This book develops in detail the simple idea that assertion is the expression of belief. In it the author puts forward a version of probabilistic semantics which acknowledges that we are not perfectly rational and which offers a significant advance in generality on theories of meaning couched in terms of truth conditions. It promises to challenge a number of entrenched and widespread views about the relations of language and mind. Part I presents a functionalist account of belief worked through a modified form of decision theory. In Part II the author generates a theory of meaning in terms of assertibility conditions whereby to know the meaning of an assertion is to know the belief it expresses.

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The format of this book is unusual especially for a book about linguistics. The book is meant primarily as a research monograph aimed at linguists who have some background in formal semantics e. g. Montague Grammar. However I have two other audiences in mind. Linguists who have little or no experience of formal semantics but who have worked through a basic mathematics for linguists course (e. g. using Wall 1972 or Partee 1978) should perhaps with the help of a sympathetic Montague gramma- rian be able to discover enough of how I have adapted some of the basic ideas in formal semantics to make the developments that I undertake in the rest of the book accessible. Logicians and computer scientists who know about model theoretic semantics and formal systems should be able to glean enough from Chapters I and II about linguistic concerns and techniques to be able to read the remainder of the book again possibly with the help of a sympathetic Montague grammarian. However readers should beware. Chapter II is not meant as a general introduction either to formal semantics or to linguistics and while much of the presentation there is going over ground that is already well covered in the literature the particular formulation and the emphases are very much oriented to the developments to be undertaken later in the book.