 One caveat before we get started: before a semantic theorist sets off to explain the meanings of the expressions of some language, she needs a clear idea of what she is supposed to explain the meaning of. This might not seem to present much of a problem; aren’t the bearers of meaning just the sentences of the relevant language, and their parts? This is correct as far as it goes. But the task of explaining what the semantically significant parts of a sentence are, and how those parts combine to form the sentence, is as complex as semantics itself, and has important consequences for semantic theory. Indeed, most disputes about the right semantic treatment of some class of expressions are intertwined with questions about the syntactic form of sentences in which those expressions figure. Unfortunately, discussion of theories of this sort, which attempt to explain the syntax, or logical form, of natural language sentences, is well beyond the scope of this entry. As a result, figures like Richard Montague, whose work on syntax and its connection to semantics has been central to the development of semantic theory over the past few decades, are passed over in what follows. (Montague’s essays are collected in Montague 1974.) For an excellent introduction to the connections between syntax and semantics, see Heim &amp; Kratzer (1998); for an overview of the relations between philosophy of language and several branches of linguistics, see Moss (2012).