L**, LF, and Logical Form

Abstract

A standard view in the semantics of natural language is that first-order predicate logic is not adequate for giving an account of natural language. This chapter shows that on a reasonable formalization of the proposed formal language, this is not the case. Ludlow and Živanović show that their formal system has sufficient expressive power, is compositional in the relevant sense, and the structures are isomorphic to those of natural language. They then discuss a particular version of generative linguistics—the minimalist program—and show how their approach can be integrated into the Minimalist Program, and how that integration can yield fruitful insights for linguistic theory.

On the history of NPIs and Negative Concord

“…As it turns out, the calculation of Local Polarity through Monotonicity Marking (Sánchez Valencia 1991, Icard andMoss 2013) offers the prospect of a syntactic account of NPI-licensing that, unlike Klima's, can also handle the contrast we see in no vs. every. Concrete proposals along these lines are worked out in Dowty (1994) and Ludlow (2002) and are briefly discussed in the Appendix. I therefore assume a syntactic analysis of NPI licensing, and ask: What happens historically with the NPI-feature [u-neg] and the expressions that bear it?…”

“…The licensing question, in particular the challenge that the contrast between every and no poses for Klima's feature-based account, is addressed in Dowty (1994) and Ludlow (2002), both of which rely heavily on Sánchez Valencia's (1991) 'Monotonicity Calculus'. 20 What follows is a brief description of this type of proposal to show how it can solve the every vs. no problem.…”

Functionalism and tacit knowledge of grammar

“…33The LF of S is a structure representing exactly the syntactic information about S relevant to its semantic interpretation; it would be better to call it ‘semantic form’ (Szábo 2012, p. 105). For helpful philosophical discussions of LF, see Neale 1993, 1994, Ludlow 2002, and King 2002.…”