Formal Grammar

We suggest a way of formalizing frames using records in type theory. We propose an analysis of frames as records which model situations (including events) and we suggest that frame types (record types) are important in both the analysis of the Partee puzzle concerning rising temperatures and prices and in the analysis of quantification which involves counting events rather than individuals likes passengers or ships passing through a lock. Our original inspiration for frames comes from the work of [13,14] and work on FrameNet (https://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu). An important aspect of our approach to frames, which differs from the Fillmorean approach, is that we treat them as first class objects. That is, they can be arguments to predicates and can be quantified over. The proposal that we have made for solving the Partee puzzle is closely related to the work of [22,23] whose inspiration is from the work of [1–3] rather than Fillmore.