An Essay In Universal Semantics

This book is a study of the foundations of modeltheoretic semantics. Itscentral thesis is that one does not need to assume a perfect structural fitbetween langu... » 

This book is a study of the foundations of modeltheoretic semantics. Itscentral thesis is that one does not need to assume a perfect structural fitbetween languages and their models in order to characterise the basic semanticnotions. In particular truthvalue gaps and gluts can be explained away aslocal phenomena that do not bring logical disaster in their wake. Varzisdetailed and original account is based on a generalisation of supervaluationarytechniques and is illustrated with reference to a range of different types ofexamples from sentential logic to type theory. br emAudienceem The book isselfcontained and will appeal to philosophers logicians linguists andcomputer scientists. «