Computational Formal Semantics: FOL (revised) and English Fragment 1

Plan for the May 14 (11 am-12 pm) meeting: The first-order logic (FOL) files have been revised along the lines we discussed last time. I replaced the old modules with the new ones, so please download them again and place them in the same folder:

• FOL syntax: PredLsyn.hs
• the corresponding FOL semantics: PredLsem.hs
• a FOL model: Model.hs
• the GHCI script PredLghci.hs we will use to introduce and interact with the above modules

We will also introduce our first English fragment EF1. Please download the files below and place them in the same folder as the FOL files above:

• EF1 syntax: EF1syn.hs
• the corresponding EF1 semantics: EF1sem.hs
• the GHCI script EF1ghci.hs we will use to introduce and interact with the above modules

Note that EF1 is only indirectly interpreted, what we actually define in the EF1sem.hs module is a compositional English-to-FOL translation procedure. Eng. sentences are indirectly interpreted: they receive whatever interpretation the corresponding FOL formulas have.

Moreover, all Eng. expressions are translated, and this is done compositionally: the translation of a complex expression is a function of the translations of its parts and the way the parts are syntactically put together. But only the translations of Eng. sentences are FOL formulas, so only these receive an interpretation. We will assign (direct) interpretations to all Eng. expressions in our fragment when we turn to English Fragment 2 (EF2), which will also include the non-first-order-definable generalized quantifier most.