Alternatives in Montague Grammar

Alternatives in Montague Grammar. Ciardelli, I. & Roelofsen, F. In Csipak, E. & Zeijlstra, H., editors, Sinn und Bedeutung (SuB 20), pages 161–178, Goettingen, Germany, 2016. The handout version of the paper (https://www.dropbox.com/s/p1yirmoi41iv736/sub-2014-composing-alternatives-with-gq-appendix.pdf) contains three appendices which, due to space limitations, could not be included in the paper.

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Hamblin (1973) proposed an extension of the basic type-theoretic framework used in formal semantics, rooted in Montague (1970, 1973). In Hamblin's framework, which has come to be referred to as alternative semantics, the meaning of a sentence is not taken to be a single proposition, but rather a set of propositions—a set of alternatives. This allows for a more fine-grained view on meaning, which has led to improved analyses of a wide range of linguistic phenomena. However, it also faces a number of problems. We focus here on two of these, in our view the most fundamental ones. The first has to do with how meanings are composed, i.e., with the type-theoretic operations of function application and abstraction; the second has to do with how meanings are compared, i.e., the notion of entailment. Our aim is to reconcile what we take to be the essence of Hamblin's proposal with the more orthodox type-theoretic framework rooted in Montague's work, in such a way that the solid formal foundations of the latter are preserved and the observed problems for alternative semantics are overcome. Our proposal builds on insights from recent work on inquisitive semantics (Ciardelli et al., 2013), and it also further advances this line of work, specifying how the inquisitive meaning of a sentence, as well as the set of alternatives that it introduces, may be built up compositionally.

@inproceedings{CiardelliRoelofsen:16sub,
	abstract = {Hamblin (1973) proposed an extension of the basic type-theoretic framework used in formal
semantics, rooted in Montague (1970, 1973). In Hamblin's framework, which has come to
be referred to as alternative semantics, the meaning of a sentence is not taken to be a single
proposition, but rather a set of propositions---a set of alternatives. This allows for a more
fine-grained view on meaning, which has led to improved analyses of a wide range of linguistic
phenomena. However, it also faces a number of problems. We focus here on two of these, in
our view the most fundamental ones. The first has to do with how meanings are composed,
i.e., with the type-theoretic operations of function application and abstraction; the second has
to do with how meanings are compared, i.e., the notion of entailment. Our aim is to reconcile
what we take to be the essence of Hamblin's proposal with the more orthodox type-theoretic
framework rooted in Montague's work, in such a way that the solid formal foundations of the
latter are preserved and the observed problems for alternative semantics are overcome. Our
proposal builds on insights from recent work on inquisitive semantics (Ciardelli et al., 2013),
and it also further advances this line of work, specifying how the inquisitive meaning of a
sentence, as well as the set of alternatives that it introduces, may be built up compositionally.},
	address = {Goettingen, Germany},
	author = {Ciardelli, Ivano and Roelofsen, Floris},
	booktitle = {Sinn und Bedeutung (SuB 20)},
	date-modified = {2021-08-17 00:00:00 +0000},
	editor = {Csipak, Eva and Zeijlstra, Hedde},
	handout = {https://www.dropbox.com/s/p1yirmoi41iv736/sub-2014-composing-alternatives-with-gq-appendix.pdf},
	keywords = {inquisitive semantics,theoretical linguistics,alternative semantics,compositionality,questions},
	mendeley-tags = {inquisitive semantics,theoretical linguistics},
	note = {The handout version of the paper (https://www.dropbox.com/s/p1yirmoi41iv736/sub-2014-composing-alternatives-with-gq-appendix.pdf) contains three appendices which, due to space limitations, could not be included in the paper.},
	pages = {161--178},
	title = {{Alternatives in {Montague} Grammar}},
	url = {https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/sub/index.php/sub/article/view/227},
	year = {2016},
	Bdsk-Url-1 = {https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/sub/index.php/sub/article/view/227}}

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