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The Semantics of Dynamic Space in French: Descriptive, experimental and formal studies on motion expression
Edited by Michel Aurnague and Dejan Stosic
[Human Cognitive Processing 66] 2019
► pp. 324–352

A computational account of virtual travelers in the Montagovian generative lexicon

| LIFO, Université d’Orléans, France
| LIRMM, Université de Montpellier, CNRS, Montpellier, France
| LIRMM, Université de Montpellier, CNRS, Montpellier, France

This chapter deals with the automated formal analysis of a specfic interpretation of fictive motion named the “virtual traveler”, involved for instance in the French equivalents of a sentence like The path descends for two hours where it is possible that no-one actually descends. Our analysis in computational semantics yields the intended logical formula in the framework of the Discourse Representation Theory. It relies on a framework, the Montagovian Generative Lexicon that integrates lexical semantics into compositional semantics.

Keywords: computational semantics, Discourse Representation Theory, lexical semantics, Montague semantics, type theory
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Lexical information and compositional semantics
  • 3.Standard compositional semantics
    • 3.1The Lambek calculus
    • 3.2A semantic lexicon
    • 3.3Semantic analysis
    • 3.4Overall architecture
  • 4.The Montagovian generative lexicon
    • 4.1Principles of the lexicon
      • 4.1.1Main or standard terms
      • 4.1.2Optional morphisms of the terms
    • 4.2Girard’s system F of type polymorphism
    • 4.3Co-predication
      • 4.3.1Polymorphic conjunction
      • 4.3.2Rigid vs. flexible use of optional morphisms
    • 4.4Standard behaviour
    • 4.5Qualia exploitation
    • 4.6Facets: Correct co-predication
    • 4.7Applications
  • 5.Fictive motion: Data, question and outline
    • 5.1A case study and a field for semantic experiments
    • 5.2A particular phenomenon: “fictive motion”
    • 5.3Types and functions
    • 5.4Semantics with λ-DRT
    • 5.5Lexical coercions and fictive motion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 29 July 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.66.09lef
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