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Description:
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The integrated theory of dynamic interpretation set out here will be a surprise to
advanced researchers in linguistics. It combines classical formal semantics and
modern dynamic semantics without altering the fundamental paradigm. At the
book’s core lies a pragmatically motivated notion of a dynamic conjunction of
meanings, an idea that is worked out in full formal detail. This is applied to
linguistic phenomena that involve anaphora, quantification and modality. The
author demonstrates that in each area of application existing data can be neatly
combined with new dynamic insights, but more importantly, there is a genuine
further pay-off: the work generates treatments of phenomena that were not
initially intended, with functional readings of pronouns and quantifiers, ‘Hob-Nob’
sentences, and insights into what we now call ‘Pierce’s Puzzle’.
The outcome of a decade of work by the Amsterdam School of dynamic
semantics, this volume condenses and reflects upon a vital body of research.
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