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Enriched Meanings
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OXFORD ST UDIES IN SEM ANTICS AND PR AGMATICS

General Editors
Chris Barker, New York University, and Chris Kennedy, University of Chicago

recently published in the series


4
Reliability in Pragmatics
Eric McCready
5
Numerically Qualified Expressions
Chris Cummins
6
Use-Conditional Meaning
Studies in Multidimensional Semantics
Daniel Gutzmann
7
Gradability in Natural Language
Logical and Grammatical Foundations
Heather Burnett
8
Subjectivity and Perspective in Truth-Theoretic Semantics
Peter Lasersohn
9
The Semantics of Evidentials
Sarah E. Murray
10
Graded Modality
Qualitative and Quantitative Perspectives
Daniel Lassiter
11
The Semantics and Pragmatics of Honorification
Register and Social Meaning
Elin McCready
12
The Meaning of More
Alexis Wellwood
13
Enriched Meanings
Natural Language Semantics with Category Theory
Ash Asudeh and Gianluca Giorgolo
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Enriched Meanings
Natural Language Semantics with Category Theory

A SH A SU D E H A N D G IA N LU C A G IO R G O L O

1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/8/2020, SPi

3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Ash Asudeh and Gianluca Giorgolo 2020
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2020
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020941615
ISBN 978–0–19–884785–4 (hbk.)
978–0–19–884786–1 (pbk.)
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
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For our parents


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Contents

General preface ix
Acknowledgements xi
List of figures xv
List of tables xvii
List of symbols and conventions xix

1. Introduction 1
1.1 Computational tool and exercises 3

PA RT I . BAC KG R O U N D
2. Enriched meanings in semantics and pragmatics 7
2.1 Introduction 7
2.2 Semantics and pragmatics 7
2.3 Enriched meanings 10
2.4 The phenomena 11
2.4.1 Multidimensionality 12
2.4.2 Perspectives 13
2.4.3 Uncertainty 15
2.5 Conclusion 16
3. Category theory 19
3.1 Introduction 19
3.2 Categories 19
3.2.1 Category of linguistic meanings 23
3.3 Functors 24
3.4 Natural transformations 26
3.5 Monads 28
3.6 A logic for working with monads 32
3.7 Glue Semantics 36
3.8 Categorial Grammar 36
3.9 Exercises 37

PA RT I I . C A SE S T U D I E S
4. Conventional implicature 41
4.1 Introduction 41
4.2 Interdimensional backflow 44
4.3 Conventional implicatures and compositionality 48
4.4 A monad for conventional implicature 50
4.5 Analysis 53
4.5.1 Lexicon 54
4.5.2 Interpretation 56
4.6 Conclusion 57
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viii contents

4.7 Exercises 57
5. Perspectival reference 59
5.1 Introduction 59
5.2 The true scope of the problem 60
5.2.1 No embedding: simple sentences 60
5.2.2 Non-distinct terms: the Paderewski puzzle 64
5.2.3 Identity statements: delusions and mathematical truths 67
5.2.4 Summary: the space of possibilities 70
5.3 Formalization 70
5.3.1 A non-monadic formalization in Logical Form semantics 70
5.3.2 A monadic formalization 75
5.3.2.1 A monad for perspectives 75
5.3.2.2 Composition 76
5.4 Analysis 78
5.5 Previous approaches 87
5.6 Conclusion 91
5.7 Exercises 92
6. Uncertainty and conjunction fallacies 95
6.1 Introduction 95
6.2 Background 95
6.3 Monads and uncertainty 100
6.4 Conjunction fallacies, compositionally 105
6.5 One process, two representations 107
6.6 Analysis 108
6.7 Implications for the semantics/pragmatics boundary 112
6.7.1 Grice is nice? 112
6.7.2 Let’s get tropical 113
6.8 Conclusion 121
6.9 Exercises 122

PA RT I I I . C OM P O SI T IO N A N D I N T E R AC T IO N S
7. Monad combinatorics 127
7.1 Introduction 127
7.2 Mixing phenomena 128
7.3 Distributive laws 130
7.4 Interpretation 137
7.5 Uncertainty 140
7.5.1 Uncertainty and conventional implicatures 140
7.5.2 Uncertainty and perspectives 143
7.6 Why do we need monads? 146
7.7 Conclusion 148
7.8 Exercises 148
7.9 Appendix A: Expanded terms 150
7.10 Appendix B: Natural deduction proofs 156
8. Conclusion 161

References 165
Author index 173
Subject index 175
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General preface

Oxford Studies in Semantics and Pragmatics publishes original research on meaning


in natural language within contemporary semantics and pragmatics. Authors present
their work in the context of past and present lines of inquiry and in a manner accessible
to both to scholars whose core areas of expertise are in linguistic semantics and
pragmatics, and to researchers in related and allied fields such as syntax, lexicology,
philosophy and cognitive science. The series emphasizes rigorous theoretical analysis
grounded in detailed empirical investigation of particular languages.
This is a companion series to Oxford Surveys in Semantics and Pragmatics. The
Surveys series provides critical overviews of the major approaches to core semantic
and pragmatic phenomena, a discussion of their relative value, and an assessment
of the degree of consensus that exists about any one of them. The Studies series
equally seeks to put empirical complexity and theoretical debate into comprehensible
perspective, but with a narrower focus and correspondingly greater depth. In both
series, authors develop and defend the approach and line of argument which they find
most convincing and productive.
Building on the pioneering work of Shan and others, the goal of this volume
is to further motivate and explore the use of monads in the semantics of natural
language. Monads—a technique borrowed from functional programming—provide a
principled, modular approach to enriching composition. To use a standard example,
an intensional grammar can be viewed as a monadic enrichment of an extensional
grammar. In order to illustrate the power of monadic analysis, Asudeh and Giorgolo
develop three detailed case studies. The first is multidimensionality: the sentence Ann,
a logician, just arrived simultaneously asserts that Ann arrived and independently
entails that she is a logician. The second are substitution puzzles: Bill doesn’t believe
that Hesperus is Phosphorus can be true even when Hesperus and Phosphorus refer to
the same planet. The third is a delightfully innovative take on Tversky and Kahneman’s
famous bank teller fallacy, in which people sometimes behave as if Linda is a feminist
bank teller can be more likely than Linda is a bank teller. In addition to the intrinsic
elegance of the analyses, the modular monadic perspective on composition has the
potential for a more explanatory account of the richness of meaning composition than
the ‘generalize-to-the-worst-case’ proliferation of parameters that has been inherited
from Montague grammar and has become the standard in compositional semantics.
Of equal value to their rich and detailed empirical case studies, Asudeh and Gior-
golo go deep into the category-theory roots of monads, and provide diagrams and
exercises for the engaged reader. Though starting from basics, they get as far as the
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x general preface

mathematically challenging work of integrating the three case studies into a unified
grammar. As a result, this volume, as lucid as it is concise, will serve both as an
introduction and a touchstone for future work exploring the analytical potential of the
monadic approach.
Chris Barker
New York University
Christopher Kennedy
University of Chicago
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Acknowledgements

This book grew out of some papers we wrote and the lecture notes for our 2015 ESSLLI
course. We thank (blame?) Chris Barker for the notes becoming this book. He came up
to us at an ESSLLI dinner and said, ‘You wrote a book.’ We exchanged brief, alarmed
looks that said, ‘We did?!’ Well, now we finally did. We also thank Chris’s co-editor and
co-Chris, Chris Kennedy, for co-believing in the project. And we are very grateful to
Julia Steer and Vicki Sunter at OUP.
We have presented aspects of this work to various audiences. We thank students,
faculty, and participants at the following venues for their feedback and questions: the
2014 Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society; the 2014 EACL Workshop on
Type Theory and Natural Language Semantics at the University of Gothenburg; the
International Symposium on Brain and Cognitive Science at Boğaziçi University; the
2011 and 2012 LFG Conferences at the University of Hong Kong and Udayana Uni-
versity; the 2014 Philosophical Linguistics and Linguistical Philosophy Conference;
the February 2014 South of England Lexical Functional Grammar Meeting at SOAS;
the Institute of Cognitive Science at Carleton University; the Canadian Linguistics
First Annual Undergraduate Symposium at Concordia University; the Institute of
Linguistics at the University of Minnesota; the Quantum Group at the Department
of Computer Science, University of Oxford; the Department of Linguistics at the
University of Rochester.
We are grateful for the financial support of the Ministry of Research and Innovation
(as it was then called) of the Province of Ontario, the Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council of Canada, and the John Fell Oxford University Press Research Fund,
through grants to Ash, and the European Commission, for awarding a Marie Curie
Fellowship to Gianluca.
We are also immensely thankful to Shalom Lappin for releasing Gianluca from a
postdoctoral fellowship at King’s College London to take up the Marie Curie. We
thank John Baez for taking the time to talk to us about category theory during a
visit to Oxford, even though we waylaid him after his talk. We thank Blair Tinker at
the University of Rochester’s Digital Scholarship Lab for helping us to find a hosting
solution for the Glue logic theorem prover that Gianluca developed. We would also
like to thank the following folks for taking the time for one-to-one (or two) discussions
in person or over email: Avery Andrews, Doug Arnold, Ashley Atkins, Chris Barker,
Arno Bastenhof, David Beaver, Matteo Capelletti, Simon Charlow, Eros Corazza, Mary
Dalrymple, Jan van Eijck, Kai von Fintel, Philippe de Groote, Daniel Gutzmann, Dag
Haug, Ron Kaplan, Elin McCready, Michael Moortgat, Jim Pryor, Geoff Pullum, Louisa
Sadler, Vijay Saraswat, Rob Stainton, Christina Unger, and Yoad Winter. They bear no
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xii acknowledgements

responsibility for any misrepresentation of their views or comments. Any errors are
our own—we are to blame for all bad things.
We would also like to thank members of the Glue Group, a virtual gathering
organized by Mary Dalrymple at the University of Oxford, but involving participants
from all over the globe: Avery Andrews, Doug Arnold, Oleg Belyaev, Mary Dalrymple,
Jamie Findlay, Matthew Gotham, Dag Haug, John Lowe, Moritz Messmer, Andrew
Morrison, Agnieszka Patejuk, Adam Przepiórkowski, Louisa Sadler, Vijay Saraswat,
and Mark-Matthias Zymla. They likewise bear no responsibility for any errors in this
book.
This work would have been impossible without the institutional support of Carleton
University, particularly the Institute of Cognitive Science and the School of Linguistics
and Language Studies, the University of Oxford, particularly the Faculty of Linguistics,
Philology, and Phonetics, Jesus College, and the University of Rochester, particularly
the Department of Linguistics. Our thanks to Deans Wallace Clement, Gloria Culver,
Catherine Khordoc, John Osborne, and Pauline Rankin.
There are so many colleagues to thank at these institutions for their support,
insight, collegiality, and companionship: Maya Ravindranath Abtahian, Victor Acedo-
Matellán, Sol Armoskaite, Richard Ashdowne, Peter Barber, David Barron, Leo
Bertossi, Lev Blumenfeld, Martin Booth, Richard Bosworth, Andy Brook, Mark
Brouard, Phil Burrows, Lisa Bylinina, Debbie Cameron, Greg Carlson, Thomas
Charles-Edwards, Patricia Clavin, Roi Cohen Kadosh, John Coleman, Eros Corazza,
Tim Coulson, David Cram, Molly Crockett, Patricia Daley, Mary Dalrymple, Andrew
Dancer, Armand D’Angour, Jim Davies, Wolfgang de Melo, Hugh Doherty, Sue
Doran, Jakub Dotlačil, Gillian Douglas, Simon Douglas, Luca Ducceschi, Hanne
Eckhoff, Paul Elbourne, Péter Esö, Robin Evans, Jan Fellerer, Louisiane Ferlier, Bennett
Foddy, Colleen Fulton, Alex Gajda, Berit Gehrke, Joan Grant, Rich Grenyer, Nino
Grillo, Nadine Grimm, Scott Grimm, Peter Guekguezian, Sander van der Harst,
Chris Herdman, Kerstin Hoge, Dan Holloway, Sarah Howle, Matt Husband, Miles
Jackson, Nick Jacobs, Anthea Jones, Sarah Jones, Yvonne Jones, Deepthi Kamawar,
Paulina Kewes, Jens Kipper, Katrin Kohl, John Krebs, Aditi Lahiri, Christine Lane,
Ann Laubstein, Steffen Lauritzen, Dave Leal, Bert Le Bruyn, Jo-Anne Lefevre,
Vili Lehdonvirta, John Logan, John Lowe, Alex Lumbers, Ian Maclachlan, Beth
MacLeod, Mark MacLeod, Mary MacRobert, John Magorrian, Martin Maiden, Joyce
McDonough, Peter Mirfield, Anna Morpurgo Davies, Steve Morris, Beth Mortimer,
Richard Moxon, Kumiko Murasugi, Louise Mycock, Myrto Mylopoulos, Samu
Niskanen, Rick Nouwen, Jim Oliver, Daniela Omlor, Tim Palmer, Andreas Pankau,
Ivan Panović, Sandra Paoli, Steve Parkinson, Elinor Payne, Janet Pierrehumbert, Ray
Pierrehumbert, Asia Pietraszko, Dave Popplewell, Philomen Probert, Steve Pulman,
Min Que, Peggy Renwick, Markus Röser, Jeff Runner, Pam Sammons, Eleanor Scerri,
Marieke Schouwstra, Len Schubert, Nigel Shadbolt, Josh Shepherd, Amanda Sherry,
Dan Siddiqi, Raj Singh, JC Smith, Nick Southwood, Zeynep Soysal, Shankar Srinivas,
David Stevenson, Kathy Sylva, Johanneke Sytsema, Mike Tanenhaus, Karen Tarrant,
Fred Taylor, Graham Taylor, Roberta Tedeschi, Ros Temple, Jonathan Thacker, James
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acknowledgements xiii

Tilley, Ida Toivonen, John Tracey, Marion Turner, Michael Vickers, Kylie Vincent,
Sailesh Vyas, Connie Wall, Caroline Warman, Ian Watson, Rob West, Aaron White,
Stuart White, Sarah Wild, Dominic Wilkinson, Andreas Willi, Sam Wolfe, Ralf Wölfer,
David Wood, Stephen Wright, and Tracey Wright.
This book is proof that it’s not all fun and games, as party poopers sometimes
like to remind you, but we have had lots of fun and games on the way, for which
we thank our family and friends: Alda e Simo, Alfred Asudeh, Alli Asudeh, Harry
Asudeh, Isa Asudeh, Isak Asudeh, Thora Asudeh, il Bedo, Anna Birnbaum, Bruno,
Phil Burrows, Cesco, Kate Clark, Sonya Clegg, Tim Coulson, Mary Dalrymple, Stevie
DeVille, Simon Douglas, Robin Evans, George Ferguson, Francesco Fermani, Fo, il
Fresh, Arno Giorgolo, Matt Husband, Ken Kahn, Deepthi Kamawar, Alison Kennedy,
Shahnaz Khorshidi, Anita Kothari, Bruce Lawrence, Gonzalo Lazo, Matteo Legrenzi,
Elisa Lugli, Alex Lumbers, Mark MacLeod, Alberto Mameli, Jean-Philippe Marcotte,
James Neenan, Samu Niskanen, Elinor Payne, Rafael Perera, Anna Retulainen, Behin
Safavi, Tom Sanders, Erin Saupe, Ludo Serratrice, Dan Siddiqi, Julie Siddiqi, Nicole
Sierra, the Snake Oil Abusers, Rob Stainton, Elliott Strikefoot, Gun Toivonen, Karl-
Johan Toivonen, Tolyi, and Başak Yakış-Douglas.
Most of all, we thank Dora Biro and Linda Lo Truglio for so much (too much, really),
not least for tremendous patience and for putting up with absent bodies and minds.
La porta!
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List of figures

3.1. Simple mini language 21


3.2. Extended mini language 22
3.3. A portion of the category of linguistic meanings 24
3.4. Sequent calculus for a fragment of multiplicative linear logic with a monadic
modality 33
3.5. Type-logical categorial grammar with monadic modality as sequent calculus 37
4.1. Type-logical categorial grammar with monadic modality as sequent calculus 54
5.1. Sequent calculus for a fragment of linear logic with a monadic modality 77
5.2. Two witness derivations for the two non-equivalent readings of Mary Jane loves
Spider-Man 82
6.1. Some inhabitants of P(t) 101
6.2. 𝜂t (T) 101
6.3. Example distribution over {a, b, c} 102
6.4. Example of a function from {a, b, c} to probability distributions over truth values 103
6.5. Pure joint probability for {a, b, c} and {T, F} 103
6.6. The result of applying bind to its two arguments 103
6.7. Derivation of Linda is a feminist with contextual meaning constructor 110
6.8. (Simplified) derivation of Linda is a bank teller and Linda is a feminist 110
6.9. Percentages of zero, single, and double conjunction fallacies by likelihood of
component propositions 114
6.10. The likelihood of the proposition p represented as a point in the
trueness/falseness space 116
6.11. Examples of likely and unlikely propositions in the trueness/falseness space 117
6.12. Conjunction of propositions, given the min-plus or max-plus tropical semirings 118
6.13. Conjunction and disjunction symmetries, given the min-plus or max-plus
tropical semirings 120
7.1. Derivation for goddamn Sandy 129
7.2. Derivation for goddamn Sandy is Sandy 129
7.3. Left and right Swap rules for a distributive law 𝛿 ∶ ♢i ♢j → ♢j ♢i 136
7.4. Proof with Cut for the sequent ♢ A, A ⊸ ♢ A, ♢ A ⊸ ♢ B ⊢ ♢ ♢ B
i j i i j i
137
7.5. Natural deduction calculus for a fragment of the logical calculus 138
7.6. Proof for Linda is a fucking banker 141
7.7. Proof for Catwoman is a banker 144
7.8.  as a theorem of our logic 147
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8 enriched meanings in semantics and pragmatics

a corollary of compositionality. Compositionality demands that the meanings of larger


expressions be determined on the basis of the meanings of their parts (and syntax).
In turn, then, the parts must also have meanings, and this process must ultimately
bottom out in a conventional, i.e. regular and predictable, specification of meaning for
the smallest interpretable parts (morphemes, words, constructions—whatever fits the
particular theory of the syntax–semantics interface that is assumed). Another way to
understand conventionality is as the component of meaning that is not sensitive to
real-world (i.e. extra-linguistic) knowledge.
Second, what is meant by truth-conditionality? It is commonplace to take the mean-
ing of a sentence to be its truth-conditions—with suitable but compatible modifications
to capture meanings of non-declaratives—and to understand the meanings of its parts
based on how they contribute to these truth-conditions. From this perspective, truth-
conditionality is once more related to compositionality. It is thus one way of enacting
the Fregean program me.1
Let us now examine the different cells of the table, starting with descriptive meaning.
Consider the following simple but apt examples from Gutzmann (2015: 2):

(2.1) a. A cat sleeps under the couch.


b. A turtle sleeps under the couch.
(2.2) a. The turtle sleeps under the couch.
b. The turtle sleeps under the sofa.

The first two sentences have different truth-conditions. Since the only difference is cat
versus turtle, these words must be the source of the difference. Therefore, cat and turtle
have different truth-conditional meanings, and this is conventionalized in their lexical
meanings. The second two sentences have the same truth-conditions, yet also differ
in one word: couch versus sofa. Therefore, couch and sofa must have the same truth-
conditional meaning, and this is also conventionalized in their lexical meanings.2
Next let’s turn to pragmatic enrichment. This is a phenomenon in which non-
conventionalized aspects of meaning seem to contribute to truth-conditions of
utterances.

(2.3) I have not eaten. [today]

In terms of its conventional meaning, this sentence just seems to express the propo-
sition that it is not the case that the speaker has eaten anything before the utterance
time. In most contexts, this would obviously be false, but the sentence is taken instead
to be true, based on (something like) the pragmatically enriched proposition I have not
eaten today. Pragmatic enrichment thus seems to have truth-conditional effects.

1 Whether the Principle of Compositionality should be attributed to Frege himself is contentious (Janssen
2011), but it certainly seems that Frege’s philosophy was instrumental in its germination.
2 This is not to say that the fact that they are synonyms is necessarily directly part of their conventional meaning.
That depends on your theory of lexical semantics (Cruse 1986, Geeraerts 2010).
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