Repository | Book | Chapter
(1988) Categorial grammars and natural language structures, Dordrecht, Springer.
There is a noticeable revival of categorial grammar these days, as a vehicle for linguistic description. The systems used differ somewhat from the original calculus of Ajdukiewicz and Bar-Hillel, however. In particular, there is a component of rules for "type change' of expressions, making for greater flexibility and elegance. One fundamental system of this kind is the so-called "Lambek Calculus', whose type-change rules show a close analogy with the inference rules of constructive propositional logic. In this paper, we present one calculus of this kind, and survey its theoretical properties as a device in linguistic semantics. Our two main new contributions are a new and complete semantics for this calculus, as well as a modest study of its language-accepting capacity. In this way, we hope to provide a better understanding of the background theory of flexible categorial grammar, in tandem with its descriptive uses.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-6878-4_3
Full citation:
van Benthem, J. (1988)., The Lambek calculus, in R. T. Oehrle, E. Bach & D. Wheeler (eds.), Categorial grammars and natural language structures, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 35-68.
This document is unfortunately not available for download at the moment.