Ruth Kempson

Ruth Kempson
Born26 June 1944
EducationSOAS (PhD)
AwardsFBA
Scientific career
Fieldslinguistics
InstitutionsSOAS
ThesisPresupposition and the delimitation of semantics (1973)
Doctoral advisorCharles Ernest Bazell
Other academic advisorsRandolph Quirk, Anita Mittwoch, Neil Smith, Deirdre Wilson
Doctoral studentsJohn Saeed

Ruth Margaret Kempson, FBA (born 26 June 1944) is a British linguist. She is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at King's College, London.

In 1977, Kempson published Semantic Theory, which discusses the concept of entailment 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 in 1989. She has made contributions to the theoretical framework of Dynamic syntax.