Formal Semantics: Origins, Issues, Early Impact

Formal semantics and pragmatics as they have developed since the late 1960's have been shaped by fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration among linguists, philosophers, and logicians, among others, and in turn have had noticeable effects on developments in syntax, philosophy of language, computational linguistics, and cognitive science. In this paper I describe the environment in which formal semantics was born and took root, highlighting the differences in ways of thinking about natural language semantics in linguistics and in philosophy and logic. With Montague as a central but not solo player in the story, I reflect on crucial developments in the 1960's and 70's in linguistics and philosophy, and the growth of formal semantics and formal pragmatics from there. I discuss innovations, key players, and leading ideas that shaped the development of formal semantics and its relation to syntax, to pragmatics, and to the philosophy of language in its early years, and some central aspects of its early impact on those fields. References Abbott, B. 1999. ‘The formal approach to meaning: Formal semantics and its recent developments’. Journal of Foreign Languages (Shanghai)119, no. 1: 2–20. https://www.msu.edu/~abbottb/formal.htm. Ajdukiewicz, K. 1960. Je zyk i Poznanie (Language and Knowledge). Warsaw. Bach, E. 1968. ‘Nouns and Noun Phrases’. In E. Bach & R.T. Harms (eds.) ‘Universals in Linguistic Theory’, 90–122. NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Bach, E. 1989. Informal Lectures on Formal Semantics. New York: State University of New York Press. Bar-Hillel, Y. 1954a. ‘Logical syntax and semantics’. Language 30: 230–237. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/410265 Bar-Hillel, Y. 1954b. ‘Indexical Expressions’. Mind 63: 359–379. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mind/LXIII.251.359 Bar-Hillel, Y. 1963. ‘Remarks on Carnap’s Logical Syntax of Language’. In P. A. Schilpp (ed.) ‘The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap’, 519–543. LaSalle, Illinois / London: Open Court / Cambridge University Press. Barker, C. & Jacobson, P. (eds.). 2007. Direct Compositionality. Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bernstein, L. 1976. The unanswered question: six talks at Harvard: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1973. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Bohnert, H. & Backer, P. 1967. ‘Automatic English-to-Logic Translation in a Simplified Model: A Study in the Logic of Grammar’. IBM Research Paper RC-1744. Yorktown Heights, NY: IBM. Burris, S. 2009. ‘The Algebra of Logic tradition’. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2009 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta. S