This account of logic studies in Australia consists of discussions of a number of technical results and theories in logic which seem to me to be both interesting and representative. The material covered largely concerns the work of the ‘relevant logic’ school of which I am a member, but I also discuss other work such as the significance logics of Goddard and Routley, various analyses of conditionals proposed by V.H. Dudman, B. Ellis, and F. Jackson, and C.L. Hamblin’s theory of formal dialogues.

Logics and languages

Logic in Australia

The question whether natural language can be captured in a formal system has been argued at length, and both a positive and a negative answer has been defended. The paper investigates the main lines of argument for both, and argues that the stalemate that appears to have been reached is an indication that the question itself rests on a wrong conception of the relation between natural languages and formal languages, and hence of the methodological status of formal modelling of natural language.

Can Natural Language Be Captured in a Formal System

Some numerical constructions in English

The paper deals with a number of problems connected with the analysis of natural languages as it affects machine translation. It poses the question as to which of the possible ways of defining the analysis result at transfer level appears the most suitable for the practical objective of creating a translation process for large quantities of text and a broad linguistic spectrum, and reviews some of the difficulties of analysis created by the open-endedness and ambiguity of natural languages. It will be proposed that the analysis of natural languages within the context of machine translation be seen not as something different from the analysis of natural languages for other purposes, such as fact retrieval and question-answering systems, but that it be kept open so that it can be adapted to other fields, primarily with a view to creating polyvalent language processing systems. Finally, the approach used for the automatic analysis of French in project C of the special research field 1OO 'Electronic Linguistic Research', at the University of the Saar will be described.

background

The role amd form of analysis in machine translation the automatic analysis of french at saarbrucken

This paper is about the most important technical problem faced by Structured Meanings Semantics: the reiteration of hyperintensional functors (i.e., functors of Θ-categorial languages of the sort defined by Max Cresswell in [6]). A way to solve this problem in a general and natural way by using Scott's Domains is both suggested and shown. The result is a semantics which unrestrictedly allows reiterations of hyperintensional functors. The semantics is also extended to accommodate Θ-categorial languages with variables.

Logics and languages

Citations

Logic in Australia

Can Natural Language Be Captured in a Formal System

Some numerical constructions in English

The role amd form of analysis in machine translation the automatic analysis of french at saarbrucken

Structured meanings and reflexive domains

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