Abstract: In formal semantics of natural languages, lexical items are considered to have types. For example, Euclid’s Elements is of type Book or of type e (i.e. individuals). Whether a given type assignment is universal, that is whether the type assignment works in all felicitous contexts or not affords four possible answers. Either type assignments are universal or not, and then if they are, either they have a complex structure which accommodates all senses of the corresponding lexical items, or they are atomic types meaning that when the context changes, we have a different lexical entry. If the types are not universal, then the family of types assigned to a lexical item are either systematically related or not. If the notion that lexical items have types has an objective reality, then only one of these four possibilities is real. In this paper, we explore these four possibilities and examine some of the main approaches in the literature in view of these four categories. This categorization aims at giving a big picture of the issue of type-shifting, this time shaped around a different characterization; we want to see how the approaches are similar or different in their essential visions toward the phenomena of type-shifting.
Keywords: Euclid’s Elements, Accommodates All Senses, Phenomena Of Type-Shifting, Lexical items, Hypothesis
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DOI:
10.17148/IJARCCE.2018.781
