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122A multi-dimensional treatment of quantification in extraordinary EnglishLinguistics and Philosophy 31 (1): 101-127. 2008.In this paper I revive two important formal approaches to the interpretation of natural language, that of Montague and that of Karttunen and Peters. Armed with insights from dynamic semantics (Heim, Krifka) the two turn out to stand up against age-old criticisms in an orthodox fashion. The plan is mainly methodological, as I only want to illustrate the technical feasibility of the revived proposals. Even so, there are illuminating and welcome empirical consequences on the subject of scope island…Read more
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97Meanwhile, within the Frege boundaryLinguistics and Philosophy 26 (5): 547-556. 2003.In this paper, I want to contribute to understanding and improving on Keenan'sintriguing equivalence result about reducible type quantifiers (Keenan, 1992).I give an alternative proof of his result which generalizes to type quantifiers, andI show how the reduction of a reducible type quantifier to (the composition of) ntype quantifiers can be effected.
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81Jigsaw SemanticsThe Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 6 1-26. 2011.In the last decade the enterprise of formal semantics has been under attack from several philosophical and linguistic perspectives, and it has certainly suffered from its own scattered state, which hosts quite a variety of paradigms which may seem to be incompatible. It will not do to try and answer the arguments of the critics, because the arguments are often well-taken. The negative conclusions, however, I believe are not. The only adequate reply seems to be a constructive one, which puts seve…Read more
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66Meaning and Use of Indefinite ExpressionsJournal of Logic, Language and Information 11 (2): 141-194. 2002.Sentences containing pronouns and indefinite noun phrases can be said toexpress open propositions, propositions which display gaps to be filled.This paper addresses the question what is the linguistic content ofthese expressions, what information they can be said to provide to ahearer, and in what sense the information of a speaker can be said tosupport their utterance. We present and motivate first order notions ofcontent, update and support. The three notions are each defined in acompositional…Read more
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48The 2007 edition of the Amsterdam Colloquium is the Sixteenth in a series which started in 1976. Originally, the Amsterdam Colloquium was an initiative of the Department of Philosophy of the University of Amsterdam. Since 1984 the Colloquium is organized by the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) of the University of Amsterdam.
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34Editorial: Logic and games (review)Journal of Logic, Language and Information 11 (3): 287-288. 2002.
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30Not Only BarbaraJournal of Logic, Language and Information 24 (2): 95-129. 2015.With this paper I aim to demonstrate that a look beyond the Aristotelian square of opposition, and a related non-conservative view on logical determiners, contributes to both the understanding of Aristotelian syllogistics as well as to the study of quantificational structures in natural language
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15The Cambridge Handbook of Formal Semantics (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2016.Formal semantics - the scientific study of meaning in natural language - is one of the most fundamental and long-established areas of linguistics. This Handbook offers a comprehensive, yet compact guide to the field, bringing together research from a wide range of world-leading experts. Chapters include coverage of the historical context and foundation of contemporary formal semantics, a survey of the variety of formal/logical approaches to linguistic meaning and an overview of the major areas o…Read more
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15Activism and Civil Society: Broadening Participation and Deepening DemocracyRecerca.Revista de Pensament I Anàlisi 17 7-13. 2015.In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence of political activism through an irruption of citizen movements – 5M or Occupy–, the birth of new political platforms –5 Stelle, Zyrisa, Podemos– and the rise of new direct action groups, such as Anonymous, Stop-Evictions Movements, cooperatives, to name just a few. In some countries this activism has not just placed substantial pressure on traditional actors of representative democracy and governments, but has also opened up opportunities for str…Read more
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13KD45 with Propositional QuantifiersLogic and Logical Philosophy 1-28. forthcoming.Steinsvold (2020) has provided two semantics for the basic modal language enriched with propositional quantifiers (∀p). We define an extension EM of the system KD45_{\Box} and prove that EM is sound and complete for both semantics. It follows that the two semantics are equivalent.
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9The Cambridge Handbook of Formal Semantics (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2016.Formal semantics - the scientific study of meaning in natural language - is one of the most fundamental and long-established areas of linguistics. This Handbook offers a comprehensive, yet compact guide to the field, bringing together research from a wide range of world-leading experts. Chapters include coverage of the historical context and foundation of contemporary formal semantics, a survey of the variety of formal/logical approaches to linguistic meaning and an overview of the major areas o…Read more
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7Grounding dynamic semanticsIn Anne Bezuidenhout & Marga Reimer (eds.), Descriptions and Beyond, Oxford University Press. 2004.
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2Proceedings of the Eighth Amsterdam Colloquium: December 17-20, 1991Illc, University of Amsterdam. 1992.
Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |