I propose that human experience of matter provides the source domain for the metaphor that motivates the grammatical category of aspect in Russian. This model is a version of the universal TIME IS SPACE metaphor, according to which SITUATIONS ARE MATERIAL ENTITIES, and, more specifically, PERFECTIVE IS A DISCRETE SOLID OBJECT versus IMPERFECTIVE IS A FLUID SUBSTANCE. The contrast of discrete solid objects with fluid substances reveals a rich array of over a dozen properties; the isomorphism observed between those properties (...) and the complex uses of aspect in Russian is compelling. This model presents a more finely articulated account of Russian aspect than feature analysis can achieve. Although some of these properties overlap significantly with the count versus mass distinction often associated with aspect, the properties provide more detail and ground the metaphor to concrete experience. Properties of matter can be divided into three groups: inherent properties such as edges, shape, and integrity (which correspond to inherent situation aspect); interactional properties such as juxtaposition, dynamism, and salience (which correspond to discourse phenomena of aspect); and human interactional properties such as graspability and impact (which correspond to pragmatic phenomena of aspect). The interactional and human interactional properties can be used to motivate subjective construal, whereas the inherent properties serve as default motivators. The model will be demonstrated in detail using Russian data, followed by a survey comparing Russian with the other Slavic languages, which will show that deviations consist of either non-implementation of a given property, or the implementation of an inherent (default) property in place of an interactional or human interactional property. This model will be contrasted with a brief discussion of a selection of non-Slavic languages. The specific metaphor in this model does not apply beyond Slavic, but perhaps it will encourage investigation into the source domain of aspect in other languages. There appears to be a correlation between the relatively heavy morphological investment Slavic languages make in nominal individuation and the individuation of situations presented in this metaphorical model. (shrink)

This paper investigates lexical mass-to-count and count-to-mass operators in Slavic languages, primarily Russian and Ukrainian, by exploring the distribution and semantic contribution of the suffix -_in_/-_yn_. The focus is on two uses of the suffix: the singulative turns mass nouns like _gorox_ ‘pea’ into count, denoting sets of natural units (e.g., _gorošina_ ‘a pea’), and the massifier applies to count nouns, such as _kon’_ ‘horse’, and turns them into mass (e.g., _konina_ ‘horsemeat’). It is proposed that each use (...) of -_in_/-_yn_ contributes a partition operator which triggers a new division into units of the original material part. It is further argued that the singulative and the massifier should be unified, given their (i) phonological identity, (ii) shared grammatical properties, and (iii) common semantic core. Under the proposed analysis, there is a single suffix that functions as an underspecified lexical partition shifter. (shrink)

Schwarzschild (Nat Lang Semant 7:141–177, 1999)’s account of givenness elaborates a notion of complementarity of givenness and focus in an intricate way: while givenness is semantically interpreted, focus is grammatically marked. It has been noticed, however, that under certain circumstances givenness in English is grammatically marked as well. Movement plays a role in this process. This paper provides further evidence for givenness marking. I present a case study of three Slavic languages (Czech, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian) in which givenness (...) is always grammatically marked. In these languages, given elements must linearly precede new elements. If this relative ordering cannot be achieved by base generation, the ordering can be achieved by movement. I offer an account of the data in terms of givenness and the Maximize Presupposition principle of Heim (1991). In particular, I argue for an operator that marks elements in its scope as given. The operator divides the structure between a given and a new part. The role of Maximize Presupposition is to enforce that every given element is in the scope of the operator. The operator and Maximize Presupposition work in tandem with an economy condition on movement that licenses movement only if it yields an otherwise unavailable semantic interpretation. The proposal thus provides independent evidence for competition in grammar and for the role of Maximize Presupposition in the process. (shrink)

This review considers Semantic Syntax and Slavic Transformational Syntax particularly in the light of their contributions to the theory of grammar. Semantic Syntax is shown to have a polemical bias against the Aspects model and toward generative semantics. Its editor's position in the constellation of semantic logicians is defined; pro-Chomskian objections to the logical-cognitive semantic theory are advanced. Slavic Transformational Syntax is comprised of essays with a wide range of theoretical stances; the insights of the radical case (...) grammar of James Miller are compared with those of Semantic Syntax. Remarks on deixis by Richard Brecht are discussed in relationship to semantic-logic approaches. Certain similarities of Jakobsonian functionalism and generative semantics are discussed. (shrink)

I discuss two competing theories of the progressive: the theory proposed in Parsons (1980, 1985, 1989, 1990) and the theory proposed in Landman (1992). These theories differ in more than one way. Landman regards the progressive as an intentional operator, while Parsons doesn't. Moreover, Landman and Parsons disagree on what uninflected predicates denote. For Landman, cross the street has in its denotation complete events of crossing the street; the aspectual contribution of English simple past (perfective aspect) is the identity function. (...) For Parsons, both complete and incomplete events of crossing the street can be in the denotation of the base VP; perfective aspect restricts its denotation to the events that culminate. I present a version of ParsonÕs theory that avoids the problems raised by Landman, in particular the problem posed for Parsons by creation verbs. The repaired version and Landman's theory still differ in the way they analyze uninflected verbs. The repaired version and Landman's theory still differ in the way they analyze uninflected predicates. I present evidence from Slavic languages that both theories are needed. Finally, I discuss some evidence that may favor one or the other approach to the semantics of the English progressive. (shrink)

This textbook, which is completely self-contained and can be read by anyone with a secondary school education, is the result of the author's material prepared over the past 15 years of teaching introductory natural language semantics to graduate and undergraduate students at McGill University. The intended audience comprises undergraduate and graduate students in linguistics as well as those in philosophy, computer science and psychology with an interest in natural language semantics. The aim of the textbook is to teach (...) the fundamentals of natural language semantics, with English as the principal, though not the exclusive, target language. The principal aim of the textbook is to provide the student with all the basics necessary to be able him or her read research in natural language semantics, regardless of the theory assumed by the author of the research. In contrast to other textbooks in the field, which aim to introduce students to a particular theory of natural language semantics, this textbook seeks to give to its reader a clear overview of the kind of natural language phenomena which, at least prima facie, fall within the ambit of an investigation of natural language semantics; to assist the reader in developing a mastery of the mathematical tools used to formulate hypotheses about the natural language phenomena studied; and to impart to the reader an appreciation of the interplay between hypothesis and data. As a result, the textbook is rich in its presentation of the patterns of English, drawing extensively on the best and most contemporary descriptive grammars of English. The textbook also has more than 500 exercises, with answers to half of them. (shrink)

This volume offers a general introduction to the field of semantics and provides coverage of the main perspectives.

This paper is a reflexion on the computability of natural language semantics. It does not contain a new model or new results in the formal semantics of natural language: it is rather a computational analysis, in the context for type-logical grammars, of the logical models and algorithms currently used in natural language semantics, defined as a function from a grammatical sentence to a set of logical formulas—because a statement can be ambiguous, it can correspond to multiple formulas, (...) one for each reading. We argue that as long as we do not explicitly compute the interpretation in terms of possible world models, one can compute the semantic representation of a given statement, including aspects of lexical meaning. This is a very generic process, so the results are, at least in principle, widely applicable. We also discuss the algorithmic complexity of this process. (shrink)

I assume that the task of natural language semantics is to provide an unambiguous logical language into which natural language can be translated in such a way that the translating expressions display a structure which is isomorphic to the meaning of the translated expressions. Since language is a means of thinking and communicating mental contents, the meanings of singular terms cannot be the individuals of the substratist tradition, because such individuals are not cognizable entities. Thus I propose that the (...) logical language be based on Castaneda's guise theory, according to which singular terms always denote guises, i.e., roughly, bundles of properties. This, I argue, would result in a semantics which is in accordance with projects such as Lakoff's natural logic or Fodor's methodological solipsism. ;I first propose a formal system, GCC, which tries to be as faithful as possible to Castaneda's informal presentation of guise theory. It is therefore characterized by different forms of predication and a distinction between a level of property composition and a level of proposition composition. Such a distinction is dropped in a second system, GF, which presents a more traditional Fregean representation of predication. Yet, GF endorses essential assumptions of guise theory such as the existence of different sameness relations that can provide various interpretations for the English "is". I claim that GF provides more theoretical simplicity than GCC. ;Finally, I show the fruitfulness of the present approach by applying GF to a vast collection of linguistico-philosophical puzzles which includes but is not restricted to those that guise theory was originally designed to address: various versions of Frege's paradox, the paradox of analysis, Quine's puzzle on the number of planets, issues of reidentification and intentional identity, the anaphoric "it" of sentences such as "the lizard's tail fell off but then it grew back," problems connected with the use of "knowing-who ," proper names, indexicals and demonstratives. (shrink)

Paul M. Pietroski, University of Maryland I had heard it said that Chomsky’s conception of language is at odds with the truth-conditional program in semantics. Some of my friends said it so often that the point—or at least a point—finally sunk in.

Evidentiality deals with the marking of information source, that is with means that specify how we come to know what we (think to) know. For instance, such means indicate whether knowledge derives from hearsay, or whether an inference has been based on perception or on knowledge about habits. Often these indications are vague. This book focuses on sentence adverbs and so-called function words in Slavic languages. Six of them were subject of a questionnaire survey, whose discussion, preceded by (...) general methodological background, occupies the second part of this book. The first half contains a thorough consideration of notional links between evidentiality and related domains, first of all of epistemic modality, and it discusses the intricacies of doing lexicography of evidential marking. (shrink)

This paper examines the account of ordinary language semantics developed by Franz Brentano and his pupil Anton Marty. Long before the interest in ordinary language in the analytic tradition, Brentanian philosophers were exploring our everyday use of words, as opposed to the scientific use of language. Brentano and Marty were especially interested in the semantics of (common) names in ordinary language. They claimed that these names are vague, and that this is due to the structure of the concepts (...) that constitute their meaning: concepts expressed by such names are themselves vague, based on typicality, and have more or less similar items within their extension. After presenting the views of Brentano and Marty, this paper compares them to later accounts of meaning and concepts, notably Wittgenstein’s theory of family resemblances and the prototype theory of concepts, and emphasizes the originality of the Brentanian position. (shrink)

Doubling unconditionals are exemplified by the Spanish example Venga quien venga, estaré contento ‘Whoever comes, I’ll be happy’. This curious and little studied construction is attested in various forms in a number of Romance and Slavic languages. In this paper, I provide a basic description of these constructions, focusing especially on Spanish, Czech, and Slovenian, and argue that they can be brought in line with analyses of run-of-the-mill unconditionals if one recognizes that the wh-structure within the unconditional antecedent (...) is a free relative and that the free relative is focused. The focused free relative introduces alternatives and thus gives rise to the denotation proposed by Rawlins :111–178, 2013) for English unconditionals. In the last part of the paper, I hypothesize that at least some non-doubling unconditionals could in fact have a doubling underlying structure, which is disguised by relative sluicing—clausal ellipsis with a relative pronoun remnant. (shrink)

Paul M. Pietroski, University of Maryland I had heard it said that Chomsky’s conception of language is at odds with the truth-conditional program in semantics. Some of my friends said it so often that the point—or at least a point—finally sunk in.

The paper sets out to offer an alternative to the function/argument approach to the most essential aspects of natural language meanings. That is, we question the assumption that semantic completeness (of, e.g., propositions) or incompleteness (of, e.g., predicates) exactly replicate the corresponding grammatical concepts (of, e.g., sentences and verbs, respectively). We argue that even if one gives up this assumption, it is still possible to keep the compositionality of the semantic interpretation of simple predicate/argument structures. In our opinion, compositionality presupposes (...) that we are able to compare arbitrary meanings in term of information content. This is why our proposal relies on an ‘intrinsically’ type free algebraic semantic theory. The basic entities in our models are neither individuals, nor eventualities, nor their properties, but ‘pieces of evidence’ for believing in the ‘truth’ or ‘existence’ or ‘identity’ of any kind of phenomenon. Our formal language contains a single binary non-associative constructor used for creating structured complex terms representing arbitrary phenomena. We give a finite Hilbert-style axiomatisation and a decision algorithm for the entailment problem of the suggested system. (shrink)

The contributions in this volume focus on the Bayesian interpretation of natural languages, which is widely used in areas of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and computational linguistics. This is the first volume to take up topics in Bayesian Natural Language Interpretation and make proposals based on information theory, probability theory, and related fields. The methodologies offered here extend to the target semantic and pragmatic analyses of computational natural language interpretation. Bayesian approaches to natural language semantics and pragmatics are (...) based on methods from signal processing and the causal Bayesian models pioneered by especially Pearl. In signal processing, the Bayesian method finds the most probable interpretation by finding the one that maximizes the product of the prior probability and the likelihood of the interpretation. It thus stresses the importance of a production model for interpretation as in Grice’s contributions to pragmatics or in interpretation by abduction. (shrink)

The verification of a sentence against a visual display in experimental conditions reveals a procedure that is driven solely by the properties of the linguistic input and not by the properties of the context (the set-up of the visual display) or extra-linguistic cognition (operations executed to obtain the truth value). This procedure, according to the Interface Transparency Thesis (ITT) (Lidz et al. in Nat Lang Semant 19(3):227–256, 2011), represents the meaning of an expression at the interface with the ‘conceptual-intentional’ system (...) (Chomsky in The minimalist program. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1995). My experiments provide support for the ITT by replicating in Polish and in Bulgarian the findings of Lidz et al. (Nat Lang Semant 19(3):227–256, 2011) for the English quantifier most. We also obtain new evidence that participants are prompted to switch between verification procedures by a change in the linguistic input (a different superlative quantifier entailed by most), but not by a change in the visual input. Thus, the motivation for the subconscious switch in procedures is not to maximize efficiency. Participants use the procedure associated with each quantifier, and in effect, the same display is verified differently depending on which information the visual system is instructed to use by the semantic representation of the sentence. (shrink)

We present Property Theory with Curry Typing (PTCT), an intensional first-order logic for natural language semantics. PTCT permits fine-grained specifications of meaning. It also supports polymorphic types and separation types. We develop an intensional number theory within PTCT in order to represent proportional generalized quantifiers like “most.” We use the type system and our treatment of generalized quantifiers in natural language to construct a type-theoretic approach to pronominal anaphora that avoids some of the difficulties that undermine previous type-theoretic analyses (...) of this phenomenon. (shrink)

Situation semantics was developed as an alternative to possible worlds semantics. In situation semantics, linguistic expressions are evaluated with respect to partial, rather than complete, worlds. There is no consensus about what situations are, just as there is no consensus about what possible worlds or events are. According to some, situations are structured entities consisting of relations and individuals standing in those relations. According to others, situations are particulars. In spite of unresolved foundational issues, the partiality provided (...) by situation semantics has led to some genuinely new approaches to a variety of phenomena in natural language semantics. In the way of illustration, this article includes relatively detailed overviews of a few selected areas where situation semantics has been successful: implicit quantifier domain restrictions, donkey pronouns, and exhaustive interpretations. It moreover addresses the question of how Davidsonian event semantics can be embedded in a semantics based on situations. Other areas where a situation semantics perspective has led to progress include attitude ascriptions, questions, tense, aspect, nominalizations, implicit arguments, point of view, counterfactual conditionals, and discourse relations. (shrink)

This paper describes a novel pedagogical software program that can be seen as an online companion to one of the standard textbooks of formal natural language semantics, Heim and Kratzer (1998). The Penn Lambda Calculator is a multifunctional application designed for use in standard graduate and undergraduate introductions to formal semantics: Teachers can use the application to demonstrate complex semantic derivations in the classroom and modify them interactively, and students can use it to work on problem sets provided (...) by the teacher. The program supports demonstrations and exercises in two main areas: (1) performing beta reduction in the simply typed lambda calculus; (2) application of the bottom-up algorithm for computing the compositional semantics of natural language syntax trees. The program is able to represent the full range of phenomena covered in the Heim and Kratzer textbook by function application, predicate modification, and lambda abstraction. This includes phenomena such as intersective adjectives, relative clauses and quantifier raising. In the student use case, emphasis has been placed on providing “live” feedback for incorrect answers. Heuristics are used to detect the most frequent student errors and to return specific, interactive suggestions. (shrink)

Expressions like "two novels" are traditionally taken to convey information about cardinality and are analyzed using a cardinality function. Salmon (Philosop Perspect 11:1–15, 1997), Liebesman (Australasian J Philos 93:21–42, 2015; Philos’ Impr 16:1–25, 2016; In D. W. Zimmerman (ed.), Oxford studies in metaphysics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, forthcoming), and Haida and Trinh (in: Dočekal, Wagiel (eds) Formal approaches to number in Slavic and beyond, Language Science Press, Berlin, 2001) argue against this traditional account, claiming that it can’t explain our (...) use of expressions like "two and a half novels". According to them, the proper analysis of such expressions requires a partiality measure, which maps entities to rational numbers such as 2.5. In this paper, we set out to defend the traditional account. To do so, we demonstrate that an analysis based on a partiality measure is inconsistent with the truth conditions of plural comparatives and equatives. We also show that such an account doesn’t provide an adequate analysis for expressions like "two novels and a half", nor for their French counterparts (e.g., "deux romans et demi"). Critically, such expressions contain no constituent that could refer to the number 2.5. We provide an alternative analysis for all these expressions, based on cardinality and an operation of non-overlapping summation. (shrink)

Hybrid languages have both modal and first-order characteristics: a Kripke semantics, and explicit variable binding apparatus. This paper motivates the development of hybrid languages, sketches their history, and examines the expressive power of three hybrid binders. We show that all three binders give rise to languages strictly weaker than the corresponding first-order language, that full first-order expressivity can be gained by adding the universal modality, and that all three binders can force the existence of infinite models (...) and have undecidable satisfiability problems. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall provide a novel response to the argument from context-sensitivity against truth-conditional semantics. It is often argued that the contextual influences on truth-conditions outstrip the resources of standard truth-conditional accounts, and so truth-conditional semantics rests on a mistake. The argument assumes that truth-conditional semantics is legitimate if and only if natural language sentences have truth-conditions. I shall argue that this assumption is mistaken. Truth-conditional analyses should be viewed as idealised approximations of the complexities (...) of natural language meaning. From this perspective, disparity between the scientific model and its real-world target is to be expected. I elaborate on what such an approach to semantics would look like. (shrink)

By creating certain marks on paper, or by making certain sounds-breathing past a moving tongue-or by articulation of hands and bodies, language users can give expression to their mental lives. With language we command, assert, query, emote, insult, and inspire. Language has meaning. This fact can be quite mystifying, yet a science of linguistic meaning-semantics-has emerged at the intersection of a variety of disciplines: philosophy, linguistics, computer science, and psychology. Semantics is the study of meaning. But what exactly (...) is "meaning"? What is the exact target of semantic theory? Much of the early work in natural language semantics was accompanied by extensive reflection on the aims of semantic theory, and the form a theory must take to meet those aims. But this meta-theoretical reflection has not kept pace with recent theoretical innovations. This volume re-addresses these questions concerning the foundations of natural language semantics in light of the current state-of-the-art in semantic theorising. (shrink)

For most of the 1980s, Jon Barwise focused much of his research in the area of natural language semantics. This article surveys his research publications in that area.Most, but not all, of those publications were in the area of situation semantics, a new approach to natural language semantics Barwise developed jointly with his colleague John Perry in the first half of the 1980s. That work was both blessed, and cursed, by becoming closely identified in academic circles with (...) the award of a $23 million gift to Stanford from the System Development Foundation for the establishment in 1983 of its Center for the Study of Language and Information. The development of situation semantics, and in due course its underlying mathematical foundation Situation Theory, carried out for the most part within the framework of CSLI's STASS research group, was actually a relatively small part of the overall research program at CSLI. But because Barwise and Perry were leading figures at CSLI, were centrally involved in securing the SDF gift, and were respectively the first and second directors of CSLI, a general impression sprung up that the two of them had been awarded millions of dollars to develop situation semantics.A major consequence of this false impression was that from the theory's early days, a great deal of interest was shown in the project. With so many accomplished scholars pouring over the work while the ink was still wet on the manuscript pages, Barwise and Perry were able to take advantage of a broad range of helpful criticism. This meant that they were able to develop the new theory much more rapidly than would otherwise have been the case. (shrink)

We develop a framework for natural language semantics which handles intensionality via metalogical constructions and deals with degree truth values in an integrated way. We take an axiomatic set theory, ZF, as the foundation for semantic representations, but we make ZF a metalanguage for part of itself by embedding a language ℒ within ZF which is basically a copy of the part of ZF consisting of set expressions. This metalogical set-up is used for handling propositional attitude verbs (limited to (...) believe in this paper). We define a truth function τ which determines the truth value τ(p, T) of an ℒ-proposition p with respect to a theory T. Theories are sets of ℒ-propositions with associated truth values, and can be viewed as a (much more well-defined) replacement for possible worlds. We develop a mechanism for defining belief worlds as theories. We simultaneously develop two different versions of our system - a Boolean version where the set Ω of truth values is {0, 1}, and a degree-truth version where Ω is the interval [0, 1] of real numbers. We use degrees of truth in handling a broad class of semantic predicates that we call base-focus predicates, which include generalized quantifiers as well as many adverb and adjective senses and certain discourse-level predicates. (shrink)

Independence Friendly Logic, introduced by Hintikka, is a logic in which a quantifier can be marked for being independent of other quantifiers. Dependence logic, introduced by Väänänen, is a logic with the complementary approach: for a quantifier it can be indicated on which quantifiers it depends. These logics are claimed to be useful for many phenomena, for instance natural language semantics. In this contribution we will compare these two logics by investigating their application in a compositional analysis of the (...) de dicto - de re ambiguity in natural language. It will be argued that Independence Friendly logic is suitable, whereas Dependence Logic is not. (shrink)

Transparent intensional logic (TIL) is a well-explored type-theoretical framework for semantics of natural language. However, its treatment of polymorphic functions, which are essential for the analysis of various natural language phenomena, is still underdeveloped. In this paper, we address this issue and propose an extension of TIL that introduces polymorphism via type variables ranging over types and generalized variables ranging over constructions and types. Furthermore, we offer an analysis of sentences involving non-specific notional attitudes of the general form ‘_A_ (...) considers (believes, desires, wants, seeks,...) something’. (shrink)

A BSTRACT. We present Property Theory with Curry Typing, an intensional first-order logic for natural language semantics. PTCT permits fine-grained specifications of meaning. It also supports polymorphic types and separation types.1 We develop an intensional number theory within PTCT in order to represent proportional generalized quantifiers like most. We use the type system and our treatment of generalized quantifiers in natural language to construct a typetheoretic approach to pronominal anaphora that avoids some of the difficulties that undermine previous type-theoretic (...) analyses of this phenomenon. (shrink)