Abstract not found

ormal semantics constitutes the framework of this thesis, and the aim is to characterise the semantics ( of the progressive, as it appears in sentence (1). 1) Max was running towards the station Among the problems is one known as the "imperfective paradox". According to intuitions, sentence ( (1) entails (2), but no entailment holds between (3) and (4). 1) Max was running towards the station ( (2) Max ran towards the station 3) Max was running to the station S (4) Max ran to the station ince (1) and (3) would seem to have the same logical form, they ought to have similar entailments. , e Why is this not so? This thesis is divided into two parts. The first part, containing chapters 2 to 5 valuates the current formal theories that tackle the imperfective paradox. Solving the imperfective , a paradox consists of two tasks: the first is to characterise a semantic distinction between (2) and (4) nd the second is to supply a semantic analysis of the progressive that is sensitive to this dist...

Institute for Research in Cognitive Science (IRCS) at Penn under the direction of Aravind Joshi and Lila Gleitman for providing resources, a constant stream of speakers and visitors, and a vibrant community which fostered my interest in interdisciplinary work. I want to thank my advisors Lila Gleitman, Robin Clark, and Henry Gleitman for their guidance of this dissertation as well as of my graduate career more generally. I thank the members of the Linguistics department and the IRCS community who provided support at all levels. Special thanks go to the members past and present of the Babylab and Cheese groups, and to Sabine

Temporal logic arose at the border of philosophy and linguistics. From the seventies onward, it became a major tool also in computer science and articial intelligence, which have turned into the most powerful source of new logical developments since. We discuss some recent themes demonstrating new connections with modal logic. In the course of this, we also point out some new types of open research questions.

Categorial grammar analyzes linguistic syntax and semantics in terms of type theory and lambda calculus. A major attraction of this approach is its unifying power, as its basic function/argument structures occur across the foundations of mathematics, language and computation. This paper considers, in a light example-based manner, where this elegant logical paradigm stands when confronted with the wear and tear of reality. Starting from a brief history of the Lambek tradition since the 1980s, we discuss three main issues: (a) the fit of the lambda calculus engine to characteristic semantic structures in natural language, (b) the coexistence of the original type-theoretic and more recent modal interpretations of categorial logics, and (c) the place of categorial grammars in the complex total architecture of natural language, which involves - amongst others - mixtures of interpretation and inference.

ii This thesis investigates verbal and prepositional representations of change under a non-localistic analysis based on the mereology of events, i.e., a system of aspect that uses event parts as primitives in lieu of path parts. Localistic analyses, developed from motional concepts (e.g., Verkuyl 1993, Asher & Sablayrolles 1994), do not extend to non-motional data (e.g., changes of state or possession) except via metaphor, thereby bypassing essential generalizations about change. It is argued that, instead of modeling change after the tripartite source-route-goal divisions of a spatial path, the various combinations of two eventive primitives-distinguished point and distinguished process- are sufficient and necessary in accounting for abstract and concrete data, including the four aspectual verb classes of states, activities, achievements and accomplishments (Vendler 1967). The medial lexical specification, route, is shown to be unnecessary, being an epiphenomenon of two distinguished points interacting, or inferable through pragmatic considerations.

In this paper, we present an account of the semantics of the English temporal prepositions and some related temporal adverbials. This account aims to describe how these expressions function in English sentences, and in particular how they contribute to the truth-conditions of the sentences in which they occur. Our account will be couched at a sufficiently formal level to enable us to define a procedure for assessing the validity of a range of arguments couched in everyday temporal English. We develop a temporal representation language, TL, into which English sentences involving temporal prepositions can be naturally translated. Our goal is to tailor the representation language so as to fit as closely as possible the expressive resources provided by temporal constructions in English. In particular, we show how many restrictions on use of multiple preposition phrases are explained naturally by the semantics we give for these phrases, and the structure of the formal language we ...