General introduction -- Methods and tools for lexical acquisition -- X-bar theory: Its role in GB theory -- Information-based linguistics and head-driven phrase structure -- Three lectures on situation theoretic grammar -- Basic aspects of the theory of generalized quantifiers -- The semantics of tense and aspect -- Simplifying and correcting the treatment of intentionality in Montague semantics -- Compositionality and omniscience in situation semantics -- Some remarks on first-order intensional logic -- References.

This volume is the proceedings of the Second Advanced School on Artificial Intelligence (EAIA '90) held in Guarda, Portugal, October 8-12, 1990. The focus of the contributions is natural language processing. Two types of subject are covered: - Linguistically motivated theories, presented at an introductory level, such as X-bar theory and head- driven phrase structure grammar, - Recent trends in formalisms which will be familiar to readers with a background in AI, such as Montague semantics and situation semantics. The topics were chosen to provide a balanced overview of the most important ideas in natural language processing today. Some of the results presented were worked out very recently, are the subject of ongoing research, and have not previously appeared in book form. This book may serve as a textbook: in fact its contents were intended as lecture notes.