LINGUIST List 10.789

Thu May 20 1999

Books: Syntax and Semantics

Editor for this issue: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar <aristarlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Jud Wolfskill, Semantics and Syntax in Lexical Functional Grammar
2. Maureen Burke, New Book: SEMANTICS, COMPARATIVE & GENERAL GRAMMAR
3. Maureen Burke, New Book: MINIMALIST THEORY/GENERATIVE GRAMMAR

The following is a book which readers of this list might find of
interest. For more information please visit
http://mitpress.mit.edu/promotions/books/DALSHS99


Semantics and Syntax in Lexical Functional Grammar

The Resource Logic Approach

edited by Mary Dalrymple


A new, deductive approach to the syntax-semantics interface integrates
two mature and successful lines of research: logical deduction for
semantic composition and the Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) approach
to the analysis of linguistic structure. It is often referred to as the
"glue" approach because of the role of logic in "gluing" meanings
together.

	

The glue approach has attracted significant attention from, among
others, logicians working in the relatively new and active field of
linear logic; linguists interested in a deductive approach to the
interface between syntax and semantics within a nontransformational,
constraint-based syntactic framework; and computational linguists and
computer scientists interested in an approach to semantic composition
that is grounded in a conceptually simple but powerful computational
framework.

	

Mary Dalrymple is a member of the research staff at Xerox Palo Alto
Research Center, Consulting Associate Professor of Linguistics at
Stanford University, and a Researcher at the Center for the Study of
Language and Information, Stanford University.


Contributors

Richard Crouch, Mary Dalrymple, John Fry, Vineet Gupta, Mark Johnson,
Andrew Kehler, John Lamping, Dick Oehrle, Fernando Pereira, Vijay
Saraswat, Josef van Genabith.


6 x 9, 409 pp., cloth ISBN 0-262-04171-5


A Bradford Book

Language, Speech, and Communication series


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 | Jud Wolfskill 

 ||||||| Associate Publicist Phone: (617)
253-2079

 ||||||| MIT Press Fax: (617) 253-1709

 ||||||| Five Cambridge Center E-mail: 
wolfskilmit.edu 

 | Cambridge, MA 02142-1493 
http://mitpress.mit.edu 

 

Mohanan, Tara (National University of Singapore); Lionel Wee (National
University of Singapore); GRAMMATICAL SEMANTICS: EVIDENCE FOR STRUCTURE IN
MEANING; ISBN: 1-57586-202-6 (paper), 1-57586-201-8 (cloth); 286 pp. CSLI
Publications and National University of Singapore1999:
http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/ email: pubsroslin.stanford.edu

The exploration of meaning in human languages has traditionally focused on
the relation between linguistic forms and what they refer to in the world.
Most approaches to formal semantics have been driven by this preoccupation.
Recent years, however, have seen the growth of a parallel preoccupation,
that of exploring the relation between patterns of meaning and grammatical
structure, leading to the search for a restricted subset of meanings that
interact with the grammatical system of human languages. As part of this
research program of "grammatical semantics", this collection of papers
addresses questions of what the atomic elements of grammatically relevant
meanings should be, how they must be represented, and how these
representations interact with representations of other dimensions of
language structure. The papers converge on the idea that morpheme-internal
and phrasal meanings are represented along a single dimension, distinct
from syntactic representations. Among the phenomena described are
alternations of aspectual classes of predicates, event modification and
event elaboration, and presuppositions, and the languages include English,
Malay, Malayalam, and Mandarin.




*************************
CSLI Publications
Ventura Hall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4115
Telephone (650) 723-1839
Fax (650) 725-2166
http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/

Johnson, David E. (The IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center) and Shalom
Lappin (King's College, University of London); LOCAL CONSTRAINTS VS.
ECONOMY; ISBN: 1-57586-182-8 (paper), 1-57586-183-6 (cloth); 150 pp. CSLI
Publications 1999: http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/
email: pubsroslin.stanford.edu

The book offers a detailed critique of the economy-of-derivation model of
grammar that has emerged within the framework of Chomsky's Minimalist
Program. It looks at the conceptual and computational complexity problems
as well as the empirical consequences of both global and local economy
principles. The book compares the economy-of-derivation model with a local
constaint model of grammar that does not invoke conditions on sets of
derivations or on possible operations in a derivation. It argues that the
pure local constraint model of grammar avoids the complexity problems
resulting from economy-of-derivation principles and provides a more
satisfactory explanation of the linguistic facts that economy theorists
have cited in support of their approach. The local constraint model also
allows for a more natural and empirically well-motivated grammatical
architecture than the one postulated by the Minimalist Program.




*************************
CSLI Publications
Ventura Hall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4115
Telephone (650) 723-1839
Fax (650) 725-2166
http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/

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1999 Contributors