The format of this book is unusual, especially for a book about
linguistics. The book is meant primarily as a research monograph aimed
at linguists who have some background in formal semantics, e. g.
Montague Grammar. However, I have two other audiences in mind. Linguists
who have little or no experience of formal semantics, but who have
worked through a basic mathematics for linguists course (e. g. using
Wall, 1972, or Partee, 1978), should, perhaps with the help of a
sympathetic Montague gramma- rian, be able to discover enough of how I
have adapted some of the basic ideas in formal semantics to make the
developments that I undertake in the rest of the book accessible.
Logicians and computer scientists who know about model theoretic
semantics and formal systems should be able to glean enough from
Chapters I and II about linguistic concerns and techniques to be able to
read the remainder of the book, again possibly with the help of a
sympathetic Montague grammarian. However, readers should beware. Chapter
II is not meant as a general introduction either to formal semantics or
to linguistics and while much of the presentation there is going over
ground that is already well covered in the literature, the particular
formulation and the emphases are very much oriented to the developments
to be undertaken later in the book.