Universal Higher Order Grammar

Abstract

We examine the class of languages that can be defined entirely in terms of provability in an extension of the sorted type theory (Ty_n) by embedding the logic of phonologies, without introduction of special types for syntactic entities. This class is proven to precisely coincide with the class of logically closed languages that may be thought of as functions from expressions to sets of logically equivalent Ty_n terms. For a specific sub-class of logically closed languages that are described by finite sets of rules or rule schemata, we find effective procedures for building a compact Ty_n representation, involving a finite number of axioms or axiom schemata. The proposed formalism is characterized by some useful features unavailable in a two-component architecture of a language model. A further specialization and extension of the formalism with a context type enable effective account of intensional and dynamic semantics.