Workshop & Conference on Linguistic, Computational, and Philosophical Aspects of Generic, Habitual and Mass Terms to be held Summer 1987 at Stanford University

语义学是语言学理论的一个重要组成部分，研究语言表达的含义和方式。这在某种程度上是语言学中最困难的部分，因为意义是所说和所谈论的东西之间的关系，而所谈论的东西原则上可以是宇宙中的任何东西，真实或虚假，真实或虚幻。在语言语义学方面所取得的成功，主要是由于对要研究的意义的类别设置了严格的限制。因此，进一步的进展取决于逐步放宽这些限制，将更广泛的语言表达纳入一般的语义理论。在这里提出的研讨会的目的是完成语义学范围的扩大，到一类现象，这些现象在目前可用的理论模型下对语义分析提出了越来越大的挑战。这些现象是一般术语、习惯术语和质量术语。通用表达表示事物的类别，例如，“狗是毛茸茸的。”习惯用语描述的是某种有规律地发生的活动，即使它可能此刻没有发生，例如，“马克斯读时代杂志。”质量术语指的是数量或多或少但无法计数的无差别物质，如“水”或“盐”。我们有理由相信，所有这些类型的表达式在语义上都是相关的，并且对处理一种类型的语义理论进行适当的修改，原则上也可以处理其他类型。这些表达式特别重要，因为它们是科学陈述的典型形式，到目前为止，我们无法对它们进行令人满意的语义分析，这使得我们无法在计算环境中处理这些陈述。研讨会的参与者是语言学家和逻辑学家，他们一直试图从各自的角度处理与这组现象相关的语义问题。虽然他们取得了一些显著的进展，但每个人都遇到了重大问题，他们认为这些问题可以从另一方的角度进行攻击。讲习班将提供长时间的密集互动，使他们能够充分跟踪这些线索，并向对这些问题感兴趣的其他社区报告他们的发现。

Abstract Narrative A key component of linguistic theory is semantics, the study of what and how linguistic expressions mean. This is in some ways the most difficult part of linguistics, because meaning is the relationship between what is said and what is talked about, and what is talked about can in principle be anything in the universe, true or false, real or unreal. Most of whatever success there has been in work in linguistic semantics has come about primarily by virtue of setting strict limitations on the classes of meanings to be studied. Further progress depends, then, on progressive relaxation of these limitations, to incorporate broader ranges of linguistic expressions into a general semantic theory. The aim of the workshop proposed here is to accomplish such a broadening of the reach of semantics, to a class of phenomena which have been presenting increasing challenges to semantic analysis under currently available theoretical models. These phenomena are the generic, habitual, and mass terms. Generic expressions say something about classes of things, for example, "Dogs are furry." Habitual expressions describe some kind of activity which happens regularly, even though it may not be happening at the moment, for example, "Max reads Time magazine." Mass terms are those which refer to undifferenti- ated stuff which may be present in greater or lesser quantity, but can't be counted, like "water" or "salt". There is reason to believe that all of these types of expressions are related semantically, and that a proper modification to semantic theory dealing with one type could in principle deal with the other types as well. These expressions are of particular importance because they are the typical form of scientific statements, and our failure so far to be able to perform a satisfactory semantic analysis of them has made it impossible to deal with such statements in a computational environment. The participants in the workshop are linguists and logicians who have been trying to cope with the semantic problems related to this set of phenomena from their own respective perspectives for some time now. While they have made some notable progress, each has encountered significant problems, which they believe may be amenable to attack from the perspective of one of the others. The workshop will provide an extended period of intensive interaction to allow them to follow up these leads fully, and report their findings to the rest of the community interested in these problems.