Adverbs in a modern type theory

Abstract

Abstract. This paper is the first attempt to deal with aspects of the semantics of adverbs within a modern type theoretical setting. A number of issues pertaining to the semantics of different classes of adverbs like verididality and intensionality will be discussed and further shown to be captured straightforwardly within a modern type theoretical setting. In particular, I look at the issue of veridicality and show that the inferences associated with veridical adverbs can be dealt with via typing alone, i.e. without the aid of meaning postulates. In case of intensional adverbs like intentionally or allegedly, I show that these can be captured by making use of the type theoretical notion of context, i.e. without the use of possible worlds.