Jump to content

Talk:Logical form (linguistics)/Archive 1

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 1

Link to Syntax article

I've re-organized some sentences a bit. I think, short as it is, it flows a little better now. I did my best not to change the meaning, or at least not to remove any information.

The link to the article "Overt vs. Covert Movements", which was inline in the article, I moved to references, using it as a citation. After filling in the publication information, I hesitated, but left it linked, even though the website which hosts the .pdf is a subscription service and requires payment to view the link. I think this is generally discouraged by WP:REF, but better to retain the information than lose it. If anyone decides it shouldn't be linked, at least now the citation can stay and the link be deleted. Torgo (talk) 00:53, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

RM

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:16, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


Logical form (linguistics) → Logical Form — or Logical form (Chomsky and May). This article describes a particular theory (or perhaps subset) of logical forms defined by Chomsky and May. It is almost always written as Logical Form (or LF) to distinguish it from the common name that doesn't ascribe to a particular theory [1]. Cf. Chomsky: LF captures "those aspects of semantic representation that are strictly determined by grammar, abstracted from other cognitive systems" [2] Tijfo098 (talk) 10:25, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

  • Support move to Logical Form. The capitalised term is unique to work within or derived from transformational grammar; the phrase in this context is always capitalised and is a mark of this context, and is a key point of discussion there. Andrewa (talk) 06:30, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Bibliography added

Hi, we are just university students trying to construct the wiki for logical form (in linguistic sense), also, we do this in order to fulfill the course requirement. Here are the sources that we may use to construct this page.

Annotated Bibliography

Dekker, P. (1996). The values of variables in dynamic semantics. Linguistics and Philosophy, 19, 211-257. doi:10.1007/BF00628200

This paper brings together several topics from semantics and logical form to analyze and interpret anaphoric relationships in predicate logic. Dekker uses an integrative approach to take two historically distant concepts, Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) and Dynamic semantics for the language of predicate logic (DPL), to generate new knowledge which furthers the research of a language of logical forms. By drawing out the interesting qualities of each theory, Dekker strives to develop a model that incorporates systems of interpretation with representations of natural language. His goal is to argue the importance and contribution of variable constructs in semantic analysis of languages.


Diesing, M. (1992). Bare Plural Subjects and the Derivation of Logical Representations. Linguistic Inquiry, 23, 353-380. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4178777

With reference to existential and general interpretation, Molly Diesing examines predicates from two levels; stage-level and individual-level. These levels give rise to an interpretive distribution that has their own corresponding logical representations. Her discussion involves exploring the contrast between the concepts of raising and control predicates. Diesing argues that a strategy for mapping syntactic structures can be reflected in logical representations on both an existential and generic level of predicates in English and German language.


Elugardo, R. & Stainton, R.J. (2001) Logical Form and the Vernacular. Mind & Language. (16) 4, 393-323

This paper discusses vernacularism, a view that logical form is primarily assigned to natural language expressions and derivatively assigned to anything else (propositions, mental states, etc.). They found that vernacularism is false and that when people communicate with non-sentential speech it can still be considered logical form. Even though a non-linguistic item is communicated, it would still be a logical form. There are some that even have fundamental logical forms. The view that the author takes in this paper is against vernacularism, but believes that it is important because it is “assumed to be a suppressed premise” . This paper is important to our topic because it discusses how logical form can be assigned to any form of language which will allow us to give a more defined look at logical form and how it can apply to any part of sentential/non-sentential speech. It also gives us knowledge of previous theories.


Harman, G. (1979). If and modus ponens. Theory and Decision, 11(1), 41-53.

The author argues that one cannot simply map categories onto logical forms, and that logical and grammatical categories are different. Although many words can be represented by logical categories, these relationships are indirect. He further posits that logical forms belong to closed class lexica, while nonlogical forms belong to the open-class. Likewise, sentential relationships are not connected to single grammatical representations. The author means to make explicit the implied interpretations of if and then used in logical arguments such as if P then Q, whose meanings have been historically taken for granted in the discipline of syntax, arguing that modus ponens is not a logical principle. He argues that if resembles the complementizer that. Positions of other researchers, such as Chomsky (as cited in Harman, 1979) are brought in, regarding context of if determining its meaning; that is, if behaves as that preceding subjunctives. He concludes that by making explicit these relationships that modus ponens “does not hold simply by virtue of its logical form” (Harman, 1979, pp. 52). Harman’s argument is legitimate; that is, we must not take for granted the meaning of forms. His exploration of the meanings of if elucidate how it behaves syntactically in terms of logical form and grammatical form and contributes to our understanding of logical form relationships and representations.Alyson Budd (talk) 01:19, 20 October 2014 (UTC)


Higginbotham, J. (1980). Pronouns and bound variables. Linguistic Inquiry, 679-708.

This paper mainly focused on the question that under what conditions the pronoun can be interpreted as a variable that is bound to the quantificational NP (e.g. every boy, all the students). Based on previous works, the author came up with a possible mechanism, and used it to examine some data to illustrate the effectiveness of the mechanism. This paper shows the early attempt to connect the logical forms with the binding theory. The general syntactic structure, DS--SS--LF, adopted by the author is mainly based on the previous works by Chomsky (1976, 1977, 1979, 1980) and the quantification rule is adopted from the dissertation of May (1977). It gave a step-by-step explanation on how the mechanism works in the analysis. However, this paper is quite dense in its content, so it needs further clarification on certain content for general readers without linguistic background to understand.

Guéron, J., & May, R. (1984). Extraposition and logical form. Linguistic Inquiry, 1-31.

This article looks at properties of 2 types of extraposition: extraposition from NP and result clause extraposition. It is shown that in both types of extraposition there is a head-complement relation that must agree at the level of logical form. It is also argued that the differences between the two types of extraposition is characteristic to the thematic status of each of their heads. The authors feel that they have established that the extraposition construction properties can be accounted for only by considering their syntax at a level with a greater degree of structural articulation than S-structure, but the authors even admitted that there are still many roads unexplored.

Raffray, C. N., & Pickering, M. J. (2010). How do people construct logical form during language comprehension?. Psychological science, 21(8), 1090-1097. This paper is about how do people interpret ambiguous sentences by looking at the relationship between comprehenders and logical-form representations. They arranged four “sentence-picture matching” experiments to test. As a result, they find out that the logical form is not in the position between syntactic representation and final representation, but rather, it is emerged during the comprehension process. This article have tested the logical form representation through four experiments which is very useful toward our project. Instead of the abstract explanations, this gives us examples of how logical form representation applies in the real situation, and how it is actually emerged and processed. The only problem with this experiment is that all the participants are native-English speakers. I wonder whether having non-native English speakers will make differences in the result because forming of logical-form representation should be universal, but only testing on non-native English speakers will limit the possibility and variants of logical form representations. After all, this article is very helpful to me, it helps me to understand the logical form better in a very demonstrative way.

Stanley, J. (2000). Context and logical form. Linguistics and philosophy, 23(4), 391-434.

In this paper, the author argued that all effects of extra-linguistic contexts on truth condition can be traced back to the logical form, while the non-linguistic interpretation of extra-linguistic contexts can only rely on the general relevance and rationality. Stanley adopted the descriptive conception to refer to the term logical form in his paper, namely, a sort of linguistic representation that reveals to the “real structure” in the sentence. He also suggested that if this claim is true, the interpretation of linguistic assertion should be significantly different from the non-linguistic interpretation. The author carefully examined the cases in non-sentential assertion, and in “unarticulated constituents” and came to the the conclusion that neither of them is able to object the claim that effects of extra-linguistic context on truth conditions are traceable to the elements in the syntactic structure. This paper posits logical form differently from what Chomsky and May consider as logical form. The content in this paper is highly concerned with the logical form in philosophical sense and in semantics, which shows the integration of philosophy and linguistics.

Szabo, Z. G. (2012). Against logical form. Donald Davidson on Truth, Meaning, and the Mental, 105.

This author has came up with a viewpoint that is against the traditional way of thinking logical form. He argues that the Chomsky’s way of thinking logical form is not in fact a logical form, but rather a “semantic form”, and Quinean’s philosophy way of thinking logical form is the result of formalization”. He thinks that both of their ways of thinking logical form are not objectionable. He argues that we should stay on early analyses of logical form which is only about sentences. This author’s counter viewpoint of the contemporary thinking of linguistics is important towards our wikipedia project. This article indicates new point of thinking about logical forms. He raises up a question of “is this logical form of what we want?” It gives us a brief review of how the “logical form” becomes the logical form we used nowadays, and clarify the ambiguity of today’s logical form. This article is opposed to today’s logical form, but is this argument really true? Things could have changes after a while, the same term logical form may not refer to the same meaning in the old days. Chomsky’s definition or Quinean’s definition of logical form are not changing the original definition but rather adding more meanings to it according to different subject.

Williams, E. S. (1977). Discourse and logical form. Linguistic Inquiry, 8(1) 101-139.

Williams explores the conversion of grammatical to logical forms using derivations, such that are represented by t in syntax tree diagrams specifically in regards to VP deletion. This representation is bound in anaphor relationships, and when the corresponding forms are deleted, a “shadow form” is left behind (WIlliams, 1977, pp. 103). He also brings in Chomsky’s Quantifier Interpretation (Chomsky, as cited in Williams, 1977). Gapping precludes anaphoric relationships, as demonstrated by the removal of the bound relationship necessary for anaphors, i.e. if an antecedent is in a previous sentence the anaphoric relationship is destroyed by gapping, creating ungrammatical sentences. Types of movement on logical forms behave differently: VP can apply across sentences (so-called “Discourse Grammar”) but gapping cannot (pp. 102). Williams demonstrates rules needed to derive logical forms from surface structures in sentence, and its relationship with discourse grammar, namely concerning only logical forms, and not surface or deep structures. He introduces the principle of “strict utterance” to demonstrate the relationship between deletion and interpretive theories, and how deletion theory fails to account for VP anaphora, where interpretive theory does not (pp. 107). Williams illustrates the effects of these rules and theories, and how sentence grammar creates logical forms while discourse grammar acts on logical forms, through helpful derivations and explanations (both grammatical and ungrammatical). This paper draws upon earlier works by Chomsky and other contemporaries to further elaborate how these different grammars work in relation to logical forms, adding to the body of knowledge and helping develop the literature of syntax. Alyson Budd (talk) 07:20, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

We will be glad to accept constructive suggestions. :-)Krissong1994 (talk) 06:39, 3 October 2014 (UTC)Alyson Budd (talk) 07:20, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Framework for expanding article

General Intro

Logical Form, abbreviated as LF, in a linguistic sense refers to an abstract level of representation derived from the S-structure through transformational operations which are responsible for mapping D-structure to S-structure representations. It functions as the interface between grammar and conceptual-intentional properties of language, analogous to how the Phonetic Form is the interface between grammar and the audio-perceptual properties of utterances. The concept of Logical Form arises because some meanings of sentences are not directly expressed on the surface form. The combination of three facts mentioned below gives rise to the difficulty to express the meaning of the sentence directly.

  1. The sentences that include quantificational or question words possess different semantic properties from non-interrogative and non-quantificational sentences;
  2. These special properties reflect syntactic generalizations that are best captured and explained at the level of LF;
  3. The LF representation, which is derived from the S-structure, does not require any other explanation other than existed theory of overt syntax. Krissong1994 (talk) 06:03, 29 October 2014 (UTC)Ttam1987 (talk) 15:36, 29 October 2014 (UTC)Alyson Budd (talk) 22:07, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
These are things worth adding into the article: the motivations for LF! Make sure to cite the source and write them from your understanding. Then next is to exemplify these ideas with concrete language data from the papers you have.--Lingfan (talk) 03:07, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Development of Logical Form by Noam Chomsky and his graduate students

In the 1970's Robert May wrote a dissertation called 'The Grammar of Quantification', with the supervision of Noam Chomsky, which first developed the idea of Logical Form.{{May, |1977}} sofiamcor (talk) 12:49, 29 October 2014

Alyson Budd (talk) 07:14, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Logical Form: Syntax interfacing with Semantics

  • wide scope and narrow scope (maybe change this subtitle to "the notion of scope"? )

Quantifier (every/all, some)

Whoever is editing the quantification section, can you please cite your courses? I have tried to add citations but I don't know which specific articles or books you are using. Alyson Budd (talk) 06:58, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Before quantifier raising
After quantifier raising


In the early years of LF studies, the definition of scope was introduced. The scope of an operator is the domain within which it has the ability to affect the interpretation of other expresstions. Three types of examples are uncontroversial for having scope over an expression and affecting some aspect of the interpretation: quantifier-quantifier, quantifier-pronoun, quantifier-negative polarity item. It is worth noticing that when a negation has an indefinite article in its scope, it clearly affects its interpretation by not able to infer the existence of a relevant entity; while when negation is within the subject quantifier scope, negation is not affected by the quantifier. If the Quantified Expresstion1 (QE1) is in the domain of QE2, but not vice versa, QE1 must take a narrow scope; if both are in the domain of the other, the structure is potentially ambiguous; if neither QE is in the domain of the other, they must be interpreted independently. These assumptions explain that the cases where the direct object of the main vlause is not within the domain of the embedded subject. For example, that every boy left upset a teacher, it cannot be interpreted as for every boy, there is a possibly different teacher who was upset by the fact that the boy left. Krissong1994 (talk) 07:31, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Ambiguity motivation

Everyone has someone that they love, not necessarily the same person
Everyone loves the same someone

User: Sofiamcor

WH-movement

When wh-movement is from the subject position it is unambiguous, but when wh-movement is from the object position it is ambiguous. (May, 1985)sofiamcor (talk) 17:19, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

example
1) What did everyone buy for Max.

2) Who bought everything for Max.

(May, 1985)sofiamcor (talk) 17:19, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Ttam1987 (talk) 15:45, 29 October 2014 (UTC) content to go hereAlyson Budd (talk) 07:14, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Include relevant links to semantics and syntax pages and explain the connection with examples from English and other languages. Alyson Budd (talk) 07:52, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Cross-linguistic examples of Logical Form

content to go here Alyson Budd (talk) 07:16, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Images of Logical Form - Syntax Tree

Alyson Budd (talk) 07:53, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

References

Hi everyone, I am adding some references fyi:

miscellaneous

--Lingfan (talk) 22:18, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Instructions from Jonathan re page formatting, etc.

nest into tables 1x1 for grey box examples next to trees IN ADVANCED

nest pictures

FOR PICTURES/images - describe (even syntax trees) (for blind people)

share this image on wiki - thumbnail

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Table

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Picture_tutorial

http://reftag.appspot.com/doiweb.py - plug DOI into website will generate wiki code

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Table/Introduction_to_tables

example within wiki links Syntax

- use parenthetical citations rather than number superscript

to create references:

(Ward, 2011) DELETE REFS TAGS OFF FRONT AND BACK OF LINK not necessary

make table/legend/key to make notations make sense to readers (for example *sentence = ungrammatical sentence)

Questions for S.C.

When we add to the article, do we need to change the talk page to match?
No. Talk page is for discussion of editing the article.

What of the two types of citation styles?
APA and citation internal to wiki

Can we discuss controversy, i.e. there is an article from a psychological experiment that posits that LF comes about at the same time as comprehension and isn't an intermediate between syntax and semantics.
It should be discussed in another article on LF in wiki. You can point it out and add the link to it.

Are syntax trees based on sentences from textbooks, that we make for the purpose of this article, original work?
If the idea behind the trees is from someone's work, then it should be noted that your picture is based on/revised/adopted from xxx. If the idea is very basic and generally accepted, you could draw the trees without citation.

Are the notes and references page the same thing? How do we make sure we are citing properly?
I'm not sure what're notes you refer to here... you mean footnotes (footnotes section should be distinguished from references section)? let me know:)

Alyson Budd (talk) 07:47, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

A summary of R2 discussion
  • Keep revise your definition to make it concise and broad enough to capture the idea of this article
  • Re-organize a bit your sections and subsections by considering:

Reasons for existence of LF and language facts
How does existence of LF explain the language facts?
Different theories on how a specific syntactic construction is analyzed on LF

For example, your section title "quantification" and "wh-movement" can be revised or moved into subsection of somewhere, in order to present a relationship of the two notions and LF. Introduction to the two notions can be linked to relevant wiki pages.

Technical issues

  • Give LF structures in brackets or trees (you can use the former more often as it's easier to format while giving representative trees for similar ideas)
  • When giving language examples, please also explain them by referring to each example.
  • Cite original source in addition to second-hand source.
  • Use consistent citation style and example representation.
  • Ungrammatical sentences need to be translated as well (for example, "Intended for...").
  • Double-check if links are available.

Lingfan (talk) 03:37, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Needed Revisions

Our page needs some revisions in the following categories

1. citation consistency

2. example consistency - including pictures and tree diagrams

3. grammatical and spelling errors

4. style/flow of writing

5. Look at Carnie Syntax text for good examples in LF.


I will do my best to work on the Theories section over the weekend, including "who, what, and when" as suggested by RM in class today. Alyson Budd (talk) 23:59, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
We should all take time to peer-review each other's sections, so I invite what I add to theories to be reviewed/edited freely. Alyson Budd (talk) 00:00, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Copy-Editing Suggestions

The contents of the article are looking good! Just a couple suggestions on how to make parts of it a little clearer:

  1. There are two different styles of citations being used throughout the article (footnote and inline). The article would benefit from a consistent use of either one of them.
  2. In the section titled "The Notation of Scope", the example that every boy left upset a teacher is provided inline. Formatting this example in the same way that the Hungarian and Chinese examples are done would make the distinction between example and explanation much clearer to the reader.
  3. The section "Cross-linguistic Examples of Logical Form: Hungarian" is missing citations for where the examples came from, and for the explanation. It would be beneficial to add these so readers can be sure of where the information comes from.

--Vloewen (talk) 16:53, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi D1, thanks for the advice. We've already fixed most of the citation and tried to make them look more consistent in style. Also, we tried to change the format of the cross-linguistic examples to make them clearer. --Krissong1994 (talk) 06:15, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Some further suggestions:

  1. In the section on Quantification, there are frequent instances where words are inconsistently capitalized, including but not limited to "quantification", "the scope principle", "minimalism", and "minimalist syntax".
  2. There are also several spelling and grammatical errors. Minor, but kind of detracts from the article.
  3. The example everyone loves someone is also provided inline and does not appear to have a citation.

Rrrrrllllleeeee (talk) 19:30, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Some obscurities:

  1. Start from the beginning, the word "minimalist" is mentioned few times, is there a difference between "minimalist program" and "Minimalist theory"?
  2. In 1.1 The Notion of Scope, by saying "it is worth noticing that...", would it be more precise to have an example accompany with it or to explain briefly why it is worth noticing and how it is the case of an indefinite article with negation?
  3. In 4.2 Chinese, would be more helpful to expand or rephrase the three sentences. The contents under the Chinese example seems obscure and what do you mean by "A-chains" has been "stressed" on? Chinese is disambiguated by case positions in "some cases", as what kind of cases? What about the reference for (Aoun&Li, 1993), which citation/reference style are you using throughout this article?

--Fannyfish0224 (talk) 08:16, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

More suggestions:

  1. Would be even more helpful to give some examples of Logical Form, such as trees or some visual aid to better help others understand its concept
  2. For the section explaining Quantifier Expressions, would be helpful to give quantifier structures for the example sentences (such as ∀ and Ǝ)
  3. For the Ambiguity Motivation section, the explanation states "... the sentence above would have two possible structural representations..." please give the two possible representations as it would greatly help in contributing to readers' understandings.
  4. Subject movement constraint is also mentioned in WH-Movement's section. It would be helpful to briefly explain what it is or link it to a Wikipedia page that focuses on this topic.
  5. For the Chinese data set examples, it is missing the citation of where these examples were chosen from. It would be helpful to give the citation for people who wants to further look this up.

--Millywkh (talk) 01:35, 3 November 2014 (UTC)


A lot of definitions and clarifications are needed since it's a wikipedia page and is meant for lay people to read:

  • In section 1, "quantifier scope" should be defined. "Scope" is mentioned in the following subsection but "quantifier scope" is mentioned a lot in the whole article. It is important people understand what this term means before they can continue to understand other concepts.
  • In section 1.1, "operator" should be defined. Linguistic uses terms that are similar to computer programming and logic, along with philosophy. I think it's best to define it in such a way so that it is specific to linguistic.
  • Also in section 1.1, it is mentioned that 3 examples are uncontroversial for having scope over an expression.
  1. Why is it uncontroversial? Give examples to support this claim.
  2. What does "having scope over an expression" mean? Clarify
  3. What does "quantifier-quantifier" mean? And "quantifier-pronoun" and "quantifier-negative polarity item"? Give examples of each?
  • Again in section 1.1, define "indefinite article". Also clarify whether the indefinite article is in the scope of the negation or vice versa. A following sentence says "if the negation is in the subject quantifier scope". The format of what you are comparing is inconsistent. Also define "subject quantifier scope". It may not need to be defined if you defined what "quantifier scope" was.
  • In the same paragraph, "it affects its interpretation" is ambiguous. Clarify "what" defines "what".
  • Exactly what statement does the example (which needs to have the format of an example be it in parentheses with an e.g. or on the next line) at the end of this paragraph refer to? The last paragraph of section 1.1 need to be restructured in such a way that makes it more coherent.

SakuraChii (talk) 04:21, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Revisions

Thanks to the feedback of our peers, and other wikipedians, we incorporated their helpful suggestions by making our citations and examples consistent, modifying the style of the language, removing overlinking and explaining some points more fully. We added more examples with diagrams to better illustrate the concepts and we did our best to present the information in an organized way, both in terms of visual flow of the article and in terms of content. Alyson Budd (talk) 07:33, 14 November 2014 (UTC)


Unfortunately, after we made our examples consistent in the same unicode font, another wikipedia editor changed it, so now our examples are inconsistent. We tried to undo it but it did not work.Alyson Budd (talk) 07:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

In-line Citations

Firstly, thank you to Alyson Budd et. al for your contributions to this article! Good work! A couple of things that I want to point out that will hopefully helpful to this article, and to your group's project.

  1. While Harvard style citations are still considered acceptable on Wikipedia, the vast majority of articles now use footnotes as their primary, or only inline citation style. Your method is not wrong, although your formatting is slightly off (they should be plaintext instead of linked), but to match the style of most Wikipedia articles, I would suggest changing to footnote style. I am more than willing to make this change for you, but want to remain sensitive to the fact that this is a graded project, and your prof might or might not understand that this article doesn't belong to your group... Just let me know here, or on my talk page!
  2. There is a bit of overlinking in your article - general practice is to link to another Wikipedia page (e.g.. Noam Chomsky) the first time that it comes up, but not in future instances. Overlinking can cause confusion for the reader, as they may think that a new link means that the link hasn't been referenced prior, when it has.
  3. Related to the above, generally linking to non-wiki pages in the body of an article is unusual, although there are circumstances where it is useful and/or necessary. I noticed that you linked to externalvpages for May, and several other linguists at the end of the article. As all of these links are bios from non-reliable/verifiable/notable sorces, and their subjects may or may not be notable (global notability as determined by Wikipedia:Notable) themselves, these links are probably inappropriate. External links to webpages about the subject of your article could be included in the "External links" section.

I have limited wiki experience, but I am willing to give advice to the best of my ability. There are also ways to get advice from more experienced editors if you want it. Keep up the good work! --Sennsationalist (talk) 11:37, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi Sennsationalist! Yes, please do reformat our citations! That would be delightful. I will fix the overlinking :) Thanks so much. Alyson Budd (talk) 20:49, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Hey Alyson,
I changed all of the Harvard citations to footnote style. I also did a small amount of copy-editing, and made a few other small changes that related to the citation changes (mostly sentence form, removing things like "This is from x-source").
A few things that are important, some of which I learned while doing this:
  1. {{Reflist}} builds you a list of references used in the article! It's super handy. It's located in the reference section (I put it in, because it wasn't there). I commented out <!-- this is comment code --> the previous list of references - it's still there if you look at the code, just in case you still need something from it. But it won't show up on the wikipedia page any more.
  2. If you want to edit a reference that is already in the article, you should go to the first time that the reference is defined. At the bottom, next to the reference, click the little "^" or the letter "a". Then edit that section. Use the cite templates (cite book/cite journal) to enter the relevant information, then insert. Make sure that it's in the right location (between the <ref> and </ref> tags, and that you delete the old one!
  3. Named references are useful! If you are citing the same source more than once in the article, there is an easy shortcut. Simply go to the first place a reference is used, and change the <ref> tag that is at the beginning of the citation code to <ref name="NAMEofREF">. Now, if you want to cite that same article again, you only need to write <ref name="NAMEofREF" /> and it will refer back to the original reference. Alternately you can click "Named References" in the Cite tab of the editor, and select an already named reference.
There were several incomplete references that were not in the References list that you guys had compiled at the bottom of the wiki. These were Collinge, Ouhalla, Ioup, Montague, May 1977, Reinhart, Rodman, Chomsky, Beghelli, Beghelli and Stowel, Huang. Using #2 above you should be able to input the information about the sources to get rid of the red error text. I think it only wants a title, but more details definitely wouldn't hurt.
Anyways, I hope that was helpful, and that I didn't break anything!! Let me know if there's anything else that I can advise on. --Sennsationalist (talk) 17:14, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
Another useful method of referencing to bear in mind for the future, particularly for long articles with many references to the same source, is the use of {{sfn}} (or {{sfnb}}, which puts the year in parentheses) for references and {{efn}} for explanatory notes. Explanatory footnotes notes are inserted where you specify {{notelist}}, and the references are inserted at {{reflist}}. The bibliography uses the appropriate citation template, such as {{Cite book}}. If you specify ref=harv with the citation template and get the syntax right, the footnote cue links to the entry in the references section, and that links to the entry in the bibliography. This is the method used in featured articles like the Manchester Ship Canal. It can be a bit tricky, though, for instance when you have two books by the same author in the same year. --Boson (talk) 22:46, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Pages moves and disambiguation

I have moved Logical Form (two capital letters) to Logical Form (linguistics). See the discussion at Talk:Logical_Form_(linguistics)/Archive_1#RM calling for capital initial letters because of a convention in the field of linguistics. Without the disambiguating word, this can be mistaken for a case of using capital letters merely because it's the title of an article, and that of course is against Wikipedia's conventions. I made Logical Form with two capitals into a disambiguation page. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:04, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

"Quantification - key historical developments"

Section on "Quantification - key historical developments" needs to be re-written in a better style - it is very hard to read. I am unable to revise it as I do not understand what it is trying to say. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.1.197.148 (talk) 13:06, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Logical_form_(linguistics)/Archive_1&oldid=1073883615"