This book offers an introduction to the derivation of meaning that is accessible and worked out to facilite an understanding of key issues in compositional semantics. The syntactic background offered is generative, the major semantic tool used is set theory. These tools are applied step-by-step to develop essential interface topics and a selection of prominent contrastive topics with material from English and German.

Table of Contents

Part I. Structure and Meaning: An Introduction to Syntax and Semantics 

1-1 Introduction to the field: Syntax and semantics 

1-2 Categories, phrases and phrase structure rules 

1-3 A systematic way of constructing phrases

1-4 Clause structure and movement

1-5 Goals and methods in semantics

1-6 Composing sentence meanings – first steps

1-7 Extending the theory

1-8 NP Semantics

Appendix. Syntactic and semantic rules from Part I

Part II – Extending the Theory and Applying it to Crosslinguistic Difference

2-1 Introduction and roadmap to the second part

2-2 Clause structure - English and German

2-3 Quantifiers and scope

2-4 Negation and polarity

2-5 Focus

2-6 Ellipsis

2-7 Tense and Aspect

2-8 Conclusions

About the Authors

Sigrid Beck is a linguist and professor in the Department of English at the University of Tübingen. She researches semantics, in particular on areas including questions, plurals, and focus.

Remus Gergel received his doctorate in English linguistics from the University of Tübingen after studying English, mathematics and Romance languages.