#  Gennaro Chierchia 

 



   ![Gennaro Chierchia](/sites/g/files/omnuum5096/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/chierchia/files/os_web_pic_chierchia_2020.png?itok=U8xLchw1) 

 

I have been spending my intellectual life studying how meaning takes shape in human language. A common thread in my work is the idea/claim/speculation that a logic (a way of drawing inferences) spontaneously grows and latches on to the syntactic structures produced by our capacity for recursive computation. This ‘natural logic’ gives a special power to our ability to use language to communicate and refer, a power not found in other species. Some more specific recurring themes/obsessions are properties and predication (control/raising/de se attributions), Noun Phrase structure (quantified vs. ‘bare’ nominals, mass vs. count), anaphora and presuppositions, implicatures and polarity phenomena. I am also very interested in pursuing these topics by experimental means.



 

   ![Book: "Logic in Grammar](/sites/g/files/omnuum5096/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/chierchia/files/b1_chierchia_logic-in-gramm.jpg?itok=cbeT-Xmd) 

 



 

 [### Oxford University Press 2013

 ](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/logic-in-grammar-9780199697984;jsessionid=7A74A0EBC0E57D0D0CAE6E1A9822C7A0?cc=us&lang=en&) 

 

   ![Semantic Interfaces](/sites/g/files/omnuum5096/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/chierchia/files/1575863162_0.jpg?itok=aV-8E0OF) 

 



 

 [### CSLI 2001

 ](https://web.stanford.edu/group/cslipublications/cslipublications/site/1575863162.shtml) 

 

   ![Meaning and Grammar An Introduction to Semantics](/sites/g/files/omnuum5096/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/chierchia/files/b6-meaning.jpg?itok=y4zB_xij) 

 



 

 [### MIT Press 2000

 ](http://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262031622/meaning-and-grammar/) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   ![Semantica, Le Strutture del Linguaggio](/sites/g/files/omnuum5096/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/chierchia/files/41kw4jzfrnl._.jpg?itok=WLAPdiyQ) 

 



 

 [### Il Mulino 1997

 ](https://www.mulino.it/edizioni/foreign_rights/scheda_volume.php?id_sezione=838&isbnart=05790) 

 

   ![Dynamics of Meaning. Anaphora, Presupposition and the Theory of Grammar](/sites/g/files/omnuum5096/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/chierchia/files/21gnh75f-7l.jpg?itok=wfBS-_Oi) 

 



 

 [### University of Chicago Press 1995

 ](https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo3628157.html) 

 

   ![Properties, Types and Meaning](/sites/g/files/omnuum5096/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/chierchia/files/b5-type.jpg?itok=PSamD8UG) 

 



 

 [### Kluwer/Reidel 1988

 ](https://link.springer.com/book/9781556080883) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

##  A surprise for my 60th birthday 

 



   ![b7-fromgrammartomeaning.jpg](/sites/g/files/omnuum5096/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/chierchia/files/b7-fromgrammartomeaning.jpg?itok=f4TlOwWd) 

 



 

 [### Cambridge 2013

 ](http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/languages-linguistics/semantics-and-pragmatics/grammar-meaning-spontaneous-logicality-language)