< Ivano Caponigro >

Logic Seminar (Math 391, Phil 391):
Formal Semantics of Natural Language

Winter 2015

WHEN: Tuesday 4:15-5:30 pm

WHERE: Bldg. 380, room 383-N (3rd floor)

WHO (organizers): Solomon Feferman, Ivano Caponigro (click on the names for contact info)

WHAT:

This quarter we discuss some of Richard Montague's seminal work on the formal semantics of natural language and a small sampling of the work that has been inspired by Montague's research program. The seminar should be of interest to linguists, logicians, and philosophers (in alphabetical order).

Familiarity with first order logic is assumed; no knowledge of linguistics is required. Attendees may find useful to look at the "Background Readings" below. Some of the suggested "Optional Readings" or "Further Readings" should also be of help as we go along.

Attendees are welcome to present any of the required readings. See the Courseworks for Phil 391 (aka Math 391) for information about enrollment in the seminar and grades; in particular, those taking the seminar for a letter grade must give at least one presentation or write a paper on some material in the literature to discuss ahead with the seminar organizers. We encourage presenters who have different backgrounds to team up and help each other in presenting a paper. Feel free to contact the seminar organizers if you have any questions.

Dates	Topics and Presenters	Readings and Materials [Click on the authors' names for the their web- or wikipedia pages] [Click on the paper titles for the papers]
1/13	Seminar Overview Montague's background in mathematical logic [Feferman] Formal semantics of natural laguages before Montague [Caponigro]	Handout [the paper that was mentioned at the end of today's meeting: BARWISE & COOPER, Generalized quantifiers and natural language] OPTIONAL: PARTEE, On the history of the question of whether natural language is “illogical” [extended blog post with comments and replies]
1/20	Montague's seminal ideas and framework (PART I) [Tania Rojas-Esponda: PTQ: "The syntax of a fragment of English"] [Shane Steinert-Threlkeld:PTQ: "Intensional Logic" - Part I]	MONTAGUE, The proper treatment of quantification in ordinary English (PTQ), 1973 [written in 1970; the 3rd of Montague's 3 main papers on natural language and the most influential; see "Further Readings" for links to the other two] OPTIONAL: PARTEE, Montague's “linguistic” work: Motivations, trajectory, attitudes PARTEE, The starring role of quantifiers in the history of formal semantics
1/27	Montague's seminal ideas and framework (PART II) [Shane Steinert-Threlkeld:PTQ: "Intensional Logic" - Part II] [Alex Djalali: PTQ: "Translating English into Intensional Logic"]
2/3	Extending the framework: bare plural nouns [Masoud Jasbi]	CARLSON, *A unified analysis of the English bare plural, 1977 OPTIONAL: CHIERCHIA, Reference to kinds across languages*, 1998
2/10	Extending the framework: mass and plural nouns [Peter Hawke]	LINK, The logical analysis of plurals and mass terms: A lattice-theoretical approach, 1983 OPTIONAL: CHIERCHIA, Mass nouns, vagueness, and semantic variation, 2010
2/17	Extending the framework: questions [Cleo Condoravdi in collaboration with Stanley Peters] Related talk: Floris Roelofsen (ILLC, University of Amsterdam) Alternatives in Montague Grammar (link to the paper) Friday Feb 20, 3:30 pm, Margaret Jacks Hall, Bldg. 460, Room 126	KARTTUNEN, Syntax and semantics of questions, 1977 OPTIONAL: HAMBLIN, Questions in Montague English, 1973
2/24	Guest speaker: BARBARA PARTEE Naturalizing Montague Grammar with type-shifting principles	OPTIONAL: PARTEE, Noun Phrase interpretation and type-shifting principles, 1986
2/25 Wed 1:30 pm	Dana Scott (Carnegie Mellon; Berkeley) leads a discussion on: What kind of Intensional Logic do we really want/need? Toward a Modal Metaphysics Margaret Jacks Hall, Bldg. 460, Linguistics Dept., Greenberg Room SLIDES: [Intro], [Lecture 1], [Lecture 2], [Lecture 3]
3/3	Beyond the framework: Property Theory [Solomon Feferman] [lecture notes]	CHIERCHIA & TURNER, *Semantics and Property Theory*, 1988
3/10	CANCELLED A simpler theory of properties for the semantics of natural language [Solomon Feferman]	OPTIONAL: FEFERMAN, A language and axioms for explicit mathematics FEFERMAN, The operational perspective: Three routes

Background Readings

Attendees may find it useful to look in advance at the following entries, mainly from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, for orientation to the methodological aspects of Montague's work:
- compositionality
- generalized quantifiers
- intensional logic
- Montague Semantics
- Montague Grammar

Further Readings

Montague, English as a Formal Language, 1970
[written in 1968; the 1st of Montague's 3 main papers on natural language]
Montague, Universal Grammar, 1971
[submitted July 21, 1970; the 2nd of Montague's 3 main papers on natural language]
Lewis, General Semantics, 1970
[another seminal paper on natural language semantics that deals with some of the same issues as Montague's together with several others]
Thomason (ed.), Formal Philosophy: Selected Papers of Richard Montague, 1974
[the almost complete collection of Montague's philosophical and linguistic work including his 3 main papers on natural language; it's missing "Reply to Moravcsik", which can be found in Hintikka, Moravcsik, Suppes (eds), Approaches to Natural Language, pp. 289-294. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1973; reprinted as "The Proper Treatment of Mass Terms in English'' in Pelletier (ed.), Mass Terms: Some Philosophical Problems, pp. 173-178. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979]
Dowty, Wall, Peters, Introduction to Montague Semantics, 1981
[an excellent textbook that introduces the reader to PTQ slowly, clearly, and thoroughly]
Partee, ter Meulen, Wall, Mathematical Methods in Linguistics, 1990
Partee & Portner (eds), Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings, 2002 [a collection of 18 "classics" in formal semantics]

Books on reserve

van Benthem, et al. (eds), Handbook of Logic and Language, 1991
Dowty, Wall, Peters, Introduction to Montague Semantics, 1981
Partee, Mathematical Methods in Linguistics, 1990
Peters & Westerståhl, Quantifiers in Language and Logic, 2006
Portner & Partee (eds), Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings, 2002
Thomason (ed.), Formal Philosophy: Selected Papers of Richard Montague, 1974

(last update: 05/27/2015 )