Comprehensive and up-to-date to theory and research
This comprehensive review and critical synthesis of research on modality focuses on formal theories within linguistics and related aspects of philosophical logic. It will be welcomed by students of linguistics at graduate level and above, as well as by researchers in philosophy, computational science, and related fields.
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Summary
Comprehensive and up-to-date to theory and research
This comprehensive review and critical synthesis of research on modality focuses on formal theories within linguistics and related aspects of philosophical logic. It will be welcomed by students of linguistics at graduate level and above, as well as by researchers in philosophy, computational science, and related fields.
Description
This is a book about semantic theories of modality. Its main goal is to explain and evaluate important contemporary theories within linguistics and to discuss a wide range of linguistic phenomena from the perspective of these theories. The introduction describes the variety of grammatical phenomena associated with modality, explaining why modal verbs, adjectives, and adverbs represent the core phenomena. Chapters are then devoted to the possible worlds semantics formodality developed in modal logic; current theories of modal semantics within linguistics; and the most important empirical areas of research. The author concludes by discussing the relation betweenmodality and other topics, especially tense, aspect, mood, and discourse meaning.Paul Portner's accessible guide to this key area of current research will be welcomed by students of linguistics at graduate level and above, as well as by researchers in philosophy, computational science, and related fields.
Critic Reviews
“This is a most welcome, challenging and insightful book...an invaluable source of information for both students and senior researchers in linguistic semantics.”
`Modality lives up to [its] billing. It serves as an introduction, giving an overview of the main theories of modality, from modal logic, through Angelika Kratzers seminal work (Kratzer 1981, 1991), to more recent approaches.... The book is also a valuable reference for experts. It summarizes major areas of active debates (e.g. truth-conditional status of epistemic modality), presents novel issues and challenges to current theories (e.g. issues of gradedmodality), and offers new solutions and directions, which will certainly inspire future research.'Valentine Hacquard, Language
About the Author
Paul Portner is Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University. He studied philosophy and linguistics at Princeton University and at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where his 1992 PhD dissertation was on Situation Theory and the Semantics of Propositional Expressions. He is editor of Formal Semantics: Essential Readings (Blackwell, 1992) and author of What is Meaning? (Blackwell, 2005). He is currently writing a book onMood, which like the present work will appear in Oxford Surveys in Semantics and Pragmatics.
This is a book about semantic theories of modality. Its main goal is to explain and evaluate important contemporary theories within linguistics and to discuss a wide range of linguistic phenomena from the perspective of these theories. The introduction describes the variety of grammatical phenomena associated with modality, explaining why modal verbs, adjectives, and adverbs represent the core phenomena. Chapters are then devoted to the possible worlds semantics for modality developed in modal logic; current theories of modal semantics within linguistics; and the most important empirical areas of research. The author concludes by discussing the relation between modality and other topics, especially tense, aspect, mood, and discourse meaning.Paul Portner's accessible guide to this key area of current research will be welcomed by students of linguistics at graduate level and above, as well as by researchers in philosophy, computational science, and related fields.
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