In this chapter, the author contributes with the experiences gathered during the years while teac... more In this chapter, the author contributes with the experiences gathered during the years while teaching formal Linguistics to students. The main focus of this section is to describe how teaching semantics can be impactant to beginners.
The goal of this paper is to argue for the fruitfulness for linguistic theory of an approach to s... more The goal of this paper is to argue for the fruitfulness for linguistic theory of an approach to semantics that has been developed primarily by logicians and philosophers. That the theory of possible worlds semantics has been ex tremely fruitful for logic and philosophy is widely if not universally accepted, and I will not try to convince remaining skeptics on that score. But the goals of linguistics are sufficiently different from those of philosophy and logic that there are independent and highly reasonable grounds for skepticism about the appropriateness ...
Before turning to some selected issues in type theory, type-shifting and the semantics of noun ph... more Before turning to some selected issues in type theory, type-shifting and the semantics of noun phrases, which form the main topic of this chapter, I will briefly mention some other, very exciting topics of current research in formal semantics that are relevant to the theme of this book, but which do not receive the attention they deserve in what follows. One is the centrality of context dependence, context change, and a more dynamic view of the basic semantic values. This view of meanings, in terms of functions from contexts to contexts, is ...
... in DET(P) must be all and only the singletons of elements of P.) Two other potentially signif... more ... in DET(P) must be all and only the singletons of elements of P.) Two other potentially significant properties of A are that it is symmetric and is monotonically increasing in both arguments; I conjecture that these are both ``nice'' properties. That's a vague claim, but I would ...
This exciting series features important new research by leading scholars in the field of semantic... more This exciting series features important new research by leading scholars in the field of semantics. Each volume focuses on a topic or topics central to the field, including dynamic semantics, aspect, focus, anaphora, and type-shifting, and offers a pedagogical component designed to introduce the topics addressed and situate the new research in the context of the field and previous research. The presentational style emphasizes student accessibility without compromising the sophistication of the research involved. Explorations in Semantics is an excellent series for students and researchers in the field, as well as scholars in adjacent areas such as syntax, philosophy of language, and computational linguistics.
and Alexander Wentzell for help gathering and clarifying information and improving translations, ... more and Alexander Wentzell for help gathering and clarifying information and improving translations, and Wayles Browne for invaluable help and advice at all stages. 1 Our transliteration practice: When we know that someone's long-standing personal preference for the transliteration of their name in English-language contexts is different from the JSL standard (e.g. 'Zalizniak', 'Paducheva', 'Sitchinava', 'Tolstaya' rather than 'Zaliznjak', 'Padučeva', 'Sičinava', 'Tolstaja'), we use their preferred transliteration if we are writing about them in our text, including when we are translating from Russian into English something someone else wrote about them. But in the bibliography, when transliterating citations of works in Russian, we use JSL standard in both author names and names occurring within titles of works. Exceptions: we write 'Zalizniak', 'Yanin', 'Testelets' as author names (though not within titles). For émigrés such as Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov, we use their American names, even when writing about pre-emigration times.
Richard Montague, logician and philosopher, founded the theory of Montague grammar, a starting po... more Richard Montague, logician and philosopher, founded the theory of Montague grammar, a starting point for formal semantics. Montague studied at Berkeley under Tarski, and taught at UCLA from 1955 to 1971. He made major contributions to mathematical logic, then turned to the development of a theory of syntax, model–theoretic semantics, and formal pragmatics encompassing formal and natural languages. Crucial features of his theory include the truth-conditional foundations of semantics, the algebraic interpretation of the principle of compositionality, and the use of a higher-order typed intensional logic. Montague grammar became influential in linguistics by the 1970s, and evolved (with additional sources) into formal semantics.
Before turning to some selected issues in type theory, type-shifting and the semantics of noun ph... more Before turning to some selected issues in type theory, type-shifting and the semantics of noun phrases, which form the main topic of this chapter, I will briefly mention some other, very exciting topics of current research in formal semantics that are relevant to the theme of this book, but which do not receive the attention they deserve in what follows. One is the centrality of context dependence, context change, and a more dynamic view of the basic semantic values. This view of meanings, in terms of functions from contexts to contexts, is ...
In this lecture we will deal with sorts, shifts, coercion and other useful notions. But first of ... more In this lecture we will deal with sorts, shifts, coercion and other useful notions. But first of all let's hint why we need then. Consider a Russian example: stakan moloka 'glass of milk'. What's the problem? A glass is a concrete object. But a glass of milk may be a glass with some milk in it or some quantity of milk. We have a well-known example of metonymy here. But how should we deal with it in our constructions? This is our topic today.
'donkey-pronouns'.1 Among the data to be accounted for, described more fully in Section II, are t... more 'donkey-pronouns'.1 Among the data to be accounted for, described more fully in Section II, are temporal analogs of deictic pronouns, anaphoric pronouns with definite and indefinite antecedents, 'bound-variable' pronouns, and 'donkey-sentence' pronouns. The unified treatment of all these uses of pronouns provided by the frameworks of Kamp and Heim is reviewed in Section III. In Section IV I describe and slightly modify Hinrichs' treatment of tenses, adverbs, and temporal anaphora in simple linear discourse and in sentences with when-, before-, and after-clauses. In Hinrichs' treatment, events, processes, and states are taken as primitives rather than instants or intervals of time, following Kamp (1979), (1980) (cf. also Bach (1980), (1981)); 'reference events' are added to take over the function of earlier authors' 'reference times'. Hinrichs' overall framework fits into Kamp's theory of discourse representation structures, allowing 'discourse events' to be treated similarly to 'discourse entities'. Section V summarizes the explanation provided by these accounts for the parailels between temporal and nominal anaphora in the deictic case and
In this chapter, the author contributes with the experiences gathered during the years while teac... more In this chapter, the author contributes with the experiences gathered during the years while teaching formal Linguistics to students. The main focus of this section is to describe how teaching semantics can be impactant to beginners.
The goal of this paper is to argue for the fruitfulness for linguistic theory of an approach to s... more The goal of this paper is to argue for the fruitfulness for linguistic theory of an approach to semantics that has been developed primarily by logicians and philosophers. That the theory of possible worlds semantics has been ex tremely fruitful for logic and philosophy is widely if not universally accepted, and I will not try to convince remaining skeptics on that score. But the goals of linguistics are sufficiently different from those of philosophy and logic that there are independent and highly reasonable grounds for skepticism about the appropriateness ...
Before turning to some selected issues in type theory, type-shifting and the semantics of noun ph... more Before turning to some selected issues in type theory, type-shifting and the semantics of noun phrases, which form the main topic of this chapter, I will briefly mention some other, very exciting topics of current research in formal semantics that are relevant to the theme of this book, but which do not receive the attention they deserve in what follows. One is the centrality of context dependence, context change, and a more dynamic view of the basic semantic values. This view of meanings, in terms of functions from contexts to contexts, is ...
... in DET(P) must be all and only the singletons of elements of P.) Two other potentially signif... more ... in DET(P) must be all and only the singletons of elements of P.) Two other potentially significant properties of A are that it is symmetric and is monotonically increasing in both arguments; I conjecture that these are both ``nice'' properties. That's a vague claim, but I would ...
This exciting series features important new research by leading scholars in the field of semantic... more This exciting series features important new research by leading scholars in the field of semantics. Each volume focuses on a topic or topics central to the field, including dynamic semantics, aspect, focus, anaphora, and type-shifting, and offers a pedagogical component designed to introduce the topics addressed and situate the new research in the context of the field and previous research. The presentational style emphasizes student accessibility without compromising the sophistication of the research involved. Explorations in Semantics is an excellent series for students and researchers in the field, as well as scholars in adjacent areas such as syntax, philosophy of language, and computational linguistics.
and Alexander Wentzell for help gathering and clarifying information and improving translations, ... more and Alexander Wentzell for help gathering and clarifying information and improving translations, and Wayles Browne for invaluable help and advice at all stages. 1 Our transliteration practice: When we know that someone's long-standing personal preference for the transliteration of their name in English-language contexts is different from the JSL standard (e.g. 'Zalizniak', 'Paducheva', 'Sitchinava', 'Tolstaya' rather than 'Zaliznjak', 'Padučeva', 'Sičinava', 'Tolstaja'), we use their preferred transliteration if we are writing about them in our text, including when we are translating from Russian into English something someone else wrote about them. But in the bibliography, when transliterating citations of works in Russian, we use JSL standard in both author names and names occurring within titles of works. Exceptions: we write 'Zalizniak', 'Yanin', 'Testelets' as author names (though not within titles). For émigrés such as Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov, we use their American names, even when writing about pre-emigration times.
Richard Montague, logician and philosopher, founded the theory of Montague grammar, a starting po... more Richard Montague, logician and philosopher, founded the theory of Montague grammar, a starting point for formal semantics. Montague studied at Berkeley under Tarski, and taught at UCLA from 1955 to 1971. He made major contributions to mathematical logic, then turned to the development of a theory of syntax, model–theoretic semantics, and formal pragmatics encompassing formal and natural languages. Crucial features of his theory include the truth-conditional foundations of semantics, the algebraic interpretation of the principle of compositionality, and the use of a higher-order typed intensional logic. Montague grammar became influential in linguistics by the 1970s, and evolved (with additional sources) into formal semantics.
Before turning to some selected issues in type theory, type-shifting and the semantics of noun ph... more Before turning to some selected issues in type theory, type-shifting and the semantics of noun phrases, which form the main topic of this chapter, I will briefly mention some other, very exciting topics of current research in formal semantics that are relevant to the theme of this book, but which do not receive the attention they deserve in what follows. One is the centrality of context dependence, context change, and a more dynamic view of the basic semantic values. This view of meanings, in terms of functions from contexts to contexts, is ...
In this lecture we will deal with sorts, shifts, coercion and other useful notions. But first of ... more In this lecture we will deal with sorts, shifts, coercion and other useful notions. But first of all let's hint why we need then. Consider a Russian example: stakan moloka 'glass of milk'. What's the problem? A glass is a concrete object. But a glass of milk may be a glass with some milk in it or some quantity of milk. We have a well-known example of metonymy here. But how should we deal with it in our constructions? This is our topic today.
'donkey-pronouns'.1 Among the data to be accounted for, described more fully in Section II, are t... more 'donkey-pronouns'.1 Among the data to be accounted for, described more fully in Section II, are temporal analogs of deictic pronouns, anaphoric pronouns with definite and indefinite antecedents, 'bound-variable' pronouns, and 'donkey-sentence' pronouns. The unified treatment of all these uses of pronouns provided by the frameworks of Kamp and Heim is reviewed in Section III. In Section IV I describe and slightly modify Hinrichs' treatment of tenses, adverbs, and temporal anaphora in simple linear discourse and in sentences with when-, before-, and after-clauses. In Hinrichs' treatment, events, processes, and states are taken as primitives rather than instants or intervals of time, following Kamp (1979), (1980) (cf. also Bach (1980), (1981)); 'reference events' are added to take over the function of earlier authors' 'reference times'. Hinrichs' overall framework fits into Kamp's theory of discourse representation structures, allowing 'discourse events' to be treated similarly to 'discourse entities'. Section V summarizes the explanation provided by these accounts for the parailels between temporal and nominal anaphora in the deictic case and
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