I was writing something up about presuppositions when I realized that I really wanted to be able to write things somewhat formally. So for the purposes of building our shared vocabulary, I decided to write a layperson’s guide to formal semantics. I’m writing it up in the way that most helped *me* understand it back in my youth circa 1872 – if you feel comfortable and intuitive about using set theory, by all means go look at the original source (Heim & Kratzer). I was not comfortable with really any kind of serious math when I first started out doing semantics so I am going to phrase things as simply and un-formally as possible. I even put in some warning signs for when math is about to happen in case you are not currently in the proper headspace to receive that kind of information.
A Thought Experiment in the Development of the Formal Sciences
Last Monday I stayed up all night writing, working on several different projects, among them some remarks on formalism from 1998 that I had…