6
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Accepted
What's the difference between metonymy, meronymy, meronomy and mereology?
The key to understanding is the difference between objects and names of objects:
A meronom is a part.
A meronym is the name of a part.
A meronomy is a relationship between parts and sub-parts.
...
- 76
6
votes
What is the difference between an implicature and a presupposition
The standard definition, as in the one you'll come across in introductory semantics classes, is that presuppositions have to be true, while implicatures are probably true.
For example, imagine that I ...
- 68.2k
6
votes
What are the semantics of questions and requests/commands?
In an approach quite close to the one you seem to assume for declaratives, questions can be seen as denoting lambda-abstractions. The set of true answers is the set of arguments with which such an ...
- 4,496
5
votes
Accepted
Is propositional logic present in all languages?
Every natural language has the resources required for constructing a system of propositional calculus, and no language naturally encodes exactly some system of propositional calculus. One fundamental ...
- 83.3k
5
votes
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Is there a linguistic notion of a "static" vs "dynamic" noun?
In the philosophy of language and modal logic, the conceptions you label "static" and "dynamic" are called rigid designator and flaccid designator respecively.
5
votes
Accepted
What do the semicolon and period mean in semantics?
The semicolon in ∀;y is surely a typo. It should just be ∀y, just like the ∀x that precedes it.
A period is often used to introduce the scope of a variable binding expression like ∀x, e.g. ∀x.φ. By ...
- 156
5
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Formalizing Natural Languages
This is a ridiculously complicated area, and the need to eventually narrow down your interest is a high priority. I would start with classical generative syntax as practiced by Noam Chomsky, and I ...
- 83.3k
5
votes
Is Hebrew more efficient and more grammatically logical than English?
The short answer is no, all languages are about equally efficient. All natural languages are under a similar evolutionary pressure, to communicate information efficiently. Speakers need to convey ...
- 68.2k
5
votes
Are there two senses of "grammar" with respect to semantics?
You could say that there are myriad senses of grammar. For example, even here, some people speak of "grammar" as referring to syntax. Since syntax has connections to morphology, it can also ...
- 83.3k
5
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Uniquenesses of Hebrew
The first claim sounds kind of meaningless unless we can define what a noun's "object" is. If so, it will probably turn out to be meaningful but false.
For the second one, if we're ...
- 2,540
4
votes
Conditional clauses, use of 'if, then, else' in major non-English languages?
In many languages, for example Bengali, the word comparable to if is optional and frequently absent, whereas the word marking the apodosis (usually with a similar function to then) is mandatory, ...
- 4,002
4
votes
What is the difference between an implicature and a presupposition
The question is a bit like asking "What's the difference between a wardrobe and a chair" - well, they are just two different things...
A presupposition is, simply put, something that must be ...
- 6,560
4
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An Overview of Mathematical-Logical Approaches in Formalizing Natural Languages
Seconding the Kornai stuff mentioned above; it's all great.
Probably the seminal text here from the point of view of relatively modern linguistics would be Partee's 1993 book, which while somewhat old ...
- 511
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On colorless green ideas
Chomsky observed (Syntactic structures p. 15) that
"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" and "Furiously sleep ideas green colorless" are both "equally nonsensical", but ...
- 83.3k
4
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On colorless green ideas
First, it should be clear that in natural languages nothing has a rigid definition. To make sense of a sentence is thus to select "definitions" so that the sentence has the intended meaning. ...
- 441
3
votes
Accepted
What contemporary theories attempt to explain why languages have phonotactic restrictions instead of permitting any phonemic combinations?
Step 1 is to say what theories there are of the nature of so-called phonotactic constraints. Phase 1 was Morpheme Structure Rules, which held that lexical items could be partially specified for ...
- 83.3k
3
votes
Accepted
Discrepancy between Classical Logic, Set Theory, Propositional Logic and Languages
There are two different answers, depending on the environment.
In certain contexts (logical formulae, programming languages, legal documents, Magic: the Gathering cards), avoiding ambiguity is very ...
- 68.2k
3
votes
Accepted
When are 'or' and 'unless' exclusive in (daily) English?
Linguists generally distinguish literal entailment vs. pragmatic implicature. As for literal entailment, "A or B" mean "A or B" and if A and B both happen to be true, that's okay ...
- 83.3k
3
votes
Relationship of spoken and written language and truth of sentences
Many people can read and write a language, having no experience whatsoever with the spoken form of the language, or any language. Sound is not essential to language acquisition, all that is required ...
- 83.3k
3
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Are there two senses of "grammar" with respect to semantics?
There are indeed different senses of "grammar". In the scientific (linguistic) sense, it has a broader meaning than in everyday language. Grammar in the broader sense is any system of rules ...
- 945
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An Overview of Mathematical-Logical Approaches in Formalizing Natural Languages
There’s probably a good encyclopedia article or handbook on mathematical linguistics, Andras Kornai wrote some books on this.
You might like this blog post. https://blog.juliosong.com/linguistics/...
- 590
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An Overview of Mathematical-Logical Approaches in Formalizing Natural Languages
I’m a grad student in mathematics doing research in Formal Semantics.
Work in the Montague Semantics pulls upon a lot more than just Lambda Calculus. There’s a lot of work with non-standard logic (...
- 267
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An Overview of Mathematical-Logical Approaches in Formalizing Natural Languages
Before pointing to some literature I want to clarify the interaction between Montague semantics and categorial grammar:
Montague semantics is intimately related to categorial grammar. Indeed, one the ...
- 176
3
votes
A predicate as argument of a predicate
You are correct that predicates of predicates, in particular adverbs like "well", are not straightforwardly translated into (first-order) predicate calculus, as something like P(Q(x)) or P(Q)...
- 6,560
2
votes
Truth-conditions of predicate-logic formulas for donkey sentences
a) Correct. Some fine-tuning to your answer:
The donkey that Jake owns in own(j,x), is not the same donkey that was beaten in beat(j,x).
It is not necessarily the same. Depending on which ...
- 6,560
2
votes
Accepted
Motivation behind the definition for existential quantifiers such as *some* in compositional semantics
The reason is as follows:
For ALL we need "for all objects, if they are P, then they are also Q". If we would use logical AND, it would mean "for all objects, they are P and they are Q" which is ...
- 251
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What is the best/state-of-the-art logic for representing English language?
The wording of your question seems to imply an equivalence between first order predicate logic and higher order logics. They are not equivalent. First order predicate logic was shown to be ...
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2
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Conditional clauses, use of 'if, then, else' in major non-English languages?
As for the order of things:
"In conditional statements, the conditional clause precedes the conclusion as the normal order in all languages. (...) (Greenberg 1963: 84, #14)
(https://typo.uni-...
- 648
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(how) do natural languages distinguish classes and instances of things?
In some theories of epistemology, the distinction between class and individual is not strict, for example the class "mammal" is composed of individuals such as "dog; cat; human; horse&...
- 83.3k
2
votes
What is the purpose of "x" in the Venn-diagrams depicting categorical propositions?
The "X" means that the set is not empty. In other words, there exists at least one member of that set. The idea being, I imagine, that putting an "X" in that area indicates that ...
- 68.2k
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