This book provides a systematic study of three foundational issues in the semantics of natural language that have been relatively neglected in the past few decades.

• focuses on the formal characterization of intensions, the nature of an adequate type system for natural language semantics, and the formal power of the semantic representation language
  
• proposes a theory that offers a promising framework for developing a computational semantic system sufficiently expressive to capture the properties of natural language meaning while remaining computationally tractable
  
• written by two leading researchers and of interest to students and researchers in formal semantics, computational linguistics, logic, artificial intelligence, and the philosophy of language

Chris Fox is a Reader in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Essex. In addition to numerous papers, his previous publications in the area of computational semantics include The Ontology of Language: Properties, Individuals, and Discourse (2000).

Shalom Lappin is Professor of Computer Science at King’s College, London. He has published extensively on issues in computational linguistics and formal grammar, and his books include Local Constraints vs. Economy (with David Johnson, 1999), Fragments: Studies in Ellipsis and Gapping (edited with Elabbas Benmamoun, 1999), and The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory (edited, Blackwell, 1996).