The content of this textbook is organized as a theory of language for
the construction of talking robots. The main topic is the mechanism of
natural language communication in both the speaker and the hearer.
In the third edition the author has modernized the text, leaving the
overview of traditional, theoretical, and computational linguistics,
analytic philosophy of language, and mathematical complexity theory with
their historical backgrounds intact. The format of the empirical
analyses of English and German syntax and semantics has been adapted to
current practice; and Chaps. 22-24 have been rewritten to focus more
sharply on the construction of a talking robot.