Richard Montague’s turn towards natural language in his own voice Amsterdam, 26 August 1967

On August 26, 1967, Richard Montague, who was 36, was invited to participate to a symposium on “The Role of Formal Logic in the Evaluation of Argumentation in Natural Languages“ by Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, organizer and chair. It was part of the “Third International Congress for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science“, which took place in Amsterdam. Bar-Hillel had earlier distributed four theses to invited participants. Each participant had 10 minutes for their presentation and 3 more minutes to reply after all had presented. This recording starts with Montague’s presentation, which ends at 9:09. Jerrold J. Katz and Erik Stenius were among the participants and had already presented. Montague refers to them in his presentation. Montague’s 3-minute comments start at 9:10. Montague’s comments were immediately followed by Bar-Hillel’s clarification at 12:32. J. F. Staal then published an edited version of the transcripts from the symposium as ’Formal Logic and Natural Languages (A Symposium)’. “Foundations of