Background
Montague, Richard Merett was born on September 20, 1930 in Stockton, California, United States.
mathematician philosopher university professor
Montague, Richard Merett was born on September 20, 1930 in Stockton, California, United States.
In Mathematics in 1953, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy 1957, the latter under the direction of the mathematician and logician Alfred Tarski. His Doctor of Philosophy dissertation, titled Contributions to the Axiomatic Foundations of Secretariat Theory, contained the first proof that all possible axiomatizations of the standard axiomatic set theory ZFC must contain infinitely many axioms.
At the University of California, Berkeley, Montague earned a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy in 1950, an Master of Arts Montague wrote on the foundations of logic and set theory, as would befit a student of Tarski. In other words, ZFC cannot be finitely axiomatized. He pioneered a logical approach to natural language semantics which became known as Montague grammar.
This approach to language has been especially influential among certain computational linguists—perhaps more so than among more traditional philosophers of language.
In particular, Montague"s influence lives on in grammar approaches like categorial grammar (such as Unification Categorial Grammar, Left-Associate Grammar, or Combinatory Categorial Grammar), which attempt a derivation of syntactic and semantic representation in tandem and the semantics of quantifiers, scope and discourse (Hans Kamp, a student of Montague, co-developed Discourse Representation Theory). He died violently in his own home.
The crime is unsolved to this day. Anita Feferman and Solomon Feferman argue that he usually went to bars "cruising" and bringing people home with him.
On the day that he was murdered, he brought home several people "for some kind of soirée", but they instead robbed his house and strangled him.
Montague was a mathematical logician who became fascinated with the idea that the various ‘methods’ developed in mathematical logic rmg» be successfully applied to the analysis of natura language. Convinced that there is ‘no importa» theoretical difference between natural languages and the artificial languages of sought ‘to comprehend the syntax of both kinds of languages within a and mathematically precise theory’ In pursuing this project Montague follow'1- Carnap and Tarski by taking the definition 0 ‘truth in a model’ as the fundamental semantic redicate of the sentences of the languages described. He recognized, however, that an ° standing difficulty was how to account tor ‘indexicals’ of natural languages i an exact ‘model-theory’. _ ^ Montague first dealt explicitly with this a other issues closely connected to natural 3 guages in ‘Pragmatics’ (1968). He outline ^ theory of pragmatic languages in terms of extensions re^ ^ tive to an ‘index’ (context, possible world. and intensions reinterpreted as functions lecting with each expression and index the cxlension that the expression has with respect to lhat index. He also anticipated some applications °f this theory. In ‘Universal grammar’ (1970), Montague evised a general theory of language which presented oth syntax and semantics in an algebraic form.also introduced a formal theory of translation, 'Maintaining that the interpretation of a sentence °r a language may be induced through a translall°n of that sentence or that language into an already interpreted language. Finally, he preSented both intensional logic and a description 0 English in terms of his universal or Montague grammar, suggesting that the sentences of English can be translated into intensional logic according 0 their syntactical structure. Montague’s seminal contributions were curtailed by his untimely death > murder) in 1971. His influence on the study of anguage has been immense. One important expansion of his ideas may be found in Partee 1975. ®°urces: Passmore 1985; Bullock & Woodings.