19 Applications of modal logic in linguistics

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the applications of modal logic in linguistics and provides a sophisticated view of modern interfaces between logic and natural language. Modal logic is known in linguistics for the light it throws on semantics; Richard Montague's use of higher-order modal logic for this purpose is widely considered to be the starting point of modern natural language semantics. Modal logic is also used to analyze syntactic structure and interesting links with formal language theory have emerged. In linguistic semantics, logic is used to formalize, or interpret, an object language. The main uses of modal logic in semantics are independent from the main concerns of modal logicians: completeness and correspondence. The two applications of modal logic to the syntax and semantics of natural languages because of the historical importance of modal logic in the development of natural language semantics and because of the significance of model theoretic syntax in current research in mathematical linguistics.