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A Dynamic Categorial Grammar

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Formal Grammar (FG 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8612))

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Abstract

We present a compositional, dynamic categorial grammar for discourse analysis that captures the core insights of dynamic semantics: indefinites do not quantify but introduce discourse referents; definites are anaphoric to previously-mentioned discourse referents; discourse referents have their ‘lifespan’ limited by certain operators. The categorial grammar formalism we propose is strongly lexicalist and derives linguistic signs with a syntactic division of labor separating surface form from the underlying combinatorics. We argue that this formalism compares favorably with earlier efforts on several counts. It does not require any complicated or idiosyncratic machinery such as specialized assignments, states, or continuations, and encodes the requirement that a certain discourse referent be present in the discourse context using dependent types, rather than e.g. partial functions. The dynamic semantics itself is a straightforward extension of an underlying static semantics that is fully (hyper)intensional, avoiding many unsavory problems associated with standard possible worlds approaches.

Thanks are due to audiences at Ohio State University who critiqued early drafts of this work, especially to the joint linguistics/philosophy seminar in the spring of 2011 and the pragmatics reading group.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Natural Language Understanding and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Nuance Communications, 1198 East Arques Avenue, Sunnyvale, California, 94085, USA

    Scott Martin

  2. Department of Linguistics, The Ohio State University, 1712 Neil Avenue, Columbus, Ohio, 43210, USA

    Carl Pollard

Authors
  1. Scott Martin
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  2. Carl Pollard
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Departament de Llenguatges i Sistemes,Informàtics, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Jordi Girona Salgado,1-3, 08034, Barcelona, Spain

    Glyn Morrill

  2. Department of Philosophy, Tilburg University, P.O. Box 90153, NL 5000, LE Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Reinhard Muskens

  3. Department of Linguistics and Information Science, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Universitätsstrasse 1, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Rainer Osswald

  4. Institute for English and American Studies, Department of Linguistic, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Grüneburgplatz 1, 60323, Frankfurt, Germany

    Frank Richter

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Martin, S., Pollard, C. (2014). A Dynamic Categorial Grammar. In: Morrill, G., Muskens, R., Osswald, R., Richter, F. (eds) Formal Grammar. FG 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8612. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44121-3_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44121-3_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-44120-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-44121-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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