Abstracts of the Invited Speakers

Type driven bridging in serial verb constructions

Maria Bittner

Many languages have serial verb constructions (SVCs) - that is, a series of verbs, without any marking of subordination or coordination, which share a single subject and tense. SVCs present an interesting puzzle for the theory of NL semantics because their meaning is consistently richer than their syntax. Fist of all, in each SVC the component verbs are linked by an implicit causal, temporal, or conjunctive relation which cannot be attributed to any overt element in the structure. Secondly, each of these implicit linking relations correlates with a distinctive pattern of nominal, temporal, and event anaphora. And last but not least, these correlations are crosslinguistically stable, turning up in a wide range of constructions in typologically distant languages. The big question for NL semantics is WHY? The answer developed in this paper is that these phenomena reflect a species of accommodation which is built into invariant semantic principles of NL - dubbed Crosslinguistic DRT - as type-driven bridging. More precisely, the implicit causal, temporal, or conjunctive relation found in SVCs cannot be attributed to any one element because it is due to type-driven bridging. This is contingent on type mismatch and so crucially requires a configuration with two sisters. In NL, as in music, discord is meaningful. Just what it means depends on the nature of the discord and its local dynamic environment. Secondly, each implicit relation correlates with a distinctive pattern of nominal, temporal and event anaphora because these anaphoric relations are also largely mediated by type-driven bridging. Each implicit relation reflects a particular bridge operator, which in turn implies a characteristic type mismatch and dynamic habitat. Type-driven bridging operates like a Swiss clockwork, so any shift in these characteristics leads to predictable shifts in the application of other bridge operators. Thus seemingly independent anaphoric patterns cluster into predictable anaphoric profiles - such as the resultative, sequential, and conjunctive profiles found in SVCs. Finally, the principles of Crosslinguistic DRT (building on Kamp & Reyle 1993, Muskens 1995, 1996, Dekker 1994, Bittner 1999) explain why these anaphoric profiles are crosslinguistically stable, recurring in diverse constructions of distant languages. Ubiquitous semantic convergence across structural diversity is inevitable in NL because structure-building operations vastly outnumber the principles of semantic composition - to wit, three type-driven rules (APPLICATION, PREDICATION and BRIDGING), eight bridge operators (BRIDGING BUTTERFLY), and an inventory of types and dynamic profiles for basic meanings small enough for a representative sample to fit on a single page. All of these ingredients can be motivated independently of SVCs. Indeed, they are so few and so active in semantic composition that in any language a small discourse sample should suffice to illustrate the lot.
Linguistics Faculty
Rutgers University

Possessives, Relational Nouns, and the Argument-Modifier Distinction

Barbara Partee

(Joint work with Vladimir Borschev, VINITI, Moscow)

Possessive constructions like 'John's teacher', 'John's team', 'friend of John's' offer several interesting semantic problems and challenges. The first and most basic problem is a compositionality problem: is it possible to give a unified semantic analysis to possessives with both "plain nouns" (one-place predicates) as in 'John's team', 'John's dog' and relational or "transitive" nouns as in 'John's friend', 'John's teacher'?

On the analyses of Partee (1983/97) and Barker (1991), the DP in a possessive phrase (i.e. 'John' in 'John's') is always an argument of some relation, but the relation does not always come from the head noun. Possessives with "transitive nouns" are argument-like, while possessives with "plain nouns" are more modifier-like, with the modifier meaning including an implicit free relation variable. Recent proposals by Jensen and Vikner (1994), Vikner and Jensen (ms.1998) and Partee and Borschev (1998, 2000) analyze all possessives as argument-like, coercing plain nouns to take on relational meanings.

The unified analysis thus achieved is theoretically attractive, and has an advantage over the earlier "two kinds of possessives" analysis in offering a natural account of the ambiguity of 'Mary's former mansion'. But it is not clear that predicate possessives, as in 'This is Mary's', can be or should be assimilated to this argument-like treatment of possessives.

The main issue to be addressed is the question of whether all, some, or no possessives are best treated as arguments of nouns, and if so which ones? and how can we tell? The question will be examined from several perspectives, including cross-linguistic perspectives, but will not be settled.

References:
Barker, Chris (1991) Possessive Descriptions. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of California, Santa Cruz.
Borschev, Vladimir and Barbara H. Partee (1999) "Semantic Types and the Russian Genitive Modifier Construction", In K. Dziwirek et al, eds., Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics: The Seattle Meeting 1998, Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications.
Jensen, Per Anker and Carl Vikner (1994) "Lexical knowledge and the semantic analysis of Danish genitive constructions", in S.L.Hansen and H.Wegener (eds.), Topics in Knowledge-based NLP Systems. Samfundslitteratur, Copenhagen, 37-55.
Partee, Barbara (1983/1997) Uniformity vs. versatility: the genitive, a case study. Appendix to Theo Janssen (1997), Compositionality, in Johan van Benthem and Alice ter Meulen, eds., The Handbook of Logic and Language, Elsevier. 464-470.
Partee, Barbara H. and Vladimir Borschev (1998). Integrating lexical and formal semantics: Genitives, relational nouns, and type-shifting. In: Robin Cooper and Thomas Gamkrelidze, eds., Proceedings of the Second Tbilisi Symposium on Language, Logic, and Computation. Tbilisi: Center on Language, Logic, Speech, Tbilisi State University. Pp 229-241.
Partee, Barbara H. and Vladimir Borschev (2000). "Genitives, relational nouns, and the argument-modifier distinction." In: C. Fabricius-Hansen, E. Lang and C. Maienborn (eds.), Approaching the Grammar of Adjuncts. ZAS Papers in Linguistics 17. Berlin: Humboldt University. 177-201.
Vikner, Carl and Jensen, Per Anker 1999 A semantic analysis of the English genitive: Interaction of lexical and formal semantics. Ms. Copenhagen and Kolding, Denmark.
Department of Linguistics
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Bare nominals in the typology of indefinites

Henriëtte de Swart

Recent analyses indicate that not all indefinites are alike. Some are `weaker' than others. Bare nominals are particularly weak: they don't seem to have strong, quantificational interpretations at all, they always take narrow scope, and they can even be incorporated, which indicates that they do not necessarily count as a `full' argument. We can go one step further and observe that all bare nominals are not alike. Data from Hungarian and Hindi suggest that incorporated bare plurals license discourse anaphora, but incorporated bare singulars do not.

In the first half of this talk, I want to discuss some approaches to the weak/strong distinction, and I will show that they are insufficient to account for the incorporation data from Hindi and Hungarian. In the second half of the talk, I will develop a typology of indefinites which establishes more fine-grained distinctions between bare nominals and other kinds of indefinites.

In particular, I will sketch an approach to argument structure that interprets incorporation in terms of unification of thematic arguments, whereas full arguments introduce discourse referents. The distinction between thematic arguments and discourse referents is established in an extended version of the Discourse Representation theory developed by Kamp and Reyle (1993). Various features such as the singular/plural distinction and the possibility of `doubling' in a language constrain the discourse transparency of incorporated nominals.

Even when they are not incorporated, bare nominals have narrower scope possibilities than full NPs. The English bare plural illustrates this case. I will show that constraints on anchoring of the discourse referent introduced by the bare plural can capture these restrictions.
UiL-OTS/Department of French
Utrecht University

Abstracts Accepted for Presentation at Sinn und Bedeutung

Plural Quantification and Anaphora without Groups or Sum Discourse Referents

Nicholas Asher


Department of Philosophy
University of Texas at Austin

Delayed quantification for cumulative readings

Daisuke Bekki

This paper introduces a dynamic quantificational mechanism to derive cumulative readings in a compositional way. The mechanism is called Delayed Quantification, which is proposed in Bekki (2000). The main advantages of delayed quantification are the following:
  1. It can derive cumulative readings as the default reading without assuming any extra mechanisms.
  2. It can derive other readings such as a distributive reading from the default cumulative reading easily and naturally.
  3. Logical forms for these readings can be derived compositionally.

Information and Human
PRESTO, Japan Science & Technology Corporation

Definites in there-insertion contexts

Agnes Bende-Farkas and Peter Krause

On the traditional weak/strong distinction among NPs (Milsark 1977, Barwise and Cooper 1981), definite descriptions are excluded from THERE-BE constructions with existential readings. But there are a number of counterexamples involving weak definites and absolutely unique descriptions. We formulate a constraint on the justification of the presuppositions of noun phrases in this environment which accounts for the facts.
IMS
Universität Stuttgart

Relative Clauses and Exhaustification

Alastair Butler

We show that the full range of relative clause like constructions support a view of how language encodes an operation of exhaustification in syntax. We observe that an exhaustive/maximal interpretation is required if a head is (forced) inside its relative clause at LF (e.g., relatives with there-insertion disallow determiners with non-exhaustive interpretations: {Every, *A} lion there is eats meat). If a head is external, as in ordinary restrictive relatives, no such constraint holds (e.g., {Every, A} lion that is in Africa eats meat). We give an analysis that builds into the CP-projection of each relative clause an exhaustification operator (E). E controls the interpretation of a head within its scope, but will have no effect if the head is external to its relative clause. This has the advantage of giving a single syntax/semantics, which always involves an exhaustification operator, for all relatives.
Department of Language and Linguistic Science
University of York

Composing questions

Balder ten Cate

A notion of relevance for questions is developed, relating questions to decision problems. Relevance of questions is an important topic, because it can shed new light on problematic contextual aspects of questions. First, a composition operator is defined on proposition concepts. It is shown how this operator, when applied to questions, allows us to formulate a notion of relatedness. Next, relevance of questions is defined in terms of the composition operator, relating questions to decision problems. This is done in a dynamic fashion, in order to take contextual aspects into account.
ILLC
University of Amsterdam

Reanalysing ``selbst''

Regine Eckardt

It is by now well established that reanalysis is one of the most interesting and fruitful mechanisms for speakers to assign new meanings to old words (e.g. Heine (1997)) . Yet, the wealth of reanalysis examples in the literature contrasts sharply with the impressionistic way in which the actual paths of meaning change are usually described. In my paper, I will offer one of the first accounts of reanalysis in terms of formal semantics which, apart from elucidating certain German data, will demonstrate that the study of reanalysis in terms of compositional semantics can offer a much clearer understanding of meaning changes than the currently common treatments in terms of `rearranging' and `bleaching'.
Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft
University of Konstanz

Determining reinterpretation potential

Markus Egg

For an analysis of reinterpretation it is important to determine the reinterpretation potential of an expression, i.e., whether it may be reinterpreted at all, and, if so, which of its constituents are affected by reinterpretation.

Previous analyses of reinterpretation determine reinterpretation potential in terms of syntactic constituent structure, which however runs into problems since expressions with an identical constituent structure may exhibit different reinterpretation patterns. E.g., (1) and (2) differ in that in (1), the VP, and in (2), the N' must be reinterpreted:

The analysis of reinterpretation which we propose derives the reinterpretation potential of an expression largely from its syntactic constituent structure, but complements this strategy by lexical means of determining reinterpretation potential, which makes possible a more fine-tuned approach to reinterpretation phenomena.
Computerlinguistik, FB 4.7
Universität des Saarlandes

The double scope of quantifier phrases

Cornelia Endriss and Andreas Haida

Our proposal is concerned with the semantics of Quantifier Phrases (QPs) and QP chains. We assume that a QP, when interpreted in its base position denotes a Generalized Quantifier (GQ), whereas when interpreted in displaced position it - in effect - denotes a semantic object that is a GQ embedded within two operators: a collectivizing operator K that is responsible for the specific / group referring interpretation of a QP and a distributing operator Dist responsible for their distributivity. We conceive these operators to be effective in different positions of a QP chain, with the K-operator at the head of the chain and the Dist- operator at the foot. This accounts for the "double scope behavior" of a large class of QPs, i. e. their possibly non-local existential import with simultaneously locally restricted distributive scope. Our account predicts different scopal possibilities for different QPs depending on specific semantic properties of the respective GQ involved, namely monotonicity and "minimizability".
Institut für Linguistik
Universität Potsdam

Evidential force in Quechua

Martina Faller

This paper discusses how evidentiality, the linguistic encoding of source of information, is best analyzed within current semantic and pragmatic theory. It is argued that the force of Quechua evidentials cannot be analyzed as a Gricean implicature, because it is not cancellable, nor as a semantic entailment, because it does not have any truth-conditional effects. Instead, evidential force should be seen as an illocutionary phenomenon in the tradition of Searle and Austin. Positive evidence for this analysis comes from scope interactions with the question operator. Furthermore, the illocutionary analysis straightforwardly explains why presuppositions are outside the scope of the evidential force.
Linguistics Department
Stanford University

Generalised quantifiers over objects and proofs

Tim Fernando

Generalizations of universal and existential quantifiers to binary predicates on sets constitute a well-developed branch of linguistic semantics, applied widely to determiner/noun phrases. An altogether different generalization (reviewed in the talk) is the ``proposition-as-types'' interpretation, linking the quantifiers to implication and conjunction. The present work combines these generalizations, extending the approach to anaphora in Type-Theoretic Grammar (TTG, Ranta 1994) to plurals, as treated in DRT (Kamp and Reyle 1993). The pay-off for DRT, beyond the inferential apparatus TTG provides, is a novel anaphoric perspective on conservativity for generalized quantifiers (which, like Kanazawa 1994, admits both weak and strong donkey readings).
Trinity College Dublin
Computer Science

A semantic motivation for the second dative

Egbert Fortuin

In this paper I will provide evidence for the semantic and conceptual basis of syntax by showing that the occurrence of the so-called second dative in Russian can be accounted for by the meaning of the dative and the meaning of the infinitive. This analysis differs from analyses within the framework of Generative Grammar and Lexical Functional Grammar, where the meaning of the constituents is not taken into account in the syntactic analysis in a systematic way. In these analyses the occurrence of the second dative is explained in terms of notions such as S« and CP. As I will argue, the use of these notions as explanatory devices leads to circularity because the status of S« or CP of infinitive clauses with second datives must be seen as the result of the meaning of the combination of the infinitive with a second dative, and not as the cause of occurrence of the second dative.
Slavische Taalkunde
Universiteit van Amsterdam

Quantifying kids

Bart Geurts

I propose an explanation for various non-adult readings that have been reported in the literature on language acquisition. I argue that, by and large, children apply the same interpretative principles as adults do, but sometimes misapply them because universally quantified sentences are more complex than existentially quantified ones. This is illustrated by showing that the same principles that produce children's "errors" are crucially involved in the standard interpretation of Westerståhl's Nobel prize sentences.
Department of Philosophy
University of Nijmegen\ \&\ Humboldt University, Berlin

A unified accout of declaratives and polar interrogatives

Christine Gunlogson

This paper analyzes the difference between declaratives and polar interrogatives with the same content ('It's raining.' vs. 'Is it raining?'). The guiding idea is that the semantic contribution of sentence type is in ruling out certain future states as expected developments of the discourse. To implement this idea I introduce a representation of discourse context, the projection set, that incorporates participants' expectations about how the discourse will develop. The analysis follows Groenendijk 1999 (SALT IX) in generalizing the notion of entailment across sentence types, and generalizes (non-trivial) consistency and informativeness across both types as well. I will also comment on extending the proposal to wh- interrogatives.
Linguistics Department
UCSC

The syntax of comparative determiners

Martin Hackl

Generalized Quantifier Theory maintains that comparative determiners such as more than n are semantically opaque. I.e. the internal composition of comparative determiners is irrelevant for the truth-conditional contribution these determiners have to the sentence they appear in. They might as well be viewed as unanalyzed or idiomatic units. This view will be challenged based on systematic interactions between the numeral inside the quantifier and the matrix VP (the "Minimal Number of Participants Generalization with Comparative Determiners"). In a second step, an analysis of comparative determiners in terms of the independently motivated syntax and semantics of comparatives is developed that not only accounts for these unexpected interactions but has the welcome property of being compositional down to formation of comparative determiners.
Department of Linguistics
University of Maryland

Jiu and the system of focus quantification in Mandarin Chinese

Daniel Hole

This paper deals with the analysis of the Mandarin adverbial particle 'jiu'. It is argued that jiu always relates to an information-structurally distinguished category, a focus in most cases. The inadequacies of previous treatments can be avoided if 'jiu' is analyzed as relating to a focus interpretation involving negated universal quantification over the domain of alternatives. This quantificational type has so far never been attested in focus semantics. Concerning the category assignment of 'jiu' I will tentatively argue that 'jiu' should be considered an agreement marker relating a focus to a (predicative) background.
Institut für Englische Philologie
Freie Universität Berlin

On the acquisition of the aspects in Italian

Angeliek van Hout and Bart Hollebrandse

Research of the past 25 years on the acquisition of aspect in a variety of languages has produced many puzzles (Bronckart and Sinclair 1973; Antinucci and Miller 1976; Bloom et al. 1980; Weist et al. 1984), but few answers have emerged so far. Time is ripe to apply recent insights from formal semantic theories on aspectuality to start developing some explanations. Our study looks into the acquisition of the interaction of the situation and viewpoint aspects in Italian. The results suggest that it is more difficult to acquire the compositional nature of telicity than to learn the semantic operators associated with the so-called aspectual tenses (perfective for the Passato Prossimo and imperfective for the Imperfetto). We argue that telicity is acquired later because it involves acquiring refined knowledge of verb phrases, noun phrases, the syntax of aspect and the semantic integration of verb and object (cf. Van Hout 1998), whereas viewpoint aspect involves learning a more straightforward mapping between morphological forms and their meaning.
Faculteit Letteren
Rijsuniversiteit Groningen

Some notes on the formal properties of bidirectional optimality theory

Gerhard Jäger

In this talk, we will discuss some formal properties of the model of bidirectional Optimality Theory that was developed in Blutner 2000. We will investigate the conditions under which bidirectional optimization is a well-defined notion, and we will give a conceptually simpler reformulation of Blutner's definition. In the second part of the talk, we will demonstrate that bidirectional optimization can be modeled by means of finite state techniques. There we rely heavily on the related work of Frank and Satta 1998 about unidirectional optimization.

Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft

Frege, contextuality and compositionality

Theo M.V. Janssen

There are two principles which bear the name `Frege's principle': the principle of compositionality, and the context principle. The aim of this contribution is to investigate whether this is justified: did Frege accept both principles at the same time, did he hold the one principle but not the other, or did he at some moment change his opinion? The conclusion is as follows. There is development in Frege's position. In the period of Grundlagen he followed to a strict form of contextuality. He repeated contextuality in later writings, but became less strict. From 1914 on, pushed by the needs of research, he comes close to compositionality. But he could never make the final step toward compositionality for principled reasons, therefore he always would reject compositionality.
ILLC/Computer Science
University of Amsterdam

Referent-tracking and pronoun resolution in dynamic semantics: Some insights from Finnish

Elsi Kaiser

This paper presents an entity-tracking and pronoun resolution algorithm which extends and elaborates the methods of dynamic semantics (e.g. Groenendijk, Stokhof & Veltman 1996). I show that to successfully tackle pronoun resolution in a language such as Finnish - a free-word language without articles - we need to refine the 'peg system' used in dynamic semantics. I provide an algorithm which uses the pragmatically-motivated word order tendencies of Finnish to create and update an ordered register of pegs (where each peg is associated with an entity in the discourse), ranked according to salience. Pronouns are interpreted as referring to the topmost (most salient) peg in the register (cf Centering Theory, e.g. Grosz, Joshi & Weinstein 1995). This paper also addresses the interpretation of reflexive pronouns as well as the relation between grammatical role and salience.
Department of Linguistics
University of Pennsylvania

Precise and vague interpretation of measure terms

Manfred Krifka

Measure terms based on round number words are typically interpreted more leniently than measure terms based on non-round number words, e.g. The distance between Amsterdam and Vienna is one thousand kilometers / nine hundred eighty-seven kilometres. I propose an explanation of this phenomenon based on two interacting pragmatic principles: a preference for vague interpretations of terms, and a preference for round numbers. This gives us immediately the preferred vague interpretation for round terms. The preferred precise interpretation of non-round terms can be derived under the assumption that the two principles interact weakly, in the sense of Blutner's Bidirectional Optimality Theory.
Institut für deutsche Sprache und Linguistik
Humboldt Universität zu Berlin

The semantics of participial -ing and the problem of indirect access

Kiyomi Kusumoto

Zucchi (1999) suggests that bare, i.e., uninflected, predicates in English have in their denotation only sets of complete events. In this paper, I argue against this conclusion and claim with Parsons (1990) that the denotation of bare predicates are sets of events that include both complete and incomplete ones. Evidence comes from the semantics of noun-modifying participles, as in "the man building a house" and "the man knowing the system". I show that the fact that phrases like "the man building a house" give rise to the imperfective paradox, and the incompatibility of stative predicates with progressive Šing (i.e., the ungrammaticality of phrases like "*the man who is knowing the system") can be best explained under the assumption that the denotation of bare predicates includes sets of incomplete events.
Department of English
Hirosaki Gakuin University

Description Grammar for Discourse

Noor van Leusen

Building on (Gardent and Webber '98) and (Muskens, to appear) we develop a `description grammar' for discourse, i.e., a discourse grammar which generates descriptions of trees rather than tree structures. Due to this feature, the grammar not only provides an attractive treatment of ambiguity and underspecification in discourse, but it also allows for a smooth integration of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic constraints on discourse interpretation. The aim of the talk is to present the descripton grammar framework, and to illustrate the latter point. First, we introduce the description grammar formalism, and we discuss some basic properties of the discourse grammar, such as the incrementation operation, and structural accessibility. After that, we turn to the implementation of certain pragmatic constraints on discourse interpretation and show how these together constrain the attachment of newly processed discourse constituents.
Faculteit der Wijsbegeerte
Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen

Two kinds of universals and two kinds of groups

Friederike Moltmann

I will argue that natural language makes reference to two kinds of abstract objects (universals) and two kinds of groups, which are distinguished in analogous ways, namely by the way properties are fixed. The properties of one kind of abstract object (kinds) and of one kind of group (pluralities) are projected, in one way or another from their instances, whereas the properties of the other kind of universal (properties) and the other kind of group (collectives) are assigned in the ordinary way. Tracing the difference among entities to the way their properties are assigned, rather than to any formal differences in their nature (e.g. the distinction between sums and atoms or sets and singleton sets) gives a better explanation of a number of important semantic facts, such as different of readings of predicates and of existential constructions as well as distributivity.

King's College

Measure DP adverbials, Aktionsart, and functional structure

Marcin Morzycki

Certain DP adverbials constitute a natural subclass, distinct from the others, characterized by narrow scope, low structural position, and an Aktionsart effect. This constellation of characteristics, not noted in existing treatments of DP adverbials, can be explained if taken as evidence that certain Aktionsart information which cannot plausibly come from the DP itself is encoded instead in the denotation of a verbal feature responsible for licensing the adverbial. Independent evidence for this approach is adduced from true adverbs, and consequences for the interaction between functional structure and the semantics of modification are explored.
Dept. of Linguistics
University of Massachusetts

Acknowledgement and common ground

Marie Nilsenova

Research of natural dialogues has shown that the most common dialogue act is acknowledgement, by virtue of which hearers signal their understanding of speakers' message. Neither qualitative dynamic semantics, nor the quantitative approach of [van Rooy 2000] can render acknowledgement acts relevant in the sense of the Gricean rational conversation model. It will be argued that the difficulty lies in representations of common ground (CG). The data can be accounted for if we understand CG to be a part of participants' epistemic state, using the Bayesian model.
ILLC
University of Amsterdam

William of Ockham's account on predication

Catarina Dutilh Novaes

The study of some medieval logical systems often leads to the hypothesis that standard predicate logic (SPL) may not be powerful enough to account for them. This is the case namely of William of Ockham. His notion of truth deviates from that of SPL in that it is based on identity of reference, and not on membership to sets, as in the latter. Moreover, his treatment of temporal and modal propositions includes cases which the modal and temporal versions of SPL does not have the expressive power to treat. Hence, a different notation is necessary to reconstruct Ockham's language: we here present a proposal, that we call 'split' notation - "a o b", instead of "B(a)". This alternative notation is not only advantageous from a technical point of view, but it is also more faithful to the philosophical principles underlying Ockham's logic, since its basic elements are terms, and not propositions, as in SPL.
ILLC
University of Amsterdam

The presupposition of counterfactuality

Francesca Panzeri

In the literature on conditionals, it is often noted how there is a close connection between the issue of counterfactuality and that one of morphological mood: the set of Subjunctive mood conditionals nearly coincides with that one of conditionals whose antecedent clause expresses a contrary-to-fact statement. In this paper, I propose to associate to the occurrence of a conditional statement in the Subjunctive mood a “presupposition of counterfactuality”, that is, a clause that explicitly states that its utterance is felicitous only in a context of conversation in which its antecedent clause is believed to be false. I argue that this move is plausible, that is an instance of a more general pattern, and that, together with a refinement of the notion of similarity function, it can correctly account for the problem of presuppositions in counterfactuals that Heim (1992) could only partially solve, and only in an ad hoc manner.
Dipartimento di Filosofia
Universita degli Studi di Milano

Games for generalised quantifiers

Ahti Pietarinen

Contrary to some older opinions, generalised quantifiers do not display any principled hindrance for receiving a game-theoretic interpretation. I shall demonstrate this by formulating semantic game-theoretic rules for various types of generalised quantifiers, both monadic and polyadic. This shows the flexibility of games over relational semantics, while also providing a general account of branching for certain types of generalised quantifiers. One spin-off is a game-theoretic method for dealing with new context-dependent generalised quantifiers such as 'most...the rest' and 'three...the others'.
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex

Distributive po- in Polish

Christopher Piñón

Polish (like comparable Slavic languages) draws a morphosyntactic distinction between imperfective and perfective verbs. Perfective verbs are typically derived from imperfective verbs by the addition of a prefix. One such perfective prefix is `distributive po-', which productively applies to a wide range of imperfective verbs. The intuitive semantic content of po- is that it universally quantifies over the patient argument of the verb that it applies to. In this paper I describe several salient properties of po- and propose an event semantic analysis accounting for them. These properties include the fact that the domain of quantification for po- must contain at least two objects, that the events denoted may not be simultaneous, and that po- does not apply to stative verbs. I show how these properties can be accounted for by treating po- as a modifier of two-place relations between events and (ordinary) objects and by making use of correspondences between event and object mereologies.
Institut für Sprache und Information
Universität Düsseldorf

Semantic restrictions to analogical processes in word formation theory

Irene Rapp

I assume that there are two different methods of word formation: on the one hand there are wordsyntactic rules, on the other hand there are analogical processes. Whereas wordsyntactic rules work by concatenation, analogical processes operate on complex lexical entries by means of substitution or substraction (=back formation). Words formed by analogical processes differ fundamentally from words formed by wordsyntactic rules: First, they can take over an idiomatization of their complex base. Second, their internal structure is not constrained by categorial rules. However, there is one important restriction to analogical processes. Their output has to obey certain semantic restrictions imposed by its category. In particular, argument structure regularities which are due to a specific category must not be violated.
Deutsches Seminar
Universität Tübingen

A one-dimensional choice-function approach to `association with focus'

Ingo Reich

Only, being a focus particle, must be associated with a focus. Since moving the focus constituent to the focus particle leads in general to violations of island constraints, Rooth~(1984) proposed a two-dimensional \textsl{in situ} semantics for focus. It turned out, however, that this semantics leads to exactly the same violations in more complex cases. In this talk, I propose another \textsl{in situ} analysis of focus that avoids this consequence. It is based on a one-dimensional structured meaning approach to the interpretation of focus-background structures, but makes crucial use of choice functions. As a direct consequence, focus, indefinites and \textit{wh}-prases can be considered as constituting a natural class of island insensitive operators, each of which introduces a choice function that undergoes binding during the interpretational process.
Sonderforschungsbereich 340
Universität Tübingen

The question of the three condemned men

Robert van Rooy

In van Rooy (Amsterdam Coll: 1999) I showed that by relating questions to decision problems we can determine the utility of unambiguous questions (i.e. partitions), and use it to resolve the underspecification of interrogative sentences. In this talk the analysis will be extended to enable it (i) to determine also the relevance of non-partitional questions (mention-some questions, conditional questions, and questions when it is expected that the respondent won't be cooperative), and (ii) show that the resulting analysis gives a satisfactory account of the traditional philosophical puzzle of the three condemned men.
ILLC
University of Amsterdam

Semantic uniformity

Philippe Schlenker

Several analogies have been noted over the years between the way natural language refers to individuals, to times, and to possible worlds. Thus Partee 1973, 1984 observed that the notion of `anaphora' extends beyond the domain of individuals, and that tenses can be construed as temporal pronouns; Stone 1997 extended this insight to mood (construed as a modal pronoun). We argue that these are not just analogies, and that in fact a single interpretive system underlies reference to individuals, times and possible worlds. Specifically, we claim (i) that the interpretable features (e.g. +/-1st person) found in one domain are found in every other domain as well, and (ii) that in each domain the interpretive rules are the same. A weak and a strong version of the hypothesis are discussed, with arguments drawn from indexicality, sequence phenomena, logophoricity, quantification and non-monotonicity.
Department of Linguistics
University of Southern California

Russian li and the syntactic and semantic interpretation of ForceP and FocusP in the left periphery

Kerstin Schwabe

The talk aims to show that there is a need for functional categories as Force Phrase and Focus Phrase in the left periphery of a clause to account for the syntactic and semantic interaction beween sentence type and information structure. The interaction of interrogativity and information structure is well observable in Russian where the particle li may indicate interrogativity as well as narrow focus. If the li is cliticized on to an XP we regard this constituent as a complex operator that has to do two jobs. Firstly, it structures a proposition into a background and a focus part and relates this structured proposition to its contextually given alternatives. Secondly, it converts the (now structured) proposition into a function.

Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft

Temporal adverbials, conditional forms and the notion of `reference time'

Benjamin Shaer

In this paper, I argue that (i) the interpretation of conditional perfect (CP) forms and (ii) possible tense-temporal adverbial (TA) combinations provide evidence for the introduction of two RTs into the analysis of the English tense system. Significantly, however, these RTs figure in a treatment of tenses rather different from those offered in Kamp & Reyle's (1993) well-known analysis of this system. In particular, these two RTs (i) are part of the syntactically-specified temporal structure of every tense; (ii) figure in uniform temporal specifications for each tense; (iii) are independent of a sentence's `temporal perspective time'; and finally, (iv) are only indirectly involved in `narrative progression', the proper treatment of which appears to require a far more elaborate `temporal reasoning' approach along the lines developed by Lascarides & Asher (1993), among others.
Department of Applied Language Studies
Brock University

Aspectual duality, quantification and focus

Hans Smessaert

The view that the four adverbials "not yet" ("nog niet"), "already" ("al"), "still" ("nog"), "no longer" ("niet meer") constitute a duality square running parallel to the square of Predicate Logic continues to be controversial (eg. Löbner:1990,1999 vs Van der Auwera:1993,1998). Although this paper basically agrees with the critics, it argues for a much richer notion of aspectual duality in Dutch. Two paradigms of eight adverbials are discussed, one expressing quantification, as in "al lang" ("already for a long time") vs "nog maar net" ("only just"), the other expressing focus meaning, as in "nog altijd niet" ("still not") vs "al bijna" ("already almost"). These two types are analysed along four and five dimensions of polarity respectively. Both within the quantificational and the focus group the different kinds of internal, external and dual negation are modelled in terms of switching operations on various polarity dimensions. Furthermore, the mechanisms of quantificational duality and focus duality are shown to intertwine straightforwardly.
Departement Linguistiek
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Restricted and unrestricted negative determiners

Lucia M. Tovena

This paper highlights shortcomings in Chierchia's (1998) classification with respect to negative determiners. We consider two unrestricted determiners, namely English `no', for which the proposed function $\pi$ on the left argument is too coarse grained, since the difference in morphological number of the noun in this position is not devoid of interpretive import, and Italian `niente', for which $\pi$ seems inadequate too. We consider also two singular determiners, namely Italian `nessuno' and French `aucun', whose distribution cannot be captured with Chierchia's domain restrictor S. Indeed, they appear to instantiate a type predicted to be impossible, as they combine with singular count and mass nouns. Furthermore, overlaps between the two Italian determiners do not match predictions.
UFR Angellier
Universite de Lille III

The church in the south of fleet street: Representing indeterminate extensions in space and time

Martin Trautwein

Whenever natural language refers to entities which exceed the range of human perception, the lexicalized type concepts of objects and eventualities denote only essential or typical parts of the referent, such that just substantial properties - the material constitution of objects and the crucial stage of eventualities - are specified. While this phenomenon is a special case for nominal reference to objects, propositions under normal contextual conditions generally denote just typical parts of eventualities. Ontologies with only discrete entities as basic elements of conceptual domains are inadequate to represent the vagueness and underspecification of these structures. The presentation assumes non-discrete structures (blurs) as building blocks for large and complex units of these domains. Blurs also allow for underspecification with regard to structural properties.
Zentrum für höhere Studien
Universität Leipzig

Non-given definites

Carla Umbach

In general there seems to be no one to one correspondence between focus and new information, and background and old information, respectively. With respect to noun phrases, however, there are various results showing that accenting does have an influence on the NP's reference. This paper advocates to accept "non-given definites" as a regular class of definites and shows that they need a foccussed part in their description. Together with Krifka's "non-novel indefinites", which have to be deaccented, they support the idea that givenness or novelty of an (in)definite is not due to the article but determined by the information structure within the NP's descriptive content.
Institut für Linguistik
Universität Leipzig

Observations on opaque verbs

Ede Zimmermann

Opaque verbs are verbs whose nominal arguments may have a non-specific (or notional, or opaque, or de dicto) interpretation alongside the logically more straightforward specific (objectual/transparent/de re) construal. Cases in point are "owe", "seek", and "resemble". There are various logico-semantic analyses of opaque verbs that mainly differ in the type of denotation they attribute to (the predicate underlying) the verb. In this talk I want to highlight some problems that, in some way or other, come up in all these analyses and whose solutions are largely (though not entirely) independent of details of type assignment. More specifically, I will address the following four questions: Institut für Deutsche Sprache und Literatur II
Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität

A different reading each time -- the semantics of German distributive `jeweils'

Malte Zimmermann

I present an analysis of the German distributive element jeweils 'each / each time'. I argue that there are two lexical entries for jeweils, each with its own selection requirements. On its event-quantifier reading, jeweils selects a proposition-denoting expression (IP or VP) as its argument, and distributes over a (contextually given) set of events. On its individual-quantifier reading, jeweils selects three arguments (a numeral NP denotation, a verb denotation, and a plural NP denotation), and distributes over the plural NP. The proposed analysis of jeweils explains why sentences containing this item are ambiguous in some cases, and why only one of the readings is available in others. The analysis is fully compositional. Furthermore, it may be extended to account for the semantic double nature of other adverbial / adnominal expressions, such as wenigstens 'at least', or h\"ochstens 'at most'.
Faculteit der Letteren
Universiteit van Amsterdam

Interrcategorial entailment and semantic relations between non-declaratives

R. Zuber

Intercategorial entailment (IC-entailment) is an entailment between expressions of different, but functionally related, categories. Functional expression F of the category A/B IC-entails expression E of the cateory A iff F(X) entails E, for any X of the category B. (Similarily for "E IC-entails F"). This definition will be applied to describe some semantic relations between non-declaratives by considering non-declaratives as denoting sets of properties corresponding to predicates into which different non-declaratives can be embedded.
CNRS
Universite Paris 7
Balder ten Cate & Paul J.E. Dekker