Ontology of sentential moods

In this paper ontological implications of the Barcan formula and its converse will be discussed at the conceptual and technical level. The thesis that will be defended is that sentential moods are not ontologically neutral since the rejection of ontological implications of Barcan formula and its converse is a condition of a possibility of the imperative mood. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first section a systematization of semantical systems of quantified modal logic is introduced for the purpose of making explicit their ontological presuppositions. In this context Jadacki's ontological difference between being and existence is discussed and analyzed within the framework of hereby proposed system of quantified modal logic. The second section discusses ontological implications of the Barcan formula and its converse within the system accommodating the difference between being and existence. The third section presents a proof of incompatibility of the Barcan formula and its converse with the use of imperatives. In the concluding section, a thesis on logical pragmatics foreclosing the dilemma between necessitism and contingentism is put forward and defended against some objections

Introducing a Calculus of Effects and Handlers for Natural Language Semantics

In compositional model-theoretic semantics, researchers assemble truth-conditions or other kinds of denotations using the lambda calculus. It was previously observed that the lambda terms and/or the denotations studied tend to follow the same pattern: they are instances of a monad. In this paper, we present an extension of the simply-typed lambda calculus that exploits this uniformity using the recently discovered technique of effect handlers. We prove that our calculus exhibits some of the key formal properties of the lambda calculus and we use it to construct a modular semantics for a small fragment that involves multiple distinct semantic phenomena

Phasal Eliminativism, Anti-Lexicalism, and the Status of the Unarticulated

This paper explores the prospect that grammatical expressions are propositionally whole and psychologically plausible, leading to the explanatory burden being placed on syntax rather than pragmatic processes, with the latter crucially bearing the feature of optionality. When supposedly unarticulated constituents are added, expressions which are propositionally distinct, and not simply more specific, arise. The ad hoc nature of a number of pragmatic processes carry with them the additional problem of effectively acting as barriers to implementing language in the brain. The advantages of an anti-lexicalist biolinguistic methodology are discussed, and a bi-phasal model of linguistic interpretation is proposed, Phasal Eliminativism, carved by syntactic phases and (optionally) enriched by a restricted number of pragmatic processes. In addition, it is shown that the syntactic operation of labeling (departing from standard Merge-centric evolutionary hypotheses) is responsible for a range of semantic and pragmatic phenomena, rendering core aspects of syntax and lexical pragmatics commensurable

Lexicalization of Light Verb Structures and the Semantics of Nouns

In this study I shall focus on two Romance idiomatic patterns and the semantics of nouns. It is shown that idioms, in addition to having distinct basic argument structure representations, are formed in syntax by various instantiations of Merge. It is argued that there is a lexicalization pattern reflecting semantic conflation (Talmy 1985, 2000) between cause and degree. This pattern, in syntactic terms, is the output of subsequent Merge operations (Chomsky 1995) between the object noun of a monadic argument structure, an indefinite quantifier and an adjunct phrase. The study of this lexicalization pattern is of interest with regard to the semantics of bare nouns, especially of bare count singular nouns in object position; it is proved that bare nouns are interpreted as properties, and, because of this, they permit quantification over degrees. By contrast, there is a second lexicalization pattern starting from a composite argument structure which licenses an individual or a kind denoting reading for the DP object

Evaluation Order Effects in Dynamic Continuized CCG: From Negative Polarity Items to Balanced Punctuation

Combinatory Categorial Grammar\u27s (CCG; Steedman, 2000) flexible treatment of word order and constituency enable it to employ a compact lexicon, an important factor in its successful application to a range of NLP problems. However, its word order flexibility can be problematic for linguistic phenomena where linear order plays a key role. In this paper, we show that the enhanced control over evaluation order afforded by Continuized CCG (Barker & Shan, 2014) makes it possible to not only implement an improved analysis of negative polarity items in Dynamic Continuized CCG (White et al., 2017) but also to develop an accurate treatment of balanced punctuation

Sinhala Involitive Verbs from a Cross-linguistic perspective: Distinguishing Involuntary Agents from Involuntary Causers

This paper distinguishes between two types of constructions with involitive verbs in Sinhala: involitive sentences with dative marked subjects dubbed ‘Dative Involitives’ and involitive sentences with postpositional subjects dubbed ‘PP involitives’. Dative involitives involve activity verbs while PP involitives involve causative verbs. The flavors variously dubbed 'involuntary', 'accidental', 'out-of-control’, 'could-not- help', or 'inevitable' associated with these involitive constructions derive from the presence of a modal element in them. The paper defends a compositional analysis of the two types of involitives according to which the modal in each construction displays a different argument structure. Dative involitives exhibit a universal circumstantial modal in a monadic structure with VoiceP as argument. This results in a subject- centered modality with Dative in an applicative counting as a 'quirky subject' interpreted as an 'involuntary agent/actor/doer'. By contrast PP-involitives are shown to mirror causative interpretations. They contain a universal circumstantial modal relating a causal sub-event to a result sub-event in a bi-eventive causative structure. Here PP as 'quirky subject' in an Applicative is interpreted as an 'involuntary causer/effector'. The paper sheds light on the considerable cross-linguistic variation regarding the presence/absence of 'involuntary agents/actors/doers' and 'involuntary causers/effectors' across several unrelated languages including Polish and Spanish

Reaching for the Star: Tale of a Monad in Coq

Monadic programming is an essential component in the toolbox of functional programmers. For the pure and total programmers, who sometimes navigate the waters of certified programming in type theory, it is the only means to concisely implement the imperative traits of certain algorithms. Monads open up a portal to the imperative world, all that from the comfort of the functional world. The trend towards certified programming within type theory begs the question of reasoning about such programs. Effectful programs being encoded as pure programs in the host type theory, we can readily manipulate these objects through their encoding. In this article, we pursue the idea, popularized by Maillard [Kenji Maillard, 2019], that every monad deserves a dedicated program logic and that, consequently, a proof over a monadic program ought to take place within a Floyd-Hoare logic built for the occasion. We illustrate this vision through a case study on the SimplExpr module of CompCert [Xavier Leroy, 2009], using a separation logic tailored to reason about the freshness of a monadic gensym

The Scope and the Subtleties of the Contextualism/Literalism/Relativism Debate

In recent years, a number of new trends have seen light at the intersection of semantics and philosophy of language. They are meant to address puzzles raised by the context-sensitivity of a variety of natural language constructions, such as knowledge ascriptions, belief reports, epistemic modals, indicative conditionals, quantifier phrases, gradable adjectives, temporal constructions, vague predicates, moral predicates, predicates of personal taste, etc. A diversity of labels have consequently emerged, such as 'contextualism', 'indexicalism', 'invariantism', 'literalism', 'minimalism', 'relativism', variously qualified. The goal of this essay is to pinpoint the issues that lie at the heart of the recent debates, clarify what is at stake, and provide a snapshot of the current theoretical landscape