Leibniz on the payoff of having a precise formal system:
If controversies were to arise, there would be no more need of disputation between two philosophers than between two accountants. For it would suffice to take their pencils in their hands, and say to each other, ‘Let us calculate.’
(heard in the Blackburn & Bos course on Computational Semantics–more on that course and the others when I have a chance to stop and breathe)
emma :: Jul.06.2007 :: philosophy :: 5 Comments »
Nate Charlow has an interesting post over at his blog about CCG and the ontology of syntax, where he voices some concerns about the redundancy of different operators (function application and function composition)/derivations in yielding the same interpretations for the same expressions. There’s already an interesting little discussion brewing over there, and these are the sorts of concerns that theoretical linguists need to have an appropriate response to, so I very much recommend checking it out. I may add my own thoughts on the matter when I have some time to, but for now, I think Simon does a very good job in representing our camp.
emma :: Jun.15.2007 :: misc, syntax, semantics, philosophy, linguistics :: No Comments »
From W.V. Quine Word and Object Section 23 “Relative Clauses. Indefinite Singular Terms”, cited in Partee (1975):
“At any rate the peculiar genius of the relative clause is that it creates from a sentence ‘…x…’ a complex adjective summing up what that sentence says about x. Sometimes the same effect could be got by dropping ‘x is’, as in the last example, or by other expedients; thus in the case of ‘I bought x’, ‘bought by me’ (formed by conversion and application) would serve as well as the relative clause ‘which I bought’. But often, as in the case of ‘the bell tolls for x’, the relative clause is the most concise adjective available for the purpose.”
“The ’such that’ construction is thus more flexible than the ‘which’ construction. But what is more striking is the power and flexibility of either of these constructions as contrasted with the earlier or ‘algebraic’ ways of deriving general terms: such operations as attributive juxtaposition, application of relative terms, conversion to passive voice, derelativization (’brother’ from ‘brother of’), and the joining of terms by ‘and’ and ‘or’. It is not obvious that any preassigned finite set of algebraic operations could suffice for the work of all relative clauses; though actually Schönfinkel’s work, which marked the inception of combinatory logic, may be said to establish an affirmative answer to that question.”
emma :: May.18.2007 :: misc, semantics, philosophy, linguistics :: No Comments »
emma :: Apr.13.2007 :: misc, semantics, philosophy, linguistics :: No Comments »
By way of a link to a Lambda-the-Ultimate post from Nathan, here’s an interesting paper that attempts to avoid some paradox of Frege’s.
This paper claims that you can allow unrestricted impredicative quantification if you keep careful track of Frege’s sense-reference distinction, and distinguish between predicates and names of predicates. This (if it really works — I haven’t done more than skim the paper yet) would be a different method of using a predicative hierarchy to avoid the paradoxes.
Paul C. Gilmore’s An Intentional Type Theory: Motivation and Cut-Elimination
Disclaimer: I haven’t yet had the time to read the paper, so by “interesting”, I mean that I’m interested in looking at it myself :-P Mostly, this post was to serve as a later reminder for me to read it! And yes, I will indeed post comments & observations when I get around to it.
emma :: Mar.19.2007 :: misc, semantics, logic, philosophy :: 1 Comment »
From Chapter 3 of Kratzer’s the Event Argument, discussed today at the Semantics Reading Group:
The theme relation may not qualify as a ‘natural’ category at all. What are natural categories? Any theory of lexical acquisition must make some distinction between categories that are natural and those that are not. Very roughly, the natural categories are those that humans take to be candidates for denotations of simple lexical items, spontaneously and without any explicit instruction or definition. The most famous example of a non-natural category is the property ‘grue’ discussed by Nelson Goodman in the fifties. An object is grue if it is green and has been examined before a fixed time, say December 31, 2010, or else it is blue, and has not been examined before December 31, 2010. All emeralds that have been examined so far are grue as well as green. But for some reason - and this is Goodman’s puzzle - grueness, unlike greenness, is not a category that humans come up with naturally when presented with emeralds, grass, or frogs, for example. To be sure, the concept of grueness can be grasped by human minds, but if it is, it’s on the basis of a verbal definition. The theme relation may not be quite as gruesome as grueness, but unlike the agent relation, it may still not qualify as a natural relation.
Grue just lends itself so nicely to all sorts of cute puns. If I grue up, I’d stop being so amused by them ;-P
emma :: Mar.07.2007 :: misc, semantics, philosophy, linguistics :: No Comments »
And he has a blog.
(The proprietor has been so kind as to make no judgments – as far as I know – about this proprietor’s ability to understand the thoughts of a philosopher. For the record, this proprietor, too, made no assumptions about the lack of intelligence of her imp’s brother. She assumed, actually, quite the opposite, if you really must know.)
emma :: Feb.26.2007 :: misc, philosophy :: 2 Comments »
After a marathon phone conversation with Nathan tonight, I find myself more and more aware of language and thought and discourse and and and…Aaauuuugh *brain implodes*
I’m also hyper-aware of my use of that now. Yay being a linguist and being surrounded/bombarded by data all the time.
I told Stefan about how much I’ve been thinking about the phonetics-phonology interface, and he asked if I’d had any dreams about it. Upon my reply (negatory; dreaming about lambdas and S-expressions and donkeys and in German all seems to be reasonable, but I still can’t fathom the idea of dreaming about phonetics-phonology), he responded “Well, you’re not thinking about it enough, then”. Touché. Of course, I’ll bet that part of my lack of dreaming about that stems from my lack of sleep.
Also–it’s Friday?! When the hell did that happen? Nathan told me he was going to LA this weekend, and I thought today was Monday so when he said that he had to pack for his trip, I got totally confuzzled.
Lastly: this NP-S relative clause stuff is exciting. Talking about it with Nath just made me even more excited about working on this. I like talking about linguistics/philosophy; I feel like I get a better grip on these things when I talk/write about them, when the language makes (somewhat more) manifest all the ideas floating around in and out of my head. I get this Zen-like feeling of engagement and understanding when talking about semantics that I don’t quite have access to outside of talking to someone.
emma :: Feb.09.2007 :: misc, semantics, philosophy, linguistics :: 2 Comments »
In a discussion about language, grammar, syntax (/operational semantics), semantics, rationality, inference, …
Emma: …(speculative blather about the human cognitive process and logical ability)
Nathan: You could even call that…rationality.
Emma: Ok, sure, but that’s a sort of loaded word, too, wouldn’t you say?
Nathan: Yeah, but…
Emma: If you’re not going to let me have grammar on account of it being loaded…
Nathan: Ok ok…
Emma: Well, ok. At some point we’re going to have to agree on some primitives.
Nathan: Why? When we do that, we’ll be done talking!
emma :: Feb.08.2007 :: misc, syntax, semantics, philosophy, linguistics :: No Comments »
