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Unless and until: A compositional analysis

  • Gary Mar
  • , Yuliya Manyakina
  • , Amanda Caffary
  • McGill University
  • Stony Brook University

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

The analyses of unless and until lie at the intersection of logic and linguistics. They crop up in papers about tense connectives [1], quantification [15], anaphora [7], polarity and duality [17,18] and in classical theorems of tense logic [10]. Unless and until are morphologically similar, and in some contexts, they even appear to be ‘interchangeable’. In this paper we give compositional analyses showing the interrelatedness of these two connectives. In addition, we use this case study to draw some broader methodological points. The locus classicus on the logic of unless is Quine’s Elementary Logic [20] where he sets forth three methodological dogmas. We dub these Quine’s Three Dogmas of Linguistic Negativism and argue that these three dogmas not only give a misleading account of the interplay between logic and linguistics but that rejecting them leads to discovering a unified compositional analysis.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationLogic, Language, and Computation - 10th International Tbilisi Symposium on Logic, Language, and Computation, TbiLLC 2013, Revised Selected Papers
EditorsMartin Aher, Daniel Hole, Emil Jerabek, Clemens Kupke
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages190-209
Number of pages20
ISBN (Print)9783662469057
DOIs
StatePublished - 2015
Event10th International Tbilisi Symposium on Logic, Language, and Computation, TbiLLC 2013 - Gudauri, Georgia
Duration: Sep 23 2013Sep 27 2013

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume8984
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference10th International Tbilisi Symposium on Logic, Language, and Computation, TbiLLC 2013
Country/TerritoryGeorgia
CityGudauri
Period09/23/1309/27/13

Keywords

  • Modal tense operators
  • Punctual and durative until
  • Quantifier restriction
  • Quine’s dogmas
  • Unless
  • Until

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