QUESTIONS IN MONTAGUE ENGLISH

Abstract

This chapter focuses on questions in Montague English. The study of questions leans out to pragmatics in the sense that someone who thinks the exclusive purpose of language is to state truths may be led by it to think again. But it is remarkable that it is possible to produce a semantics (or model theory) of questions and that this dovetails surprisingly neatly with Montague's own semantics of statements. Montague gives separate rules, which may be omitted in virtue of their close parallel with those just stated, for the case in which the scope of the quantification is a common noun rather than a formula. The word “entity” is an example of a word with special semantic properties, and Montague specifies explicitly that “not” should have the properties of negation and that ‘is” as a two-place verb should have the properties of identity, and that “necessarily” should have those of Leibnizian necessity, that is, truth in all possible universes. This completes the rules for the language. Because of ambiguities, the rules do not attach a unique denotation to every formula. It would be possible to make semantic rules for interrogatives quite separately from those for indicatives. But a unified set of rules can be constructed quite simply if indicatives are regarded as equivalent to one-alternative or Hobson's-choice interrogatives.