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Re: [ontolog-forum] Barbara Partee on Formal Semantics

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From: Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 2014年10月28日 15:06:24 -0400
Message-id: <544FE930.2040908@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On 10/28/14 11:54 AM, John F Sowa wrote:
> I came across a 52-page review of the development of formal
> semantics, which Barbara Partee published in 2011. See below
> for the URL and a copy of the concluding paragraph.
>
> Barbara earned a PhD at MIT (Chomsky as thesis adviser) and
> began teaching linguistics at UCLA, where she joined Richard
> Montague and Hans Kamp in pioneering work in combining formal
> semantics with the complexity of NLs. This review is a history
> of the field by one of the leading developers and promoters.
>
> My major criticism is about the size of the "grain of truth"
> by which she minimizes George Lakoff's criticisms. I have
> a high regard for both Barbara and George. Both of them were
> graduate students of Chomsky's around the same time, and they
> both have important points to make (although I prefer Barbara's
> style to George's sometimes excessive hyperbole).
>
> My very short critique is that Barbara and George are equally
> correct about the aspects of language they emphasize, and
> equally wrong about the aspects of the other that they dismiss
> or minimize. There is, of course, much more that could be said.
>
> John
> ______________________________________________________________
>
> http://newprairiepress.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1056&context=biyclc
>
> FORMAL SEMANTICS: ORIGINS, ISSUES, EARLY IMPACT
> by Barbara H. Partee
>
> [Concluding paragraph]
>
> I should note a criticism that comes from Lakoff and other 鼎ognitive
> Linguists?: formal semanticists don稚 work on metaphor, because
> formal semantics is inadequate for dealing with metaphor, and deals
> only with 弾asy? parts of natural language. There is probably a grain
> of truth to this, and it is undoubtedly connected with the relative
> narrowness of treatments of lexical meaning within formal semantics.
> (Formal semanticists have a great deal to say about the semantics of
> 斗ogical words?, and about aspects of the semantics of open-class words
> that impinge directly on their contribution to compositional meaning,
> but very little to say about what distinguishes the meanings of open-
> class words whose more 素ormal? properties are alike.) I don稚 believe
> that formal semantics will ever account for 疎ll of meaning?. But I
> believe that it does very well at accounting for the truth-conditional
> core of literal meaning, which is not handled in any explicit way
> within Cognitive Linguistics. And we池e getting better at solving
> problems, and there is progress on semantic issues in language
> typology, language history, language acquisition, pragmatics and
> discourse, computational linguistic applications, and more. And as
> the field has made progress, new questions have opened up. I have
> really not said anything about the work of the last thirty years,
> and it is that work by which the fruitfulness of the field can best
> be judged.
>
>
>
>
John,  (01)
What you've stated above, represented using TURTLE based Nanotation:
## Nanotation Start ##  (02)
<http://newprairiepress.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1056&context=biyclc>
a schema:WebPage ;
rdfs:label "FORMAL SEMANTICS: ORIGINS, ISSUES, EARLY IMPACT" ;
dcterms:creator dbpedia:Barbara_Partee ;
foaf:primaryTopic dbpedia:Semantics ;
rdfs:seeAlso <#Excerpt>, <#Comment> .  (03)
<#Excerpt>
rdfs:label "Article Excerpt" ;
dcterms:description
 """
 I should note a criticism that comes from 
Lakoff and other 鼎ognitive
 Linguists?: formal semanticists don稚 work on 
metaphor, because
 formal semantics is inadequate for dealing with 
metaphor, and deals
 only with 弾asy? parts of natural language. 
There is probably a grain
 of truth to this, and it is undoubtedly 
connected with the relative
 narrowness of treatments of lexical meaning 
within formal semantics.
 (Formal semanticists have a great deal to say 
about the semantics of
 斗ogical words?, and about aspects of the 
semantics of open-class words
 that impinge directly on their contribution to 
compositional meaning,
 but very little to say about what distinguishes 
the meanings of open-
 class words whose more 素ormal? properties are 
alike.) I don稚 believe
 that formal semantics will ever account for 
疎ll of meaning?. But I
 believe that it does very well at accounting 
for the truth-conditional
 core of literal meaning, which is not handled 
in any explicit way
 within Cognitive Linguistics. And we池e getting 
better at solving
 problems, and there is progress on semantic 
issues in language
 typology, language history, language 
acquisition, pragmatics and
 discourse, computational linguistic 
applications, and more. And as
 the field has made progress, new questions have 
opened up. I have
 really not said anything about the work of the 
last thirty years,
 and it is that work by which the fruitfulness 
of the field can best
 be judged.
 """ .
<#Comment>
rdfs:label "Article Comment" ;
rdfs:comment """
 I came across a 52-page review of the development of formal
 semantics, which Barbara Partee published in 2011. See 
below
 for the URL and a copy of the concluding paragraph.  (04)
 Barbara earned a PhD at MIT (Chomsky as thesis adviser) and
 began teaching linguistics at UCLA, where she joined 
Richard
 Montague and Hans Kamp in pioneering work in combining 
formal
 semantics with the complexity of NLs. This review is a 
history
 of the field by one of the leading developers and 
promoters.  (05)
 My major criticism is about the size of the "grain of 
truth"
 by which she minimizes George Lakoff's criticisms. I have
 a high regard for both Barbara and George. Both of 
them were
 graduate students of Chomsky's around the same time, 
and they
 both have important points to make (although I prefer 
Barbara's
 style to George's sometimes excessive hyperbole).  (06)
 My very short critique is that Barbara and George are 
equally
 correct about the aspects of language they emphasize, and
 equally wrong about the aspects of the other that they 
dismiss
 or minimize. There is, of course, much more that could 
be said.
 """ ;
dcteterms:creator dbpedia:John_F._Sowa .  (07)
## Nanotation End ##  (08)
Net effect, enriching related data in the Linked Open Data cloud.  (09)
-- 
Regards,  (010)
Kingsley Idehen 
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Personal Weblog 1: http://kidehen.blogspot.com
Personal Weblog 2: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter Profile: https://twitter.com/kidehen
Google+ Profile: https://plus.google.com/+KingsleyIdehen/about
LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kidehen
Personal WebID: http://kingsley.idehen.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this  (011)

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