Alternative Semantics
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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). -
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. -
Prosodic Focus∗
Prosodic Focus∗ Michael Wagner March 10, 2020 Abstract This chapter provides an introduction to the phenomenon of prosodic focus, as well as to the theory of Alternative Semantics. Alternative Semantics provides an insightful account of what prosodic focus means, and gives us a notation that can help with better characterizing focus-related phenomena and the terminology used to describe them. We can also translate theoretical ideas about focus and givenness into this notation to facilitate a comparison between frameworks. The discussion will partly be structured by an evaluation of the theories of Givenness, the theory of Relative Givenness, and Unalternative Semantics, but we will cover a range of other ideas and proposals in the process. The chapter concludes with a discussion of phonological issues, and of association with focus. Keywords: focus, givenness, topic, contrast, prominence, intonation, givenness, context, discourse Cite as: Wagner, Michael (2020). Prosodic Focus. In: Gutzmann, D., Matthewson, L., Meier, C., Rullmann, H., and Zimmermann, T. E., editors. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Semantics. Wiley{Blackwell. doi: 10.1002/9781118788516.sem133 ∗Thanks to the audiences at the semantics colloquium in 2014 in Frankfurt, as well as the participants in classes taught at the DGFS Summer School in T¨ubingen2016, at McGill in the fall of 2016, at the Creteling Summer School in Rethymnos in the summer of 2018, and at the Summer School on Intonation and Word Order in Graz in the fall of 2018 (lectures published on OSF: Wagner, 2018). Thanks also for in-depth comments on an earlier version of this chapter by Dan Goodhue and Lisa Matthewson, and two reviewers; I am also indebted to several discussions of focus issues with Aron Hirsch, Bernhard Schwarz, and Ede Zimmermann (who frequently wanted coffee) over the years. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
The Surface-Compositional Semantics of English Intonation Mark Steedman
THE SURFACE-COMPOSITIONAL SEMANTICS OF ENGLISH INTONATION MARK STEEDMAN University of Edinburgh This article proposes a syntax and a semantics for intonation in English and some related lan - guages. The semantics is ‘surface-compositional’, in the sense that syntactic derivation constructs information-structural logical form monotonically , without rules of structural revision, and with - out autonomous rules of ‘focus projection ’. This is made possible by the generalized notion of syntactic constituency afforded by combinatory categorial grammar (CCG)—in particular, the fact that its rules are restricted to string-adjacent type-driven combination. In this way, the grammar unites intonation structure and information structure with surface-syntactic derivational structure and Montague-style compositional semantics, even when they deviate radically from traditional surface structure. The article revises and extends earlier CCG-based accounts of intonational semantics, ground - ing hitherto informal notions like ‘theme ’ and ‘rheme ’ (a.k.a. ‘topic ’ and ‘comment ’, ‘ presupposi - tion ’ and ‘focus ’, etc.) and ‘background ’ and ‘contrast ’ (a.k.a. ‘given ’ and ‘new ’, ‘ focus ’, etc.) in a logic of speaker/hearer supposition and update, using a version of Rooth’s alternative semantics . A CCG grammar fragment is defined that constrains language-specific intonation and its interpreta - tion more narrowly than previous attempts.* Keywords : intonation structure, information structure, second-occurrence focus, combinatory cat - egorial grammar (CCG), syntax, semantics 1. INTRODUCTION . The main claims of this article concern the semantics of informa - tion structure—the part of sentence semantics that has to do with the relation of utter - ance to discourse context and participant supposition about ‘common ground ’—and its relation to surface grammar. -
INTERPRETATION of DISJUNCTION Do Children Interpret
INTERPRETATION OF DISJUNCTION 1 Do children interpret “or” conjunctively? Dimitrios Skordosa, Roman Feimanb, Alan Balec, & David Barnerd aUniversity of Calgary bBrown University cConcordia University dUniversity of California, San Diego CONTACT: Dimitrios Skordos School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures & Cultures University of Calgary [email protected] INTERPRETATION OF DISJUNCTION 2 Acknowledgements: Thank you to the many families and preschools who participated in this research, as well as the Fleet Science Center. Thank you also to Junyi Chu and members of the Language and Development Lab for help collecting data. This work was funded in part by a grant to D.B. from the James S. McDonnell Foundation and a SSHRC Insight grant to A.B. INTERPRETATION OF DISJUNCTION 3 ABSTRACT Preschoolers often struggle to compute scalar implicatures (SI) involving disjunction (or), in which they are required to strengthen an utterance by negating stronger alternatives, e.g., to infer that, “The girl has an apple or an orange” likely means she doesn’t have both. However, recent reports surprisingly find that a substantial subset of children interpret disjunction as conjunction, concluding instead that the girl must have both fruits. According to these studies, children arrive at conjunctive readings not because they have a non-adult-like semantics, but because they lack access to the stronger scalar alternative and, and employ doubly exhaustified disjuncts when computing implicatures. Using stimuli modeled on previous studies, we test English-speaking preschoolers and replicate the finding that many children interpret or conjunctively. However, we speculate that conditions which replicate this finding may be pragmatically infelicitous, such that results do not offer a valid test of children’s semantic competence. -
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. -
Materials on Forest Enets, an Indigenous Language of Northern Siberia
Materials on Forest Enets, an Indigenous Language of Northern Siberia SUOMALAIS-UGRILAISEN SEURAN TOIMITUKSIA MÉMOIRES DE LA SOCIÉTÉ FINNO-OUGRIENNE ❋ 267 ❋ Florian Siegl Materials on Forest Enets, an Indigenous Language of Northern Siberia SOCIÉTÉ FINNO-OUGRIENNE HELSINKI 2013 Florian Siegl: Materials on Forest Enets, an Indigenous Language of Northern Siberia Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 267 Copyright © 2013 Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura — Société Finno-Ougrienne — Finno-Ugrian Society & Florian Siegl Layout Anna Kurvinen, Niko Partanen Language supervision Alexandra Kellner This study has been supported by Volkswagen Foundation. ISBN 978-952-5667-45-5 (print) MÉMOIRES DE LA SOCIÉTÉ FINNO-OUGRIENNE ISBN 978-952-5667-46-2 (online) SUOMALAIS-UGRILAISEN SEURAN TOIMITUKSIA ISSN 0355-0230 Editor-in-chief Riho Grünthal (Helsinki) Vammalan Kirjapaino Oy Editorial board Sastamala 2013 Marianne Bakró-Nagy (Szeged), Márta Csepregi (Budapest), Ulla-Maija Forsberg (Helsinki), Kaisa Häkkinen (Turku), Tilaukset — Orders Gerson Klumpp (Tartu), Johanna Laakso (Wien), Tiedekirja Lars-Gunnar Larsson (Uppsala), Kirkkokatu 14 Matti Miestamo (Stockholm), FI-00170 Helsinki Sirkka Saarinen (Turku), www.tiedekirja.fi Elena Skribnik (München), Trond Trosterud (Tromsø), [email protected] Berhard Wälchli (Stockholm), FAX +358 9 635 017 Jussi Ylikoski (Kautokeino) He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to […]” (The Fellowship of the Ring, New York: Ballantine Books, 1982, 102). -
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).