Semantics References

List of Semantics References by Greg Sanders
From a 1993 Usenet correspondence from Greg Sanders, recently brought to the top of comp.ai.nat-lang
Quote … the following (alphabetically by author) are some of the books
I have come across that I regard as interesting (omitting material on
Montague semantics). I make no claims that this covers the field. I
have not read any of “Meaning and Grammar.” I particularly recommend
Pinker’s “Learnability and Cognition” as a good entry point to this list.
“Natural Language Understanding” by James Allen
“Situations and Attitudes” by Jon Barwise and John Perry
“Meaning and Grammar” by Gennaro Chierchia and Sally McConnell-Ginet
(appears to be THE heavy-duty book on formal semantics)
“Language and Problems of Knowledge” by Noam Chomsky
“Matter and Consciousness” by Paul Churchland
“Mental Spaces” by Gilles Fauconnier
“Philosophy and Cognitive Science” by James Fetzer
“Meaning and Truth” edited by Jay Garfield and Murray Kiteley
“The Artificial Intelligence Debate” edited by Stephen Graubard
(contains what I think is the best paper by Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus)
“Consciousness and the Computational Mind” by Ray Jackendoff
“Metaphors We Live By” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
“Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things” by George Lakoff
“Cognitive Grammar” (volumes I and II) by Ronald Langacker
“Learnability and Cognition” by Steven Pinker
“Connections and Symbols” edited by Steven Pinker and Jacques Mehler
(see especially the paper by Steven Pinker and Alan Prince
End Quote.
Interestingly, in Dupuy’s book reviewed below, several of these are obviously referenced, but more importantly is Dupuy’s basic point that any “science” would do well to reflect on earlier attempts to solve its problems and not presume that new ideas actually supercede the old. 1993 is a long time ago in web-enabled knowledge management !