Lexical Meaning in Context

Nicholas Asher is Directeur de Recherche CNRS, Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse, Université Paul Sabatier and Professor of Philosophy and of Linguistics at the University of Texas, Austin. He is author of Reference to Abstract Objects in Discourse (1993) and co-author of Logics of Conversation (2003) with Alex Lascarides.

• Preface; Part I. Foundations: 1. Lexical meaning and predication; 2. Types and lexical meaning; 3. Previous theories of prediction; Part II. Theory: 4. Type composition logic; 5. The complex type; 6. Type presuppositions in TCL; Part III. Development: 7. Restricted predication; 8. Rethinking coercion; 9. Other coercions; 10. Syntax and type transformations; 11. Modification, coercion and loose talk; 12. Generalizations and conclusions; Part IV. Coda: References; Index.

'Finally we have a representation of word meaning and how it interacts with more standard compositional semantics. The fundamental basis of Nicholas Asher's theory is that word meanings are lexically simple, but the combination of word meanings involves interesting and complex ways for the types associated with the words to interact. Formal semanticists and computational semanticists now have a theory that is well-enough developed that they can pursue solutions to a broad range of hitherto recalcitrant phenomena.' Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Simon Fraser University and University of Alberta