Wild control operators

Linguists seek to understand the semantics of expressions in human languages. Taking a computational point of view, there are many natural language expressions--operators in the wild, so to speak-that control evaluation in ways that are familiar from programming languages: just think of the natural-language counterparts of if, unless, while, etc. But in general, how well-behaved are control operators found in the wild? Can we always understand them in terms of familiar programming constructs, or do they go significantly beyond the expressive power of programming languages? As an example where operators from a programming language can provide an insightful analysis of a natural language construction, consider the difference in meaning between the following two sentences: (1) a. John only drinks PERRIER. (emphasis on Perrier) b. John only DRINKS Perrier. (emphasis on drinks) The first sentence entails that John never drinks, say, Evian, but the second sentence entails instead that John ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: POPL
• Authors: Chris Barker
• Keywords: Familiar Programming Constructs, Natural Language, POPL 2009, Programming Languages, Sentence Entails