Lexical Semantics in Modern Type Theory: The challenge of selectional coercion

Abstract

The goal of this work is to address the challenge of modelling selectional coercions in frame of MTT semantics. We will claim that selectional coercions, but not contextual coercions can be modelled via incorporating notions of lexical records and the Lecial Conceptual Paradigm (LCP) from the Generative Lexicon (Pustejovsky 1996) (further: GL) thus drawing the line between them: Main Questions: What are the possible ways of integrating lexical semantics from the Generative Lexicon for cases of linguistical coercion into Modern Type Theory? To what extent can selectional coercion be modelled in MTT enriched with GL-style lexical structure? In order to address the main questions, we use methods and definitions which are already present in Modern Type Theories: namely, Σ-types (e.g. Luo 2021), coercive subtyping (Luo, Soloviev, and Xue 2013), unit-types (e.g. Luo 2011a, A) and dependent event types (Luo and Soloviev 2017). This introduces a number of challenges. We briefly describe these here and then break the Main Questions down into sub-questions (Q1)- (Q3).