Formal Pragmatics: Semantics, Pragmatics, Presupposition, and Focus

Formal Pragmatics addresses issues that are on the borderline of the semantics and pragmatics of natural language, from the point of view of a model-theoretic semanticist. This up-to-date resource covers a substantial body of formal work on linguistic phenomena, and presents the way the semantics-pragmatics interface has come to be viewed today.

• Introduces Discourse Representation Theory and File Change Semantics, with their formal representation of context and context change.
  
• Covers presupposition, including the nature and status of presuppositions as well as presupposition projection.
  
• Deals with focus, its prosodic manifestation, and the model-theoretic analysis of its meaning and function.

This volume, which serves as a textbook, as well as a reference or research book, offers a detailed discussion of key issues and clearly explains important, cutting-edge research.