Dynamic Semantics

129 Pages·2012·1.376 MB·English

by  Paul J.E. Dekker (auth.)

Dynamic Semantics
Dynamic Semantics
Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy
Volume 91
Managing Editors
Lisa Matthewson, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Yael Sharvit, University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA
Thomas Ede Zimmermann, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität,
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
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Johan van Benthem, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Gregory N. Carlson, University of Rochester, USA
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Ewan Klein, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Bill Ladusaw, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
Terrence Parsons, University of California, Irvine, USA
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Dynamic Semantics
Paul J. E. Dekker
123
PaulJ. E.Dekker
Department of Philosophy
Universityof Amsterdam
OudeTurfmarkt 145
1012GC Amsterdam
The Netherlands
ISSN 0924-4662
ISBN 978-94-007-4868-2 ISBN 978-94-007-4869-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4869-9
SpringerDordrechtHeidelbergNewYorkLondon
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Acknowledgments
I thank my tutors Maria Aloni, Jeroen Groenendijk, Herman Hendriks, Theo
M.V. Janssen Martin Stokhof, and Frank Veltman for the right kind of philo-
sophical-logical education leading me to write this monograph. This monograph
can be considered a kind of compilation of their ideas, even though, of course,
noneofthemcanbeblamedforanythingIclaim.Myintellectualtraininghasalso
greatly benefited from both the persons, and the works, of Alastair Butler, David
Israel,PaulineJacobson,HansKamp,FriederikeMoltmann,BarbaraPartee,Anna
Szabolcsi, Henk Zeevat, and Ede Zimmermann. Thanks to all of them! Special
thanksarealsoduetoEricFlaten,whokindlyagreedtocorrecttypographicaland
stylistic infelicities in this monograph, and in so doing also helped me to correct
errors of myself.
v
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 Predicate Logic with Anaphora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3 Information Update and Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4 Quantification and Modality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5 Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
vii
Chapter 1
Introduction
Whatliesinfrontofyou,thereader,isamonographappropriatelycalled‘Dynamic
Semantics’.Afterreadingit,itwill,Ihope,becleartoyouwhyitiscalledso,but
beforereadingitthetitlemayneedsomeclarification.Amostobviousinterpretation
oftheterm“DynamicSemantics”maybethatitisconcernedwithadynamicstyle
ofsemanticlinguistictheorizing.Ifonewouldthinkofthismonographasexhibiting
suchatypeoflinguistictheorizingIwouldbeverymuchflattered,butIdon’tthink
Icouldagreewiththequalification,really.Themonographisdull,andintendedto
bedull.Alesslikely,butequallyinappropriate,interpretationofthetitlewouldbe
that this monograph is concerned with a semantic theory of dynamic objects, like
actions,processes,arrowsandpopstars.Thismonograph,andthesubjectsitcovers,
aredefinitelynotaboutthat,eventhougharrowsandpopstars,likestamps,numbers,
andthoughts,arenotexcludedfromthedomainsthismonographwantstoinclude
initssemantics.Butinnowaydothesedynamicobjectsfigureasprimarytargets.
Amorelikelyinterpretationofthetitlewouldbethatthemonographexemplifiesa
sortofsemantictheoryaccordingtowhichmeaningsaredynamic.This,aswell,is
notthecorrectinterpretation,butitdeservessomespecialattention.
Therearegood,philosophical,linguistic,andcomputational,reasonsforthinking
of meanings, whatever they are, as some sort of dynamic entities. Meanings can
beconceivedofasproofs,orprocesses,orcomputations,orpatterns,orpotentials.
There is a whole variety of dynamic objects which, as has been argued for in the
literature, constitutes the kinds of things we are concerned with if we talk about
meanings.Honestly,Iamverysympathetictotheseideas,andIsubscribetothem,
butthisconceptionofmeaningisstillnottheoneintendedwhenItalkaboutdynamic
semantics in this monograph. Such a dynamic conception of meaning will be left
untouchedthroughoutthismonograph,eventhoughitmay,throughout,replacethe
static conception employed or assumed in the monograph. The monograph is not
aboutdynamicmeanings,eventhoughyoucan,ifyouwant,construeitthatway.
So, then, what is the dynamic thing about the semantics which this monograph
talksabout,grantedthatwehavesomeunderstandingofthetermsemantics?Iwill
adoptaveryconservativeunderstandingoftheterm“semantics”,whichdealswiththe
P.J.E.Dekker,DynamicSemantics,StudiesinLinguisticsandPhilosophy91, 1
DOI:10.1007/978-94-007-4869-9_1,
©SpringerScience+BusinessMediaDordrecht2012
2 1 Introduction
interpretationof“expressions”insomeindependentlymotivateddomainof“mean-
ings”. This assumes an abstract domain of expressions, to be uncovered by some
syntactic theory, and a domain of meaning and use, to be covered by a pragmatic
theory.Thetwoassumptionsarehighlycontroversial,andwillalsonotbeleftundis-
putedintheremainderofthemonograph,buttheyarenotthetargetofdiscussion.
Theyprovideagoodstartingpoint,ifonlyfromthecurrenttheoreticallinguisticstate
oftheart,andforthemomentIwouldliketoleaveitatthat.The“dynamics”ofthe
semanticsinthismonographdoesnotlieinthemeaningsassignedtowell-formed
expressions,but,rather,inthecompositionofthesemeanings.
In accordance with a very intuitive and well-established tradition, and appro-
priately attributed to the mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frege, linguistic
constructionsarecomposedoftheirparts,andsoaretheirmeanings.Therearevar-
ious reasons to get bewildered by this quite obvious observation. One of these is
theequallyobviousobservationthatthesameconstituentexpressionmayfigurein
differentcompoundconstructions;anotheristhatoneandthesame(compound)con-
structionmaycontainmultipleoccurrencesofoneandthesameconstituentexpres-
sion. (This does not happen with houses and the bricks they are built from.) This
means that, even though we can agree on the idea or the notion of a constituent
expression, and of its meaning (provided that we can make sense of these notions
anyway)westillcanquestionanddiscussthevariouswaysinwhichanexpression
withitsmeaningcancombineorconjoinwithanotherconstituentexpression.What
somehavelabeledthedynamicsofnaturallanguage,comesdowntopreciselythis
dynamiccomposition,orconjunction,ofexpressionsandtheirmeanings.
Almostallsemantictheoriesare,willinglyorunwillingly,dynamic.Alltheories
consciouslyorinadvertentlyagreethatinterpretationisdependentoncontext,ifonly
ontheagentperformingtheinterpretation,oronthelanguageemployed.Somemay
havedoubtsaboutthesignificanceofthis,andprefertoabstractawayfromthistype
ofcontextdependence,butitcanhardlybedeniedthatinterpretationprocesses,and
co-occurring belief states are essentially indexical. We don’t want to go as far as
proving that one exists from the premise that one believes, but it surely seems to
beapresuppositionthataspokenwordcannotdowithoutaspeaker,thatawritten
worddoesn’tcomewithoutawriter,andthataninterpretationrequiresaninterpreter.
Someuniversalfeaturesofnaturallanguageessentiallyreflectthesefacts.Itappears
that all natural languages have either grammaticalized their personal, spatial and
temporal dependence, if they haven’t made it part of their default meaning. And
alsoallinterpretedformallanguages,iffullyandappropriatelyspecifiedintheright
handbooks,havetorelatetheirkeyconceptsrelativetoalanguageandamodelfor
∗ ∗
thatlanguage—normallythelanguagewithitsinterpretation currently discussed
inthehandbook.Somethingsaresoessentialthattheyeasilygounnoticed.
First and second person pronouns, indexicals or demonstratives, third person
pronouns, tenses and temporal adverbs, all display essentially contextual aspects
of meaning, which, nevertheless, work in a cross-contextual way. We can quite
successfully state the meaning of the Dutch first person pronoun “ik” by saying
that it, always, refers to the speaker. This may be many speakers, an in principle
unboundednumberofthem,butitisstillonemeaning.Yetitappearsthat“ik”never
1 Introduction 3
means,orshouldbeintendedtomean,what“thespeaker”means.WhenIsaythat
itisnotsurprisingthatIamshort-sighted,forinstancebecauseitisnotsurprising
thatIam,Idonotmeanthatitisnotsurprisingthatthespeakerofmyutteranceis
short-sighted,becausewhyshouldashort-sightedpersonsuddenlysayso?Basically
thesameobservationspertaintothetemporalreferenceinArthurN.Prior’s“Thank
Goodness that’s over.” Or to take an example from Peter T. Geach, if everybody
thinks thathe isclever, soif Ithink Iam clever, and you think you are clever too,
andeverybodythinksso,thenwhatexactlyistheverysamethingthateverybodyis
thinking?
Thepronounsfromnaturallanguages,andthevariablesfromformallanguages,
sharethefeatureofbeingsocontext-driventhattheyseemtobebasicallyuseless.In
practice,theyaresoessentialthatitisdifficulttodowithoutthem.Itmayrequiresome
first graduate training to indeed ∗read∗ the predicate logical formula “∃x(STUx ∧
¬∃y(PROy∧ADMxy))”asawayofrenderingthemeaningof“Somestudentadmires
noprofessor.”Ittakes,itseems,ageniustoreadWillardvanOrmanQuine’svariable
freeequivalentE(R(STU ×N(E(R(I(PRO×ADM))))))thesameway.(Quine’s
renderingonlyinvolvesacoupleoflogicaloperationsonthepredicatesSTU,PRO
andADM.)Pronouns,Ibelieve,arenotonlyessential,butalsoessentiallypractical.
Historically, the discussion about the dynamic composition of meanings has
focusedonlinguisticconstructionswithpronominalelements,orwithopenplaces,
or expressions which are otherwise incomplete. Surely it is easy to make fun of a
dynamicsemanticenterprisebysayingitdealsonlywithpronounswhicharewords
oflength3(‘she’)orless(‘he’,or‘I’,or‘∅’).Butonceonerealizesthe‘essential
indexical’natureofnaturallanguage,ase.g.,SaulKripke,JohnPerry,DavidLewis
andrecentlyFrançoisRecanatihaveobserved,thentheindexical,orreferential,or
anaphoric potential of expressions is not at all so trivial. The quite obvious fact
thatoneandthesameexpression,evenunderoneandthesameanalysis,mayhave
differentinterpretationsindifferentcontextshasfar-reachinglogicalconsequences.
Aristotle’smostbelovedsyllogismBarbarafailsinthepresenceofpronounsaswe
willalsoseeinChap.2ofthismonograph.IfweactlikethosewhofollowedGottlob
Frege,butnotlikeFregehimself,wemightblamenaturallanguageanditsanaphoric
devices for being imperfect, and get them out of the way; if we, however, want to
livewithoursituatednature,wemayhavetofacethelogicalcomplicationsofthe
practicalmeritsofhavingpronouns.Thisiswhatthismonographisabout.Ihopeto
showtothereaderthatevenaverysuperficialanalysisofpronounsdoescomplicate
ourlogic,yetdoesnotmakeitillogical,andthatthephenomenadonottoforceus
tochangeourconceptofmeaning,evenifonemayofcoursefindotherreasonsto
doso.
Formally speaking I do little more than the following. In Chap.2 I extend the
architectureofinterpretationofpredicatelogicwithacategoryofpronouns.WhydoI
dothis?Inthefirstplace,firstorderpredicatelogicisthemostminimal,well-behaved
and well-studied logical formalism that can be taken to model natural language
structures besides those of its logical connectives, or their counterparts. Taking a
liberalviewonthekindsofthingsonemayquantifyover,itsexpressivepowerisquite
impressiveindeed.Addingpronounsessentiallymeansaddingcontextdependence,