In
situation theory Situation theory provides the mathematical foundations to situation semantics, and was developed by writers such as Jon Barwise and Keith Devlin in the 1980s. Due to certain foundational problems, the mathematics was framed in a non-well-founded set ...
, situation semantics (pioneered by
Jon Barwise
Kenneth Jon Barwise (; June 29, 1942 – March 5, 2000) was an American mathematician, philosopher and logician who proposed some fundamental revisions to the way that logic is understood and used.
Education and career
Born in Independence, ...
and
John Perry in the early 1980s) attempts to provide a solid theoretical foundation for reasoning about common-sense and real world situations, typically in the context of
theoretical linguistics
Theoretical linguistics is a term in linguistics which, like the related term general linguistics, can be understood in different ways. Both can be taken as a reference to theory of language, or the branch of linguistics which inquires into the n ...
,
theoretical philosophy
The modern division of philosophy into theoretical philosophy and practical philosophyImmanuel Kant, ''Lectures on Ethics'', Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 41 ("On Universal Practical Philosophy"). Original text: Immanuel Kant, ''Kant’s Ge ...
, or applied
natural language processing,
Barwise and Perry
Situations, unlike worlds, are not complete in the sense that every proposition or its negation holds in a world. According to ''Situations and Attitudes'', meaning is a relation between a discourse situation, a connective situation and a described situation. The original theory of ''Situations and Attitudes'' soon ran into foundational difficulties. A reformulation based on
Peter Aczel
Peter Henry George Aczel (; born 31 October 1941) is a British mathematician, logician and Emeritus joint Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the School of Mathematics at the University of Manchester. He is known for his work in ...
's
non-well-founded set theory
Non-well-founded set theories are variants of axiomatic set theory that allow sets to be elements of themselves and otherwise violate the rule of well-foundedness. In non-well-founded set theories, the foundation axiom of ZFC is replaced by axio ...
was proposed by Barwise before this approach to the subject petered out in the early 1990s.
HPSG
Situation semantics is the first semantic theory that was used in
head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG).
Kratzer
Barwise and Perry's system was a top-down approach which foundered on practical issues which were early identified by
Angelika Kratzer and others. She subsequently developed a considerable body of theory bottom-up by addressing a variety of issues in the areas of
context
Context may refer to:
* Context (language use), the relevant constraints of the communicative situation that influence language use, language variation, and discourse summary
Computing
* Context (computing), the virtual environment required to su ...
dependency in discourse and the
syntax–semantics interface
In linguistics, the syntax–semantics interface is the interaction between syntax and semantics. Its study encompasses phenomena that pertain to both syntax and semantics, with the goal of explaining correlations between form and meaning.Chierchi ...
. Because of its practical nature and ongoing development this body of work "with possible situations as parts of
possible world
A possible world is a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been. Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic, philosophy, and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional and modal logic. Their me ...
s, now has much more influence than Barwise and Perry’s ideas".
[ Barbara Partee, "Reflections of Formal Semanticist as of Feb. 2005", p. 20. February 14, 2005.]
See also
*
*
*
Notes
External links
"Situations in Natural Language Semantics"–
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
Semantics
{{semantics-stub