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Article 2354 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: harwood@umiacs.umd.edu (David Harwood)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech,sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: The Return of the Son of the Flame-Free Putnam Thread
Keywords: intension vs. extension, the name relation, model theory
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Date: 21 Dec 91 18:44:45 GMT
References: <1991Dec20.134023.6825@husc3.harvard.edu> <1991Dec20.221220.26233@milton.u.washington.edu> <1991Dec21.015234.6837@husc3.harvard.edu>
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In article <1991Dec21.015234.6837@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

>which is comparable to the Carnap and Montague systems of intensional
>semantics in their entirety (see Carnap's "Meaning and Necessity", and any
>generic introduction to Montague semantics).
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Anti-inflammatory comment: Montague was mathematical logician (recursion
theory, I think), student of A. Tarski as I recall, who subsequently tried
to characterize natural (and other) languages mathematically by providing
them with a recursive syntax and intensional (PW) semantics (w. Carnapian
meaning postulates). The approach was called "Montague Grammar" by 
mathematical linguists. (M- is dead; he also wrote a classic introduction
to modal logic and an interesting textbook, which was used in some
philosophy depts. Math depts used Schonfield in my generation.)

Montague grammar used to taught, in my era, in linguistics departments,
and I guess it still is - I saw a reference to a recent book by Stanley
Peters, a renown mathematical linguist (used to be UTexas dept chair when
I was there). So perhaps it has some "scientific" utility, besides
"philosophical" amusement. I have also read an article reporting an
application for logical databases of computers. (We used the first edition
of a posthumous collection of Montague's papers called _Formal Philosophy_.
There were 3 central papers and approaches: sometimes abbreviated EFL, UG,
and PTQ. "Universal Grammar" was the general approach; "English as a Formal
Language" was a UG-like approach to an intensional fragment of English,
including propositional attitudes, a principal motivation of the theory;
and "The Proper Treatment of Quantification in English" was an alternative
adopted by many linguists for their work and publication (back then),
in which recursive rules of translation were provided to interpret natural
languages (say) by translation into a suitably rich (2nd-order) intensional
logical language with suitable prior semantics.

Linguists could (try to) provide semantics even for such things as questions
in this framework. And there are some computer parsers for Montague syntax
for fragments of English. The approach generally is very elegant, LISP-like.
	Anyway, the programme was pursued because it was not evident 
how to formally provide semantics within the ever-changing Chomsky-
style purely syntactical programme of transformational grammars. There was 
considerable controversy and opposition among linguists (and philosophers).
[Note the differences in background - Montague's was mathematical logic
and his mentor Tarski; Chomsky isn't a logician, but his background (before
his work transformational grammar) was certain algebras (and semi-Thue 
systems) and a mentor who employed rewrite rules for linguistic analysis.

	I think a lot of controversies originate out of such differences
in personal, conceptual backgrounds.To be honest, I have perhaps made 
plenty of mistakes in this historical review, since I haven't looked at 
the subject in many years.


