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Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics
Compositional Semantics: An Introduction to the Syntax/Semantics Interface
This book provides an introduction to compositional semantics and to the syntax/semantics interface. It is rooted within the tradition of model theoretic semantics, and develops an explicit fragment of both the syntax and semantics of a rich portion of English.
Professor Jacobson adopts a Direct Compositionality approach, whereby the syntax builds the expressions while the semantics simultaneously assigns each a model-theoretic interpretation. Alongside this approach, the author also presents a competing view that makes use of an intermediate level, Logical Form. She develops parallel treatments of a variety of phenomena from both points of view with detailed comparisons. The book begins with simple and fundamental concepts and gradually builds a more complex fragment, including analyses of more advanced topics such as focus, negative polarity, and a variety of topics centering on pronouns and binding more generally. Exercises are provided throughout, alongside open-ended questions for students to consider. The exercises are interspersed with the text to promote self-discovery of the fundamentals and their applications.
The book provides a rigorous foundation in formal analysis and model theoretic semantics and is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in linguistics, philosophy of language, and related fields.
Professor Jacobson adopts a Direct Compositionality approach, whereby the syntax builds the expressions while the semantics simultaneously assigns each a model-theoretic interpretation. Alongside this approach, the author also presents a competing view that makes use of an intermediate level, Logical Form. She develops parallel treatments of a variety of phenomena from both points of view with detailed comparisons. The book begins with simple and fundamental concepts and gradually builds a more complex fragment, including analyses of more advanced topics such as focus, negative polarity, and a variety of topics centering on pronouns and binding more generally. Exercises are provided throughout, alongside open-ended questions for students to consider. The exercises are interspersed with the text to promote self-discovery of the fundamentals and their applications.
The book provides a rigorous foundation in formal analysis and model theoretic semantics and is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in linguistics, philosophy of language, and related fields.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 11, 2016
This is easily the most poorly written attempt at a book in the history of academia. Pauline Jacobson may know something about Semantics, but you would never know it from the way that she presents the information in this text. Her writing is truly comparable to the attention span of a twelve-year-old kid with Asperger's. Half of this book isn't even intelligible from an organized, sequential-thought-process point of view, not to mention useful from an educational standpoint. Instead, it is comprised of Jacobson's incessant rambling about how we all wished Semantics were something that it's not, imaginary figures such as her beloved "Straw Man" that play no noticeable part whatsoever in the explanation of anything even remotely relevant to the Syntax-Semantics interface, and this verbal diarrhea of hers regarding her personal views on the history of Compositional Semantics.
Just to give some insight on what one can expect from this text:
"Let f be any function that takes n arguments (including 0) of any type, then an e-type argument, and then m other arguments (including 0) of any type to return 1 or 0. Then argslot-l(f) is a function which also takes the same n arguments, then a generalized quantifier argument P, and then the same m arguments. It returns 1 just in case P maps to 1 the set of individuals x which are such that had f applied to the same n arguments and then to x and then to the same m arguments, f would have returned 1."
It is because of the Delphic explanations such as this one that turned my opinion of this book sour. Outside of her horrendous writing, the main problem that I have is that this text is supposedly an introduction to Compositional Semantics, yet her explanations of even the most basic formulas are excessively cryptic and unclear. If it hadn't been for my professor providing supplementary texts to the class, we would all still be working through her wording on set theory.
This book is an absolute waste of time and money.
Just to give some insight on what one can expect from this text:
"Let f be any function that takes n arguments (including 0) of any type, then an e-type argument, and then m other arguments (including 0) of any type to return 1 or 0. Then argslot-l(f) is a function which also takes the same n arguments, then a generalized quantifier argument P, and then the same m arguments. It returns 1 just in case P maps to 1 the set of individuals x which are such that had f applied to the same n arguments and then to x and then to the same m arguments, f would have returned 1."
It is because of the Delphic explanations such as this one that turned my opinion of this book sour. Outside of her horrendous writing, the main problem that I have is that this text is supposedly an introduction to Compositional Semantics, yet her explanations of even the most basic formulas are excessively cryptic and unclear. If it hadn't been for my professor providing supplementary texts to the class, we would all still be working through her wording on set theory.
This book is an absolute waste of time and money.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 12, 2022
Left the book three-quarters in. Learnt a lot of formalism but, as others pointed out, there are quite a few typos and the discussion can get very dense. Jacobson is aware of the branching, non-linear structure, and she suggests that a reader skim through choice sections.
I do plan to return for a second pass — but for now, I think I'm good. Upside: Jacobson presents the non-triviality of the formal semantic enterprise, and she has convinced me that some standard moves in the mainstream syntactic theory were misguided and could've been avoided with a less dismissive treatment of semantics. (Onto the linguistic wars book next!)
I do plan to return for a second pass — but for now, I think I'm good. Upside: Jacobson presents the non-triviality of the formal semantic enterprise, and she has convinced me that some standard moves in the mainstream syntactic theory were misguided and could've been avoided with a less dismissive treatment of semantics. (Onto the linguistic wars book next!)
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May 26, 2022this book is an introduction to the syntax/semantics interface with a (direct) compositional approach. only read if you are a polish logician
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