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Structured Meanings, Thematic Roles and Control

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Properties, Types and Meaning

Part of the book series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy ((SLAP,volume 39))

Abstract

One of the salient features of current work in semantics has been the search for fine grainedness. The strategies that are most actively being explored can perhaps be classified in two groups. The first group of proposals tries to come up with a theory of logical space capable of weighting information content in subtle ways. Data semantics, for example, (Veltman (1983), Landman (1986)) and situation semantics (Barwise and Perry 1983) fall within this group. The second group of proposals centers around the idea that at some level propositional content must be represented in terms of sentence-like structures, as Frege and Russell suggested. The structured meaning approach (a variant of Carnap’s intensional isomorphism approach), developed in Cresswell (1985) and related work falls in this second group.

Since I started thinking about these issues, I have been helped by more people than I can possibly acknowledge. The present work has been most directly influenced by D. Dowty, P. Jacobson, R. Larson and E. Williams. For the many remaining problems, mea culpa.

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© 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Chierchia, G. (1989). Structured Meanings, Thematic Roles and Control. In: Chierchia, G., Partee, B.H., Turner, R. (eds) Properties, Types and Meaning. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 39. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2723-0_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2723-0_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-55608-070-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-2723-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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