DOCSLIB.ORG

Characterizing Kinds

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Characterizing Kinds Characterizing Kinds A Semantics for Generic Sentences Matt Teichman October 27, 2015 Acknowledgments There is no question that Melina Avery deserves my heartfelt thanks for living through this project with me over the past few years. We met as it was in its formative stages, and I could not have asked for a more thoughtful or sensitive partner. It is no trivial undertaking to be in the company of someone who is writing a dissertation, and I must say she pulled it off with impeccable grace. If better people write better dissertations, then you primarily have her to thank for making me into a better person. I am also especially eager to thank my parents, Harold Teichman and Susan Davis, for far more than can be fit into an acknowledgements section. Throughout my early life, at great personal and financial cost to themselves, they made it their top priority to secure for me the best education they possibly could. And throughout my adult life, they have regu- larly gone beyond the call of duty when it came to nurturing my varied intellectual interests. When I developed an interest in philosophy, right at the tail end of my undergraduate ca- reer, it was my father who told me about Frege’s work, bought me copies of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, Anscombe’s Intention, and Kripke’s Naming and Necessity, and urged me to take my first logic course. When I first developed a serious interest in Wittgenstein, it was he who patiently dissected the rule following argument, the private language argument, and the remarks on pain for me. When I took my first ever graduate seminar in philosophy, then as an outsider to the discipline, I frequently had to phone home for help, but I was able to get myself up to speed remarkably quickly, thanks to his formidable erudition in phi- losophy, mathematics, the German language, physics, poetry, and countless other subjects. For this unofficial second education, which formed the perfect complement to my formal education, I am profoundly grateful. During those late undergraduate years, I was a dual major in linguistics and cinema studies, about to pursue graduate work in cinema studies on avant-garde film. My first ever philosophy course, on aesthetics, was with Christopher Williams, who did an excellent job of introducing me to the art of drawing subtle logical distinctions between superficially similar philosophical positions. It was Molly Diesing, Junko Shimoyama, and Dorit Abusch who gave me my first introduction to the philosophy of language as an undergraduate, and I am sure that my take on the field has been strongly influenced by their respective ap- i ii proaches. And it was Greg Salmieri who introduced to me both to ancient philosophy and to the history of philosophy more broadly. Although it may not be immediately apparent from the direction my research has taken, my overall philosophical world picture derives much of its inspiration from the ancient Greeks. Even today, my views about how philo- sophical activity integrates into the rest of human life take Greg’s important work in this area as their point of departure. As my graduate work in cinema studies progressed, an interest in systematically char- acterizing the differences between film interpretation and linguistic interpretation led me to draw more and more on contemporary scholarship in philosophy, and before I knew it, my research had evolved into something that it only really made sense to pursue in a philosophy department. When I finally decided to make the transition from one academic discipline to another, John McDowell, Lucy Fischer, Nicholas Rescher, Greg Salmieri, Cathy Legg, Ronald A. T. Judy, John Whitman, and Abigail Cohn were particularly forthcoming with practical advice on how best to do so. It was on McDowell and Rescher’s strong recommendation that I ended up choosing the University of Chicago, and it was thanks to the superlatively warm support of my cinema studies supervisor, Lucy Fischer, that I was able to transition smoothly. Upon my arrival in Chicago, I was instantly made to feel at home in a vibrant commu- nity of first-rate graduate students, each of whom had an impressive combination of diverse philosophical interests and exhibited an desire to share their ideas with others. During my first few years in the program I had a roommate named Mark Hopwood, who it could be said spent much of that time effectively training me to live. Somehow, over scores of extensive powwows that can only be characterized as epic, and despite his downright comical lack of interest in every area of philosophy that I work on, he managed to teach me a nontrivial proportion of what I currently know about the field, along with a substantial proportion of what I currently know about politics, history, and religion. How I managed to talk him into creating a podcast with me is anyone’s guess. During this same period, I was also especially lucky to have access to Aidan Gray and Peter Klecha, under whose intellectual mentorship I was introduced to recent work in the philosophy of language, and with whom I spent numerous hours considering various hypotheses as to the explanatory purport of semantic theories. The deep connections be- tween my previous philosophical interests and this exciting new material were immediately apparent, and before long, I was a regular attendee of the Semantics and Philosophy of Lan- guage workshop. Today, Aidan and Peet are still the first people I turn to when I feel my understanding of human language needs to be deepened. My decision to specialize in the philosophy of language became definitive after I took Chris Kennedy’s introductory graduate seminar on semantics. Although I had been exposed iii to basic compositional semantics as an undergraduate, most of the content of this course was new to me. Chris has an unbelievable degree of spontaneous energy in the classroom; he thrusts his students right into the thick of the most difficult foundational debates in the field, but in such a way as to make them seem somehow tractable. Each class session of his is impeccably organized, while also retaining a strong improvisational character. I recall one instance in which he asked: ‘Which theory of syntactic movement would you rather use? The trace or the copy theory? It’s all the same to me.’ Someone requested that we adopt the copy theory, and the entire trajectory of the rest of the course was instantly reconfigured, including the content of all subsequent homework exercises. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered that level of extemporaneity in a class ever since. Shortly thereafter, I sat in on two excellent formal semantics seminars taught by Ita- mar Francez, wherein we covered such fascinating topics as modality, concealed questions, dynamic semantics, and intensional transitives. One year later, he graciously offered to guide me through an unofficial independent study in the canonical works of that tradition. My entire dissertation topic sprung into existence one afternoon as a result of a conversation I had with him. And a year after that, thanks to the generous letter-writing efforts of Gabriel Lear, Chris Kennedy, and Kevin Davey, I was awarded a Fulbright IIE grant to study logic and semantics in the Netherlands. It would be difficult to overstate how formative this period was for me. The Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation is incomparable to any other academic environment I’ve come across. The disciplinary demarcations that dictate the way nearly every intel- lectual problem is conceived of in the US barely exist there. At the ILLC, researchers in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science, computer science, and engineering think nothing of publishing, teaching graduate seminars, or putting on conferences in each other’s fields. In the US, interdisciplinarity typically involves a professor in one department co-authoring a paper with a professor in a different department. But in Amsterdam, it runs much deeper. Most of the work done there is impossible to fit into the familiar academic tax- onomy; one has the sense that it could be published in any one of five fields, modulo small variations in terminology. I am reminded of Michel Foucault, who was told by philosophers that he was trying to pass history off as philosophy, and by historians that he was trying to pass philosophy off as history. In my view, to be on the receiving end of such accusations is as sure a sign as any that one must be doing something right. My entire stay in Amsterdam was a success, but my meetings with Frank Veltman, my faculty sponsor while abroad, are particularly worthy of mention. Over a period of one academic year, he helped me solidify my sense of how the standard rubric of topics in mathematical logic hooks up with the standard rubric of topics in formal semantics. And although my inclinations tend in a metaphysical rather than epistemic direction, he has probably had more of an influence on the way I conceive of normality than anyone else. In iv a less official capacity, I have Facundo Carriero, my roommate for the first four months of my visit, to thank for teaching me most of what I currently know about logic, programming, and how to set up an operating system. Though he would surely insist otherwise, I think it’s clear that he is a philosopher at heart. I returned to Chicago in the Spring of 2012, highly energized for dissertation writing. Billy Cobham has said that the Bitches Brew sessions with Miles Davis were an exciting new challenge for him, because whereas previously he’d shared a recording booth with no more than one piano genius at a time, now he was expected to keep up with three.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Logic, Reasoning, and Revision
    Logic, Reasoning, and Revision Abstract The traditional connection between logic and reasoning has been under pressure ever since Gilbert Harman attacked the received view that logic yields norms for what we should believe. In this paper I first place Harman’s challenge in the broader context of the dialectic between logical revisionists like Bob Meyer and sceptics about the role of logic in reasoning like Harman. I then develop a formal model based on contemporary epistemic and doxastic logic in which the relation between logic and norms for belief can be captured. introduction The canons of classical deductive logic provide, at least according to a widespread but presumably naive view, general as well as infallible norms for reasoning. Obviously, few instances of actual reasoning have such prop- erties, and it is therefore not surprising that the naive view has been chal- lenged in many ways. Four kinds of challenges are relevant to the question of where the naive view goes wrong, but each of these challenges is also in- teresting because it allows us to focus on a particular aspect of the relation between deductive logic, reasoning, and logical revision. Challenges to the naive view that classical deductive logic directly yields norms for reason- ing come in two sorts. Two of them are straightforwardly revisionist; they claim that the consequence relation of classical logic is the culprit. The remaining two directly question the naive view about the normative role of logic for reasoning; they do not think that the philosophical notion of en- tailment (however conceived) is as relevant to reasoning as has traditionally been assumed.
    [Show full text]
  • Mathematical Logic
    Proof Theory. Mathematical Logic. From the XIXth century to the 1960s, logic was essentially mathematical. Development of first-order logic (1879-1928): Frege, Hilbert, Bernays, Ackermann. Development of the fundamental axiom systems for mathematics (1880s-1920s): Cantor, Peano, Zermelo, Fraenkel, Skolem, von Neumann. Giuseppe Peano (1858-1932) Core Logic – 2005/06-1ab – p. 2/43 Mathematical Logic. From the XIXth century to the 1960s, logic was essentially mathematical. Development of first-order logic (1879-1928): Frege, Hilbert, Bernays, Ackermann. Development of the fundamental axiom systems for mathematics (1880s-1920s): Cantor, Peano, Zermelo, Fraenkel, Skolem, von Neumann. Traditional four areas of mathematical logic: Proof Theory. Recursion Theory. Model Theory. Set Theory. Core Logic – 2005/06-1ab – p. 2/43 Gödel (1). Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) Studied at the University of Vienna; PhD supervisor Hans Hahn (1879-1934). Thesis (1929): Gödel Completeness Theorem. 1931: “Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme I”. Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem and a proof sketch of the Second Incompleteness Theorem. Core Logic – 2005/06-1ab – p. 3/43 Gödel (2). 1935-1940: Gödel proves the consistency of the Axiom of Choice and the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis with the axioms of set theory (solving one half of Hilbert’s 1st Problem). 1940: Emigration to the USA: Princeton. Close friendship to Einstein, Morgenstern and von Neumann. Suffered from severe hypochondria and paranoia. Strong views on the philosophy of mathematics. Core Logic – 2005/06-1ab – p. 4/43 Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem (1). 1928: At the ICM in Bologna, Hilbert claims that the work of Ackermann and von Neumann constitutes a proof of the consistency of arithmetic.
    [Show full text]
  • In Defence of Constructive Empiricism: Metaphysics Versus Science
    To appear in Journal for General Philosophy of Science (2004) In Defence of Constructive Empiricism: Metaphysics versus Science F.A. Muller Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Mathematics Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80.000 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands E-mail: [email protected] August 2003 Summary Over the past years, in books and journals (this journal included), N. Maxwell launched a ferocious attack on B.C. van Fraassen's view of science called Con- structive Empiricism (CE). This attack has been totally ignored. Must we con- clude from this silence that no defence is possible against the attack and that a fortiori Maxwell has buried CE once and for all, or is the attack too obviously flawed as not to merit exposure? We believe that neither is the case and hope that a careful dissection of Maxwell's reasoning will make this clear. This dis- section includes an analysis of Maxwell's `aberrance-argument' (omnipresent in his many writings) for the contentious claim that science implicitly and per- manently accepts a substantial, metaphysical thesis about the universe. This claim generally has been ignored too, for more than a quarter of a century. Our con- clusions will be that, first, Maxwell's attacks on CE can be beaten off; secondly, his `aberrance-arguments' do not establish what Maxwell believes they estab- lish; but, thirdly, we can draw a number of valuable lessons from these attacks about the nature of science and of the libertarian nature of CE. Table of Contents on other side −! Contents 1 Exordium: What is Maxwell's Argument? 1 2 Does Science Implicitly Accept Metaphysics? 3 2.1 Aberrant Theories .
    [Show full text]
  • Contrastivism Surveyed
    Contrastivism Surveyed (Forthcoming in Nous) Jonathan Schaffer Joshua Knobe ANU-RSSS Yale University Suppose that Ann says, “Keith knows that the bank will be open tomorrow.” Her audience may well agree. Her knowledge ascription may seem true. But now suppose that Ben—in a different context—also says “Keith knows that the bank will be open tomorrow.” His audience may well disagree. His knowledge ascription may seem false. Indeed, a number of philosophers have claimed that people’s intuitions about knowledge ascriptions are context sensitive, in the sense that the very same knowledge ascription can seem true in one conversational context but false in another. This purported fact about people’s intuitions serves as one of the main pieces of evidence for epistemic contextualism, which is (roughly speaking) the view that the truth conditions of a knowledge attribution can differ from one conversational context to another. Opponents of contextualism have replied by trying to explain these purported intuitions in other ways. For instance, they have proposed that these purported intuitions may be explained via shifts in what is at stake for the subject, pragmatic shifts in what is assertible, or performance shifts in our liability to error. Yet a recent series of empirical studies threatens to undermine this whole debate. These studies presented ordinary people with precisely the sorts of cases that have been discussed in the contextualism literature and gave them an opportunity to say whether they agreed or disagreed with the relevant knowledge attributions. Strikingly, the results suggest that people simply do not have the intuitions they were purported to have.
    [Show full text]
  • Making Logical Form Type-Logical Glue Semantics for Minimalist Syntax
    Making Logical Form type-logical Glue Semantics for Minimalist syntax Matthew Gotham University of Oslo UiO Forum for Theoretical Linguistics 12 October 2016 Slides available at <http://folk.uio.no/matthegg/research#talks> Matthew Gotham (Oslo) Making LF type-logical FTL, 12.10.2016 1 / 63 What this talk is about Slides available at <http://folk.uio.no/matthegg/research#talks> An implementation of Glue Semantics —an approach that treats the syntax-semantics interface as deduction in a type logic— for Minimalist syntax, i.e. syntactic theories in the ST!EST!REST!GB!...‘Chomskyan’ tradition. Q How Minimalist, as opposed to (say) GB-ish? A Not particularly, but the factoring together of subcategorization and structure building (in the mechanism of feature-checking) is, if not crucial to this analysis, then certainly useful. and a comparison of this approach with more mainstream approaches to the syntax-semantics interface. Matthew Gotham (Oslo) Making LF type-logical FTL, 12.10.2016 2 / 63 Outline 1 The mainstream approach 2 A fast introduction to Glue Semantics 3 Implementation in Minimalism The form of syntactic theory assumed The connection to Glue 4 Comparison with the mainstream approach Interpreting (overt) movement Problems with the mainstream approach Glue analysis Nested DPs Scope islands Matthew Gotham (Oslo) Making LF type-logical FTL, 12.10.2016 3 / 63 The mainstream approach How semantics tends to be done for broadly GB/P&P/Minimalist syntax Aer Heim & Kratzer (1998) Syntax produces structures that are interpreted recursively
    [Show full text]
  • Proceedings of the LFG 00 Conference University of California, Berkeley Editors: Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King 2000 CSLI P
    Proceedings of the LFG 00 Conference University of California, Berkeley Editors: Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King 2000 CSLI Publications ISSN 1098-6782 Editors' Note This year's conference was held as part of a larger Berkeley Formal Grammar Conference, which included a day of workshops and the annual HPSG conference. The program committee for LFG'00 were Rachel Nordlinger and Chris Manning. We would like to thank them for putting together the program that gave rise to this collection of papers. We would also like to thank all those who contributed to this conference, especially the local organizing committee, namely Andreas Kathol, and our reviewers, without whom the conference would not have been possible. Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King Functional Identity and Resource-Sensitivity in Control Ash Asudeh Stanford University and Xerox PARC Proceedings of the LFG00 Conference University of California, Berkeley Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King (Editors) 2000 CSLI Publications http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/ 2 1 Introduction1 Glue semantics provides a semantics for Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) that is expressed using linear logic (Girard, 1987; Dalrymple, 1999) and provides an interpretation for the f(unctional)-structure level of syntactic representation, connecting it to the level of s(emantic)-structure in LFG’s parallel projection archi- tecture (Kaplan, 1987, 1995). Due to its use of linear logic for meaning assembly, Glue is resource-sensitive: semantic resources contributed by lexical entries and resulting f-structures must each be used in a successful proof exactly once. In this paper, I will examine the tension between a resource-sensitive semantics which interprets f-structures and structure-sharing in f-structures as expressed by functional control resulting from lexical functional identity equations.
    [Show full text]
  • RELATIONAL NOUNS, PRONOUNS, and Resumptionw Relational Nouns, Such As Neighbour, Mother, and Rumour, Present a Challenge to Synt
    Linguistics and Philosophy (2005) 28:375–446 Ó Springer 2005 DOI 10.1007/s10988-005-2656-7 ASH ASUDEH RELATIONAL NOUNS, PRONOUNS, AND RESUMPTIONw ABSTRACT. This paper presents a variable-free analysis of relational nouns in Glue Semantics, within a Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) architecture. Rela- tional nouns and resumptive pronouns are bound using the usual binding mecha- nisms of LFG. Special attention is paid to the bound readings of relational nouns, how these interact with genitives and obliques, and their behaviour with respect to scope, crossover and reconstruction. I consider a puzzle that arises regarding rela- tional nouns and resumptive pronouns, given that relational nouns can have bound readings and resumptive pronouns are just a specific instance of bound pronouns. The puzzle is: why is it impossible for bound implicit arguments of relational nouns to be resumptive? The puzzle is highlighted by a well-known variety of variable-free semantics, where pronouns and relational noun phrases are identical both in category and (base) type. I show that the puzzle also arises for an established variable-based theory. I present an analysis of resumptive pronouns that crucially treats resumptives in terms of the resource logic linear logic that underlies Glue Semantics: a resumptive pronoun is a perfectly ordinary pronoun that constitutes a surplus resource; this surplus resource requires the presence of a resumptive-licensing resource consumer, a manager resource. Manager resources properly distinguish between resumptive pronouns and bound relational nouns based on differences between them at the level of semantic structure. The resumptive puzzle is thus solved. The paper closes by considering the solution in light of the hypothesis of direct compositionality.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 22 Semantics Jean-Pierre Koenig University at Buffalo Frank Richter Goethe Universität Frankfurt
    Chapter 22 Semantics Jean-Pierre Koenig University at Buffalo Frank Richter Goethe Universität Frankfurt This chapter discusses the integration of theories of semantic representations into HPSG. It focuses on those aspects that are specific to HPSG and, in particular, re- cent approaches that make use of underspecified semantic representations, as they are quite unique to HPSG. 1 Introduction A semantic level of description is more integrated into the architecture of HPSG than in many frameworks (although, in the last couple of decades, the integra- tion of syntax and semantics has become tighter overall; see Heim & Kratzer 1998 for Mainstream Generative Grammar1, for example). Every node in a syntactic tree includes all appropriate levels of structure, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics so that local interaction between all these levels is in principle possible within the HPSG architecture. The architecture of HPSG thus follows the spirit of the rule-to-rule approach advocated in Bach (1976) and more specifi- cally Klein & Sag (1985) to have every syntactic operation matched by a semantic operation (the latter, of course, follows the Categorial Grammar lead, broadly speaking; Ajdukiewicz 1935; Pollard 1984; Steedman 2000). But, as we shall see, only the spirit of the rule-to-rule approach is adhered to, as there can be more 1We follow Culicover & Jackendoff (2005: 3) in using the term Mainstream Generative Grammar (MGG) to refer to work in Government & Binding or Minimalism. Jean-Pierre Koenig & Frank Richter. 2021. Semantics. In Stefan Müller, Anne Abeillé, Robert D. Borsley & Jean- Pierre Koenig (eds.), Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar: The handbook. Prepublished version.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 30 HPSG and Lexical Functional Grammar Stephen Wechsler the University of Texas Ash Asudeh University of Rochester & Carleton University
    Chapter 30 HPSG and Lexical Functional Grammar Stephen Wechsler The University of Texas Ash Asudeh University of Rochester & Carleton University This chapter compares two closely related grammatical frameworks, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) and Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG). Among the similarities: both frameworks draw a lexicalist distinction between morphology and syntax, both associate certain words with lexical argument structures, both employ semantic theories based on underspecification, and both are fully explicit and computationally implemented. The two frameworks make available many of the same representational resources. Typical differences between the analyses proffered under the two frameworks can often be traced to concomitant differ- ences of emphasis in the design orientations of their founding formulations: while HPSG’s origins emphasized the formal representation of syntactic locality condi- tions, those of LFG emphasized the formal representation of functional equivalence classes across grammatical structures. Our comparison of the two theories includes a point by point syntactic comparison, after which we turn to an exposition ofGlue Semantics, a theory of semantic composition closely associated with LFG. 1 Introduction Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar is similar in many respects to its sister framework, Lexical Functional Grammar or LFG (Bresnan et al. 2016; Dalrymple et al. 2019). Both HPSG and LFG are lexicalist frameworks in the sense that they distinguish between the morphological system that creates words and the syn- tax proper that combines those fully inflected words into phrases and sentences. Stephen Wechsler & Ash Asudeh. 2021. HPSG and Lexical Functional Gram- mar. In Stefan Müller, Anne Abeillé, Robert D. Borsley & Jean- Pierre Koenig (eds.), Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar: The handbook.
    [Show full text]
  • The University of Chicago in Praise of Praise a Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Division of the Humanities in Candi
    THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO IN PRAISE OF PRAISE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY BY DANIEL J. TELECH CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AUGUST 2018 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank my dissertation committee. I am incredibly fortunate to have had Agnes Callard and Brian Leiter direct my dissertation project. Their support, wisdom, and generosity have meant a great deal to me—philosophically and personally—over the past several years. Joint dissertation meetings with Agnes and Brian unfailingly left me with a sense of urgency, demandingness, and encouragement that remains with me, at least on good days, when doing philosophy. Before they were my advisors, they were my teachers. Agnes’ seminar on deliberation, on the one hand, and Brian’s workshop on free will and responsibility, on the other, played significant roles in my becoming gripped by the questions animating this project. I hope to be able to live up to the ideals that working and studying with them has allowed me, however incipiently, to appreciate. I thank Paul Russell for being an excellent committee member. Paul has helped me stay attuned to the complexity and humanness of issues of agency and responsibility. This dissertation owes much to insightful conversations with him. I also thank Derk Pereboom. Derk supervised a valuable visit of mine to Cornell in the fall of 2016, and became something of an unofficial committee member, providing me with generous and instructive comments on the majority of the dissertation. There are many others to whom I am grateful for support with and valuable discussion on, parts of my project, and its earlier and attendant stages.
    [Show full text]
  • Contrast and Contrastivism: the Logic of Contrastive Knowledge
    University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Arts Arts Research & Publications 2010 Contrast and Contrastivism: The Logic of Contrastive Knowledge Scobbie, Taylor http://hdl.handle.net/1880/51000 Thesis Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca Contrast and Contrastivism: The Logic of Contrastive Knowledge Taylor Scobbie - 0 - Table of Contents I. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ - 2 - II. Contrast ............................................................................................................................... - 5 - A. Contrastive Sentences ..................................................................................................... - 5 - B. Knowledge of Contrastive Sentences .............................................................................. - 9 - III. Contrastivism .................................................................................................................... - 11 - A. Historical Context ........................................................................................................... - 11 - B. Contrastivism ................................................................................................................. - 13 - C. Contrastivism and Epistemic Logic ................................................................................ - 22 - D. Compatibility .............................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Towards Glue Semantics for Minimalist Syntax∗
    cambridge occasional papers in linguistics COP i L Volume 8, Article 4: 56–83, 2015 j ISSN 2050-5949 TOWARDS GLUE SEMANTICS FOR MINIMALIST SYNTAX∗ Matthew Gotham University College London Abstract Glue Semantics is a theory of the syntax/semantics interface according to which syntax generates premises in a fragment of linear logic, and semantic interpretation proceeds by deduction from those premises. Glue was originally developed within Lexical-Functional Grammar and is now the mainstream view of semantic composition within LFG, but it is in principle compatible with any syntactic framework. In this paper I present an implementation of Glue for Minimalism, and show how it can bring certain advantages in comparison with approaches to the syntax/semantics interface more conventionally adopted. 1 Introduction Take a simple example of quantifier scope ambiguity like (1). (1) A boy trains every dog. There are various theoretical options available when deciding where the ambi- guity of (1) should be located. One option would be to say that that the lexical entry of one (or more) of the words in the sentence is polymorphic (Hendriks 1987). Another would be to say that there is more than one syntactic analysis of (1): either in terms of constituent structure (May 1977) or derivational history (Montague 1973). There is a third option, however, which is to say that the ambiguity resides in the nature of the connection between syntax and semantic composition. This is the approach taken in Glue Semantics.1 What the lexical polymorphism and syntactic ambiguity accounts have in common is the view that, given a syntactic analysis of a sentence and a choice ∗ This paper is based on material that was presented at the event Interactions between syntax and semantics across frameworks at Cambridge University on 8 January 2015, and to the Oxford Glue Group on 19 February and 5 March 2015.
    [Show full text]