LING 360 Lecture Notes - Lecture 24: Rush Hour, Syntactic Ambiguity, Logical Consequence
31 Oct 2016
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Picks out a fairly large class of words, and we will focus on only a few of them. We are especially interested in (cid:498)and(cid:499), (cid:498)or(cid:499), and (cid:498)if(cid:499) We will find out that (cid:498)and(cid:499) and (cid:498)or(cid:499) belong to one class (coordinators) and (cid:498)if(cid:499) Semantics is exactly the truth-value function that corresponds to the (cid:498)and(cid:499) symbol (the wedge ) Empirical evidence that we do this comes from the syntax of language. If you learn the meanings of sentences, there is an unbounded amount of sentences and you can"t memorize all of them. You can idiomatic sentences, (cid:498)bill kicked the bucket(cid:499) you are not imagining. Bill kicking a bucket you know it means that he died. Model theory concocts the notation which can express all mathematical claims and then you observe how this can help you understand the meaning of larger expressions. In order to calculate the value of complex expressions, you have to have parentheses to understand the formula of the sentence/expression.
