Questions for the Workshop on the Origins of Formal Semantics
Univesity of Michigan
Nov 19-21, 2015

Version of: September 27, 2015

Rich’s list of questions (2015-8-12): (Revised by RT, 2015-9-27)

  1.  Is Montague's approach to syntax of interest, are there aspects of it that aren't incorporated in the categorical grammar tradition?
  2. What was the influence of Prior's work on early work in formal semantics?
  3. Can any influences of Carnap's be traced?  In particular, Carnap's use of meaning postulates was quite different -- a last resort for what couldn't be handled by definitions -- but perhaps there is a connection?  Can anyone say where Montague's ideas about meaning postulates came from?  (Yes, Carnap, of course, but Montague’s meaning postulates are very different from Carnap’s.)
  4. Can we say anything about the sources for Montague's approach to ambiguity?
  5. Did Montague interact at all with Yehoshua Bar-Hillel?  Can any influences be traced there?

Ivano (2015-8-13): (edited by BHP)

  1. How is Montague’s linguistic work and research program directly and indirectly influenced in its content and form by (i) what he had learned at Berkeley and the influence of Tarski, (ii) the debates and work on modal logic in the late 50s and 60s, and (iii) Montague’s own previous work in logic and philosophy?
  2. There’s evidence (in footnotes, in the archives, in comments orally and in print) that Montague thought about linguistic facts and constructions beyond those he deals with in his published papers -- e.g. mass nouns, adjectives, plurals (and plural quantifiers), reflexives. And some of the workshop participants may have discussed some of these issues directly with Montague. (i) Is there any evidence of how he would have addressed and developed those, beyond what’s mentioned in (Partee 2013)? (ii) Can they be taken as a sign that he considered his work on natural language far from finished?
  3. What looked particularly attractive in Montague’s research program to the young scholars and students who were exposed to it right away (or just a few years later), which includes most of the workshop participants? What struck people as most different from what they had seen before about semantics of natural language?
  4. Lewis and Montague interacted closely the 4 years they overlapped at UCLA (1966-70) and published two important papers on the semantics of natural language (PTQ and General Semantics) at the same time. Both papers present the idea of generalized quantifiers, both papers make considerable use of categorial grammar. Neither paper references the other nor mentions the other person in acknowledgements. (Partee 2013) discusses the GQ priority question and concludes that it was very probably Montague’s idea. Do participants have ideas this and other priority questions, and about the influences in either direction between Lewis and Montague?

Barbara (2015-8-14):

  1.  A pair of counterfactual history questions:

a.  What if Montague hadn’t been born? (or hadn’t done any of what he did?)

b.  What if Montague hadn’t died? (when he did)

The first gets directly into issues of what everyone else was doing at the time of Montague’s work, and whether enough of the ideas of formal semantics were in the air for it to have gotten going without the impetus of his work.

The second is largely the question of whether he would have continued to develop his work on formal semantics, which he publicly claimed not to consider very important, and if so in what directions.

  1. Has the distinction between direct model-theoretic interpretation and interpretation via translation into an intermediate representation language ever been important? Is it now? Is ‘no representation without interpretation’ just a slogan, or is model-theoretic interpretation somehow crucial? (Some linguists happily ignore model theory or even argue against it.)
  2. Montague’s Intensional Logic seems to been of more importance to him than his work on natural language semantics. (Because of his Tarskian upbringing?) But did it have any influence outside of semantics? More generally, is it fair to say that by far his greatest influence was on semantics?

Partee, Barbara H. 2013. Montague’s “linguistic” work: Motivations, trajectory, attitudes. In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 17, September 8-10 2012, eds. Emmanuel Chemla, Vincent Homer and Grégoire Winterstein, 427-453. Paris: ENS. http://semanticsarchive.net/sub2012/Partee.pdf