2024.08.8 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews
Jeffrey C. King, Felicitous Underspecification: Contextually Sensitive Expressions Lacking Unique Semantic Values in Context, Oxford University Press, 2021, 176pp., $82.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780192857057.
Reviewed by Ray Buchanan, University of Texas at Austin
Jeff King has written an outstanding book on an important and challenging topic, one that manages to bring more clarity and structure to the subject matter it addresses than one would have thought possible. The book is carefully argued and provides detailed analyses of a wide range of interesting data concerning context-sensitive constructions, including tense, definite descriptions, and demonstrative pronouns.
Since quite a lot happens in this slender volume, I’ll limit my discussion to the first half of the book (Chapters 1–3), where King lays out the theoretical core of his account; a full discussion of the second half (Chapters 4–6) is not possible in the space of a brief review. In the book’s later chapters, King offers a detailed account of how his picture…
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