Moschovakis’ Notion of Meaning as Applied to Linguistics

G. Frege introduced two concepts which are central to modern formal approaches to natural language semantics; i.e. the notion of reference (denotation, extension, Bedeutung) and sense (intension, Sinn) of proper names. The sense of a proper name is wherin the mode of presentation (of the denotation) is contained. For Frege proper names include not only expressions such as Peter, Shakespeare but also definite descriptions like the point of intersection of line l1 and l2 and furthermore sentences which are names for truth values. Sentences denote the True or the False. The sense of a sentence is the proposition (Gedanke) the sentence expresses. In the tradition of possible world semantics the proposition a sentence expresses is modelled via the set of worlds in which the sentence is true. This strategy leads to well known problems with propositional attitudes and other intensional constructions in natural languages since it predicts for example that the sentences in (1) are equivalent.