A Computable Solution to Partee’s Temperature Puzzle

This paper presents a computable solution to Partee’s temperature puzzle which uses one of the standard tools of mathematics and the exact sciences: countable approximation. Our solution improves upon the standard Montagovian solution to the puzzle (i) by providing computable natural language interp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inLogical Aspects of Computational Linguistics. Celebrating 20 Years of LACL (1996–2016) pp. 175 - 190
Main Authors Liefke, Kristina, Sanders, Sam
Format Book Chapter
LanguageEnglish
Published Berlin, Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 10.11.2016
SeriesLecture Notes in Computer Science
Subjects
Associates
Computability
Continuous functionals
Individual concepts
Temperature puzzle
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Summary:This paper presents a computable solution to Partee’s temperature puzzle which uses one of the standard tools of mathematics and the exact sciences: countable approximation. Our solution improves upon the standard Montagovian solution to the puzzle (i) by providing computable natural language interpretations for this solution, (ii) by lowering the complexity of the types in the puzzle’s interpretation, and (iii) by acknowledging the role of linguistic and communicative context in this interpretation. These improvements are made possible by interpreting natural language in a model that is inspired by the Kleene-Kreisel model of countable-continuous functionals. In this model, continuous functionals are represented by lower-type objects, called the associates of these functionals, which only contain countable information.
Bibliography:We would like to thank three anonymous referees for LACL 2016, Hans Leiss, and Christian Retoré for their valuable comments and suggestions. The research for this paper has been supported by the German Research Foundation (via Kristina Liefke’s grant LI 2562/1-1), by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (via Sam Sanders’ postdoctoral research fellowship), and by LMU Munich’s Institutional Strategy LMUexcellent within the framework of the German Excellence Initiative.
ISBN:3662538253
9783662538258
ISSN:0302-9743
1611-3349
DOI:10.1007/978-3-662-53826-5_11