Talk:Formal semantics (natural language)

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2025/March

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Changes to the article

I was thinking about implementing changes to this article with the hope of moving it in the direction of GA status. Two paragraphs in the body of the article lack references and the article has the maintenance tags "self-published source" and "permanent dead link".

Many central topics are currently missing, like basic explanations of major frameworks such as Montague, Davidsonian, dynamic, and situation semantics. The article covers a few basic concepts and phenomena, but there would be many more to include, such as reference, quantifiers, tense, aspect, intentionality, intensionality, questions, imperatives, possible worlds, model theory, and entailment. Given that the central characteristic of formal semantics, compared to other types of semantics, is its formal method, a (sub)section on methodology would be beneficial.

The section "Overview" could be expanded with better sourcing. Since providing an overview is already the function of the lead section, it could be renamed to "Definition" or something similar. Despite Montague's influence, I think the history section should start earlier with Frege, Tarski, and Carnap, similar to overview sources like Portner & Partee 2002 § Introduction and King 2008. While the main focus of the article should probably stay on natural language, various overview sources like Aloni & Dekker 2016 and Portner 2005 also examine semantics in computer science, logic, and cognition. We could cover them in a new section called "In various fields", moving the article a few steps in the direction of a WP:Broad-concept article.

There are more things to consider, but they can be addressed later since the ones mentioned so far will already involve a lot of work to implement. I was hoping to get some feedback on these ideas and possibly other suggestions. Phlsph7 (talk) 17:12, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

I'd certainly be glad if this article got some attention, but I don't have time to contribute much at the moment. Various thoughts, though:

• I recommend recent high-quality textbooks as sources. These will provide pre-digested reader-friendly explanations of what semantics is actually about and what semanticists actually do, which tends to get lost in these kinds of articles.

• Coppock and Champollion is the best thing out there. It's up-to-date, clearly written, and broad-minded. It's self-published, but still counts as an WP:RS given the stature of its authors and its widespread use in top departments.

• Heim & Kratzer and its sequel are on the verge of being out of date, but they do a great job explaining the "craft" of semantics as well as the standard approaches to many phenomena. The sequel is self-published, but again, that's not a problem given its authors, its citation count, and the fact that it was the standard textbook on intensional semantics for many years.

• Kate Kearns's book is less advanced and gives a nice survey of phenomena.

• I would exercise caution with the Cann textbook and other sources of that vintage. So much has changed since then.

• The methodology of formal semantics is just the scientific method, so I'm not sure how much there is to say there.

• I don't think the article should have a section on frameworks, since the field doesn't really work like that. The insights of Montague and Davidson have become part of the air we all breathe, but there's no distinct Montagovian or Davidsonian framework.

• There's certainly things to say about connections with the semantics of programming languages and so forth, but the study of those things is a pretty different endeavor so I think a broad concept article would be a stretch.

Botterweg (talk) 01:48, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Hello Botterweg, thanks for all your comments and the source suggestions, I'll look into them. Concerning methodology, the scientific method is primarily associated with the empirical sciences while formal semantics is more of a formal science due to its reliance on logic and mathematics. My idea was to focus the discussion on that formal methodology and its underlying assumptions, which is what sets formal semantics apart from other approaches to semantics and the first topic of many overview sources. The discussion would include things already explained in the section "Central concepts" together with other points. For example, various sources emphasize the importance of entailment or implication to analyze meaning (including Coppock & Champollion, which you mentioned), together with a basic explanation of how meaning is defined externally and how that is related to model theory. Possibly, we could also mention the distinction between grammatical and logical form.

Concerning frameworks, my idea was not to have an in-depth discussion, but maybe 1-2 paragraphs for each approach to get the basics across. I'm trying to follow overview sources which often include some discussion of them, so I think simply ignoring them would violate WP:PROPORTION. They include Lappin 2003, Portner & Partee 2002 § Introduction, and Portner 2005 chapter 12. Coppock & Champollion also has separate sections on dynamic semantics, event semantics, and different forms of logic in semantics. We can discuss whether the term "framework" is right in this context. Lappin 2003 talks of approaches, such as the Montague approach and the Davidsonian approach, which is also fine with me. Some authors talk of "Davidsonian semantics", like Portner 2005.

There are usually different ways to organize the ideas that should be mentioned into sections. I gave a rough outline of how it could be done. However, I'm also open to workshopping alternative approaches to where all the topics (like methodology and frameworks/approaches) are discussed in the section structure of the article in case you have different ideas. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:58, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

The job of a formal semanticist is to formulate hypotheses and test their predictions with data. So at least in that sense, it is very much an empirical enterprise. The hypotheses are formulated using logic, and they are often interesting in virtue of associated foundational issues, but they are nonetheless empirical hypotheses. This is true in both the philosophical and linguistically oriented corners of the field, even among those who assume an externalist view of meaning. If this aspect of the field is unfamiliar, I would recommend taking some time to read through (and perhaps even work through) one of the textbooks before proceeding with this article since this is a crucial part of what the field is.

For the most part, no deep disagreement with the other things you proposed, modulo what I said above. Do be careful with logical form, since the term refers to a different thing within semantics. Regarding frameworks, I'd prefer a different term (maybe "formal systems"?) but my real concern is just that I don't want to see a section that "teaches the controversy" between superseded theories and others that aren't really alternatives to one another. Botterweg (talk) 03:50, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

I agree with you about the empirical relevance of theories in formal semantics. I'll see if I can get the article to work with the section-structure outlined above, but this is a challenging topic so I appreciate your input. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:34, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

Section "Definition"

@Botterweg: Thanks for your help with getting this section in order. One of the passages you restored claims that "formal semanticists typically adopt a Platonistic ontology ... Within linguistics, it is more common to view formal semantics as part of the study of linguistic cognition". I'm not sure about these claims and I couldn't find them in Yalcin 2014 pp. 17–54. As far as I can tell, the chapter does not mention Platonism and only explicitly mentions formal semantics once on page 41 in a much more narrow sense to discuss Lewis's interpretation of the compositionality principle. If you have access to von Fintel's "What is semantics", could you provide a quote? As a sidenote: if this source is not published anywhere, I'm not sure that it can be used as an WP:RS, see WP:SOURCEDEF.

Concerning the terms "truth-conditional semantics" and "model-theoretic semantics", would it be ok if we added a footnote on the sentence about terminology you removed? The supporting claims in the sources are Formal semantics is thus model-theoretic semantics and there is a family of theories of semantics which we can count as just one theory ... truth-conditional semantics, formal semantics, model-theoretic semantics,.... I'm open for reformulation ideas if you dislike the previous formulation. Phlsph7 (talk) 11:55, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

With the truth-conditional stuff, I would just explain things directly instead of relying on the buzzwords, e.g. a theory of semantics needs to predict sentences' truth conditions, whatever else it does. With the other stuff, I was being very sloppy in a variety of ways. I should have called the von Fintel slides "self-published" and I shouldn't have restored the "Platonist" part. (I think it's probably true, but it's not in the source.) I could email you the von Fintel slides, but the key part in regards to {in|ex}ternalism is actually him quoting Alan Bale who has been interviewing semanticists about their views on these issues. He quotes Bale as saying:

My impressions are that those who are more philosophically oriented tend to the first point of view [= “meanings outside of the head”]. The second point of view [= “mental representations”] is often held by linguistics grad students. Perhaps this point of view is often transitional? It is also one that sometimes makes its way into the experimental literature. The third point of view [= “agnostic/pragmatic”] is quite common among those semanticists who take a more pragmatic approach to their field. (Here, I am NOT using “pragmatic” in the technical sense.)

von Fintel then goes on to say:

It is striking that so much productive work and so much intellectual exchange can be happening in a field where people have fundamentally opposed views of what it is that they are doing. A possible explanation: one can see semantics as a model-building science. Practitioners can map the models to what they think they are about in the privacy of their own world view, but that mapping does not strongly affect the practice of working with the models. See Yalcin 2018, Nefdt 2020, Jackson 2021 for discussion.

Note that in the last paragraph, von Fintel is using "model" in the sense of the "Bohr model", not in the sense of a "Kripke model". Botterweg (talk) 03:50, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to look up the quotes, they are helpful and they support the later part of the passage about the externalist view of meaning. I adjust the passage to remove Platonism, reformulate the part about cognition to better reflect the sources, and explain externalist semantics since readers may not know what that is. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:52, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

Diverse ways to construct models

I removed the paragraph that starts like this: "Within formal semantics, there are diverse ways how to construct models and relate linguistic expressions to them" because the subsequent text doesn't really describe current approaches or methodological splits. But I do think a paragraph of this sort would be good to have, perhaps discussing things like direct compositionality versus the logical form-approach. I can write this up but it won't be soon. Botterweg (talk) 23:04, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

My impression was that the paragraph already discussed this problem: the contrast between grammatical and logical form was explained in the first part while direct compositionality (via the rule-to-rule hypothesis) was examined in the second part. I'm open to reformulating it to shift the focus on "direct compositionality" instead of "rule-to-rule hypothesis", which is probably the wider term. The book you linked (Jacobson 2014) discusses the problem under the term "direct compositionality" on pp. 8–9: To elucidate, a fairly uncontroversial claim is that the grammar of any natural language is a system of rules (or principles, if one prefers) that define the set of well-formed expressions of the language (i.e., the syntax) and a set of rules (or principles) pairing these with meanings (i.e., the semantics). The hypothesis of Direct Compositionality is a simple one: the two systems work in tandem. Each expression that is proven well-formed in the syntax is assigned a meaning by the semantics, and the syntactic rules or principles which prove an expression as well-formed are paired with the semantics which assign the expression a meaning. Do you know if Jacobson 2014 discusses the contrast between the two approaches somewhere in more detail? Phlsph7 (talk) 09:47, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

If I'm understanding Stokhof correctly, he's referring to the philosophical concept of logical form, i.e. the unambiguous form of a meaning that exists independently of the linguistic vehicle used to express it. That's distinct from the concept I was referring to, though they (annoyingly) share the same name.

The fundamental idea behind the LF approach is that sentences do not have a unique grammatical form, but rather a surface grammatical form which gets pronounced and a separate logical grammatical form (sic) that undergoes semantic interpretation. In these approaches, apparent mismatches between form and meaning are explained using syntactic mechanisms such as movement. This is in contrast with Direct Compositionality, whose fundamental idea is that the surface grammatical form is the only grammatical form and that mismatches should be explained using semantic mechanisms such as type shifting.

There has also been debate about whether semantic rules should be stated in terms of syntactic categories or semantic types. This is related to the LF/DC debate, but the relationship isn't straightforward. For instance, the idea of type-driven interpretation was proposed within a direct compositional system, and the Jacobsen textbook explores type-driven implementations in a few places. There might be something to say here within a broader discussion of categorial versus generative models of the syntax-semantics interface, but this isn't an active debate on its own the way LF versus DC is. Botterweg (talk) 02:28, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

I don't think that the earlier passage in the paragraph implied that logical form "exists independently of the linguistic vehicle used to express it". As I understand it, both Stokhof 2007 and Stokhof 2013 talk about the methodology of formal semantics. We could add additional sources to back up the passage. Would the following source be acceptable to you? It says: The logical form of a sentence (or utterance) is a formal representation of its logical structure—that is, of the structure that is relevant to specifying its logical role and properties.

I'm open to your idea of mentioning a methodological split following an "LF/DC debate", but this needs to be based on high-quality sources that explicitly make this point. Do you know of any? Trying to build an argument for the existence of this split based on other discussions, like the "debate about whether semantic rules should be stated in terms of syntactic categories or semantic types", would probably be WP:OR/WP:SYNTH. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:01, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

The issue of LF/DC is probably the main debate regarding the syntax-semantic interface, so sources abound. Not all of them use the term "direct compositionality" so you could frame the issue as "whether LF exists" or something along those lines if you think there's risk of SYNTH. For the LF view, Chapter 7 of Heim & Kratzer is the locus classicus particularly for empirical arguments based on ACD and scope islands. For the opposing view (whatever you would want to call it) Chris Barker and Polly Jacobson have various handbook articles and textbooks and course notes and so forth. But once again, this is not quite the same issue as rule-by-rule versus semantic type-driven interpretation. Botterweg (talk) 23:30, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

Looks like Coppock & Champollion have a nice discussion that does use the term "Direct Compositionality". Botterweg (talk) 23:37, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

I found the books by Pauline Jacobson quite helpful. I restored a modified version of the paragraph, working in the logical form definition cited above and adding an explanation of direct compositionality and its contrast to approaches focusing on logical form. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:30, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Not yet a GA

Hey Phlsph7, I really appreciate so so much that work that you've done on this article. So much of it is really excellent and wonderful. But even so I don't think this is ready for GA status yet. My main concern is that there are still substantial factual errors, including the conflation between the syntactic level known as logical form and the historically related but ultimately distinct philosophical concept. But there's also significant gaps (e.g. no mention of crosslinguistic work) and expository inconsistencies (e.g. switching between direct and indirect interpretation without explanation). I understand it's really friggin hard to stitch together different sources that have different terminologies, approaches, and so forth, and you've done a better job that I've done in some of my editing on other topics. But these are important issues that would need to be fixed before this can be called a good article. I can help, though not very much in the immediate future. Botterweg (talk) 00:55, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback! I added a short passages on cross-linguistic work. I don't think that this topic should get much more attention since many of the main sources, like Kearns 2011, Portner 2005, and Winter 2016, give little attention to it and do not discuss it as one of the main topics. I'm also open to more improvement ideas, but it's difficult to assess criticisms without information on the affected passages. If you could quote the passages that you think are problematic, I would be happy to compare them to what the cited sources say. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:20, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

By the way, would you like to join the GA nomination as a co-nominator? Phlsph7 (talk) 10:26, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

Formulation of the lead

@Botterweg: I found the earlier formulation of the lead to be more informative for a general reader than the current one. Do you have specific concerns about the earlier formulation that could be addressed without removing all the information? Phlsph7 (talk) 09:14, 23 June 2025 (UTC)