Generalized Quantifiers: Logic and Language

The Generalized Quantifiers Theory, I will argue, in the second half of last Century has led to an important rapprochement, relevant both in logic and in linguistics, between logical quantification theories and the semantic analysis of quantification in natural languages. In this paper I concisely illustrate the formal aspects and the theoretical implications of this rapprochement

The Dynamic Turn: On Syntax between Langue and Parole

In this article I present the conception of syntax emerging from the “dynamic approach” to syntax and semantics, developed in the last few decades, moving from the critic to the static theories of language, either those developed in the Chomskian framework or those based on Montague’s grammar. I will suggest that this view can be fruitfully compared with Saussure’s position on syntax

Divenire e coscienza

The downgrading of the becoming as outward seeming, rather than the proclamation of the being as inward reality, is the still challenging legacy of the Eleatic school. Moving from this issue, I firstly propose a modernized version of the dispute on becoming between the Eleatic philosophers and Heraclites. A logical analysis of becoming will be aimed at showing the inconsistencies unavoidably produced when an analytical formulation of becoming is pursued. Then, a change of perspective on becoming is explored, from the classical, ontological (and logical), perspective to a phenomenological one, arguing that the problem of “what is” becoming should be, ultimately, left to physics. The starting point of the phenomenological analysis of becoming will be the theory of time in consciousness by Edmund Husserl.The Husserl’s phenomenology of time will be the framework of an analysis of event as a consciousness’ production, as the consciousness’ construction of becoming, to the extent that events are to be considered as “temporal object”, produced by the intentionality of the consciousness, focused on time. Modal categories will then be briefly considered from the phenomenological standpoint. In the conclusion, I propose a reinterpretation of the Eleatic notion of being in the phenomenological context: the inconsistencies raise when becoming is thought by means of the linguistic–logical categories, while in that context being and becoming are no longer conflicting