DOCSLIB.ORG

The Influence of Animacy and Context on Word Order Processing: Neurophysiological Evidence from Mandarin Chinese

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Influence of Animacy and Context on Word Order Processing: Neurophysiological Evidence from Mandarin Chinese Impressum Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, 2011 Diese Arbeit ist unter folgender Creative Commons-Lizenz lizenziert: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0 Druck: Sächsisches Druck- und Verlagshaus Direct World, Dresden ISBN 978-3-941504-13-4 The Influence of Animacy and Context on Word Order Processing: Neurophysiological Evidence from Mandarin Chinese Von der Philologischen Fakultät der Universität Leipzig genehmigte DISSERTATION Zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades doctor philosophiae Dr. Phil. vorgelegt von Luming Wang geboren am 16. Februar 1981 in Zhoushan, China Dekan: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Lörscher Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Balthasar Bickel Prof. Dr. Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky Prof. Dr. Kaoru Horie For my mother tongue, one of the many languages in this world. Acknowledgements This thesis could not have been written without the support and friendship of many people. If life is like online sentence processing in the sense that one must make a decision even without being sure of where it will lead, those people are definitely “prominent” characters that have greatly influenced my decisions, especially when I was experiencing “ambiguities” during different periods. I would like to thank them in chronological order. I thank my parents for giving me the initial processing preference, which has driven me to become closer to those things and people that I like, but unexpectedly lead me farther from them. I thank them from the bottom of my heart for their continuing selfless love. I am lucky for having been a student of Prof. Kaoru Horie and Prashant Pardesh during my MA studies at Tohoku University in Japan. From their inspiring lectures and daily, interesting conversations, I first learned that there is a sub-discipline of linguistics called “typology”. Furthermore, I want to thank them for providing me with numerous opportunities while I was in Japan and for encouraging me to continue my studies in Germany. ! I am very thankful to Prof. Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky and Prof. Matthias Schlesewsky for giving me the chance to learn about ERP experiments at the Max- Planck-Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science in Leipzig. In fact, they are associated with so many “first time” memories over the past years that I cannot list them all here. Special thanks go to Prof. Ina Bornkessel-Schelesewsky. Without her trust, insights, patience and financial support, I would not have been able to smoothly finish my PhD studies. I really appreciate the kindness of Prof. Balthasar Bickel who supervised my PhD studies. I benefitted a lot from the joint project called “Typological Variance in the Processing of Grammatical Relations” led by him and Prof. Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky. For the first time, I got to know “neurotypology” as a new field combined with typology and psychology. I am also deeply grateful to them for their criticism and suggestions in the early versions of this thesis, through which I was able to understand the significance of my work to linguistics. Unbelievably, it is they who showed me how wonderful my mother tongue is. Finally, I also want to thank my colleagues and friends whose existence reminded me that I was not alone but in a “group” while I was in Leipzig, Berlin and Marburg. I greatly appreciate the invaluable assistance of Katja Brüning, Isabel Plauth, Heike Böthel, Cornelia Schmidt and Kristiane Werrmann in the acquisition of the ERP data, and Kerstin Flake for modifying figures in my thesis. I thank Dietmar Roehm, !ükrü Barı" Demiral, Friderike Haupt and Susann Wolff for their technical help. I am grateful to Kamal Choudhary, R. Muralikrishnan, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich, Safiye Genç, Sabine Keller, Masahiko Nose, Bai Chen for their linguistic and non-linguistics support, which made my life in Germany easier and more enjoyable. Many thanks also go to Petra Schumacher, Hung Yu-Chen, Markus Philipp, Franziska Kretzschmar, Torsten Schenk, Wang Lin-Ran, Li Xu-Ping for their warm-heartedness from the first day of my life in Mainz. There are so many people, whether they know it or not, who contributed to shaping this thesis into its present form. Of course, I am the person who is solely responsible for any failings that may exist in this thesis. Abbreviations 1.SG, 2.SG, 3.SG first, second, third person singular ACC accusative ASP aspect CL classifier COM comment CPF completive focus CTF contrastive focus DAT dative DEF definite DT discourse topic EEG electroencephalography ERP event-related potencial FOC focus FT focus topic GR grammatical relation GRO ground GSR general semantic role INDEF indefinite LOC location LS logical structure MAS masculine NEU neuter NOM nominative PL plural POSS possesive PST past QP question particle RC relative clause TOP topic Contents Introduction I Theoretical and Empirical Background 1 Language Processing 3 1.1 Incrementality ..................................................................4 1.2 Word Order Variations .......................................................7 1.2.1 The Subject-preference ............................................9 1.2.2 Animacy ...............................................................18 1.2.3 Context ................................................................21 1.3 General Discussion ..........................................................24 2 The EEG and ERP Methodology 29 2.1 EEG ..............................................................................29 2.2 ERP ...............................................................................33 2.3 Language-Related Components .........................................35 2.3.1 LAN .....................................................................35 2.3.2 N400 ...................................................................38 2.3.3 P600 ....................................................................42 3 The eADM and Neurophysiological Evidences 49 3.1 The eADM ......................................................................49 3.2 The Effects of Word Order Variations..................................53 3.2.1 Subject-preference Effects ......................................53 3.2.2 Animacy Effects.....................................................59 3.2.3 Context Effects......................................................66 3.3 Challenges from Chinese ..................................................71 4 Mandarin Chinese 73 4.1 Topic and Subject............................................................74 4.2 Pro-drop ........................................................................79 4.3 Word Order Variation in Chinese........................................81 4.3.1 SVO .....................................................................83 4.3.2 S b! OV and O bèi SV .............................................90 4.3.3 SOV and OSV ........................................................92 4.4 Research Questions and Predictions ................................. 100 II Experiments 5 Subject Preference in Processing NP-V Constructions 107 5.1 Experiment 1: A comparison of OV vs. SV orders............... 107 5.1.1 Methods ............................................................. 111 5.1.2 Results............................................................... 116 5.1.3 Relatedness Questionnaire Study ........................... 122 5.1.4 Discussion .......................................................... 123 5.2 Experiment 2: A comparison of OV vs. SV orders without differences in lexical-semantic relatedness between the preverbal NP and V across conditions............................................... 125 5.2.1 Relatedness Pre-test ............................................ 126 5.2.2 Methods ............................................................. 128 5.2.3 Results............................................................... 129 5.2.4 Discussion .......................................................... 135 5.3 Experiment 3: A comparison of OV vs. SV orders in which the initial NP is either topicalised or not topicalised by the context.. 143 5.3.1 Methods ............................................................. 147 5.3.2 Results............................................................... 151 5.3.3 Discussion .......................................................... 157 5.4 Summary of Experiments 1-3 ......................................... 162 6 Animacy in Processing NP1-NP2-V Constructions 165 6.1 Experiment 4: A comparison of SOV vs. OSV orders........... 165 6.1.1 Materials and Methods.......................................... 169 6.1.2 Results............................................................... 172 6.1.3 Discussion .......................................................... 175 III Summary and Discussion 7 General Discussion 185 7.1 Summary ..................................................................... 186 7.2 Implications.................................................................. 191 7.2.1 The Subject-Preference (Exp. 1-3) ......................... 191 7.2.2 The Influence of Animacy (Exp. 4) ......................... 194 7.2.3 The Influence of Context (Exp. 3) .......................... 199 7.3 Outlook ....................................................................... 203 7.4 Conclusion ................................................................... 204 References 207 List of Figures List of Tables Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Introduction Language comprises a dynamic set of visual, auditory, or tactile symbols of communication, which is considered to be exclusive
Load more

Recommended publications
  • English Dative Alternation and Evidence for a Thematic Strategy in Adult SLA
    UCLA Issues in Applied Linguistics Title English Dative Alternation and Evidence for a Thematic Strategy in Adult SLA Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/64d102q5 Journal Issues in Applied Linguistics, 5(1) ISSN 1050-4273 Author Davies, William D Publication Date 1994-06-30 DOI 10.5070/L451005171 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California English Dative Alternation and Evidence for a Thematic Strategy in Adult SLA William D. Davies University of Iowa INTRODUCTION A body of recent work in second language acquisition is concerned with applying constructs from Chomsky's conception of Universal Grammar in both constructing an overall theory of SLA and explaining various phenomena in L2 learners (e.g., Flynn, 1984, 1987; Hilles, 1986; Phinney, 1987; White, 1985a, 1985b; papers in Flynn and O'Neil, 1988). A key linguistic construct that has received relatively little attention in SLA research is thematic roles—notions such as AGENT, THEME, GOAL, LOCATION, SOURCE, and others that are believed to contribute to semantic encoding and decoding. Although thematic roles (alternatively, thematic relations, semantic roles, case roles, 9-roles) have long been part of modem linguistic theory (cf. Gruber, 1965; Fillmore, 1968; Jackendoff, 1972), they have enjoyed increased popularity in the recent linguistic literature owing in part to their central role in Chomsky's (1981) government and binding (GB) theory, as embodied in the G-Criterion.^ Various formulations of the 9-Criterion have been proposed, but the simple formulation in (1) will suffice here. (1) e-Criterion (Chomsky 1981, p. 36): Each argument bears one and only one H-role, and each H-role is assigned to one and only one argument.
    [Show full text]
  • Long and Short Adjunct Fronting in HPSG
    Long and Short Adjunct Fronting in HPSG Takafumi Maekawa Department of Language and Linguistics University of Essex Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar Linguistic Modelling Laboratory, Institute for Parallel Processing, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Held in Varna Stefan Muller¨ (Editor) 2006 CSLI Publications pages 212–227 http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/HPSG/2006 Maekawa, Takafumi. 2006. Long and Short Adjunct Fronting in HPSG. In Muller,¨ Stefan (Ed.), Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Varna, 212–227. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Abstract The purpose of this paper is to consider the proper treatment of short- and long-fronted adjuncts within HPSG. In the earlier HPSG analyses, a rigid link between linear order and constituent structure determines the linear position of such adjuncts in the sentence-initial position. This paper argues that there is a body of data which suggests that ad- junct fronting does not work as these approaches predict. It is then shown that linearisation-based HPSG can provide a fairly straightfor- ward account of the facts. 1 Introduction The purpose of this paper is to consider the proper treatment of short- and long-fronted adjuncts within HPSG. ∗ The following sentences are typical examples. (1) a. On Saturday , will Dana go to Spain? (Short-fronted adjunct) b. Yesterday I believe Kim left. (Long-fronted adjunct) In earlier HPSG analyses, a rigid link between linear order and constituent structure determines the linear position of such adverbials in the sen- tence-initial position. I will argue that there is a body of data which sug- gests that adjunct fronting does not work as these approaches predict.
    [Show full text]
  • Animacy and Alienability: a Reconsideration of English
    Running head: ANIMACY AND ALIENABILITY 1 Animacy and Alienability A Reconsideration of English Possession Jaimee Jones A Senior Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation in the Honors Program Liberty University Spring 2016 ANIMACY AND ALIENABILITY 2 Acceptance of Senior Honors Thesis This Senior Honors Thesis is accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation from the Honors Program of Liberty University. ______________________________ Jaeshil Kim, Ph.D. Thesis Chair ______________________________ Paul Müller, Ph.D. Committee Member ______________________________ Jeffrey Ritchey, Ph.D. Committee Member ______________________________ Brenda Ayres, Ph.D. Honors Director ______________________________ Date ANIMACY AND ALIENABILITY 3 Abstract Current scholarship on English possessive constructions, the s-genitive and the of- construction, largely ignores the possessive relationships inherent in certain English compound nouns. Scholars agree that, in general, an animate possessor predicts the s- genitive while an inanimate possessor predicts the of-construction. However, the current literature rarely discusses noun compounds, such as the table leg, which also express possessive relationships. However, pragmatically and syntactically, a compound cannot be considered as a true possessive construction. Thus, this paper will examine why some compounds still display possessive semantics epiphenomenally. The noun compounds that imply possession seem to exhibit relationships prototypical of inalienable possession such as body part, part whole, and spatial relationships. Additionally, the juxtaposition of the possessor and possessum in the compound construction is reminiscent of inalienable possession in other languages. Therefore, this paper proposes that inalienability, a phenomenon not thought to be relevant in English, actually imbues noun compounds whose components exhibit an inalienable relationship with possessive semantics.
    [Show full text]
  • PUMICE: a Multi-Modal Agent That Learns Concepts and Conditionals
    PUMICE: A Multi-Modal Agent that Learns Concepts and Conditionals from Natural Language and Demonstrations Toby Jia-Jun Li1, Marissa Radensky2, Justin Jia1, Kirielle Singarajah1, Tom M. Mitchell1, Brad A. Myers1 1Carnegie Mellon University, 2Amherst College {tobyli, tom.mitchell, bam}@cs.cmu.edu, {justinj1, ksingara}@andrew.cmu.edu, [email protected] Figure 1. Example structure of how PUMICE learns the concepts and procedures in the command “If it’s hot, order a cup of Iced Cappuccino.” The numbers indicate the order of utterances. The screenshot on the right shows the conversational interface of PUMICE. In this interactive parsing process, the agent learns how to query the current temperature, how to order any kind of drink from Starbucks, and the generalized concept of “hot” as “a temperature (of something) is greater than another temperature”. ABSTRACT CCS Concepts Natural language programming is a promising approach to •Human-centered computing ! Natural language inter­ enable end users to instruct new tasks for intelligent agents. faces; However, our formative study found that end users would of­ ten use unclear, ambiguous or vague concepts when naturally Author Keywords instructing tasks in natural language, especially when spec­ Programming by Demonstration; Natural Language Pro­ ifying conditionals. Existing systems have limited support gramming; End User Development; Multi-modal Interaction. for letting the user teach agents new concepts or explaining unclear concepts. In this paper, we describe a new multi- INTRODUCTION modal domain-independent approach that combines natural The goal of end user development (EUD) is to empower language programming and programming-by-demonstration users with little or no programming expertise to program [43].
    [Show full text]
  • The Strategy of Case-Marking
    Case marking strategies Helen de Hoop & Andrej Malchukov1 Radboud University Nijmegen DRAFT January 2006 Abstract Two strategies of case marking in natural languages are discussed. These are defined as two violable constraints whose effects are shown to converge in the case of differential object marking but diverge in the case of differential subject marking. The strength of the case bearing arguments will be shown to be of utmost importance for case marking as well as voice alternations. The strength of arguments can be viewed as a function of their discourse prominence. The analysis of the case marking patterns we find cross-linguistically is couched in a bidirectional OT analysis. 1. Assumptions In this section we wish to put forward our three basic assumptions: (1) In ergative-absolutive systems ergative case is assigned to the first argument x of a two-place relation R(x,y). (2) In nominative-accusative systems accusative case is assigned to the second argument y of a two-place relation R(x,y). (3) Morphologically unmarked case can be the absence of case. The first two assumptions deal with the linking between the first (highest) and second (lowest) argument in a transitive sentence and the type of case marking. For reasons of convenience, we will refer to these arguments quite sloppily as the subject and the object respectively, although we are aware of the fact that the labels subject and object may not be appropriate in all contexts, dependent on how they are actually defined. In many languages, ergative and accusative case are assigned only or mainly in transitive sentences, while in intransitive sentences ergative and accusative case are usually not assigned.
    [Show full text]
  • Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs, and Adverbs
    Unit 1: The Parts of Speech Noun—a person, place, thing, or idea Name: Person: boy Kate mom Place: house Minnesota ocean Adverbs—describe verbs, adjectives, and other Thing: car desk phone adverbs Idea: freedom prejudice sadness --------------------------------------------------------------- Answers the questions how, when, where, and to Pronoun—a word that takes the place of a noun. what extent Instead of… Kate – she car – it Many words ending in “ly” are adverbs: quickly, smoothly, truly A few other pronouns: he, they, I, you, we, them, who, everyone, anybody, that, many, both, few A few other adverbs: yesterday, ever, rather, quite, earlier --------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------- Adjective—describes a noun or pronoun Prepositions—show the relationship between a noun or pronoun and another word in the sentence. Answers the questions what kind, which one, how They begin a prepositional phrase, which has a many, and how much noun or pronoun after it, called the object. Articles are a sub category of adjectives and include Think of the box (things you have do to a box). the following three words: a, an, the Some prepositions: over, under, on, from, of, at, old car (what kind) that car (which one) two cars (how many) through, in, next to, against, like --------------------------------------------------------------- Conjunctions—connecting words. --------------------------------------------------------------- Connect ideas and/or sentence parts. Verb—action, condition, or state of being FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) Action (things you can do)—think, run, jump, climb, eat, grow A few other conjunctions are found at the beginning of a sentence: however, while, since, because Linking (or helping)—am, is, are, was, were --------------------------------------------------------------- Interjections—show emotion.
    [Show full text]
  • Making a Pronoun: Fake Indexicals As Windows Into the Properties of Pronouns Angelika Kratzer
    University of Massachusetts Amherst From the SelectedWorks of Angelika Kratzer 2009 Making a Pronoun: Fake Indexicals as Windows into the Properties of Pronouns Angelika Kratzer Available at: https://works.bepress.com/angelika_kratzer/ 6/ Making a Pronoun: Fake Indexicals as Windows into the Properties of Pronouns Angelika Kratzer This article argues that natural languages have two binding strategies that create two types of bound variable pronouns. Pronouns of the first type, which include local fake indexicals, reflexives, relative pronouns, and PRO, may be born with a ‘‘defective’’ feature set. They can ac- quire the features they are missing (if any) from verbal functional heads carrying standard ␭-operators that bind them. Pronouns of the second type, which include long-distance fake indexicals, are born fully specified and receive their interpretations via context-shifting ␭-operators (Cable 2005). Both binding strategies are freely available and not subject to syntactic constraints. Local anaphora emerges under the assumption that feature transmission and morphophonological spell-out are limited to small windows of operation, possibly the phases of Chomsky 2001. If pronouns can be born underspecified, we need an account of what the possible initial features of a pronoun can be and how it acquires the features it may be missing. The article develops such an account by deriving a space of possible paradigms for referen- tial and bound variable pronouns from the semantics of pronominal features. The result is a theory of pronouns that predicts the typology and individual characteristics of both referential and bound variable pronouns. Keywords: agreement, fake indexicals, local anaphora, long-distance anaphora, meaning of pronominal features, typology of pronouns 1 Fake Indexicals and Minimal Pronouns Referential and bound variable pronouns tend to look the same.
    [Show full text]
  • LINGUISTICS 221 Lecture #3 DISTINCTIVE FEATURES Part 1. an Utterance Is Composed of a Sequence of Discrete Segments. Is the Segm
    LINGUISTICS 221 Lecture #3 DISTINCTIVE FEATURES Part 1. An utterance is composed of a sequence of discrete segments. Is the segment indivisible? Is the segment the smallest unit of phonological analysis? If it is, segments ought to differ randomly from one another. Yet this is not true: pt k prs What is the relationship between members of the two groups? p t k - the members of this set have an internal relationship: they are all voiceles stops. p r s - no such relationship exists p b d s bilabial bilabial alveolar alveolar stop stop stop fricative voiceless voiced voiced voiceless SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES! Segments may be viewed as composed of sets of properties rather than indivisible entities. We can show the relationship by listing the properties of each segment. DISTINCTIVE FEATURES • enable us to describe the segments in the world’s languages: all segments in any language can be characterized in some unique combination of features • identifies groups of segments → natural segment classes: they play a role in phonological processes and constraints • distinctive features must be referred to in terms of phonetic -- articulatory or acoustic -- characteristics. 1 Requirements on distinctive feature systems (p. 66): • they must be capable of characterizing natural segment classes • they must be capable of describing all segmental contrasts in all languages • they should be definable in phonetic terms The features fulfill three functions: a. They are capable of describing the segment: a phonetic function b. They serve to differentiate lexical items: a phonological function c. They define natural segment classes: i.e. those segments which as a group undergo similar phonological processes.
    [Show full text]
  • Definiteness and Determinacy
    Linguistics and Philosophy manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) Definiteness and Determinacy Elizabeth Coppock · David Beaver the date of receipt and acceptance should be inserted later Abstract This paper distinguishes between definiteness and determinacy. Defi- niteness is seen as a morphological category which, in English, marks a (weak) uniqueness presupposition, while determinacy consists in denoting an individual. Definite descriptions are argued to be fundamentally predicative, presupposing uniqueness but not existence, and to acquire existential import through general type-shifting operations that apply not only to definites, but also indefinites and possessives. Through these shifts, argumental definite descriptions may become either determinate (and thus denote an individual) or indeterminate (functioning as an existential quantifier). The latter option is observed in examples like `Anna didn't give the only invited talk at the conference', which, on its indeterminate reading, implies that there is nothing in the extension of `only invited talk at the conference'. The paper also offers a resolution of the issue of whether posses- sives are inherently indefinite or definite, suggesting that, like indefinites, they do not mark definiteness lexically, but like definites, they typically yield determinate readings due to a general preference for the shifting operation that produces them. Keywords definiteness · descriptions · possessives · predicates · type-shifting We thank Dag Haug, Reinhard Muskens, Luca Crniˇc,Cleo Condoravdi, Lucas
    [Show full text]
  • How Do Young Children Acquire Case Marking?
    INVESTIGATING FINNISH-SPEAKING CHILDREN’S NOUN MORPHOLOGY: HOW DO YOUNG CHILDREN ACQUIRE CASE MARKING? Thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy in the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences 2015 HENNA PAULIINA LEMETYINEN SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES 2 Table of Contents LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... 6 LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... 7 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................. 8 DECLARATION .......................................................................................................................... 9 COPYRIGHT STATEMENT .......................................................................................................... 9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................................... 10 Chapter 1: General introduction to language acquisition research ...................................... 11 1.1. Generativist approaches to child language............................................................ 11 1.2. Usage-based approaches to child language........................................................... 14 1.3. The acquisition of morphology .............................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Morphological Causatives Are Voice Over Voice
    Morphological causatives are Voice over Voice Yining Nie New York University Abstract Causative morphology has been associated with either the introduction of an event of causation or the introduction of a causer argument. However, morphological causatives are mono-eventive, casting doubt on the notion that causatives fundamentally add a causing event. On the other hand, in some languages the causative morpheme is closer to the verb root than would be expected if the causative head is responsible for introducing the causer. Drawing on evidence primarily from Tagalog and Halkomelem, I argue that the syntactic configuration for morphological causatives involves Voice over Voice, and that languages differ in whether their ‘causative marker’ spells out the higher Voice, the lower Voice or both. Keywords: causative, Voice, argument structure, morpheme order, typology, Tagalog 1. Introduction Syntactic approaches to causatives generally fall into one of two camps. The first view builds on the discovery that causatives may semantically consist of multiple (sub)events (Jackendoff 1972, Dowty 1979, Parsons 1990, Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1994, a.o.). Consider the following English causative–anticausative pair. The anticausative in (1a) consists of an event of change of state, schematised in (1b). The causative in (2a) involves the same change of state plus an additional layer of semantics that conveys how that change of state is brought about (2b). (1) a. The stick broke. b. [ BECOME [ stick STATE(broken) ]] (2) a. Pat broke the stick. b. [ Pat CAUSE [ BECOME [ stick STATE(broken) ]]] Word Structure 13.1 (2020): 102–126 DOI: 10.3366/word.2020.0161 © Edinburgh University Press www.euppublishing.com/word MORPHOLOGICAL CAUSATIVES ARE VOICE OVER VOICE 103 Several linguists have proposed that the semantic CAUSE and BECOME components of the causative are encoded as independent lexical verbal heads in the syntax (Harley 1995, Cuervo 2003, Folli & Harley 2005, Pylkkänen 2008, a.o.).
    [Show full text]
  • Semantic Types and Type-Shifting. Conjunction and Type Ambiguity
    Partee and Borschev, Tarragona 3, April 15, 2005 Semantic Types and Type-shifting. Conjunction and Type Ambiguity. Noun Phrase Interpretation and Type-Shifting Principles. Barbara H. Partee, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Vladimir Borschev, VINITI, Russian Academy of Sciences, and Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst [email protected], [email protected]; http://people.umass.edu/partee/ Universidad Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, April 15, 2005 1. Linguistic background:....................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Categorial grammar and syntax-semantics correspondence: centrality of function-argument application . 1 1.2. Tensions among simplicity, generality, uniformity and flexiblity........................................................... 1 2. Conjunction and Type Ambiguity (from Partee & Rooth, 1983)....................................................................... 2 2.0. To be explained: cross-categorial distribution and meaning of ‘and’, ‘or’. .................................................2 2.1. Generalized conjunction.............................................................................................................................. 3 2.2. Repercussions on the type theory: against uniformity, for "simplicity" and type-shifting.......................... 3 2.3. Proposal:......................................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]