DOCSLIB.ORG

Annotating Event Mentions in Text with Modality, Focus, and Source Information

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Annotating Event Mentions in Text with Modality, Focus, and Source Information Annotating Event Mentions in Text with Modality, Focus, and Source Information Suguru Matsuyoshiy, Megumi Eguchiy, Chitose Saoy, Koji Murakamiy, Kentaro Inuiz;y, Yuji Matsumotoy yGraduate School of Information Science, zGraduate School of Information Science, Nara Institute of Science and Technology Tohoku University 8916-5 Takayama, Ikoma, Nara 630-0192, Japan 6-6-05, Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi, 980-8579, Japan fmatuyosi, megumi-e, chitose-s, kmurakami, [email protected], [email protected] Abstract Many natural language processing tasks, including information extraction, question answering and recognizing textual entailment, require analysis of the polarity, focus of polarity, tense, aspect, mood and source of the event mentions in a text in addition to its predicate- argument structure analysis. We refer to modality, polarity and other associated information as extended modality. In this paper, we propose a new annotation scheme for representing the extended modality of event mentions in a sentence. Our extended modality consists of the following seven components: Source, Time, Conditional, Primary modality type, Actuality, Evaluation and Focus. We reviewed the literature about extended modality in Linguistics and Natural Language Processing (NLP) and defined appropriate labels of each component. In the proposed annotation scheme, information of extended modality of an event mention is summarized at the core predicate of the event mention for immediate use in NLP applications. We also report on the current progress of our manual annotation of a Japanese corpus of about 50,000 event mentions, showing a reasonably high ratio of inter-annotator agreement. 1. Introduction the components of modality in a broad sense, as described In Natural Language Processing (NLP), development of in detail in section 3, and is important for interpreting a syntactic and semantic parsers is a major task, and recently writer’s attitude toward event mentions. we have seen the development of precise POS taggers, de- A sentence may have several event mentions, though it does pendency parsers, and predicate-argument structure analyz- not include any connectives such as “and” and “although”. ers. Identifying predicate-argument structure in a sentence For example, sentence (3) has three event mentions, where is important but insufficient for applications such as infor- the core predicates are “decide(d)”, “stop” and “buy(ing)”. mation extraction (IE), question answering (QA) and rec- (3) Jim decided to stop buying that weekly magazine. ognizing textual entailment (RTE). These applications re- quire analyzing the polarity, focus of polarity, tense, as- Modality in a narrow sense (hereafter referred as restricted pect, mood and source of the event mentions in a text in modality) and polarity can be assigned to each event men- addition to predicate-argument structure analysis. For ex- tion, even if the event mention is not the main proposition ample, the verb “submitted” in sentence (1) has three ar- in the sentence. For example, the restricted modality of an guments “Ann”, “the plan” and “the comittee”, which can event “Jim buying that weekly magazine” can be regarded be identified by predicate-argument structure analysis, and as volition due to indirect effect of “decided” and its polar- the verb and these arguments correspond to an event men- ity negative due to direct effect of “stop”. We would like to tion “Ann submitting the plan to the comittee” (underlined recognize extended modality of such event mentions as well in sentence (1)). The modality toward the event mention as the main event mention. It is because they are dependent shows John’s assertion that the event actually happened. on the main event in the sentence but can be regarded as The verb “cause” and its arguments “mercury-based vac- distinct events in applications such as IE and RTE. For in- cines” and “autism in children” underlined in sentence (2) terpreting a writer’s attitude toward such event mentions, correspond to an event mention, toward which the modal- their extended modality should be analyzed. ity indicates the doctor’s inference that the underlined event In this paper, as a first step toward constructing an analyzer does not happen. of extended modality, we propose a new annotation scheme (1) John claimed that Ann submitted the plan to the for representing extended modality of event mentions in a committee. sentence, and report on the current progress of manual an- notation of a Japanese corpus of about 50,000 event men- (2) The doctor speculated that mercury-based vaccines tions. did not cause autism in children. Distinguishing assertion and inference is essential for NLP 2. Related work applications such as IE and RTE, because information as- A writer’s attitude toward event mentions is mainly rep- serted is obviously much more reliable than information in- resented with restricted modality. In English, restricted ferred. We refer to the modality, polarity and other associ- modality has two basic categories; one is Propositional ated information of an event mention in a given sentence modality, which consists of Epistemic modality and Ev- as extended modality. Extended modality covers almost all idential modality, and the other is Event modality which certain- transition evalu- modality in a polar- focus source time condi- pty of certainty ation narrow sense ity tional (Light et al., 2004) p p p p (Rubin et al., 2005) p p p p p p (Saur´ı et al., 2006) p p p p p (Prasad et al., 2006) p p p (Saur´ı and Pustejovsky, 2007) p (Medlock and Briscoe, 2007) p p (Szarvas et al., 2008) p p p p p p p (Saur´ı, 2008; Saur´ı and Pustejovsky, 2009) p p p p p p p (Hara and Inui, 2008; Inui et al., 2008) p p p p (Kawazoe et al., 2009) p p p p p p (Im et al., 2009) p p p p p p p p p Our work Table 1: Components of extended modality considered in our work and related works. is divided into Deontic modality and Dynamic modality and Pustejovsky, 2009; Kawazoe et al., 2009; Im et al., (Palmer, 2001). Other important categories of modality are 2009) and the other is for automatically analyzing extended Future, Negative, Interrogative, Imperative (Jussive), Pre- modality in text (Rubin et al., 2005; Saur´ı and Pustejovsky, supposed, Conditional, Purposive, Resultative, Desidera- 2007; Hara and Inui, 2008; Inui et al., 2008). A pioneering tive, and Fears. Modal logic with possible worlds has been work for an annotation scheme is Saur´ı et al.’s FactBank studied to capture the logical properties of modal expres- (Saur´ı and Pustejovsky, 2009). In FactBank, an event men- sions strictly (Portner, 2009). By using well-defined acces- tion is annotated with its source, introduced by Wiebe et sibility relations or conversational backgrounds, the modal al. (2005), epistemic modality and polarity for represent- logic represents various modal expressions while differen- ing event factuality, along with attribute values for tense, tiating between ones that have almost the same meaning. aspect, modality and polarity provided by a “MAKEIN- Classifications of restricted modality in Linguistics and sys- STANCE” element in TimeML (Saur´ı et al., 2006). A fac- tems of modal logic are helpful for constructing a system of tuality value of FactBank is represented as a combination of extended modality in our research, but they are unable to be values at epistemic modality axis (“certain (CT)”, “proba- adopted directly. We give three reasons for this. The first ble (PR)”, “possible (PS)” and “underspecified (U)”) and one is that these works mainly focus on classification of polarity axis (“positive (+)”, “negative (¡)” and “under- modal expressions while we focus on classification of event specified (u)”). For example, an event in text is labeled mentions based on their extended modality. The second with “CT+” when it is certain that the event happened or reason is that the main targets in these works are modality will happen according to the source of the text. An event classes of the main proposition in a sentence, and we want in text is labeled with “PR¡” when it is propable that the to deal with the extended modality of both the main propo- event did not happen or will not happen according to the sition in a sentence and the event mentions embedded in source of the text. The factuality category from FactBank that proposition, as mentioned in Section 1. The third rea- is practical for applications such as IE, QA and RTE, be- son is that classifications in these works are too fine-grained cause it summarizes information of whether a target event to identify automatically. We will describe our annotation actually happens or not along with degree of certainty in scheme of extended modality in Section 3. a way that is easily accesible for applications. However, In recent years, there has been increasing attention paid the framework of FactBank is not sufficient for extended to annotating phrases and event mentions in text with ex- modality of event mentions in text because FactBank relies tended modality in the fields of bioinformatics and NLP. on a “MAKEINSTANCE” element in TimeML (Saur´ı et al., We show a list of related work with considered components 2006) for restricted modality except for epistemic modal- of extended modality in Table 1. ity. In TimeML, restricted modality is specified at “modal- Studies in bioinformatics (Light et al., 2004; Medlock and ity” attribute of the “MAKEINSTANCE” element with a Briscoe, 2007; Szarvas et al., 2008) mainly focus on cer- surface auxiliary verb, such as “SHOULD” and “MUST”. tainty toward event mentions in text, because they want This scheme cannot be directly applied to agglutinative lan- to distinguish between asserted propositions and proposi- guages such as Korean and Japanese, because they tend to tions with inferential expressions and hedges.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Logophoricity in Finnish
    Open Linguistics 2018; 4: 630–656 Research Article Elsi Kaiser* Effects of perspective-taking on pronominal reference to humans and animals: Logophoricity in Finnish https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2018-0031 Received December 19, 2017; accepted August 28, 2018 Abstract: This paper investigates the logophoric pronoun system of Finnish, with a focus on reference to animals, to further our understanding of the linguistic representation of non-human animals, how perspective-taking is signaled linguistically, and how this relates to features such as [+/-HUMAN]. In contexts where animals are grammatically [-HUMAN] but conceptualized as the perspectival center (whose thoughts, speech or mental state is being reported), can they be referred to with logophoric pronouns? Colloquial Finnish is claimed to have a logophoric pronoun which has the same form as the human-referring pronoun of standard Finnish, hän (she/he). This allows us to test whether a pronoun that may at first blush seem featurally specified to seek [+HUMAN] referents can be used for [-HUMAN] referents when they are logophoric. I used corpus data to compare the claim that hän is logophoric in both standard and colloquial Finnish vs. the claim that the two registers have different logophoric systems. I argue for a unified system where hän is logophoric in both registers, and moreover can be used for logophoric [-HUMAN] referents in both colloquial and standard Finnish. Thus, on its logophoric use, hän does not require its referent to be [+HUMAN]. Keywords: Finnish, logophoric pronouns, logophoricity, anti-logophoricity, animacy, non-human animals, perspective-taking, corpus 1 Introduction A key aspect of being human is our ability to think and reason about our own mental states as well as those of others, and to recognize that others’ perspectives, knowledge or mental states are distinct from our own, an ability known as Theory of Mind (term due to Premack & Woodruff 1978).
    [Show full text]
  • Minimal Pronouns, Logophoricity and Long-Distance Reflexivisation in Avar
    Minimal pronouns, logophoricity and long-distance reflexivisation in Avar* Pavel Rudnev Revised version; 28th January 2015 Abstract This paper discusses two morphologically related anaphoric pronouns inAvar (Avar-Andic, Nakh-Daghestanian) and proposes that one of them should be treated as a minimal pronoun that receives its interpretation from a λ-operator situated on a phasal head whereas the other is a logophoric pro- noun denoting the author of the reported event. Keywords: reflexivity, logophoricity, binding, syntax, semantics, Avar 1 Introduction This paper has two aims. One is to make a descriptive contribution to the crosslin- guistic study of long-distance anaphoric dependencies by presenting an overview of the properties of two kinds of reflexive pronoun in Avar, a Nakh-Daghestanian language spoken natively by about 700,000 people mostly living in the North East Caucasian republic of Daghestan in the Russian Federation. The other goal is to highlight the relevance of the newly introduced data from an understudied lan- guage to the theoretical debate on the nature of reflexivity, long-distance anaphora and logophoricity. The issue at the heart of this paper is the unusual character of theanaphoric system in Avar, which is tripartite. (1) is intended as just a preview with more *The present material was presented at the Utrecht workshop The World of Reflexives in August 2011. I am grateful to the workshop’s audience and participants for their questions and comments. I am indebted to Eric Reuland and an anonymous reviewer for providing valuable feedback on the first draft, as well as to Yakov Testelets for numerous discussions of anaphora-related issues inAvar spanning several years.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 6 Mirativity and the Bulgarian Evidential System Elena Karagjosova Freie Universität Berlin
    Chapter 6 Mirativity and the Bulgarian evidential system Elena Karagjosova Freie Universität Berlin This paper provides an account of the Bulgarian admirative construction andits place within the Bulgarian evidential system based on (i) new observations on the morphological, temporal, and evidential properties of the admirative, (ii) a criti- cal reexamination of existing approaches to the Bulgarian evidential system, and (iii) insights from a similar mirative construction in Spanish. I argue in particular that admirative sentences are assertions based on evidence of some sort (reporta- tive, inferential, or direct) which are contrasted against the set of beliefs held by the speaker up to the point of receiving the evidence; the speaker’s past beliefs entail a proposition that clashes with the assertion, triggering belief revision and resulting in a sense of surprise. I suggest an analysis of the admirative in terms of a mirative operator that captures the evidential, temporal, aspectual, and modal properties of the construction in a compositional fashion. The analysis suggests that although mirativity and evidentiality can be seen as separate semantic cate- gories, the Bulgarian admirative represents a cross-linguistically relevant case of a mirative extension of evidential verbal forms. Keywords: mirativity, evidentiality, fake past 1 Introduction The Bulgarian evidential system is an ongoing topic of discussion both withre- spect to its interpretation and its morphological buildup. In this paper, I focus on the currently poorly understood admirative construction. The analysis I present is based on largely unacknowledged observations and data involving the mor- phological structure, the syntactic environment, and the evidential meaning of the admirative. Elena Karagjosova.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Grammar of Negation
    Please provide footnote text Chapter 2 On the Grammar of Negation 2.1 Functional Perspectives on Negation Negation can be described from several different points of view, and various descriptions may reach diverging conclusions as to whether a proposition is negative or not. A question without a negated predicate, for example, may be interpreted as negative from a pragmatic point of view (rhetorical ques- tion), while a clause with constituent negation, e.g. The soul is non-mortal, is an affirmative predication from an orthodox Aristotelian point of view.1 However, common to most if not all descriptions is that negation is generally approached from the viewpoint of affirmation.2 With regard to the formal expression, “the negative always receives overt expression while positive usually has zero expression” (Greenberg 1966: 50). Furthermore, the negative morpheme tends to come as close to the finite ele- ment of the clause as possible (Dahl 1979: 92). The reason seems to be that ne- gation is intimately connected with finiteness. This relationship will be further explored in section 2.2. To be sure, negation of the predicate, or verb phrase negation, is the most common type of negation in natural language (Givón 2001, 1: 382). Generally, verb phrase negation only negates the asserted and not the presup- posed part of the corresponding affirmation. Typically then, the subject of the predication is excluded from negation. This type of negation, in its unmarked form, has wide scope over the predicate, such that the scope of negation in a clause John didn’t kill the goat may be paraphrased as ‘he did not kill the goat.’ However, while in propositional logic, negation is an operation that simply re- verses the logical value of a proposition, negative clauses in natural language rarely reverse the logical value only.
    [Show full text]
  • The Content of Pronouns: Evidence from Focus
    The Content of Pronouns: Evidence from Focus VIi Sauerland Tiibingen University Thispaper is part of an effort to learn something about the semantics of pronominals from their focus properties. At present, I believe to have evidence substantiating the following two claims: Claim 1 is that Bound Pronominals can be hidden definite descriptions, but probably need not necessarily be. Claim 2 is that donkey anaphora must be hidden definite descriptions. The evidence for Claim 1 comes from a new analysis of cases with focus on bound pronouns such as (1) that also featured in earlier work of mine (Sauerland 1998, 1999). (1) On Monday, every boy called his mother. On TUESday, every TEAcher called hislHIS mother. In particular, I show parallels of focus on bound pronouns and bound definite de­ scriptions (epithets). The evidence for Claim 2 comes from cases like (2) where focus seems to be obligatory. (2) a. Every girl who came by car parked it in the lot. b. Every girl who came by bike parked #it/ITin the lot. 1 Bound Pronouns can DitTer in Meaning 1.1 Necessary_ConditioYLf or the Licensing of Fo cus The results of this paper are compatible with Schwarzschild's (1999) theory of focus. For convenience, however, I use the licensing condition in (3). This is only a necessary condition, not a sufficientcondition for focus licensing. Schwarzschild's (1999) theory entails that condition (3) is necessarily fulfilled for a focussed XP unless there's no YP dominating XP or the YP immediately dominating XP is also focussed.! (3) A focus on XP is licensed only if there are a Fo cus Domain constituent FD dominating XP and a Fo cus Antecedent constituent FA in the preceding © 2000 by Uli Sauerland Brendan Jackson and Tanya Matthews (eds), SALT X 167-1 84, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.
    [Show full text]
  • Journal of Linguistics the Meanings of Focus
    Journal of Linguistics http://journals.cambridge.org/LIN Additional services for Journal of Linguistics: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here The meanings of focus: The significance of an interpretation­based category in cross­linguistic analysis DEJAN MATIĆ and DANIEL WEDGWOOD Journal of Linguistics / FirstView Article / January 2006, pp 1 ­ 37 DOI: 10.1017/S0022226712000345, Published online: 31 October 2012 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0022226712000345 How to cite this article: DEJAN MATIĆ and DANIEL WEDGWOOD The meanings of focus: The significance of an interpretation­based category in cross­linguistic analysis. Journal of Linguistics, Available on CJO 2012 doi:10.1017/S0022226712000345 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/LIN, IP address: 192.87.79.51 on 13 Nov 2012 J. Linguistics, Page 1 of 37. f Cambridge University Press 2012 doi:10.1017/S0022226712000345 The meanings of focus: The significance of an interpretation-based category in cross-linguistic analysis1 DEJAN MATIC´ Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen DANIEL WEDGWOOD (Received 16 March 2011; revised 23 August 2012) Focus is regularly treated as a cross-linguistically stable category that is merely manifested by different structural means in different languages, such that a common focus feature may be realised through, for example, a morpheme in one language and syntactic movement in another. We demonstrate this conception of focus to be unsustainable on both theoretical and empirical grounds, invoking fundamental argumentation regarding the notions of focus and linguistic category, alongside data from a wide range of languages.
    [Show full text]
  • 30. Tense Aspect Mood 615
    30. Tense Aspect Mood 615 Richards, Ivor Armstrong 1936 The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rockwell, Patricia 2007 Vocal features of conversational sarcasm: A comparison of methods. Journal of Psycho- linguistic Research 36: 361−369. Rosenblum, Doron 5. March 2004 Smart he is not. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/smart-he-is-not- 1.115908. Searle, John 1979 Expression and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Seddiq, Mirriam N. A. Why I don’t want to talk to you. http://notguiltynoway.com/2004/09/why-i-dont-want- to-talk-to-you.html. Singh, Onkar 17. December 2002 Parliament attack convicts fight in court. http://www.rediff.com/news/ 2002/dec/17parl2.htm [Accessed 24 July 2013]. Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson 1986/1995 Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Voegele, Jason N. A. http://www.jvoegele.com/literarysf/cyberpunk.html Voyer, Daniel and Cheryl Techentin 2010 Subjective acoustic features of sarcasm: Lower, slower, and more. Metaphor and Symbol 25: 1−16. Ward, Gregory 1983 A pragmatic analysis of epitomization. Papers in Linguistics 17: 145−161. Ward, Gregory and Betty J. Birner 2006 Information structure. In: B. Aarts and A. McMahon (eds.), Handbook of English Lin- guistics, 291−317. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Rachel Giora, Tel Aviv, (Israel) 30. Tense Aspect Mood 1. Introduction 2. Metaphor: EVENTS ARE (PHYSICAL) OBJECTS 3. Polysemy, construal, profiling, and coercion 4. Interactions of tense, aspect, and mood 5. Conclusion 6. References 1. Introduction In the framework of cognitive linguistics we approach the grammatical categories of tense, aspect, and mood from the perspective of general cognitive strategies.
    [Show full text]
  • Un-Titled Affirming Negations – Negating Affirmations
    Call for Papers Un-titled Affirming Negations – Negating Affirmations Conference: July 1-3, 2010 Abstracts Due: March 28, 2010 “When we say not-being, we speak, I think, not of something that is the opposite of being, but only of something different.” (Plato, Sophist 257B) How can we speak of non-being if to speak at all implies saying “some thing”? Would we not thereby impart being to the object of our utterance and thus contradict the very claim of our assertion? This linguistic and ontological difficulty raises the broader question of the nature of negation as a rhetorical, logical and political act. Negation cannot simply be opposed to or absolutely independent from affirmation but must instead be intertwined with positivity, since negation always involves a thing which is negated. But this can be called into question by asking whether every affirmation might only be achieved by negating other properties. Rather than starting from the premise that affirmation and negation are mutually exclusive, we wish to explore the possibility of a more intricate relationship between them. How might affirmation be expressed through negation and vice versa? This conference will focus on concepts of complex affirmations and negations in domains including rhetoric, logic, ontology, and politics. Three forms of complex negations provide an initial impetus for our investigation: • First, we are interested in exploring what are known as “infinite judgments,” in which the property of not- possessing a particular attribute is ascribed to the subject of the judgment, placing this subject in an infinite “outside.” For instance, the sentence “The soul is not mortal” seems to have a different logical form from the sentence “The soul is immortal.” In the latter case, the form of judgment appears to be positive, but this attribution is that of not-possessing the characteristic.
    [Show full text]
  • Descriptions, Negation, and Focus∗
    Descriptions, Negation, and Focus∗ Michael Glanzberg University of California, Davis Forthcoming in Compositionality, Context, and Semantic Values, ed. R. Stainton and C. Viger, Springer-Verlag One of the mainstays of the theory of definite descriptions since Russell (1905) has been their interaction with negation. In particular, Russellians, who advocate the view that definite descriptions are a kind of quantifier, point to these interactions as evidence in favor of the their view. The argu- ment runs roughly as follows:1 (1) a. Definite descriptions show a number of important interactions with negation (as well as with other quantifiers, with intensional contexts, etc.). b. These interactions are best analyzed as scope interactions. c. Such scope interactions are clearly and easily predicted if we treat definite descriptions as quantifiers. They are not predicted at all, or only by roundabout means, if we do not treat definite descriptions as quantifiers. d. Hence, we have evidence in favor of the quantificational treatment of definite descriptions. ∗Thanks to Kent Bach, Chris Barker, Paul Elbourne, John MacFarlane, Robert May, Paul Pietroski, Daniel Rothschild, Rob Stainton, the Bay Area Philosophy of Language Discussion Group, and an anonymous referee for very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. A preliminary version of some of this material was presented in my seminar at UC Davis in 2005. Thanks to the participants there, especially Brian Bowman, Josh Parsons, and Paul Teller. 1For instance, Neale (1990, p. 49) writes, “Since descriptions are treated as quantifiers . all sorts of interesting scope interactions are predicted; not just with negation and other quantified noun phrases, but also with various types of nonextensional operators (Chapter 4).” 1 descriptionsnegationfocus—May 31, 2007 This is a powerful argument, and potentially far-reaching.
    [Show full text]
  • When and Why Can 1St and 2Nd Person Pronouns Be Bound Variables? the Problem with 1St and 2Nd Person Pronouns
    When and why can 1st and 2nd person pronouns be bound variables? The problem with 1st and 2nd person pronouns. In some contexts (call them context A), English 1st and 2nd person pronouns can be used as bound variables (Heim 1991, Kratzer 1998) as in (1). (1) Context A: 1st person (data based on Rullmann 2004) a. Only I got a question that I understood. = (i) !x [x got a question that x understood] = (ii) !x [x got a question that I understood] b. Every guy that I’ve ever dated has wanted us to get married. = (i) "x, guy(x) & dated(I, x) [x wants x & I to get married] = (ii) "x, guy(x) & dated(I, x) [x wants us to get married] Rullmann (2004) argues that such data are problematic for Déchaine & Wiltschko’s (2002) analysis (henceforth DW), where it is claimed that English 1st/2nd person pronouns are DPs. According to the DW analysis, 1st/2nd person pronouns have the status of definite DPs (i.e., definite descriptions) and consequently are predicted not to be construable as bound variables. DW support their claim with the observation that in some contexts of VP-ellipsis (call them context B), 1st/2nd person pronouns cannot be used as bound variables, as in (2). (2) Context B: 1st person (data based on Déchaine & Wiltschko 2002) I know that John saw me, and Mary does too. # (i) ‘I know that John saw me, and Mary knows that John saw her. !x [x knows that John saw x] & !y [y knows that John saw y] = (ii) ‘I know that John saw me, and Mary knows that John saw me.’ !x [x knows that John saw me] & !y [y knows that John saw me] As we will show, the (im)possibility of a bound variable reading with 1st and 2nd person is conditioned by a number of factors.
    [Show full text]
  • Two Negations, One Sentence and One Focus — a Squib, Alias a Trial Balloon — ∗
    Two Negations, One Sentence and One Focus | A Squib, alias a Trial Balloon | ∗ Agnes´ Bende-Farkas IMS Stuttgart University [email protected] September 8, 2006 1 The Problem This paper is about the possibility of syntactically simple Hungarian sentences with Focus to contain two negative particles that (i) express semantic negation and (ii) do not interact with each other. (1) J´anos nem [a Hamletet]F nem olvasta (hanem [a R´ome´o ´es Juli´´ at]F ) John not [the H-Acc]F not read-Past+Def3Sg (but [the R and J-Acc]F ) \It was not Hamlet that John has not read (it was Romeo and Juliet)" In (1) there are two occurrences of the negative particle nem `not'; one of them immediately pre- cecdes and the other immediately follows the DP in Focus position. These two particles correspond to two independent instances of semantic negation: I propose that the right semantic representa- tion for (1) contains two propositional units (a presuposition and an assertion part), containing one negation each. At this point it is perhaps easier to tell what (1) is not: It is not a case of double negation, as in the sentence This problem is not impossible to solve, it is merely very hard. It is not an instance of negative spread (or negative absorption): No-one saw no-one. It is not a case of Negative Concord, as in (2) where nessuno does not on its own express negation: (2) Non ha telefonato nessuno Not has phoned no-one \No-one has phoned" The sentence (1) resembles complex clauses where negation in the matrix clause does not interfere with negation in the subordinate clause.
    [Show full text]
  • Evidentiality and Mood: Grammatical Expressions of Epistemic Modality in Bulgarian
    Evidentiality and mood: Grammatical expressions of epistemic modality in Bulgarian DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements o the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Anastasia Smirnova, M.A. Graduate Program in Linguistics The Ohio State University 2011 Dissertation Committee: Brian Joseph, co-advisor Judith Tonhauser, co-advisor Craige Roberts Copyright by Anastasia Smirnova 2011 ABSTRACT This dissertation is a case study of two grammatical categories, evidentiality and mood. I argue that evidentiality and mood are grammatical expressions of epistemic modality and have an epistemic modal component as part of their meanings. While the empirical foundation for this work is data from Bulgarian, my analysis has a number of empirical and theoretical consequences for the previous work on evidentiality and mood in the formal semantics literature. Evidentiality is traditionally analyzed as a grammatical category that encodes information sources (Aikhenvald 2004). I show that the Bulgarian evidential has richer meaning: not only does it express information source, but also it has a temporal and a modal component. With respect to the information source, the Bulgarian evidential is compatible with a variety of evidential meanings, i.e. direct, inferential, and reportative, as long as the speaker has concrete perceivable evidence (as opposed to evidence based on a mental activity). With respect to epistemic commitment, the construction has different felicity conditions depending on the context: the speaker must be committed to the truth of the proposition in the scope of the evidential in a direct/inferential evidential context, but not in a reportative context.
    [Show full text]