An Experimental Study of Polysemy and Copredication in Container and Group Nominals
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ SORTING A COMPLEX WORLD: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF POLYSEMY AND COPREDICATION IN CONTAINER AND GROUP NOMINALS A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in LINGUISTICS by Karen Duek Silveira Bueno September 2017 The Dissertation of Karen Duek Sil- veira Bueno is approved: Professor Adrian Brasoveanu, Chair Professor Donka Farkas Associate Professor Pranav Anand Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright c by Karen Duek Silveira Bueno 2017 Table of Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 The ambiguity of container phrases is a type of polysemy 13 2.1 Introduction . 13 2.1.1 Defining the class of container nouns . 15 2.2 A basic two-way split: Container vs. Contents . 20 2.2.1 Selection . 21 2.2.2 Contextual plausibility/world knowledge . 28 2.3 The container reading . 32 2.3.1 The containment relation . 32 2.3.2 What is counted . 34 2.3.3 Anaphoric possibilities . 35 2.4 The contents readings: measure vs. concrete portion . 36 2.4.1 The containment relation . 38 2.4.2 What is counted . 41 2.4.3 Anaphoric possibilities . 43 2.5 Co-predication . 46 2.6 Predictions for co-predication from previous accounts . 49 2.7 Conclusion . 58 3 Experimental evidence for the polysemy of container phrases 62 3.1 Experiment 1: establishing the acceptability of co-predication . 62 3.1.1 Experimental design and materials . 66 3.1.2 Predictions . 69 3.1.3 Participants and procedure . 72 3.1.4 Results and analysis. 72 3.1.5 Discussion . 81 3.2 Experiment 2: container nouns in isolation . 84 3.2.1 Participants and procedure . 85 3.2.2 Design and materials: The effect of number . 85 3.2.3 Results and analysis . 86 iii 3.2.4 Design and materials: The source of polysemy . 87 3.2.5 Results . 90 3.2.6 Discussion . 93 3.3 Experiment 3: strengthening selectional requirements . 97 3.3.1 Participants and procedure . 101 3.3.2 Results . 101 3.3.3 Discussion . 105 4 The ambiguity of committee nouns as a type of polysemy 115 4.1 Introduction . 115 4.2 Defining the class of committee nouns . 121 4.3 The social object interpretation of committee nominals . 130 4.3.1 Selection . 130 4.3.2 Contextual plausibility/World knowledge . 131 4.3.3 Anaphoric possibilities . 133 4.4 The members interpretation of committee nominals . 134 4.4.1 Selection . 134 4.4.2 Contextual plausibility/World knowledge . 137 4.4.3 Anaphoric possibilities . 139 4.5 Co-predication: the nature of the ambiguity of committee nominals . 140 4.6 Predictions for co-predication from previous accounts . 142 5 Experimental evidence for the polysemy of committee nouns 153 5.1 Introduction . 153 5.2 Experimental Design and Materials . 154 5.3 Predictions . 161 5.4 Participants and procedure . 162 5.5 Results and analysis . 163 5.5.1 Comparing the effect of sense mismatching across nominal types . 165 5.6 Discussion . 174 6 Theoretical implications of experimental results 182 6.0.1 The updated empirical landscape . 182 6.0.2 Limitations of the experimental data . 184 6.0.3 Desiderata . 187 6.1 Assessing the possibility of applying Asher’s (2011) polysemy framework . 189 6.1.1 Polysemy under Asher(2011) . 191 6.1.2 Container phrases and committee nominals as dot types . 198 6.1.3 Limits to Asher’s (2011) predictive and explanatory power . 212 6.2 Assessing the possibility of applying Dölling (1995)’s polysemy framework . 215 6.2.1 Dölling (1995) . 215 6.2.2 Domain mapping relations . 219 6.2.3 Polysemy and Coercion in Dölling . 221 6.2.4 Revised Dölling on groups . 235 6.2.5 Beyond co-predication: returning to the original data . 239 iv 7 Conclusions 251 8 References 257 v Abstract: Sorting a complex world: An experimental study of polysemy and copredication in container and group nominals Karen Duek Silveira Bueno This dissertation is an investigation of the nature of the ambiguity of two classes of nominal expressions in English: container phrases, such as bottle of wine and box of toys, which are said to be interpreted as primarily a predicate true of the container (Ana broke that bottle of wine) or a predicate true of entity standing in a containment relation to that container (Ana drank that bottle of wine), and committee nominals, such as committee of linguists or gang of clowns, which are said to be interpreted as primarily a predicate true of an abstract social object (That committee was founded last year) or as a predicate true of the individuals standing in a membership relation to that social object (That committee met this morning). Through a series of acceptability judgment experiments, I show that both types of phrases support copredication, being able to enter into multiple predication relations which require, via selectional restrictions, that they make available both types of interpretations simulta- neously (Ana broke the bottle of wine that Lea drank/ The committee that was founded last year met this morning). In this way, they are shown to display behavior similar to well known cases of nominal polysemy (Ana burned the book that Lea translated). Based on these results, I argue that these two cases, previously analyzed in isolation, belong to a broader landscape of meaning flexibility, and that the specialized meaning shift oper- ations previously proposed are both inadequate, because they predict the unacceptability vi of copredication, and unnecessary, if these can be analyzed under general frameworks of polysemy and coercion. The dissertation explores the possibility of doing so under two such frameworks: Asher?s (2011) system of complex types, and Dolling?s (1995) system of meaning shifts between sortal domains, pointing to the ways in which they can be successfully applied to the case of con- tainer and committee nominals, but also their limitations, particularly with regards to their predictive and explanatory power and calling attention to the question of understanding, beyond the question of what formal mechanisms are necessary to account for copredication, what property may characterize the relations, such as containment and membership, which underlie systematic meaning flexibility. vii Chapter 1 Introduction Formal semanticists are not particularly known for their sharp sense of humor, but there is one joke most students that have ever attended a formal semantics class might have heard. It goes like this: "What is the meaning of life? Life’." It is somewhat funny because it is somewhat true. The question semanticists hear is, what is the meaning of the linguistic expression life? The answer seems empty: life’ is a notation indicating, in essence, that the conceptual content of that expression - its intension - is not fleshed out in its linguistic representation. It is to be found elsewhere. In truth, that is only partially the answer formal semantics gives to the general question of what is the meaning of a content nominal. That is, the meaning of cat is not simply cat’, though it includes it. The linguistically relevant parts of the meaning of that expression are seen as those that speak to how this expression is able to combine with others compositionally 1 to yield sentence level meanings. A common view, carried through from Montague’s (1973) work, is that the meaning of common nouns such as cat can be modeled using set theoretic tools: cat is the set of cats that exist in our model of the world - its extension. Equivalently, it can be modeled as a function between two primitive domains: the domain of entities that exist in our model of the world, and the domain of truth values - True or False. The truth values represent an assessment of whether the claim that is being made about the properties of those entities is congruent with our knowledge and beliefs about the world as represented in our model. The two primitives - entities and truth values - form a system of types, that limit the domain of the variables in our functions. An expression can then be of type e, if it denotes an entity, of type t, if it denotes a truth value, or it may be of a type constructed recursively out of those primitives, for instance, of type <e,t> if it denotes a function from entities to truth values, or of type <e<e,t> if it denotes a function from entities to a function from entities to truth values, and so forth. A noun like cat can then be represented as the following function, of type <e,t>. That is, its term x must be of the type e, it must be in the domain of entities, and if the denotation of that variable is also in the set denoted by cat’, the function returns the truth value True. (1) cat: λx.cat’(x) 2 This view of meaning of cat or most other common nouns, therefore assumes that very little about the concept of cat is a relevant part of its linguistic meaning, since it assumes that this plays no role in its combinatoric possibilities beyond driving its type specification. We need to know that cat denotes a one-place function, and that its variable must be of type e, and that is enough. Indeed, this view has proven enough to spring forward an understanding of a number of distinct semantic phenomena in this framework in the past half century or so. This dissertation is an exploration of an area in which some of these assumptions prove to be an obstacle, in particular in what concerns what kind of information about how we common sensically conceive of entities is encoded in the meaning of linguistic expressions.