Continuations and friends: what linguists can learn from programming language theorists

Richard Montague famously asserted "There is in my opinion no important theoretical difference between natural languages and the artificial languages of logicians" (1970, p222). In this course we'll be exploring a natural extension of Montague's conjecture. exploring parallels between natural languages and the artificial languages of computer programmers. The main focus will be on techniques developed by functional programmers for programming languages grounded in the lambda calculus, and their utility for analyzing phenomena in natural language semantics. Topics covered will include continuations and scope-taking, monads and exceptional scope, as well as applicative functors and enriched semantic composition.