Formal Semantics in Modern Type Theories
Stergios Chatzikyriakidis, Zhaohui Luo · 2020
This chapter studies formal semantics in modern type theories (MTT-semantics). It explains in more details how to interpret some of the basic linguistic categories. The chapter explicates the CNs-as-types paradigm and two other related features (subtyping and judgmental interpretations) in MTT-semantics. These features are unique to MTT-semantics and different from the traditional Montagovian semantics. The chapter presents a case study that shows how to give semantic interpretations for adjectival modification according to one of the most basic classifications for adjectives in the Montagovian tradition. Besides investigating how to model adjectival modification in MTT-semantics, one of the motivations for this case study is to demonstrate that the rich type structure in MTTs provides powerful and useful mechanisms in semantic constructions for a wide range of linguistic features.