Cem Bozsahin

Cem Bozsahin

TheBench is a tool to study monadic structures in natural language. It is for writing monadic grammars to explore analyses, compare diverse languages through their categories, and to train models of grammar from form-meaning pairs where syntax is latent variable. Monadic structures are binary combinations of elements that employ semantics of composition only. TheBench is essentially old-school categorial grammar to syntacticize the idea, with the implication that although syntax is autonomous (recall \emph{colorless green ideas sleep furiously}), the treasure is in the baggage it carries at every step, viz. semantics, more narrowly, predicate-argument structures indicating choice of categorial reference and its consequent placeholders for decision in such structures. There is some new thought in old school. Unlike traditional categorial grammars, application is turned into composition in monadic analysis. Moreover, every correspondence requires specifying two command relations, one on syntactic command and the other on semantic command. A monadic grammar of TheBench contains only synthetic elements (called `objects' in category theory of mathematics) that are shaped by this analytic invariant, viz. composition. Both ingredients (command relations) of any analytic step must therefore be functions (`arrows' in category theory). TheBench is one implementation of the idea for iterative development of such functions along with grammar of synthetic elements.

Cem Bozsahin

The article is an attempt to contribute to explorations of a common origin for language and planned-collaborative action. It gives `semantics of change' the central stage in the synthesis, from its history and recordkeeping to its development, its syntax, delivery and reception, including substratal aspects. It is suggested that to arrive at a common core, linguistic semantics must be understood as studying through syntax mobile agent's representing, tracking and coping with change and no change. Semantics of actions can be conceived the same way, but through plans instead of syntax. The key point is the following: Sequencing itself, of words and action sequences, brings in more structural interpretation to the sequence than which is immediately evident from the sequents themselves. Mobile sequencers can be understood as subjects structuring reporting, understanding and keeping track of change and no change. The idea invites rethinking of the notion of category, both in language and in planning. Understanding understanding change by mobile agents is suggested to be about human extended practice, not extended-human practice. That's why linguistics is as important as computer science in the synthesis. It must rely on representational history of acts, thoughts and expressions, personal and public, crosscutting overtness and covertness of these phenomena. It has implication for anthropology in the extended practice, which is covered briefly.

Cem Bozsahin, Arzu Burcu Guven

Multi-word expressions, verb-particle constructions, idiomatically combining phrases, and phrasal idioms have something in common: not all of their elements contribute to the argument structure of the predicate implicated by the expression. Radically lexicalized theories of grammar that avoid string-, term-, logical form-, and tree-writing, and categorial grammars that avoid wrap operation, make predictions about the categories involved in verb-particles and phrasal idioms. They may require singleton types, which can only substitute for one value, not just for one kind of value. These types are asymmetric: they can be arguments only. They also narrowly constrain the kind of semantic value that can correspond to such syntactic categories. Idiomatically combining phrases do not subcategorize for singleton types, and they exploit another locally computable and compositional property of a correspondence, that every syntactic expression can project its head word. Such MWEs can be seen as empirically realized categorial possibilities, rather than lacuna in a theory of lexicalizable syntactic categories.