Inquisitive Semantics OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, //, Spi
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Radical Inquisitive Semantics∗
Radical inquisitive semantics∗ Jeroen Groenendijk and Floris Roelofsen ILLC/Department of Philosophy University of Amsterdam http://www.illc.uva.nl/inquisitive-semantics October 6, 2010 Contents 1 Inquisitive semantics: propositions as proposals 2 1.1 Logic and conversation . .3 1.2 Compliance . .4 1.3 Counter-compliance . .5 2 Radical inquisitive semantics 6 2.1 Atoms, disjunction, and conjunction . .8 2.2 Negation . 12 2.3 Questions . 15 2.4 Implication . 18 3 Refusal, supposition and the Ramsey test 23 3.1 Refusing a proposal . 24 3.2 Suppositions . 26 ∗This an abridged version of a paper in the making. Earlier versions were presented in a seminar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on April 12 and 21, 2010, at the Journ´ees S´emantiqueet Mod´elisation in Nancy (March 25, 2010), at the Formal Theories of Communication workshop at the Lorentz Center in Leiden (February 26, 2010), and at colloquia at the ILLC in Amsterdam (February 5, 2010) and the ICS in Osnabruck¨ (January 13, 2010). 1 3.3 Conditional questions . 27 3.4 The Ramsey test . 28 3.5 Conditional questions and questioned conditionals . 30 4 Minimal change semantics for conditionals 32 4.1 Unconditionals . 33 4.2 Dependency . 34 4.3 Minimal change with disjunctive antecedents . 36 4.4 Alternatives without disjunction . 39 4.5 Strengthening versus simplification . 40 5 Types of proposals 41 5.1 Suppositionality, informativeness, and inquisitiveness . 41 5.2 Questions, assertions, and hybrids . 42 6 Assessing a proposal 42 6.1 Licity, acceptability, and objectionability . 42 6.2 Support and unobjectionability . 44 6.3 Resolvability and counter-resolvability . -
Vagueness: Insights from Martin, Jeroen, and Frank
Vagueness: insights from Martin, Jeroen, and Frank Robert van Rooij 1 Introduction My views on the semantic and pragmatic interpretation of natural language were in- fluenced a lot by the works of Martin, Jeroen and Frank. What attracted me most is that although their work is always linguistically relevant, it still has a philosophical point to make. As a student (not in Amsterdam), I was already inspired a lot by their work on dynamics semantics, and by Veltman’s work on data semantics. Afterwards, the earlier work on the interpretation of questions and aswers by Martin and Jeroen played a signifcant role in many of my papers. Moreover, during the years in Amster- dam I developped—like almost anyone else who ever teached logic and/or philosophy of language to philosophy students at the UvA—a love-hate relation with the work of Wittgenstein, for which I take Martin to be responsible, at least to a large extent. In recent years, I worked a lot on vagueness, and originally I was again influenced by the work of one of the three; this time the (unpublished) notes on vagueness by Frank. But in recent joint work with Pablo Cobreros, Paul Egr´eand Dave Ripley, we developed an analysis of vagueness and transparant truth far away from anything ever published by Martin, Jeroen, or Frank. But only recently I realized that I have gone too far: I should have taken more seriously some insights due to Martin, Jeroen and/or Frank also for the analysis of vagueness and transparant truth. I should have listened more carefully to the wise words of Martin always to take • Wittgenstein seriously. -
Intonation and Interpretation: Phonetics and Phonology
In: Speech prosody 2002. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Speech Prosody. Edited by Bernard Bel & Isabelle Marlien. Aix-en-Provence: Laboratoire Parole et Language, Université de Provence. 2002. pp 47-57. Intonation and interpretation: phonetics and phonology Carlos Gussenhoven Centre for Language Studies University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands [email protected] by no means always the case. Language change may create ‘unnatural’, arbitrary forms [5]. This response to the problem Abstract of the partially paralinguistic nature of intonation contrasts with earlier ones in which either an almost exclusively non- Intonational meaning is located in two components of linguistic viewpoint was adopted [6], or an exclusively language, the phonetic implementation and the intonational linguistic viewpoint (e.g. [2]), or in which the two aspects are grammar. The phonetic implementation is widely used for the reconciled with each other in a gradient conception of their expression of universal meanings that derive from ‘biological difference (e.g. [7, p. 128],[8]). Below, I explain the notion codes’, meaning dimensions based on aspects of the of a biological code (section 2.0), and discuss each of the production process of pitch variation. Three codes are three codes in a separate section. identified, Ohala’s Frequency Code, the Effort Code and the 1.1. Three biological codes Production Code. In each case, ‘informational’ meanings (which relate to the message) are identified, while for the first The question arises what the expalnation is the of the nature two codes also ‘affective’ meanings (relating to the state of of the universal paralignuistic meanings. -
RISES ALL the WAY UP: the INTERPRETATION of PROSODY, DISCOURSE ATTITUDES and DIALOGUE STRUCTURE Catherine Lai a DISSERTATION In
RISES ALL THE WAY UP: THE INTERPRETATION OF PROSODY, DISCOURSE ATTITUDES AND DIALOGUE STRUCTURE Catherine Lai A DISSERTATION in Linguistics Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2012 Supervisor of Dissertation: Jiahong Yuan, Assistant Professor of Linguistics Graduate Group Chair: Eugene Buckley, Associate Professor of Linguistics Dissertation Committee: Jiahong Yuan, Assistant Professor of Linguistics Mark Liberman, Trustee Professor of Phonetics Florian Schwarz, Assistant Professor of Linguistics ii Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my advisor Jiahong Yuan. I came to Penn with a somewhat vague idea of doing something in the realm of semantics and pragmatics, but it didn't take long to get hooked on phonetics with Jiahong as a teacher. I've benefitted enormously from his mentoring through the years on several other projects in addition to dissertation work. The fact that I've been able to do a dissertation right on the intersection of semantics, pragmatics, and phonetics is a testament to his open mindedness, intellectual vigor and unfailing practical support. Being at Penn has also allowed me the privilege of having Mark Liberman and Florian Schwarz on my dissertation committee. Mark never fails to amaze me with not only the breadth and depth of his knowledge on all areas of language research, but also his astounding clarity of thought. Mark's classes were critical for my developing the technical notions that have enabled me to investigate the prosody-meaning problem in a quantitative way. Florian's help was crucial in getting the semantic and pragmatic parts of this project on the right track. -
Reasoning on Issues: One Logic and a Half
Reasoning on issues: one logic and a half Ivano Ciardelli partly based on joint work with Jeroen Groenendijk and Floris Roelofsen KNAW Colloquium on Dependence Logic — 3 March 2014 Overview 1. Dichotomous inquisitive logic: reasoning with issues 2. Inquisitive epistemic logic: reasoning about entertaining issues 3. Inquisitive dynamic epistemic logic: reasoning about raising issues Overview 1. Dichotomous inquisitive logic: reasoning with issues 2. Inquisitive epistemic logic: reasoning about entertaining issues 3. Inquisitive dynamic epistemic logic: reasoning about raising issues Preliminaries Information states I Let W be a set of possible worlds. I Definition: an information state is a set of possible worlds. I We identify a body of information with the worlds compatible with it. I t is at least as informed as s in case t ⊆ s. I The state ; compatible with no worlds is called the absurd state. w1 w2 w1 w2 w1 w2 w1 w2 w3 w4 w3 w4 w3 w4 w3 w4 (a) (b) (c) (d) Preliminaries Issues I Definition: an issue is a non-empty, downward closed set of states. I An issue is identified with the information needed to resolve it. S I An issue I is an issue over a state s in case s = I. I The alternatives for an issue I are the maximal elements of I. w1 w2 w1 w2 w1 w2 w1 w2 w3 w4 w3 w4 w3 w4 w3 w4 (e) (f) (g) (h) Four issues over fw1; w2; w3; w4g: only alternatives are displayed. Part I Dichotomous inquisitive logic: reasoning with issues Dichotomous inquisitive semantics Definition (Syntax of InqDπ) LInqDπ consists of a set L! of declaratives and a set L? of interrogatives: 1. -
Snippetssnippets
snippetssnippets Issue 37 - December 2019 Special issue in honor of Uli Sauerland Contents 1. Andreea C. Nicolae, Patrick D. Elliott, and Yasutada Sudo Introduction ................................................... ..................1 2. DorothyAhn ASL IX to locus as a modifier ................................................... ..2 3. Artemis Alexiadou Decomposing scalar approximatives in Greek ......................................4 4. Anna Alsop, Lucas Champollion, and Ioana Grosu A problem for Fox’s (2007) account of free choice disjunction ........................7 5. Anton Benz and Nicole Gotzner Quantifier irgendein and local implicature ........................................10 6. Jonathan David Bobaljik and Susi Wurmbrand Fake indexicals, binding, and the PCC ............................................13 7. Brian Buccola and Emmanuel Chemla Alternatives of disjunctions: when a disjunct contains the antecedent of a pronoun ....16 8. LukaCrnicˇ and Brian Buccola Scoping NPIs out of DPs ................................................... .....19 9. Chris Cummins Some contexts requiring precise number meanings .................................22 10. Patrick D. Elliott and Paul Marty Exactly one theory of multiplicity inferences .......................................24 11. Anamaria Fal˘ au¸sand˘ Andreea C. Nicolae Two coordinating particles are better than one: free choice items in Romanian ........27 12. DannyFox Individual concepts and narrow scope illusions ....................................30 13. DannyFox Degree concepts -
Negation, Alternatives, and Negative Polar Questions in American English
Negation, alternatives, and negative polar questions in American English Scott AnderBois Scott [email protected] February 7, 2016 Abstract A longstanding puzzle in the semantics/pragmatics of questions has been the sub- tle differences between positive (e.g. Is it . ?), low negative (Is it not . ?), and high negative polar questions (Isn't it . ?). While they are intuitively ways of ask- ing \the same question", each has distinct felicity conditions and gives rise to different inferences about the speaker's attitude towards this issue and expectations about the state of the discourse. In contrast to their non-interchangeability, the vacuity of double negation means that most theories predict all three to be semantically identical. In this chapter, we build on the non-vacuity of double negation found in inquisitive seman- tics (e.g. Groenendijk & Roelofsen (2009), AnderBois (2012), Ciardelli et al. (2013)) to break this symmetry. Specifically, we propose a finer-grained version of inquisitive semantics { what we dub `two-tiered' inquisitive semantics { which distinguishes the `main' yes/no issue from secondary `projected' issues. While the main issue is the same across positive and negative counterparts, we propose an account deriving their distinc- tive properties from these projected issues together with pragmatic reasoning about the speaker's choice of projected issue. Keywords: Bias, Negation, Polar Questions, Potential QUDs, Verum Focus 1 Introduction When a speaker wants to ask a polar question in English, they face a choice between a bevy of different possible forms. While some of these differ dramatically in form (e.g. rising declaratives, tag questions), even focusing more narrowly on those which only have interrogative syntax, we find a variety of different forms, as in (1). -
324 10 2 Pragmatics I New Shorter
Speaker’s Meaning, Speech Acts, Topic and Focus, Questions Read: Portner: 24-25,190-198 LING 324 1 Sentence vs. Utterance • Sentence: a unit of language that is syntactically well-formed and can stand alone in discourse as an autonomous linguistic unit, and has a compositionally derived meaning: – A sentence consists of a subject and a predicate: S NP VP. – [[ [NP VP] ]]M,g = 1 iff [[NP]]M,g ∈ [[VP]]M,g • Utterance: The occurrence (use) of a sentence (or possibly smaller constituent that can stand alone) at a given time. • Bill: Sue is coming. Jane: Yes, Sue is coming. – Two utterances of the same sentence. Same meaning. • Bill: “I am tired.” Jane: “ I am tired, too” – Two utterances of the same sentence. Two different meanings. • Semantics studies the meaning of sentences; pragmatics studies the meaning of utterances. LING 324 2 Semantic Meaning vs. Speaker Meaning • A: Most of the people here seem pretty glum. • B: Not everybody. The man drinking champagne is happy. • A: Where? • B: That guy! (pointing) • A: He’s not drinking champagne. He’s drinking sparkling water. The only person drinking champagne is crying on the couch. See? • B: Well, what I meant was that the first guy is happy. [c.f. Donnellan 1966, Kripke 1977] LING 324 3 • The semantic (or expression) meaning of a sentence (or a smaller constituent) is its literal meaning, based on what the words individually mean and the grammar of the language. • The speaker’s meaning of a sentence is what the speaker intends to communicate by uttering it. • These often coincide, but can diverge. -
A Dynamic Semantics of Single-Wh and Multiple-Wh Questions*
Proceedings of SALT 30: 376–395, 2020 A dynamic semantics of single-wh and multiple-wh questions* Jakub Dotlacilˇ Floris Roelofsen Utrecht University University of Amsterdam Abstract We develop a uniform analysis of single-wh and multiple-wh questions couched in dynamic inquisitive semantics. The analysis captures the effects of number marking on which-phrases, and derives both mention-some and mention-all readings as well as an often neglected partial mention- some reading in multiple-wh questions. Keywords: question semantics, multiple-wh questions, mention-some, dynamic inquisitive semantics. 1 Introduction The goal of this paper is to develop an analysis of single-wh and multiple-wh questions in English satisfying the following desiderata: a) Uniformity. The interpretation of single-wh and multiple-wh questions is derived uniformly. The same mechanisms are operative in both types of questions. b) Mention-some vs mention-all. Mention-some and mention-all readings are derived in a principled way, including ‘partial mention-some readings’ in multiple-wh questions (mention-all w.r.t. one of the wh-phrases but mention-some w.r.t. the other wh-phrase). c) Number marking. The effects of number marking on wh-phrases are captured. In particular, singular which-phrases induce a uniqueness requirement in single-wh questions but do not block pair-list readings in multiple-wh questions. To our knowledge, no existing account fully satisfies these desiderata. While we cannot do justice to the rich literature on the topic, let us briefly mention a number of prominent proposals. Groenendijk & Stokhof(1984) provide a uniform account of single-wh and multiple-wh ques- tions, but their proposal does not successfully capture mention-some readings and the effects of number marking. -
Sentential Negativity and Polarity-Sensitive Anaphora a Hyperintensional Account
Sentential negativity and polarity-sensitive anaphora A hyperintensional account Lisa Hofmann University of California Santa Cruz 1 Introduction This paper is concerned with an asymmetry between positive and negative sen- tences in discourse.1 The licensing of certain propositional anaphora is contin- gent on the polarity of their antecedent clause. I call them Polarity-Sensitive Anaphora (PSAs). Among these are polar additives (Klima (1964)) and polarity particles (Farkas and Bruce (2010); Roelofsen and Farkas (2015)). (1) Polar additives (2) Agreement with polarity particles a. Mary slept. a. Mary slept. (i) So did Dalia. (i) Yes, she slept. (ii) #Neither did Dalia. (ii) #No, she slept. b. Mary didn’t sleep. b. Mary didn’t sleep. (i) #So did Dalia. (i) Yes, she didn’t sleep. (ii) Neither did Dalia. (ii) No, she didn’t sleep. Polar additives are polarity-sensitive in their licensing: Positive polar ad- ditives with so are available with a positive antecedent (1-a), but not with a negative one (1-b), whereas neither shows the opposite pattern. Polarity parti- cles (PolPs) are polarity-sensitive in their interpretation. In a positive context (2-a), only yes, but not no can be used to agree with the antecedent. In the negative context, this contrast is neutralized (Ginzburg and Sag (2000); Roelof- sen and Farkas (2015)) and either polarity particle can be used to agree. These asymmetries lead me to two questions: 1. How can the polarity-sensitivity of PSAs be accounted for? 2. What renders a sentence positive/negative for the purposes of discourse and how might that be captured theoretically? 1. -
Epistemic Implicatures and Inquisitive Bias: a Multidimensional Semantics for Polar Questions
EPISTEMIC IMPLICATURES AND INQUISITIVE BIAS: A MULTIDIMENSIONAL SEMANTICS FOR POLAR QUESTIONS by Morgan Mameni B.A., Simon Fraser University, 2008 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS c Morgan Mameni 2010 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Summer 2010 All rights reserved. However, in accordance with the Copyright Act of Canada, this work may be reproduced, without authorization, under the conditions for Fair Dealing. Therefore, limited reproduction of this work for the purposes of private study, research, criticism, review, and news reporting is likely to be in accordance with the law, particularly if cited appropriately. APPROVAL Name: Morgan Mameni Degree: Master of Arts Title of Thesis: Epistemic Implicatures and Inquisitive Bias: A Multidimensional Semantics for Polar Questions Examining Committee: Dr. John Alderete (Chair) Dr. Nancy Hedberg (Senior Supervisor) Associate Professor of Linguistics, SFU Dr. Chung-Hye Han (Supervisor) Associate Professor of Linguistics, SFU Dr. Francis Jeffry Pelletier (Supervisor) Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, SFU Dr. Hotze Rullmann (Supervisor) Associate Professor of Linguistics, UBC Dr. Philip P. Hanson (External Examiner) Associate Professor of Philosophy, SFU Date Approved: July 2, 2010 ii Abstract This thesis motivates and develops a semantic distinction between two types of polar in- terrogatives available to natural languages, based on data from Persian and English. The first type, which I call an ‘impartial interrogative,’ has as its pragmatic source an ignorant information state, relative to an issue at a particular stage of the discourse. The second type, which I call a ‘partial interrogative’ arises from a destabilized information state, whereby the proposition supported by the information state conflicts with contextually available data. -
Division of Labor in the Interpretation of Declaratives and Interrogatives∗
Division of labor in the interpretation of declaratives and interrogatives∗ Donka F. Farkas Floris Roelofsen University of California Santa Cruz ILLC, University of Amsterdam August 2, 2016 Abstract This paper presents an account of the semantic content and conventional discourse effects of a range of sentence types in English, namely falling declaratives, polar interrogatives, and certain kinds of rising declaratives and tag interrogatives. The account aims to divide the labor between compositional semantics and conventions of use in a principled way. We argue that falling declaratives and polar interrogatives are unmarked sentence types. On our account, differences in their conventional discourse effects follow from independently motivated semantic differences combined with a single convention of use, which applies uniformly to both sentence types. As a result, the Fregean `illocutionary force operators' Assertion and Question become unnecessary. In contrast, we argue that rising declaratives and tag interrogatives are marked sentence types. On our account, their conventional discourse effects consist of the effects that are dictated by the basic convention of use that is common to all sentence types considered here, augmented with special effects that are systematically connected to their formal properties. Thus, a central feature of our approach is that it maintains a parallelism between unmarked and marked sentence types on the one hand, and basic and complex discourse effects on the other. 1 Introduction It is often assumed that the interpretation of an utterance involves at least three factors: (i) a compositional procedure which, given the lexical meaning of the words that the uttered sentence consists of and the way in which they are put together, determines the semantic content of the sentence, (ii) certain conventions of use connected to the sentence type involved (e.g.