Alternative semantics (or Hamblin semantics) is a framework in
formal semantics and
logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premise ...
. In alternative semantics, expressions
denote
In linguistics and philosophy, the denotation of an expression is its literal meaning. For instance, the English word "warm" denotes the property of being warm. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of meaning including connotation. For in ...
''alternative sets'', understood as sets of objects of the same
semantic type. For instance, while the word "Lena" might denote Lena herself in a classical semantics, it would denote the singleton set containing Lena in alternative semantics. The framework was introduced by
Charles Leonard Hamblin in 1973 as a way of extending
Montague grammar to provide an analysis for
questions
A question is an utterance which serves as a request for information. Questions are sometimes distinguished from interrogatives, which are the grammatical forms typically used to express them. Rhetorical questions, for instance, are interrogative ...
. In this framework, a question denotes the set of its possible answers. Thus, if
and
are
proposition
In logic and linguistics, a proposition is the meaning of a declarative sentence. In philosophy, " meaning" is understood to be a non-linguistic entity which is shared by all sentences with the same meaning. Equivalently, a proposition is the no ...
s, then
is the denotation of the question whether
or
is true. Since the 1970s, it has been extended and adapted to analyze phenomena including
focus
Focus, or its plural form foci may refer to:
Arts
* Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in South Australia Film
*''Focus'', a 1962 TV film starring James Whitmore
* ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based ...
,
scope
Scope or scopes may refer to:
People with the surname
* Jamie Scope (born 1986), English footballer
* John T. Scopes (1900–1970), central figure in the Scopes Trial regarding the teaching of evolution
Arts, media, and entertainment
* Cinem ...
,
disjunction
In logic, disjunction is a logical connective typically notated as \lor and read aloud as "or". For instance, the English language sentence "it is raining or it is snowing" can be represented in logic using the disjunctive formula R \lor S ...
,
s,
, and
implicature
In pragmatics, a subdiscipline of linguistics, an implicature is something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally expressed. Implicatures can aid in communicating more efficiently than by explicitly sayi ...
.
See also
*
*
*
*
*
References
Semantics
Non-classical logic
Systems of formal logic
Philosophical logic
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