Showing papers by "George Lakoff published in 1970"

Linguistics and Natural Logic

Abstract: Evidence is presented to show that the role of a generative grammar of a natural language is not merely to generate the grammatical sentences of that language, but also to relate them to their logical forms. The notion of logical form is to be made sense of in terms a ‘natural logic’, a logical for natural language, whose goals are to express all concepts capable of being expressed in natural language, to characterize all the valid inferences that can be made in natural language, and to mesh with adequate linguistic descriptions of all natural languages. The latter requirement imposes empirical linguistic constraints on natural logic. A number of examples are discussed.

Adverbs and Opacity

Abstract: ?ACZTE: § Esglg is S%a1§a§er* m§®E§& Zaaoff; bnivsrsity 35 Eishigan, §eve§%a:, :§?G In his “ficieg 02 edva?§s in Eesgsnse is §§@ms Eebert Stainaker prs§cse3 faur sriteria fer eistifigxisiigg greeiaaie maiifiers frsm segtance modifiers; C§Lf§&? can it give rise to m unive?sa1 or exisfientiai sentences (In the text Gf the pager he limits this criterian to subject position.) (2) Only if an adverfi is a senience moiifier can it give rise to opaque contexts in the subject pesitien. (1) and (2) are essentially the same criterion if one assumes (as do Thomason and Stalnaker in their “Modality aad Referenceq) that opacity is to be accounted for in terms of the eifference in the scape of an operator binding a variable. (3) Only advarbg which are sentence modifiers aan occur at the beginning of a cwmplex aentence whose constituent clauaeg have different gubjects. By qcomplex semtmmce“ fitalnaker maans conjunctions, disjunctions, and if~ then constructiwms, but nmt relative claases, complements, etc. (4) If Q~1y owcurs as the moeifier of a clasefi sentence, then one can paraphraam fine awntence by fieleting the aeverb anfi prefacing the reaulting sentence by “ii is Q,1y true th'tq or “it is true Quly thatq. Stalnaker claims that these tesis yield the fellowifig results :41 Senflence mafi% 4: frecaentiy, fa) v 3 :ha mQ?§in2 aecessarilw Uossibl ... V4’ }» 5 -e, sicwly, relucfiantlyg .... W ?§iaiE§ gxggartee ey gyani §S—2§§§ fffifi the Eatienal Sciaaaa (aa §§:¥&rsii§ sf Eechigag.