Type-Logical Syntax

What is it about?

A novel logic-based framework for representing the syntax–semantics interface of natural language, applicable to a range of phenomena, based on a synthesis of proof theories that had previously been treated as mutually exclusive. This hybrid framework makes possible parsimonious—but comprehensive—treatments of a wide variety of coordination and ellipsis phenomena and their interaction with scopal operators such as quantifier, symmetrical predicates and modal auxiliaries. A number of complex patterns that have resisted satisfactory treatment in phrase structure based frameworks emerge in a natural way, essentially as the null hypothesis, under the analyses we offer in our book.

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Photo by Seyed Ahmadreza Abedi on Unsplash

Photo by Seyed Ahmadreza Abedi on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Our approach is important not only for the light it sheds on specific phenomena such as Right Node Raising, Dependent Cluster Coordination, Gapping, VP ellipsis, pseudogapping and other problematic patterns, but for the challenge it poses to the assumption of standard phrase structure constituency as the default representation of syntactic relationships within a sentence. Proof-theoretic approaches such as ours treat sentences not as objects to be constructed, but rather theorems to be derived, via deductive calculi which are the implicational fragments of certain standard substructural logics.