A Semantic Theory of Adverbs
Richmond H. Thomason, ROBERT C. STALNAKER · 2004
Abstract In recent years adverbial constructions have attracted the attention of many logicians, philoso-phers of language, and linguists. Most of this work is relevant to the content of the present ar-ticle, but that of Richard Montague and his associates deserves special discussion since our formal semantic theory can be regarded as a special case of Montague’s.1 Also, though we accept the main features of Montague’s semiotic program, we have not adopted its methodology here, but instead have followed a more conservative approach emerging from recent work in intensional logic. According to this approach, artificial logical languages are used as the objects of formal semantic theory and are linked to natural languages by an informal procedure of formalization.3 The application of semantic theories to English is therefore indirect, rather than direct as in Montague’s approach, since it is mediated by formalization.