{"id":612,"date":"2010-07-03T10:00:10","date_gmt":"2010-07-03T08:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=612"},"modified":"2010-05-06T15:19:53","modified_gmt":"2010-05-06T13:19:53","slug":"what-is-meaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=612","title":{"rendered":"What is meaning?"},"content":{"rendered":"
What is meaning?: <\/strong>Fundamentals of formal semantics. <\/strong>By Paul H. Portner<\/strong>. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. Pp. ix, 235. ISBN 9781405109185<\/a>. $38.95.<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Jim Paul Wood<\/strong>, University of New Hampshire<\/em><\/p>\n

Paul Portner describes his book as an informal introduction to formal semantics. He introduces students to the spirit of formal semantics without too many \u2018funny symbols\u2019 (1). The book includes nine chapters on various topics in semantics, two chapters on pragmatics (which P describes as intrinsically interwoven with semantics), and one chapter that describes the relationship of formal semantics to other fields. Ch. 1 opens with a few pages on the idea theory of meaning (i.e. that meanings are ideas) and explains why this is not how formal semanticists tend to think about meaning. P then discusses truth conditions and possible worlds and the difference between speaker meaning and semantic meaning.<\/p>\n

Ch. 2 is about compositionality. P introduces predication and saturation using a series of informal Venn-like diagrams. In Ch. 3, P continues the discussion of predication with adjectives and transitive verbs. He introduces the notion of sets and even includes a bit of basic lambda calculus.<\/p>\n

In Ch. 4, P discusses modifiers such as adjectives, relative clauses, and adverbs. This chapter builds off of the previous discussion of predicative adjectives, comparing them with attributive adjectives. Ch. 5 focuses on reference, introducing definiteness and ways in which semanticists have dealt with the problem of referring expressions. P then moves to a discussion of plural and mass nouns and closes with pronouns and anaphora.<\/p>\n

Ch. 6 explores quantifiers. Again, Venn diagrams are used to describe how quantifiers refer, and P discusses whether quantifiers should be thought of as predicates or as arguments. He also includes a simple, yet insightful, discussion on the licensing of negative polarity items. Ch. 7 is a short (five page) discussion of intensional versus extensional contexts.<\/p>\n

Ch. 8 investigates tense, aspect, and modality. P first addresses whether English has a three-way past\/present\/future system or a two-way past\/nonpast system and then continues to give more detailed discussions of tense. In the section on aspect, P demonstrates the sometimes muddy distinction between present\/past and progressive\/perfect. He closes with a section on modals and possible worlds, which includes a lively discussion of deontic and epistemic modality.<\/p>\n

Ch. 9 is the last chapter with a primarily semantic focus. Its topic of propositional attitudes makes for a nice segue into the chapters on pragmatics. Here P discusses belief worlds and how to characterize the truth-values of a person\u2019s beliefs.<\/p>\n

Chs. 10 and 11 focus on pragmatics, the former on what a hearer knows (or needs to know) before hearing a proposition (i.e. presuppositions) and the latter on what can be inferred after hearing a proposition. Ch. 12 closes the book with an overview of the field and a description of various theoretical perspectives.<\/p>\n

The book is colloquially written and sometimes downright amusing (without ever being distracting). It will be useful to undergraduates and early graduate students, although the fact that it is intentionally informal will probably make it supplemental for more advanced students. P describes the book as \u2018something like a walk along the beach with a marine biologist\u2019 (206) and to this end has created an interesting, informative, and entertaining text.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is meaning?: Fundamentals of formal semantics. By Paul H. Portner. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. Pp. ix, 235. ISBN 9781405109185. $38.95. Reviewed by Jim Paul Wood, University of New Hampshire Paul Portner describes his book as an informal introduction to formal semantics. He introduces students to the spirit of formal semantics without too many \u2018funny symbols\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":613,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions\/613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}