This book investigates the relation between language and logic. Gennaro Chierchia looks at the way syntactic and inferential processes interact in determining polarity sensitive and free choice phenomena.

He analyses these as a form of grammaticized scalar implicature and seeks to identify the common core of the polarity system by examining many of its manifestations as well as the choices that determine its diversity. To do so he reassesses the relations between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and in the process makes startling insights into the relation of syntax to logic.