Existential sentences : Their structure and meaning. By Michael Lumsden. London: Croom Helm, 1988. Pp. x, 256. Cloth $59.95.

Abstract

This study attempts to account for the relationship between the structure of existential sentences (ES) and their meaning. The book begins by considering the syntactic structure of ES and showing how the derivation of these sentences is compatible with general principles that have been proposed within recent versions of transformational grammar. The central chapters concentrate on the range of semantic restrictions pointed out by Milsark. After reviewing a number of approaches to the classification of quantifiers, Lumsden develops an account based on the presuppositional properties of different quantified expressions. The concluding chapter shows how syntactic representations together with logical forms are interpreted by hearers using assumptions concerning the speaker, knowledge of the immediate situation and the previous discourse, together with other background assumptions and contextual inferences.

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