Abstract
This paper consists principally of selections from a much longer work on the semantics of English. It discusses some problems concerning how to represent grammatical modifiers (e.g. ‘slowly’ in ‘x drives slowly’) in a logically perspicuous notation. A proposal of Reichenbach’s is given and criticized; then a ‘new’ theory (apparently discovered independently by myself, Romain Clark, and Richard Montague and Hans Kamp) is given, in which grammatical modifiers are represented by operators added to a first-order predicate calculus. Finally some problems concerning applications of adjectives to that-clauses and gerundive-clauses are discussed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Bibliography
Rudolf Caraap, The Logical Syntax of Language, Harcourt, Brace, New York, and K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, London, 1937.
Roderick M. Chisholm, Perceiving: A Philosophical Study,Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 1961.
Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, Mouton, The Hague, 1957.
Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1965.
Romaine Clark, ‘Concerning the Logic of Predicate Modifiers’, Nous 4 (1970).
Donald Davidson, ‘The Logical Form of Action Sentences’ in The Logic of Decision and Action (ed. by Nicholas Rescher), University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1967, pp. 81–95.
R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1952.
Richard C. Jeffrey, The Logic of Decision, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1965.
Anthony Kenny, Action, Emotion and Will, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1963.
George Lakoff, ‘Repartee, or a Reply to Negation,Conjunction and Quantifiers’, Foundations of Language 6 (1970).
James D. McCawley, ‘Meaning and the Description of Languages’, Kotoba no uchū 2, nos. 9, 10, 11.
Richard Montague, ‘English as a Formal Language’ in Linguaggi nella società e nella technica, Edizione di Comunità, Milan, 1970.
Richard Montague, ‘Pragmatics and Intensional Logic’, Synthese 22 (1970).
G.E.Moore, Principia Ethica, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1903.
Terence Parsons, ‘On a General Theory of Modifiers’ (dittograph).
Terence Parsons, A Semantics for English (mimeograph).
C. S. Peirce, ‘The Fixation of Belief’, Popular Science Monthly, 1877.
H. Reichenbach, Elements of Symbolic Logic,Macmillan, London and New York, 1947.
Dana Scott, ‘Formalizing Intensional Notions’ (dittograph).
John Wallace, ‘On What’s Happening’ (dittograph).
John Wallace, ‘On What Happened’ (dittograph).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1972 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Parsons, T. (1972). Some Problems Concerning the Logic of Grammatical Modifiers. In: Davidson, D., Harman, G. (eds) Semantics of Natural Language. Synthese Library, vol 40. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2557-7_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2557-7_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-277-0310-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-010-2557-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive