Situations, Language and Logic

This monograph grew out of research at Xerox PARC and the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) during the first year of CSLI's existence. The Center was created as a meeting place for people from many different research traditions and there was much interest in seeing how the various approaches could be joined in a common effort to understand the complexity of language and information. CSLI was thus an ideal environment for our group and our enterprise. Our original goal was to see how a well-developed linguistic the­ ory, such as lexical-functional grammar, could be joined with the ideas emerging from research in situation semantics in a manner which would measure up to the technical standards set by Montague grammar. The outcome was our notion of situation schemata and the extension of constraint-based grammar formalisms to deal with semantic as well as syntactic information. As our work progressed we widened our approach. We decided to also include a detailed study of the logic of situation theory, and to investigate how this logical theory is related to the relational theory of meaning developed in situation semantics.

I. Introduction.- 1. Prom linguistic form to situation schemata.- 2. Interpreting situation schemata.- 3. The logical point of view.- II. From Linguistic Form to Situation Schemata.- 1. Levels of linguistic form determining meaning.- 2. Motivation for the use of constraints.- 3. The modularization of the mapping from form to meaning.- 4. Situation schemata.- 5. The algorithm from linguistic form to situation schemata.- III. Interpreting Situation Schemata.- 1. The art of interpretation.- 2. The inductive definition of the meaning relation.- 3. A remark on the general format of situation schemata.- 4. Generalizing generalized quantifiers.- IV. A Logical Perspective.- 1. The mechanics of interpretation.- 2. A hierarchy of formal languages.- 3. Mathematical study of some formal languages.- 4. On the model theoretic interpretation of situation schemata.- V. Conclusions.- Appendices.- A. Prepositional Phrases in Situation Schemata.- by Erik Colban.- B. A Lyndon type interpretation theorem for many-sorted first-order logic.- C. Proof of the relative saturation lemma.- References.

Professor Dr J.F.A.K. van Benthem has received the 1996 Spinoza Award, an annual award to honour outstanding scientific merit and to stimulate innovative future research.

from the jury report:
`Van Benthem has positioned logic as an interdisciplinary science par excellence ... It is through his work that logic has acquired a bridge-function between alpha and gamma sciences on the one side and beta sciences on the other ... Van Benthem is a stimulating and innovative researcher, which explains his great attraction to young researchers. Under his inspirational guidance 38 promovendi from the Netherlands and abroad have finished their theses. In view of Van Benthem's innovative powers and the high level of his research, a number of initiatives are to be expected from him that will further strengthen the Dutch position of logic, more especially so in connection with the formal study of natural language.'