Metaphor and other forms of non-literal language are essential parts of language which have direct bearing on theories of lexical semantics. Neither narrow theories of lexical semantics, nor theories relying solely on world knowledge are sufficient to account for our ability to generate and interpret non-literal language. This paper presents an emerging approach that may provide such an account...

Common sense intuition distinguishes between events and regular objects; events happen, after all, and objects don’t. This distinction is deployed in linguistics, psychology and philosophy. Linguists say that sentences describe events, while nouns describe objects. Psychologists describe the principles of event perception, and philosophers debate the metaphysics of event identity. But how do th...

In the TACITUS project for using commonsense knowledge in the understanding of texts •bout mechanical devices and their failures, we have been developing various commonsense theories that are needed to mediate between the way we talk about the behavior of such devices and causal models of their operation. Of central importance in this effort is the axiomatization of what might be called "common...

Researchers have developed a large variety of semantic models of object-oriented computations. These include object calculi as well as denotational, small-step operational, big-step operational, and reduction semantics. Some focus on pure object-oriented computation in small calculi; many others mingle the object-oriented and the procedural aspects of programming languages. In this paper, we pr...

Researchers have developed a large variety of semantic models of object-oriented computations. These include object calculi as well as denotational, small-step operational, big-step operational, and reduction semantics. Some focus on pure object-oriented computation in small calculi; many others mingle the object-oriented and the procedural aspects of programming languages. In this paper, we pr...

Most semantic frameworks assume that the denotations of verbs expect their arguments in a certain specific order. In fixed word order languages, hence, we could say that order codes case marking. Moreover, all syntax-semantic mappings have to provide a solution for the fact that DPs can denote individual concepts of (extensional) type e as well as generalized quantifiers (〈〈e, t〉, t〉). The pape...

The elasticity of metaphor as a communication strategy has spurred philosophers to question its ability to mean anything at all. If a metaphor can elicit different responses from different people in varying contexts, how can one say it has a single meaning? Davidson has argued that metaphors have no special or secondary meaning, and must thus mean exactly what they seem to mean on the surface. ...

Inference has long been the concern of assorted disciplines that vary in focus, rationale, apparatus, terminology, and achievement. There would appear an inverse proportion between the range and the orderliness of the knowledge accumulated by the various disciplines. Literary study tends to the first extreme, logic and its heritage in modern pragmatics to the second, either imbalance precluding...