Montague Grammar

Roro, et al:

I am reading a short paper on his theories. It seems quite complicated. Can you tell me if it's worth the effort?

Montague said: "There is in my opinion no important theoretical difference between natural languages and the artificial languages of logicians; indeed, I consider it possible to comprehend the syntax and semantics of both kinds of languages within a single natural and mathematically precise theory."

I wonder if he is just wishing that natural language were as analyzable as logic.

Roro,

Perhaps each of our 'languages' is best suited for its use. Roughly in increasing order of unambiguity and systematization:

poetry
prose
legal prose
philosophical prose
scientific prose
computer languages
mathematics
logic

Each is appealing in its way. In poetry, Robert Frost could say:

Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.

In mathematics, one can write the formula for the Fourier Series of a square wave.

Sometimes in prose we pose arguments and need to call in the expertise of logic. And there are surely other overlapping areas.

But by and large a language evolves to communicate what its users want and need to communicate. Would it not be a mistake to give up prose for predicate logic or some such?

I would appreciate your thoughts.

rvw

Hello, rvw, sorry for my slow reply ... I got frightened to answer to your huge question ... I'm not qualified yet! ... so please bear in mind this is only some of my personal, shortsighted ideas.

Can I rephrase your question as: why do we need this formal language? We can pose arguments, communicate, express, discuss without it. (This way of presenting the question is not beautiful, but...)

This is actually one of frequent asked questions, and I can understand the feeling of embarrassment of questioners. It's very easy ... they say ... to understand the meaning of some expressions. Why on earth do we need completely another formal language to understand our everyday-used natural language?

I think we DO need some elaborated tool to analyze the meaning, because the meaning itself is very, very vague, unidentifiable thing. It's flexible and fragile, so we need some keen tool to analyze its structure.

(Just like ... we cannot cut a tomato with another tomato. If we want to know the inner structure of it, we need some keen tool.)

There's another reason. D.R.Dowty once wrote:

... the goal of formalization in linguistic research is to enable subsequent researchers to see the defects of an analyses as clearly as its merites; only then can further progress be made efficiently.

I have experienced when I read some paper written in formal approach I can understand the author's point, very clearly. It was a kind of surprise for me. This is, too, one of reasons why I use formal methods.

Dear Roro,

As you said in a previous post, this is a "huge question." I think the answer will come from many fields: linguistics, philosophy, psychology, physiology, neuro-science....

Our language and our thinking are inherently and necessarily vague. If I ask for a hammer, I will be happy to get just about any hammer, not just a particular one. If I see an object in the distance at twilight, my brain goes through its library of known objects and may or may not settle on one without additional sensory input.

I looked up "vagueness" in the on-line Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Vagueness is a subject unto itself. The article also has a link to a bibliography on vagueness. At the head of that bibliography is a quote from Wittgenstein:

It is clear that every sentence in our language ’is in order as it is’. That is to say, we are not striving after an ideal, as if our ordinary vague sentences had not yet got a quite unexceptionable sense, and a perfect language awaited construction by us. - On the other hand it seems clear that where there is sense there must be perfect order. -- So there must be perfect order even in the vaguest sentence.

For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules - it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either. We, in our discussions on the other hand, constantly compare language with a calculus proceeding according to exact rules.

I gather that a great deal of research on language is currently being carried out. Montague Grammar and every other discipline will likely make helpful contributions. I look forward to learning more.
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Thank you for the delightful tankas.

Here is one of my favorite quotations -- from William Butler Yeats:

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

(Hard to express in a predicate calculus!)

(Hard to express in a predicate calculus!)

How true it is. I wanted to say the same thing, but I couldn't find an appropriate word. Your favorite quotations are fabulous ...! J.Brodsky once wrote ... :

That's what's interesting about poets: after them you don't feel like talking. That is, don't feel as if you can.