  Making a linguistic theory is like making a programming language: one
typically devises a type system to delineate the acceptable utterances and a
denotational semantics to explain observations on their behavior. Via this
connection, the programming language concept of delimited continuations can
help analyze natural language phenomena such as quantification and polarity
sensitivity. Using a logical metalanguage whose syntax includes control
operators and whose semantics involves evaluation order, these analyses can be
expressed in direct style rather than continuation-passing style, and these
phenomena can be thought of as computational side effects.
