Meaning versus Grammar investigates the complicated relationship between grammar, computation, and meaning in natural languages. It details conditions under which meaning-driven processing of natural language is feasible, discusses an operational and accessible implementation of the grammatical cycle for Dutch, and offers analyses of a number of further conjectures about constituency and entailment in natural language.

Crit Cremers is an associate professor in formal semantics and computational linguistics at Leiden University.

Maarten Hijzelendoorn is a senior software engineer at the Faculty of Humanities of Leiden University.

Hilke Reckman is a senior researcher in natural language processing.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
5
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 9
0. INTRODUCTION 11
0.1 A Language Machine 11
0.2 Language and computability 16
0.3 The book 21
1. SYNTAX:
the game of recursion and discontinuity 25
1.1 The need for syntax 25
1.2 Forms of Dutch 30
1.3 The task for syntax 34
1.4 The logic and the algebra of lists, flags, types and modes 41
1.5 The calculi 60
1.6 The case for Dutch 71
1.6.1 General Format 71
1.7 The grammar of discontinuity and coordination 94
1.8 Parsing the syntax 114
1.9 Generating by syntax: agendas and linearization 138
2. SEMANTICS:
the game of scope and intensionality 153
2.1 The ways of meaning 153
2.2 The forms of meaning 157
2.3 Scope and Specification 162
2.4 Intensionality and semantic dependency 175
2.5 Events and states: reification of predication 182
2.6 Exploiting Logical Form for Parsing 196
2.7 Generating from Logic 217
3. LEXICON:
the language’s encyclopaedia and database 229
3.1 Storing knowledge of language 229
3.2 Modes of lexical knowledge 242
3.3 Unification: powering grammar conservatively 259
3.4 The making of the lexicon 265
3.5 Disclosing the lexicon: object-orientation and speed for semantic generation 284
3.6 The lexicon while parsing 298
4. GRAMMAR:
the reward of incompleteness 301
4.1 The three duals of grammar 301
4.2 The conservativity of syntax 302
4.3 The destructivity of semantics 308
4.4 The denial of structure 314
4.5 The mismatch of structure and meaning 316
4.6 The lexicon as an oracle: the case of behalve 324
4.7 The incompleteness of grammar 327
4.8 The fruit of incompleteness 329
REFERENCES 333
INDEX 349