1999 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
| Project/Area Number |
09410002
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Philosophy
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| Research Institution | Keio University (1998-1999)
Chiba University (1997) |
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Principal Investigator |
IIDA Takashi Keio University, Faculty of Letters, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (10117327)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
KACHI Daisuke Saitama University, Faculty of General Education, Assistant Professor, 教養学部, 助教授 (50251145)
TUTIYA Syun Chiba University, Faculty of Letters, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (50155404)
OKADA Mitsuhiro Keio University, Faculty of Letters, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (30224025)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1997 – 1999
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| Keywords | Japanese semantics / Logical Education / Philosophy of Language |
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| Research Abstract |
A widely accepted opinion has it that any formal semantics for the standard language of logic could not supply an adequate theory of meaning for a natural language. However, a natural language has various aspects which can be profitably described by the standard logical machinery. Our research aimed at identifying such aspects of Japanese that can be handled by the standard semantics for predicate logic, and making a progress towards enriching the standard machinery by some devices for the semantic description of a natural language. We have presented a formal language that corresponds to a Japanese fragment in which various complex non phrases can be freely constructed. In the report of our research, one can find the description of the language and its semantics as well as some philosophical discussion about the methodology.
Our method has the following features:
1. If we add a device for various sorts of restricted quantification to the standard first-order predicate logic, we can supply the semantics for many complex noun phrases of Japanese in a systematic way.
2. We can assign a truth condition almost directly to a Japanese sentence. Our semantics respects the word order of a Japanese sentence.
3. Our method can provide a formal framework for studying the contributions of various contextual factors in determining the meaning of natural language expressions.
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