Agnostic hyperintensional semantics

• Published in: Synthese (Dordrecht) Vol. 192; no. 3; pp. 535 - 562
• Main Author: Pollard, Carl
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01.03.2015; Springer Netherlands; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Categorial grammar; Education; Epistemology; Grammatical subject; Infinitives; Licensing; Linguistics; Logic; Metaphysics; Natural language; Philosophy; Philosophy of Language; Philosophy of Science; Propositions; Schemas; Semantics; Syntactic movement; Syntactic structures; United States > US; Ohio; Hyperintension; Linear logic; Proposition; World; Categorial grammar; Higher order logic
• ISSN: 0039-7857; 1573-0964
• DOI: 10.1007/s11229-013-0373-2

A hyperintensional semantics for natural language is proposed which is agnostic about the question of whether propositions are sets of worlds or worlds are (maximal consistent) sets of propositions. Montague's theory of intensional senses is replaced by a weaker theory, written in standard classical higher-order logic, of fine-grained senses which are in a many-to-one correspondence with intensions; Montague's theory can then be recovered from the proposed theory by identifying the type of propositions with the type of sets of worlds and adding an axiom to the effect that each world is the set of propositions which are true there. Senses are compositionally assigned to linguistic expressions by a categorial grammar with only two rule schemas, based on the implicative fragment of intuitionistic linear propositional logic, and a fully explicit grammar fragment is provided that illustrates the compositional assignment of sense to a variety of constructions, including dummy-subject constructions, infinitive complements, predicative adjectives and nominals, raising to subject, 'tough-movement', and quantifier scope ambiguities. Notably, the grammar and the derivations that it licenses never make reference to either worlds or to the extensions of senses.