Jerrold J. Katz (1932–2002)

This biography of Jerrold J. Katz focuses on his main contributions to linguistic theory and the philosophy of language. His accomplishments include (1) developing the first comprehensive theory of semantics within generative grammar, (2) proposing that language is an abstract rather than a physical or mental object, and (3) challenging the Fregean notions that sense determines reference and that semantic form is equivalent to logical form. In addition to his general semantic theory, Katz worked out detailed accounts of presupposition, illocutionary force, idioms and names, and published authoritatively on the work of such philosophers as René Descartes, Gottlob Frege, Willard van Orman Quine, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.