The KEY to lexical semantic representations

It is widely accepted that the semantic content of a lexical entry determines to a large extent its syntactic subcategorization or other contexts of occurrence. However, clarifying the precise extent to which this hypothesis holds has proven difficult and on occasion controversial. To maintain this hypothesis, scholars have in many difficult cases introduced syntactic diacritics in their lexical semantic representations, thereby running the risk of rendering it vacuous. Our answer to this challenge is two-fold. First, on the substantive side, we argue that the problem lies in the assumption that the semantic content of lexical entries consists of a recursive predicate-argument structure. In contrast, we claim that the semantic content of lexical entries can consist of a set of such structures, thus eschewing semantically unmotivated predicates that merely ensure the correct semantic geometry. Second, on the structural side, we suggest that the semantic content of words can idiosyncratically select one of those predicate-argument structures for the purposes of direct grammatical function assignment. We show that this hypothesis, which builds on independently motivated proposals regarding the form of underspecified natural language semantic representations, provides a clean account of linking phenomena related to several classes of predicators: verbs whose denotata require the presence of an instrument, the semantic role of French ‘adjunct’ clitics, commercial event verbs, the spray/load alternations, and lexical subordination constructions.

An intuitiomstic completeness theorem for intuitionistic predicate logic

The problem of treating the semantics of intuitionistic logic within the framework of intuitionistic mathematics was first attacked by E. W. Beth [1]. However, the completeness theorem he thought to have obtained, was not true, as was shown in detail in a report by V. H. Dyson and G. Kreisel [2]. Some vague remarks of Beth's, for instance in his book, The foundations of mathematics, show that he sustained the hope of restoring his proof. But arguments by K. Gödel and G. Kreisel gave people the feeling that an intuitionistic completeness theorem would be impossible [3]. (A (strong) completeness theorem would implyfor any primitive recursive predicate A of natural numbers, and one has no reason to believe this for the usual intuitionistic interpretation.) Nevertheless, the following contains a correct intuitionistic completeness theorem for intuitionistic predicate logic. So the old arguments by Godel and Kreisel should not work for the proposed semantical construction of intuitionistic logic. They do not, indeed. The reason is, loosely speaking, that negation is treated positively.Although Beth's semantical construction for intuitionistic logic was not satisfying from an intuitionistic point of view, it proved to be useful for the development of classical semantics for intuitionistic logic. A related and essentially equivalent classical semantics for intuitionistic logic was found by S. Kripke [4].

Transcendence of cardinals

In this paper, by a function of ordinals we understand a function which is defined for all ordinals and each of whose value is an ordinal. In [7] (also cf. [8] or [9]) we defined recursive functions and predicates of ordinals, following Kleene's definition on natural numbers. A predicate will be called arithmetical, if it is obtained from a recursive predicate by prefixing a sequence of alternating quantifiers. A function will be called arithmetical, if its representing predicate is arithmetical.The cardinals are identified with those ordinals a which have larger power than all smaller ordinals than a. For any given ordinal a, we denote by the cardinal of a and by 2a the cardinal which is of the same power as the power set of a. Let χ be the function such that χ(a) is the least cardinal which is greater than a.Now there are functions of ordinals such that they are easily defined in set theory, but it seems impossible to define them as arithmetical ones; χ is such a function. If we define χ in making use of only the language on ordinals, it seems necessary to use the notion of all the functions from ordinals, e.g., as in [6].

Reductions of Hilbert's tenth problem

Hilbert's tenth problem is to find an algorithm for determining whether or not a diophantine equation possesses solutions. A diophantine predicate (of positive integers) is defined to be one of the formwhere P is a polynomial with integral coefficients (positive, negative, or zero). Previous work has considered the variables as ranging over nonnegative integers; but we shall find it more useful here to restrict the range to positive integers, no essential change being thereby introduced. It is clear that the recursive unsolvability of Hilbert's tenth problem would follow if one could show that some non-recursive predicate were diophantine. In particular, it would suffice to show that every recursively enumerable predicate is diophantine. Actually, it would suffice to prove far less.

Note on an idea of Fitch

The concept of a recursively definite predicate of natural numbers was introduced by F. B. Fitch in his An extension of basic logic as follows:Every recursive predicate is recursively definite. If R(x1, …, xn) is recursively definite so is (Ey)R(x1, …, xn−1, y) and (y)R(x1, …, xn−1, y). If R is recursively definite and S is the proper ancestral of R, then S is recursively definite, where the proper ancestral of a relation is defined as follows: if R is of even degree, say 2m, then the proper ancestral of R is the relation S such that for all x1, …, xm, y1, …, ym, S(x1, …, xm, y1, …, ym) is true if and only if there is a finite sequence of sequences (z11, …, zm1), (z12, …, Zm2), …, (z1k, …, Zmk) such that R(Z11, …, Zm1, z12, …, zm2), R(z12, …, zm2, z13, …, zm3), …, R(z1,k−1, z1k, …, Zmk) are all true, where (z11, …, zm1) is (x1, …, xm) and (z1k, …, zmk) is (y1, …, ym).An arithmetic predicate is one which is definable in terms of the operations ‘+’ and ‘·’ of elementary arithmetic, the connectives of the classical prepositional calculus, and quantifiers.