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Encylopedia of Language and Linguistics,
ed. Keith Brown. Oxford: Elsevier
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Richard Montague was a logician and
philosopher whose seminal works on
language founded the theory known after
his death as Montague grammar, one of
the main starting points for the field
of formal semantics.
Montague was born September 20, 1930 in
Stockton, California and died March 7,
1971 in Los Angeles, a victim of a
homicide. At St. Mary’s
High School (Class of 1948)
in Stockton he studied Latin and Ancient
Greek.
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Richard Montague was a logician and
philosopher whose seminal works on
language founded the theory known after
his death as Montague grammar, one of
the main starting points for the field
of formal semantics.
Montague was born September 20, 1930 in
Stockton, California and died March 7,
1971 in Los Angeles, a victim of a
homicide. At St. Mary’s
High School (Class of 1948)
in Stockton he studied Latin and Ancient
Greek.
After a year at Stockton Junior College
studying journalism, he entered the
University of
California, Berkeley in 1948, and
studied mathematics, philosophy, and
Semitic languages, graduating with an
A.B. in Philosophy in 1950. He continued
graduate work at Berkeley in all three
areas, especially with Walter Joseph
Fischel in Arabic, with Paul Marhenke
and Benson Mates in philosophy, and with
Alfred Tarski in mathematics and
philosophy, receiving an M.A. in
mathematics in 1953 and his Ph.D. in
Philosophy in 1957. Alfred Tarski, one
of the pioneers, with Frege and Carnap,
in the model-theoretic semantics of
logic, was Montague’s main influence and
directed his dissertation (Montague
1957). Montague taught in the UCLA
Philosophy Department from 1955 until
his death.
Montague quickly became a major figure
in mathematical logic, with
contributions to proof theory, model
theory, axiomatic set theory, and
recursion theory. He applied logical
methods to a number of problems in
philosophy, including the philosophy of
language, and co-authored the logic
textbook Kalish and Montague (1964). He
directed three UCLA Ph.D. dissertations
(Cocchiarella 1966, Grewe 1965, Kamp
1968). A fourth, Gallin (1972), revised
and published as Gallin(1975), was
completed at Berkeley after Montague’s
death. Michael Bennett would also have
been Montague’s dissertation student;
his dissertation on Montague grammar
(Bennett 1974) was supervised by David
Kaplan and Barbara Partee.
Of most significance for linguistics was
Montague’s work on semantics. Building
on his development of a higher-order
typed intensional logic with a
possible-worlds modeltheoretic semantics
and a formal pragmatics incorporating
indexical pronouns and tenses (Montague
1968, 1970c), Montague turned in the
late 1960’s to the project of “universal
grammar”. For him that meant developing
a philosophically satisfactory and
logically precise account of syntax,
semantics, and pragmatics, encompassing
both formal and natural languages.
Montague’s idea that a natural language
like English could be formally described
using logicians’ techniques was a
radical one at the time. Most logicians
believed that natural languages were not
amenable to precise formalization, while
most linguists doubted the
appropriateness of logicians’ approaches
to the domain of natural language
semantics. At the time of Montague’s
work, Chomskian generative syntax was
well established, and the “linguistic
wars” between generative semantics (Lakoff,
Ross, McCawley, Postal) and interpretive
semantics (Jackendoff, with the support
of Chomsky) were in full swing. In
introductions of Montague's work to
linguists, including (Partee 1973, 1975)
and Thomason’s extended introduction to
(Montague 1974), it was argued that
Montague's work offered the potential to
accommodate some of the best aspects of
both of the warring approaches, with
some added advantages. It was the short
but densely packed “PTQ” (Montague 1973)
that had the most impact on linguists
and on the subsequent development of
formal semantics. “Montague grammar”.
University of California Biography
Richard Montague was born September 20,
1930, in Stockton, and died March 7,
1971, in his home in Los Angeles, at the
hands of persons still unknown at this
writing. A man of uncommon brilliance
and versatility, he packed into his
tragically brief existence greater
achievement than most can expect in a
lifetime.
Montague entered the University of
California at Berkeley as an
undergraduate in 1948, and was quickly
attracted to a number of disciplines,
but particularly to mathematics,
philosophy, and Semitic languages, all
of which he pursued very rapidly to the
advanced level. Receiving an A.B. in
philosophy in 1950, he continued in all
three areas for several years of
graduate work, studying particularly
with Professors W. J. Fischel in Arabic,
Paul Marhenke and Benson Mates in
philosophy, and Alfred Tarski in
mathematics--the last-named was
undoubtedly the most important single
influence on the direction of Montague's
career and the character of his work.
Between 1950 and 1953 he held the
Howison Fellowship in Philosophy, and
for two succeeding years was a teaching
assistant in mathematics. In the spring
semester of 1955 he joined the faculty
of the University at Los Angeles as
Acting Instructor in Philosophy; his
advancement thereafter through the
academic ranks was extremely fast and
perhaps uniquely so.
While still a graduate student, Montague
had already acquired considerable
national and even international
reputation. Between 1954 and his formal
dissertation defense in 1957, he had
authored six, and co-authored another
four, significant papers in mathematical
logic, including researches in Boolean
algebras, proof theory, model theory and
axiomatic set theory; perhaps the most
notable result of this research was the
important answer to a previously open
question of Tarski: that
Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory is not a
finite extension of Zermelo set theory.
After moving to the Los Angeles campus
he even accelerated the pace of his
researches in logic and expanded his
interests to include most of the
remaining areas of the field,
particularly abstract recursion theory,
predicate logic, and the model theory of
higher-order logics. All of his work was
characterized by a remarkable
combination of originality and
precision; some of it was of a
pioneering nature and most likely cannot
be fully appreciated until time lends
perspective.
In addition to his technical researches
in logic, Montague increasingly devoted
himself in the last ten years to the
application of sophisticated logical
methods to traditional problem areas in
philosophy. Among the best-known of his
works in this genre to date is a
profound study, published in 1962, of
“Deterministic Theories,” that for the
first time precisely formulates, and
then definitely settles, a number of
difficult questions regarding
determinism. Previously, these questions
(in a phrase of Russell's that well
evokes Montague) “had been given over to
philosophical vagueness.” Other
important work, some of it in
collaboration with Rolf Eberle, Donald
Kalish, and David Kaplan, was concerned
with the concept of scientific
explanation, with problems of
epistemology raised via the so-called
Hangman or Surprise Examination paradox,
with notions of conditional or derived
obligation in ethics, and with problems
of indirect discourse in philosophy of
language. In each instance, Montague
charted his subject matter with an
exactness and a clarity that set new
standards for his philosophical
colleagues everywhere.
From the mid-1960s he was centrally
preoccupied with a program that was
ambitious even for a Montague: he aimed
both to recast current work and to
determine the shape of work to come in
philosophy of language and mathematical
linguistics, in terms of the total
approach to language that he called
“pragmatics” (for an early account of
the overall framework, see his essay of
that title in Klibansky, ed.,
“Contemporary Philosophy: A Survey” ,
Firenze: Nuova Italia Editrice, 1968);
the objective was no less than an
accurate, adequate, and philosophically
satisfactory scientific account of
natural language. His work in this
direction, most of which is not yet
published, had already attracted wide
attention among philosophers and
linguists at the time of his death and
will furnish a foundation for further
development by his students and others
for many years to come.
Montague's work as a teacher was equally
outstanding; his advanced classes and
seminars were models of the same rare
combination of originality and exactness
that characterized his research, and his
elementary courses were beautifully
organized and carried out. His courses
were widely appreciated by the students
who regarded him with awe. He was
totally accessible to all of his
students, and went to great lengths to
help them in their work. In 1966 he was
the nominee of the Los Angeles graduate
students in philosophy for the GSA
Distinguished Teaching Award. Another
pedagogical achievement was the notable
introductory text, Logic: Techniques of
Formal Reasoning, written in
collaboration with Donald Kalish and
published in 1964.
He served as a member of the United
States National Committee for the
International Union of the History and
Philosophy of Science and, for the years
1966 and 1967, as Chairman of the
national Subcommittee for Logic,
Methodology, and Philosophy of Science.
He also served as Secretary of the
Association for Symbolic Logic from 1966
until his death. He had been a
consulting editor for the Journal of
Symbolic Logic since 1958.
Montague was a man of powerful will as
well as intellect, and when his views on
educational or philosophical questions
were in conflict with those of his
colleagues, personal clashes could
sometimes ensue. But those who knew him
recognized also his qualities of humor,
of sympathy, and of unshakable personal
loyalty; the many friendships he formed
with his colleagues were strong,
uninterrupted, and deeply valued.
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