PTQ

Chris Potts, Ling 230b: Advanced semantics and pragmatics, Spring 2012
April 3

On Montague Grammar

The term Montague grammar refers primarily to the three papers Montague 1970a (EFL), Montague 1970b (UG), and Montague 1973 (PTQ), listed here in increasing order of influence. Sometimes the term is applied to all the language-related papers in Montague 1974. And of course it is
often used as a broad label for any kind of formal semantics.
It is here that Montague made his biggest contribution. To most logicians (like the first author) trained in model-theoretic semantics, natural language was an anathema, impossibly
vague and incoherent. To us, the revolutionary idea in Montagues PTQ paper (and earlier
papers) is the claim that natural language is not impossibly incoherent, as his teacher Tarski
had led us to believe, but that large portions of its semantics can be treated by combining known tools from logic, tools like functions of finite type, the -calculus, generalized
quantifiers, tense and modal logic, and all the rest. (Barwise and Cooper 1981:204)
Montague had a certain job that he wanted to do and used whatever tools he had at hand
to do it. If the product looks a bit like a Rube Goldberg machine, well, at least it works pretty
well. (Barwise and Cooper 1981:204)
Montague grammer is a very elegant and a very simple theory of natural language semantics. Unfortunately its elegance and simplicity are obscured by a needlessly baroque
formalization. (Muskens 1995:7)
Montague revolutionized the field of semantic theory. He introduced methods and tools
from mathematical logic, and set standards for explicitness in semantics. Now all semanticists know that logic has more to offer than first order logic only. Finally, recall that Barbara
Partee said: lambdas really changed my life; in fact lambdas changed the lives of all semanticists. (Janssen 2011:4.1)
To really understand the intellectual tradition that Montague grew out of, one must read Feferman
and Feferman 2004, a biography of Alfred Tarski. Indeed, the Fefermans biography provides
insights into all of West Coast linguistics, logic, philosophy, and computer science, probably among
other fields. Barbara Partee is presently working on a history of formal semantics that will shed
more light on the origins and development of the ideas.
There are a number of extremely rich and useful primers on Montague semantics (broadly
construed): Halvorsen and Ladusaw 1979, Dowty et al. 1980, Gamut 1991, Partee 1997.1
1

Montague in popular culture: a reference to Dowty et al. 1980 in Wallace 1996, and the novel Campbell 2009.

Ling 230b, Stanford (Potts)

PTQ

The interpreted grammar

The next few subsections consist of a series of questions about PTQ. Well encounter a few major
challenges as we work through them and the paper:
i. In the theory, noun phrases dont denote entities, but rather have the same type as quantifiers.
This affects many of the other types.
ii. Very little of the intensionality in the system is reflected in its syntax.
iii. Properties are sets of individual concepts, rather than being functions from entities to propositions or functions from worlds to sets of entities.

2.1

Syntax

(1)

The full lexicon is defined on page 19. Annotate the definition of BA with the un-abbreviated
syntactic categories. (For example, BIV becomes Bt/e .)

(2)

What is going on with the clause BA = ? What linguistic claim might this embody, and
what consequences might it have for the theory?

(3)

(5)

How many lexical items are there in the PTQ fragment?

S
Write an English paraphrase for ACat BA .
S
Write an English paraphrase for ACat PA .

(6)

PTQ syntactic categories are not mere symbols. What are they?

(7)

What is the purpose of distinguishing t/e from t//e?

(8)

In S2, the quantificational determiners are introduced as part of the syntactic rules. Why?
Could we put them in the lexicon instead?

(9)

Illustrate rule S3 using items from the lexicon. Present one case where the gender specification matters and one where it doesnt.

(10)

Annotate rules S3-S10 with intuitive labels.

(11)

How general are the rules for conjunction and disjunction, S11-S13? Are there intuitively
well-formed phrases built from items in the fragment that it doesnt allow?

(12)

Provide annotated derivation trees for the following phrases:

(4)

(13)

a.

Bill finds a unicorn

b.

every man dates every woman

c.

man such that Mary saw him0

On page 22, we see that the string John seeks a unicorn has two different derivations.
How does this happen? (Which rules conspire to create this possibility?)
2

Ling 230b, Stanford (Potts)

2.2

PTQ

Intensional logic and models

Note: the character A is called Fraktur A, so we can just call it A (German accent optional).
(14)

What is the set of basic types for the intensional logic? How does it correspond to the set
of basic syntactic categories?

(15)

What is unusual about the recursive definition of the set of all semantic types?

(16)

Compare clause 5 with the lexicon and syntactic rules. Are there discrepancies in expressivity that we might want to address?

(17)

The operator defined in clause 6 is sometimes called up, and the operator defined in
clause 7 is sometimes called down? This makes sense given how they look. It also makes
a deeper sense. How?

(18)

What special limitation does Montague place on ?

(19)

What are the types of and assuming MEa ?

(20)

What are the components of an interpretation (intensional model)?

(21)

How are senses, extensions, and intensions defined in general terms?

(22)

What are the denotations of and assuming MEa ? (We need to refer to footnote
10 to obtain the denotations in the general case.)

(23)

Montague sneaks in a definition of truth right below the definition of the interpretation
function. What does the definition say?

(24)

The final paragraph of this section (on p. 25) defines some abbreviations that are used in a
number of subsequent papers. Lets define them in both symbols and words if possible:
a.

(, )

b.

{}

c.

{, }

d.

e.

f.

g.

(p. 28-29)

Ling 230b, Stanford (Potts)

PTQ

2.3

Translation: English (the syntax) into the intensional logic

(25)

Provide the types that correspond to the following categories:

a.

IV = t/e

b.

CN = t//e

c.

T = t/(t/e)

d.

TV = (t/e)/(t/(t/e))

(26)

What kind of functions do IV and CN objects denote?

(27)

The translation of be, in (T1b), looks extravagant, but it hides a simple idea. What is it?

(28)

The translations of proper names (T1d) and pronouns (T1e) are also obscure, but there is
a guiding intuition. What is it?

(29)

The operator is used systematically throughout T4-T10. What is it doing?

(30)

What is the type and denotation of necessarily ?

(31)

What is the value of the man runs where there is more than one man?

(32)

The rules in T14-T16 pull a neat trick with lambda abstraction. How does it work, and
what does it accomplish?

(33)

What is the force of meaning postulate 2 (p. 28)?

(34)

What is a logically possible interpretation for Montague?

(35)

The editors point out that the first equivalence on page 29 does not hold for BCN . Construct
a counterexample, i.e., a legitimate CN-type meaning that obeys the meaning postulates
but nonetheless fails this equivalence.

(36)

Unpack all the abbreviations in the following formulae so that the truth conditions are
evident:




0
p[2 p] fish (m)
a.
V
0
0
b.
u[man (u) walk (u)]
W
0
0
c.
u[unicorn (u) seek ( j, u)]
W


0
0
u[unicorn (u) P{ u}]
d. seek j, P

Ling 230b, Stanford (Potts)

PTQ

Sub-topics

Section 4, Examples, discusses two phenomena in detail. Each has given rise to its own literature:
Intensional objects: Quine 1960; Partee 1974; Dowty 1979; Zimmermann 1993; Larson
et al. 1997; Moltmann 1997; van Geenhoven and McNally 2005; Moltmann 2008; Schwarz
2006
Temperature-type objects: Partee 1974; Bennett 1975; Jackendoff 1979; Dowty et al. 1980;
Lbner 1981; Lasersohn 2005

Variables for possible worlds

One of the central innovations/simplifications of Gallin 1975 was to have variables of type s. This
results in a system that is considerably more transparent than PTQs. For a system of this sort, see
Carpenter 1997:2.

Perspectives from Lewis 1970

The logic of Lewis 1970 is very similar to that of PTQ (and simpler; I dont actually know why it
isnt more famous than PTQ), and the exposition is more expansive Lewis provides insights and
perspectives on the approach, its place within linguistics, and its limitations. A few excerpts:
Dissing generative semantics
My proposals regarding the nature of meanings will not conform to the expectations
of those linguists who conceive of semantic interpretation as the assignment to sentences and their constituents of compounds of semantic markers or the like. (Katz
and Postal, 1964, for instance.) Semantic markers are symbols: items in the vocabulary
of an artificial language we may call Semantic Markerese. Semantic interpretation by
means of them amounts merely to a translation algorithm from the object language
to the auxiliary language Markerese. But we can know the Markerese translation of
an English sentence without knowing the first thing about the meaning of the English
sentence: namely, the conditions under which it would be true. Semantics with no
treatment of truth conditions is not semantics. (p. 18)
Narrowly grammatical
My proposals will also not conform to the expectations of those who, in analyzing
meaning, turn immediately to the psychology and sociology of language users: to
intentions, sense-experience, and mental ideas, or to social rules, conventions, and
regularities. I distinguish two topics: first, the description of possible languages or
grammars as abstract semantic systems whereby symbols are associated with aspects
of the world; and second, the description of the psychological and sociological facts
5

Ling 230b, Stanford (Potts)

PTQ

whereby a particular one of these abstract semantic systems is the one used by a person or population. Only confusion comes of mixing these two topics. This paper deals
almost entirely with the first. (I discuss the second elsewhere: Lewis, 1968b and 1969,
Chapter V.) [These works are cited here as Lewis 1969 and Lewis 1975 CP.] (p. 19)
Intensions vs. meanings
Intensions, our functions from indices to extensions, are designed to do part of what
meanings do. Yet they are not meanings; for there are differences in meaning unaccompanied by differences in intension. It would be absurd to say that all tautologies
have the same meaning, but they have the same intension; the constant function having at every index the value truth. Intensions are part of the way to meanings, however,
and they are of interest in their own right. (p. 25)
We have already observed that intensions for sentences cannot be identified with meanings since differences in meaning for instance, between tautologies may not carry
with them any difference in intension. The same goes for other categories, basic or derived. Differences in intension, we may say, give us coarse differences in meaning.
For fine differences in meaning we must look to the analysis of a compound into constituents and to the intensions of the several constituents. (p. 31)

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PTQ

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