P-HYPE: A monadic situation semantics for hyperintensional side effects

Abstract

P-HYPE is a hyperintensional situation semantics in which hyperintensionality is modelled as a ‘side effect’, as this term has been understood in natural language semantics, Charlow (2014); Shan (2007), and in functional programming. We use monads from category theory in order to ‘upgrade’ an ordinary intensional semantics to a possible hyperintensional counterpart. Hyperintensional side effects are analysed as a special type of perspective sensitivity. We combine Asudeh and Giorgolo’s (2016) perspective sensitive semantic theory with a hyperintensional situation semantics, HYPE (Leitgeb, 2018), a logic with connections of Barwise and Perry’s (1983) situation semantics, truthmaker semantics (Fine, 2017) and data semantics (Veltman, 1985). P-HYPE builds on the account of Asudeh and Giorgolo (2016), by carving out a notion of perspectives as special sets of situations which can be combined together via a fusion relation. In addition, we are able to capture the utterer’s perspective on other people’s perspectives, a phenomenon that plays a role in Asudeh and Giorgolo (2016) but which is not formally defined by them.