Project

Ontological Symmetry in Language

Program

Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowships

Department

Linguistics

Abstract

Both in traditional grammar and in philosophical logic, it was assumed that significantly different linguistic systems underlie reference to individuals, to times and to possible situations or 'possible worlds.' Numerous results from resent research in formal semantics suggest that this is not so, and that there is in fact a pervasive symmetry between the linguistic means with which we refer to all three domains. I synthesize these results in a full-scale study.