Since 1970-ties in the theory of syntax of natural language quite a number of competing, incommensurable theoretic frameworks have emerged. Today the lack of a leading paradigm and kaleidoscope of perspectives deprives our general understanding of syntax and its relation to semantics and pragmatics. The present book is an attempt to reestablish the most fundamental ideas and intuitions of syntactic well-formedness within a new general account. The account is not supposed to compete with any of today’s syntactic frameworks, but to provide a deeper understanding of why these frameworks succeed or fail when they do and to show a new way for cooperation between logicians and linguists which may lead in future to a unified, yet more specific account.
This book is intended as a preliminary work for a uniform description of language, especially overall organization and architecture of grammar and its connection with semantics. An array of general logical intuitions, concerning the initial requirements for building and interpreting compound expressions, stemming from Frege, Husserl and Ajdukiewicz, is spelled out to form a general framework, allowing for critical evaluation of today’s leading paradigms, such as Generative Grammar, Montague Grammar or Type-Logical Grammar.
The main message of the book is that categorial grammar is not only one of the competing theories of syntax, but – according to some general features – is the most plausible framework for logical syntax of natural language. With profound motivation the book proposes an original treatment of quantification and formulates insightful general principles of syntactic analysis.
