Ruth Margaret Kempson, FBA (born 26 June 1944) is a British

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...

. She is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at

King's College, London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King G ...

. In 1977, Kempson published ''Semantic Theory'', which discusses the concept of

entailment Logical consequence (also entailment) is a fundamental concept in logic, which describes the relationship between statements that hold true when one statement logically ''follows from'' one or more statements. A valid logical argument is one ...

in linguistics. A proposition (P) is entailed by another (Q) if P is true when Q is true and Q is false when P is false, but Q is not strictly defined if P is true. She was awarded a

Fellow of the British Academy Fellowship of the British Academy (FBA) is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The categories are: # Fellows – scholars resident in the United Kingdom # ...

in 1989. She has made contributions to the theoretical framework of

Dynamic syntax Dynamic Syntax (DS) is a grammar formalism and linguistic theory whose overall aim is to explain the ''real-time'' processes of language understanding and production, and describe linguistic structures as happening step-by-step over time. Under the ...

References

Semanticists Syntacticians Fellows of the British Academy Academics of King's College London 1944 births Living people Philosophers of linguistics {{UK-linguist-stub