In this paper, we explore the behavior of one complex disjunction in Russian that has some special properties that set it apart from other simple and complex disjunctions: it never gives rise to free choice inferences in environments in which other disjunctions do and under universal quantifiers it behaves different from other disjunctions. We show that the data resist an analysis in terms of wide scope disjunction and propose that those special properties are due to obligatory ignorance inferences associated with this disjunction. The paper provides one more argument for a grammatical theory of ignorance along the lines of ( 7).
{"title":"Russian Disjunction To li To li and Obligatory Ignorance","authors":"Natalia Ivlieva","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffae013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffae013","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we explore the behavior of one complex disjunction in Russian that has some special properties that set it apart from other simple and complex disjunctions: it never gives rise to free choice inferences in environments in which other disjunctions do and under universal quantifiers it behaves different from other disjunctions. We show that the data resist an analysis in terms of wide scope disjunction and propose that those special properties are due to obligatory ignorance inferences associated with this disjunction. The paper provides one more argument for a grammatical theory of ignorance along the lines of ( 7).","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142193576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Negation typically has a contradictory effect on interpretation. At the same time, negated statements are often underinformative, which leaves room for pragmatic effects such as negative strengthening, where negated adjectives are pragmatically strengthened to convey their antonym (e.g., not large $leadsto $ ‘small’). Here, we investigate a theoretical controversy relating to the mechanism deriving negative strengthening effects. According to Horn's (1989) account negative strengthening arises on the basis of social considerations, whereas on Krifka's (2007) account it arises via complexity-based considerations, yielding distinct interpretation patterns. We applied Horn's (1989) and Krifka's (2007) accounts to three distinct cases of negated antonymic adjectives: informationally weak relative adjectives, informationally weak absolute adjectives, and informationally strong gradable adjectives. Our experimental results demonstrate different interpretation patterns for weak relative (large/small) and weak absolute gradable adjectives (clean/dirty) under negation. These results confirm the predictions stemming from Horn's (1989) account of negative strengthening effects and highlight the importance of a semantic extension gap between antonymic predicates for the occurrence of negative strengthening. In contrast, our experimental findings concerning strong antonymic adjectives (e.g., not gigantic/not tiny) prima facie present challenges for Horn's (1989) analysis, while they do not endorse any alternative account.
{"title":"The Interpretation of Relative and Absolute Adjectives Under Negation","authors":"Stavroula Alexandropoulou, Nicole Gotzner","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffae012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffae012","url":null,"abstract":"Negation typically has a contradictory effect on interpretation. At the same time, negated statements are often underinformative, which leaves room for pragmatic effects such as negative strengthening, where negated adjectives are pragmatically strengthened to convey their antonym (e.g., not large $leadsto $ ‘small’). Here, we investigate a theoretical controversy relating to the mechanism deriving negative strengthening effects. According to Horn's (1989) account negative strengthening arises on the basis of social considerations, whereas on Krifka's (2007) account it arises via complexity-based considerations, yielding distinct interpretation patterns. We applied Horn's (1989) and Krifka's (2007) accounts to three distinct cases of negated antonymic adjectives: informationally weak relative adjectives, informationally weak absolute adjectives, and informationally strong gradable adjectives. Our experimental results demonstrate different interpretation patterns for weak relative (large/small) and weak absolute gradable adjectives (clean/dirty) under negation. These results confirm the predictions stemming from Horn's (1989) account of negative strengthening effects and highlight the importance of a semantic extension gap between antonymic predicates for the occurrence of negative strengthening. In contrast, our experimental findings concerning strong antonymic adjectives (e.g., not gigantic/not tiny) prima facie present challenges for Horn's (1989) analysis, while they do not endorse any alternative account.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":"60 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142193558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
X-marked want is identified by von Fintel & Iatridou (2023) (vF&I) as one of the crosslinguistic challenges for what they call X-marking, the kind of morphology traditionally referred to as ‘subjunctive’ or ‘counterfactual’. This paper’s main goal is to spell out vF&I’s idea that X-marking on want reflects a widening of want’s quantificational domain, thereby doing the same job as it does in conditionals under an influential view originating with Stalnaker (1975). With Sode (2021), but also Grano & Phillips-Brown (2022), the proposition $phi $ denoted by want’s complement is treated as the antecedent of a “hidden conditional” that Heim (1992) sees in want and desire-ascriptions more generally, a treatment in whose favor vF&I’s Conditional/Desire Pattern provides morphosyntactic evidence. In line with the Stalnakerian view, but also more recent ones under which X-marking is semantically vacuous (Crowley 2022; Leahy 2011, 2018), X-marking on want is treated as reflecting the absence of a presuppositional constraint that the O-marked counterpart comes with: a limitation of closest antecedent-worlds to the attitude holder’s belief set.
von Fintel & Iatridou (2023)（vF&I）认为，X-标记的 "想要"（X-marked want）是他们所谓的 "X-标记"（X-marking）的跨语言挑战之一，也就是传统上被称为 "从句"（subjunctive）或 "反事实"（counterfactual）的形态学。本文的主要目的是阐明 vF&I 的观点，即 "想要 "上的 X 标记反映了 "想要 "的量词域的扩大，从而与 Stalnaker（1975 年）提出的一种有影响力的观点在条件式中所做的工作相同。在 Sode（2021）和 Grano & Phillips-Brown（2022）那里，want 的补语所表示的命题 $phi $ 被视为 Heim（1992）在 want 和 desire-ascriptions 中更普遍地看到的 "隐藏条件 "的前置词，vF&I 的条件/欲望模式为这种处理提供了形态句法证据。与 Stalnaker 的观点一致，也与最近的观点一致，即 X 标记在语义上是空洞的（Crowley 2022；Leahy 2011，2018），"想要 "上的 X 标记被视为反映了没有 O 标记对应物所附带的预设限制：将最接近的前因世界限制在态度持有者的信念集合中。
{"title":"X- vs. O-marked want","authors":"Alexander Wimmer","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffae005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffae005","url":null,"abstract":"X-marked want is identified by von Fintel & Iatridou (2023) (vF&I) as one of the crosslinguistic challenges for what they call X-marking, the kind of morphology traditionally referred to as ‘subjunctive’ or ‘counterfactual’. This paper’s main goal is to spell out vF&I’s idea that X-marking on want reflects a widening of want’s quantificational domain, thereby doing the same job as it does in conditionals under an influential view originating with Stalnaker (1975). With Sode (2021), but also Grano & Phillips-Brown (2022), the proposition $phi $ denoted by want’s complement is treated as the antecedent of a “hidden conditional” that Heim (1992) sees in want and desire-ascriptions more generally, a treatment in whose favor vF&I’s Conditional/Desire Pattern provides morphosyntactic evidence. In line with the Stalnakerian view, but also more recent ones under which X-marking is semantically vacuous (Crowley 2022; Leahy 2011, 2018), X-marking on want is treated as reflecting the absence of a presuppositional constraint that the O-marked counterpart comes with: a limitation of closest antecedent-worlds to the attitude holder’s belief set.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142193559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This work investigates absolute adjectives in the not very construction and how their pragmatic interpretation depends on the evaluative polarity and the scale structure of their antonymic pairs. Our experimental study reveals that evaluatively positive adjectives (clean) are more likely to be strengthened than evaluatively negative ones (dirty), and that maximum standard adjectives (clean or closed) are more likely to be strengthened than minimum standard ones (dirty or open). Our findings suggest that both evaluative polarity and scale structure drive the asymmetric interpretation of gradable adjectives under negation. Overall, our work adds to the growing literature on the interplay between pragmatic inference, valence and semantic meaning.
这项研究调查了 not very 结构中的绝对形容词，以及它们的语用解释如何取决于其反义词对的评价极性和尺度结构。我们的实验研究表明，评价积极的形容词（clean）比评价消极的形容词（dirty）更有可能得到加强，而最高标准的形容词（clean 或封闭的）比最低标准的形容词（dirty 或开放的）更有可能得到加强。我们的研究结果表明，评价极性和量表结构共同驱动了否定条件下可分级形容词的非对称解释。总之，我们的研究为越来越多的关于语用推断、价效和语义之间相互作用的文献增添了新的内容。
{"title":"Negative strengthening: The interplay of evaluative polarity and scale structure","authors":"Nicole Gotzner, Diana Mazzarella","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffae004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffae004","url":null,"abstract":"This work investigates absolute adjectives in the not very construction and how their pragmatic interpretation depends on the evaluative polarity and the scale structure of their antonymic pairs. Our experimental study reveals that evaluatively positive adjectives (clean) are more likely to be strengthened than evaluatively negative ones (dirty), and that maximum standard adjectives (clean or closed) are more likely to be strengthened than minimum standard ones (dirty or open). Our findings suggest that both evaluative polarity and scale structure drive the asymmetric interpretation of gradable adjectives under negation. Overall, our work adds to the growing literature on the interplay between pragmatic inference, valence and semantic meaning.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140883510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper reports an investigation into the nature of Negative Polarity Item (NPI) licensing conditions from a processing perspective. We found that the processing cost of Downward Entailingness (a k a the Monotonicity Effect) is determined by the number of monotonicity reversals of NPI domains, rather than by the number of Downward-Entailing (DE) operators. This conclusion is not based on the standard judgment paradigm, but rather, on the measurement of continuous variables (error rates, Reaction Times (RTs)) in a verification task, in which the truth value of a sentence is determined against a scenario. We conducted two experiments with sentences that contained one or two DE operators, which featured in different syntactic configurations. We explored how RT is affected by the manipulation of both the number of DE operators, and the syntactic environments in which they reside. We ran these experiments in Hebrew and in English, with different participant populations and different testing methods. Despite the linguistic subtlety of the theoretical issues, our results were remarkably sharp, leading to two firm conclusions: (i) that processing time is determined not by the number of DE operators, but rather, by the monotonicity of the minimal constituent in which they reside; (ii) that DE-ness is not a property of operators, but of environments. We show how our results bear directly on the current debate about the nature of monotonicity, which we describe below. Finally, we provide quantitative tests of alternative, non-semantic explanations, and show how our results do not support them.
本文报告了一项从加工角度对负极性项目（NPI）许可条件性质的调查。我们发现，"向下必然性 "的处理成本（又称 "单调性效应"）是由 NPI 领域的单调性反转数量决定的，而不是由 "向下必然性"（DE）运算符的数量决定的。这一结论并非基于标准的判断范式，而是基于验证任务中对连续变量（错误率、反应时间（RT））的测量，在验证任务中，句子的真值是根据情景来确定的。我们用包含一个或两个 DE 运算符的句子进行了两次实验，这些句子具有不同的句法结构。我们探讨了语法运算符的数量以及它们所处的句法环境对 RT 的影响。我们用希伯来语和英语进行了这些实验，使用了不同的参与者群体和不同的测试方法。尽管理论问题在语言学上非常微妙，但我们的结果却非常清晰，并得出了两个坚定的结论：(i) 处理时间不是由 DE 操作符的数量决定的，而是由它们所在的最小成分的单调性决定的；(ii) DE-ness 不是操作符的属性，而是环境的属性。我们将展示我们的结果如何直接影响到当前关于单调性本质的争论，我们将在下文中对此进行描述。最后，我们将对其他非语义解释进行定量检验，并说明我们的结果如何不支持这些解释。
{"title":"The Domains of Monotonicity Processing","authors":"I-An Tan, Nir Segal, Yosef Grodzinsky","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffae003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffae003","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reports an investigation into the nature of Negative Polarity Item (NPI) licensing conditions from a processing perspective. We found that the processing cost of Downward Entailingness (a k a the Monotonicity Effect) is determined by the number of monotonicity reversals of NPI domains, rather than by the number of Downward-Entailing (DE) operators. This conclusion is not based on the standard judgment paradigm, but rather, on the measurement of continuous variables (error rates, Reaction Times (RTs)) in a verification task, in which the truth value of a sentence is determined against a scenario. We conducted two experiments with sentences that contained one or two DE operators, which featured in different syntactic configurations. We explored how RT is affected by the manipulation of both the number of DE operators, and the syntactic environments in which they reside. We ran these experiments in Hebrew and in English, with different participant populations and different testing methods. Despite the linguistic subtlety of the theoretical issues, our results were remarkably sharp, leading to two firm conclusions: (i) that processing time is determined not by the number of DE operators, but rather, by the monotonicity of the minimal constituent in which they reside; (ii) that DE-ness is not a property of operators, but of environments. We show how our results bear directly on the current debate about the nature of monotonicity, which we describe below. Finally, we provide quantitative tests of alternative, non-semantic explanations, and show how our results do not support them.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140831996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Paul Marty, Jacopo Romoli, Yasutada Sudo, Richard Breheny
Sentences involving embedded disjunctions give rise to distributive and free choice inferences. These inferences exhibit certain characteristics of Scalar Implicatures (SIs) and some researchers have proposed to treat them as such. This proposal, however, faces an important challenge: experimental results have shown that the two inferences are more robust, faster to process, and easier to acquire than regular SIs. A common response to this challenge has been to hypothesise that such discrepancies among different types of SIs stem from the type of alternative used to derive them. That is, in contrast to regular SIs, distributive and free choice inferences are computed on the basis of sub-constituent alternatives, which are alternatives that are formed without lexical substitutions. This paper reports on a series of experiments that tested this hypothesis by comparing positive, disjunctive sentences giving rise to the two inference types to variants of these sentences involving either negation and conjunction, or negation and disjunction, for which the implicature approach predicts similar inferences on the basis of the same type of alternatives. The investigation also included deontic and epistemic modality, different positions of negation, and was extended to similar comparisons with simple disjunctions and the related ignorance inferences they give rise to. Our results show that, while the inferences are indeed quite robust in the disjunctive cases, regardless of whether negation is present or not, the inferences that their negative, conjunctive variants give rise to are not. These findings are challenging for the hypothesis that the type of alternatives involved in SI computation is a major factor responsible for differences in robustness. We outline two possible alternative explanations of our data.
涉及嵌入式分隔符的句子会产生分配推理和自由选择推理。这些推论表现出标量含义（SIs）的某些特征，因此一些研究人员提议将它们视为标量含义。然而，这一提议面临着一个重要的挑战：实验结果表明，这两种推论比常规的 SI 更稳健，处理速度更快，也更容易获得。应对这一挑战的常见方法是假设不同类型的 SI 之间的这种差异源于用于推导它们的替代方法的类型。也就是说，与常规 SI 不同，分配式推理和自由选择式推理是基于子成分替代物计算的，而子成分替代物是在没有词汇替换的情况下形成的。本文报告了一系列实验，通过比较产生这两种推理类型的正向、分词句子和涉及否定和连词或否定和分词的这些句子的变体来验证这一假设。调查还包括谓词性和认识性模态、否定的不同位置，并扩展到与简单分词及其引起的相关无知推理的类似比较。我们的研究结果表明，虽然在分词情况下，无论否定存在与否，推论都是相当稳健的，但其否定的连接词变体所引起的推论却并非如此。这些发现对以下假设提出了挑战：即 SI 计算中涉及的替代变量的类型是造成稳健性差异的主要因素。我们概述了我们的数据的两种可能的替代解释。
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This paper is concerned with the interpretation of the exclamation point in German; for example, Es hat geschneit! ‘It has been snowing!’. I argue that the exclamation point contributes a lexical operator for verum at the layer of writing acts. Specifically, it introduces the writer’s wish to ensure the recognition of the writing act in its scope. This lexicon-based proposal builds on a lexicon-based analysis of verum focus. However, while verum focus is related to the propositional layer, the exclamation point is argued to relate to the act layer. The following advantages are defended: (i) The proposal accounts for both the functional kinship between exclamation points and verum focus and their distributional differences. On the one hand, both means introduce affirmative emphasis by a bouletic attitude; on the other hand, the exclamation point has a much wider distribution than verum focus, as it is not bound to contexts that provide a controversy between a proposition and its negation. (ii) The difference in semantic scope can be traced back to a structural difference. While verum focus is integrated into its host clause, exclamation points occupy a peripheral structural position, which is typical of act modifiers. (iii) The lexicon-based approach to the interpretation of exclamation points has noteworthy broader implications. It provides an independent cross-modal piece of evidence in favor of a lexicon-based analysis of verum focus instead of a focus-based one. Furthermore, it is amenable to a formal compositional implementation. This implementation comprises first steps toward a formal model of writing acts in terms of Commitment Space Semantics and advances the general hypothesis that the graphematic form licenses a systematic mapping from form to meaning in its own right.
本文关注德语中感叹号的解释，例如 Es hat geschneit！下雪了！"。我认为，感叹号在写作行为的层面上为 verum 提供了一个词汇运算符。具体来说，它引入了作者的愿望，以确保写作行为在其范围内得到认可。这一基于词法的建议建立在对 verum focus 的词法分析基础之上。不过，verum focus 与命题层有关，而感叹号则与行为层有关。该建议具有以下优点：(i) 既解释了感叹号和动词焦点在功能上的亲缘关系，又解释了它们在分布上的差异。一方面，这两种手段都是通过一种 "口 "的态度来引入肯定强调；另一方面，感叹号的分布范围比 verum focus 要广得多，因为它并不局限于在命题与其否定之间存在争议的语境。(ii) 语义范围的差异可以追溯到结构上的差异。verum focus 与主句融为一体，而感叹号则处于外围结构位置，是典型的行为修饰语。(iii) 基于词典的感叹号解释方法具有更广泛的意义。它提供了一个独立的跨模态证据，支持对动词焦点进行基于词典的分析，而不是基于焦点的分析。此外，它还适合于正式的构词法实施。这种实现方式包含了从承诺空间语义学角度建立书写行为正式模型的第一步，并推进了一般假设，即图形形式本身允许从形式到意义的系统映射。
{"title":"Emphasizing Writing Acts: The Exclamation Point in German as a Lexical Operator for Verum","authors":"Sebastian Bücking","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffad020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffad020","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is concerned with the interpretation of the exclamation point in German; for example, Es hat geschneit! ‘It has been snowing!’. I argue that the exclamation point contributes a lexical operator for verum at the layer of writing acts. Specifically, it introduces the writer’s wish to ensure the recognition of the writing act in its scope. This lexicon-based proposal builds on a lexicon-based analysis of verum focus. However, while verum focus is related to the propositional layer, the exclamation point is argued to relate to the act layer. The following advantages are defended: (i) The proposal accounts for both the functional kinship between exclamation points and verum focus and their distributional differences. On the one hand, both means introduce affirmative emphasis by a bouletic attitude; on the other hand, the exclamation point has a much wider distribution than verum focus, as it is not bound to contexts that provide a controversy between a proposition and its negation. (ii) The difference in semantic scope can be traced back to a structural difference. While verum focus is integrated into its host clause, exclamation points occupy a peripheral structural position, which is typical of act modifiers. (iii) The lexicon-based approach to the interpretation of exclamation points has noteworthy broader implications. It provides an independent cross-modal piece of evidence in favor of a lexicon-based analysis of verum focus instead of a focus-based one. Furthermore, it is amenable to a formal compositional implementation. This implementation comprises first steps toward a formal model of writing acts in terms of Commitment Space Semantics and advances the general hypothesis that the graphematic form licenses a systematic mapping from form to meaning in its own right.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139770581","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We describe and analyze the semantics of rationale and precautioning clauses (i.e. in order to- and lest-clauses) through a detailed case study of two operators in A’ingae (or Cofán, iso 639-3: con, an Amazonian isolate): the infinitive -ye ‘inf’ and the apprehensional -sa’ne ‘appr.’ We provide a new account of rationale semantics and the first formal account of precautioning semantics. We propose that in structures such as [$p$ [(in order) to$q$]] or [$p$ [$q$-ye]], the rationale operator (underlined) encodes modal semantics where the goal worlds of the actor responsible for $p$ achieve $q$. In structures such as [$p$ [lest$q$]] or [$p$ [$q$-sa’ne]], the precautioning operator encodes modal semantics where the actor’s goal worlds avoid a recoverable situation $r$ which entails $q$ ($rRightarrow q$). We observe and account for three apparent asymmetries within the domain of rationale and precautioning semantics, which we dub precautioning semantics asymmetry, rationale polarity asymmetry, and precautioning encoding asymmetry. We thus elucidate the relation between rationale and precautioning clauses and make substantial predictions with respect to the cross-linguistic inventories of rationale and precautioning operators.
我们通过对 A'ingae（或 Cofán，iso 639-3：con，一种亚马逊孤立语）中的两个运算符：不定式 -ye 'inf' 和附加语 -sa'ne 'appr'的详细案例研究，描述并分析了理由句和预防句（即 in order to- 和 lest-clauses）的语义。我们对理性语义进行了新的阐述，并首次对预防语义进行了正式阐述。我们提出，在[$p$[（为了）达到$q$]]或[$p$[$q$-ye]]这样的结构中，理据运算符（下划线）编码模态语义，其中负责$p$的行为者的目标世界达到了$q$。在[$p$[lest$q$]]或[$p$[$q$-sa'ne]]等结构中，预防操作符编码模态语义，即行为者的目标世界避免了包含$q$的可恢复情况$r$（$rRightarrow q$）。我们观察到并解释了理由和预防语义学领域中的三种明显的不对称性，我们称之为预防语义学不对称性、理由极性不对称性和预防编码不对称性。因此，我们阐明了合理性和预防性分句之间的关系，并对合理性和预防性运算符的跨语言清单做出了实质性的预测。
{"title":"Rationale and Precautioning Clauses: Insights from A’ingae","authors":"Maksymilian Dąbkowski, Scott AnderBois","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffac012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffac012","url":null,"abstract":"We describe and analyze the semantics of rationale and precautioning clauses (i.e. in order to- and lest-clauses) through a detailed case study of two operators in A’ingae (or Cofán, iso 639-3: con, an Amazonian isolate): the infinitive -ye ‘inf’ and the apprehensional -sa’ne ‘appr.’ We provide a new account of rationale semantics and the first formal account of precautioning semantics. We propose that in structures such as [$p$ [(in order) to$q$]] or [$p$ [$q$-ye]], the rationale operator (underlined) encodes modal semantics where the goal worlds of the actor responsible for $p$ achieve $q$. In structures such as [$p$ [lest$q$]] or [$p$ [$q$-sa’ne]], the precautioning operator encodes modal semantics where the actor’s goal worlds avoid a recoverable situation $r$ which entails $q$ ($rRightarrow q$). We observe and account for three apparent asymmetries within the domain of rationale and precautioning semantics, which we dub precautioning semantics asymmetry, rationale polarity asymmetry, and precautioning encoding asymmetry. We thus elucidate the relation between rationale and precautioning clauses and make substantial predictions with respect to the cross-linguistic inventories of rationale and precautioning operators.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":"167 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139679936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We present the result of a corpus study on the difference between quelques ‘a few’ and plusieurs ‘several’. On this basis, we propose a categorization of the nouns significantly attracted by quelques and argue for an understanding of the distinction in topological terms ( Grimm, 2012a, 2012b; Wągiel, 2018, 2019). A series of observations, focusing successively on the aggregate nouns (pomme de terre ‘potato’), a sub-class of ‘fence’ nouns (gribouillis ‘scrawl’) and the mass plurals (victuailles ‘victuals’) leads us to argue that quelques Npl ‘a few Npl’ is a ‘clustered’ plural, which is true of a (more or less) cohesive set of connected entities, while plusieurs ‘several’ quantifies over sets of maximally strongly self-connected (mssc) entities. We will show that this principle can also be generalized to the temporal domain. We shall see that this distinction between the two determiners has numerous consequences on atomicity, the mass-count distinction, the possibility of counting individuals, and especially, on the existence of an individuation scale in the nominal domain.
我们介绍了一项关于 quelques "几个 "和 plusieurs "几个 "之间区别的语料库研究结果。在此基础上，我们提出了 "quelques "所吸引的名词分类，并主张从拓扑学角度来理解这种区别（Grimm, 2012a, 2012b; Wągiel, 2018, 2019）。我们先后对集合名词（pomme de terre，"土豆"）、"栅栏 "名词的一个子类（gribouillis，"涂鸦"）和大众复数（victuailles，"沧海"）进行了一系列观察，最终得出结论：quelques Npl，"几个 Npl "是一个 "聚类 "复数、而 plusieurs'几个'则是对最大强自连接（mssc）实体集合的量化。我们将证明，这一原则也可以推广到时间领域。我们将看到，两个定语之间的这种区别对原子性、质量-计数区别、计数个体的可能性，尤其是对名分域中个体化尺度的存在有诸多影响。
{"title":"Quelques in French: a Clustered Plural","authors":"Philippe Gréa","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffad013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffad013","url":null,"abstract":"We present the result of a corpus study on the difference between quelques ‘a few’ and plusieurs ‘several’. On this basis, we propose a categorization of the nouns significantly attracted by quelques and argue for an understanding of the distinction in topological terms ( Grimm, 2012a, 2012b; Wągiel, 2018, 2019). A series of observations, focusing successively on the aggregate nouns (pomme de terre ‘potato’), a sub-class of ‘fence’ nouns (gribouillis ‘scrawl’) and the mass plurals (victuailles ‘victuals’) leads us to argue that quelques Npl ‘a few Npl’ is a ‘clustered’ plural, which is true of a (more or less) cohesive set of connected entities, while plusieurs ‘several’ quantifies over sets of maximally strongly self-connected (mssc) entities. We will show that this principle can also be generalized to the temporal domain. We shall see that this distinction between the two determiners has numerous consequences on atomicity, the mass-count distinction, the possibility of counting individuals, and especially, on the existence of an individuation scale in the nominal domain.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139679964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Justyna Grudzińska, Aleksandra Siemieniuk, Aleksander Leczkowski
Previous research has indicated that abstract grammatical rules and forms fall short of predicting quantifier scope and that lexical/pragmatic knowledge plays a significant part in quantifier scope disambiguation (QSD). More recent works have argued that world knowledge in the form of relations among objects may be salient to QSD. This paper contributes to this line of research by providing support to the claim that there is a connection between our lexical knowledge about preposition meanings and quantifier scope. More specifically, we propose that certain prepositional senses encode dependency relations that have an effect on scope-taking preferences. For example, the preposition of expressing ‘part-whole sense’ contributes to our choice of the inverse scope reading for the construction a day of every month by introducing a dependency between wholes (months) and their respective parts (days). Quantifying over this dependency yields the inverse scope reading: for every month, there is a different day that belongs to it (every month > a day). Furthermore, universal quantification in locative and temporal prepositional phrases tends to support inverse scope. For example, the locative preposition on — as in a store on each side of the street — implies ‘disjointness’ (objects do not occupy more than one place at a time), and hence can be interpreted as a dependency between each side of the street and the respective stores located on them. Quantifying over this dependency yields the inverse scope reading: for each side of the street, there is a different store located on it (each side of the street > a store). For studying the connection between prepositional senses and quantifier scope in the wild, we use a scope-disambiguated corpus created by AnderBois et al. ( 2012), additionally annotated with prepositional senses using the Semantic Network of Adposition and Case Supersenses (SNACS) scheme proposed in Schneider et al. ( 2018, 2020). The results of the corpus study combined with psycholinguistic experiments support the claim made here that certain prepositional senses are strong predictors of quantifier scope.
以往的研究表明，抽象的语法规则和形式无法预测量词的范围，词汇/语法知识在量词范围消歧（QSD）中发挥着重要作用。最近的研究认为，以对象间关系为形式的世界知识可能对 QSD 有突出作用。本文为这一研究方向做出了贡献，为我们关于介词意义的词汇知识与量词范围之间存在联系的说法提供了支持。更具体地说，我们提出某些介词意义编码的依存关系会对范围选择偏好产生影响。例如，表达 "部分-整体意义 "的介词 "of "通过在整体（月）和各自的部分（日）之间引入依存关系，有助于我们为结构 "a day of every month "选择逆范围读法。对这种依存关系进行量化，就会产生逆范围解读：每个月都有属于它的不同的一天（每个月> 一天）。此外，位置介词短语和时间介词短语中的普遍定量也倾向于支持逆范围。例如，位置介词 on--如街道两边各有一家商店--意味着 "不连续性"（物体在同一时间不会占据一个以上的位置），因此可以解释为街道两边的商店之间的依存关系。对这种依存关系进行量化，可以得到反范围解读：街道的每一边都有一家不同的商店（街道的每一边都有一家商店）。为了研究介词词义和量词范围之间的联系，我们使用了 AnderBois 等人（2012 年）创建的范围消歧语料库，并使用 Schneider 等人（2018 年，2020 年）提出的 "介词词义和大小写超义语义网络（SNACS）"方案对该语料库进行了介词词义注释。语料库研究结果与心理语言学实验相结合，支持了本文的观点，即某些介词意义是量词范围的有力预测因素。
{"title":"Lexicon and Logic: A Corpus-Based Investigation Into a Connection Between Prepositional Senses and Quantifier Scope","authors":"Justyna Grudzińska, Aleksandra Siemieniuk, Aleksander Leczkowski","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffad019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffad019","url":null,"abstract":"Previous research has indicated that abstract grammatical rules and forms fall short of predicting quantifier scope and that lexical/pragmatic knowledge plays a significant part in quantifier scope disambiguation (QSD). More recent works have argued that world knowledge in the form of relations among objects may be salient to QSD. This paper contributes to this line of research by providing support to the claim that there is a connection between our lexical knowledge about preposition meanings and quantifier scope. More specifically, we propose that certain prepositional senses encode dependency relations that have an effect on scope-taking preferences. For example, the preposition of expressing ‘part-whole sense’ contributes to our choice of the inverse scope reading for the construction a day of every month by introducing a dependency between wholes (months) and their respective parts (days). Quantifying over this dependency yields the inverse scope reading: for every month, there is a different day that belongs to it (every month > a day). Furthermore, universal quantification in locative and temporal prepositional phrases tends to support inverse scope. For example, the locative preposition on — as in a store on each side of the street — implies ‘disjointness’ (objects do not occupy more than one place at a time), and hence can be interpreted as a dependency between each side of the street and the respective stores located on them. Quantifying over this dependency yields the inverse scope reading: for each side of the street, there is a different store located on it (each side of the street > a store). For studying the connection between prepositional senses and quantifier scope in the wild, we use a scope-disambiguated corpus created by AnderBois et al. ( 2012), additionally annotated with prepositional senses using the Semantic Network of Adposition and Case Supersenses (SNACS) scheme proposed in Schneider et al. ( 2018, 2020). The results of the corpus study combined with psycholinguistic experiments support the claim made here that certain prepositional senses are strong predictors of quantifier scope.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139658989","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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