User:Phlsph7/Formal semantics - Studied linguistic phenomena

Studied linguistic phenomena

• Reference, Generalized quantifiers, Indefinites, Plurality, Genericity, Tense, Aspect, Mereology, Vagueness, Modification, Negation, Conditionals, Modality, Questions, Imperatives(Aloni 2016 chapters)
• i/p, truth cond, models & sets, context, fragment of english, type theory, lambda, quantification, inference, time/tense, aspect (imperfect/perfect/continuous), intensionality(Cann 1993)
• worlds, situations, nouns, noun phrases, properties, kinds (Bach 1989)
• intentional states (BORG 2004)
• type theory (Chatzikyriakidis 2020)
• quantification, binding, reference/deixis, intensionality, model theory, context(Keenan 1975)
• noun phrase, pragmatics, dynamic, tense, aspect, modality, conjunction, type-shifting, questions, negative polarity(Portner 2002 intro)
• pred, modifiers, ref, quantifier, intensionality, tense/aspect/modality, prop att, pragmatics(Portner 2005)
• prop att (Vanderveken 2011)
• meaning, form, entailment, Intensionality and Possible Worlds, De dicto/de re, functions for linguistic denotations, monotonicity, anaphora, DEFINITE AND INDEFINITE DESCRIPTIONS, plural, tense & aspect, q & imp (Winter 2016)
  • "(i) entailment as an empirical phenomenon revealing important aspects of meaning (ii) the compositionality principle as a bridge between meaning and form"(Winter 2016)
• structural ambiguity (winter 2016 pp. 30–31)
• examples of problematic sentences to translate

Generalized quantifiers

Quantifiers are expressions that indicate the quantity of something. The most basic quantifiers in predicate logic only provide information about whether a condition applies to all or some entities, as in sentences like "all men are mortal" and "some students smoke". Formal semanticists use the concept of generalized quantifiers to extend this basic framework to a broad range quantificational expressions in natural language that usually provide more detailed information. Definite determiners, used in expressions like "the twelve disciples" and "the king", are quantificational devices that provide the exact number of entities. Other numerical determines, such as "fewer than ten", and proportional determines, such as "most", are used to convey approximate and relative quantities.

Most quantificational expressions can be interpreted as relations between two sets. For instance, the sentence "all men are mortal" expresses the idea that the set of all men is a subset of the set of all mortal beings. Similarly, the sentence "fewer than ten books were sold" asserts that the intersection of the set of books and the set of sold items contains fewer then ten elements. In type theory, sets are interpreted as characteristic functions from enities to truth values of the type $\langle e,t\rangle$, returning true if the entity is a member of the set and false otherwise. As a consequence, most quantifiers have the type $\langle \langle e,t\rangle ,\langle \langle e,t\rangle ,t\rangle \rangle$, corresponding to a function that takes two sets as inputs and outputs a truth value that depends on the relation between the sets.

Formal se

• scope, binding, and ambiguity

Definite and indefinite noun phrases

• names

Intensionality, modality, and propositional attitudes

• Extensional vs. Intensional Contexts
• de dicto vs de re

Others

• negation
• anaphora and pronouns
• plurals and mass terms
• indexicality and deixis

References

Sources

• Westerståhl, Dag (2016). "7 Generalized Quantifiers". In Aloni, Maria; Dekker, Paul (eds.). The Cambridge Handbook of Formal Semantics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 206–237. ISBN 978-1-316-55273-5.