Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, Lecture 4 Barbara H. Partee, MGU, March 28, 2013
Lecture 4. Formal Semantics and the Lexicon: Introduction to Issues and History, and a Case Study of Adjectives
1. The Lexicon in Model-theoretic Semantics...... 1 1.1. Introduction and historical overview ...... 1 1.2. Language-World-Models. Natural language metaphysics...... 3 1.3. Meaning postulates. History and examples...... 4 1.3.1. Meaning postulates - history...... 4 1.3.2. Meaning postulates - examples...... 5 2. Differences between lexical and compositional semantics ...... 6 2.1. Is the “semantics of syntax” autonomous? ...... 6 2.2. How much lexical semantics does formal semantics “need”? ...... 7 3. What does formal semantics have to offer to lexical semantics? ...... 8 3.1. An early proposal for synthesizing formal and lexical semantics by Borschev and Partee ...... 8 3.2 A more general answer, and examples ...... 8 4. Case study: adjective semantics ...... 9 4.1. Introduction to adjective semantics ...... 9 4.2. Adjective classification ...... 10 4.2.1. The Intersection Hypothesis...... 10 4.2.2. Nonintersective Adjectives...... 11 4.2.3. Nonsubsective Adjectives...... 11 4.2.4. Adjectives as Functions. Meaning postulates for adjective classes...... 11 4.3. Puzzle: Is tall intersective or subsective?...... 13 Homework #2: See separate page, online on the course website...... 13 References ...... 13
Reading: Partee, Barbara. 1995. Lexical semantics and compositionality. In An Invitation to Cognitive Science (Second Edition). Volume 1: Language, eds. Lila Gleitman and Mark Liberman, 311-360. Cambridge: MIT Press. http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/jhjMGYwM/. (Barker 2003) Lexical semantics. Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, Macmillan. (Harley 2006) Chapter 6, Lexical Semantics, from her book English Words: A Linguistic Introduction. Optional reading Dowty, David (1979) Word Meaning and Montague Grammar, Dordrecht: D.Reidel. for Chapters 6 and 8: https://udrive.oit.umass.edu/partee/Semantics_Readings/Dowty1979LexSemExcerpt.pdf . Partee, Barbara H. 2010. Privative adjectives: subsective plus coercion. In Presuppositions and Discourse: Essays offered to Hans Kamp, eds. Rainer Bäuerle, Uwe Reyle and Thomas Ede Zimmermann, 273-285. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing. http://people.umass.edu/partee/docs/ParteeInPressKampFest.pdf. Kamp, Hans, and Partee, Barbara. 1995. Prototype theory and compositionality. Cognition 57:129-191. http://bhpartee.narod.ru/kamp-partee95.pdf
1. The Lexicon in Model-theoretic Semantics.
1.1. Introduction and historical overview In logical languages like the predicate calculus (PC), the analogue of a “lexicon” is the interpretation function I that assigns a value in a model to each constant; it tells us that j denotes John, that loves denotes a certain set of ordered pairs of individuals, etc. These are extensional interpretations. In a richer intensional logic, the constants will be assigned interpretations that are intensions, functions from possible worlds to extensions – those are closer to ‘meanings’, because in order to know the intension of a word, you would have to be able to say what it applies to, given all the facts of some possible world.
1 3/28/2013 5:36 AM Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, Lecture 4 Barbara H. Partee, MGU, March 28, 2013
It was (Wittgenstein 1922) who said, “To know the meaning of a sentence is to know what is the case if it is true.” From this starting point, formal semanticists take the basic meaning of a lexical item to be its contribution to the truth conditions of sentences it may occur in. Formal semanticists, like logicians, don’t usually try to capture the complete meanings of lexical items, but concentrate on parts most relevant to compositionality issues. One early and influential approach was with the use of meaning postulates (Carnap 1952), which we discuss below.
Montague: Only “logical words” were fully analyzed. Other lexical items were treated as logical constants. (See Lecture 3.) Some aspects of their meanings were captured via meaning postulates (though he didn’t use that term), such as the equivalence of seek and try to find.
David Dowty (1979) made the first important contributions of formal semantics to the study of lexical semantics. Dowty concentrated on the issue of word-formation rules, and the puzzle of their “semi-productivity”, the fact that although there are both morphological and semantic generalizations that can be expressed by rules, they do not apply as regularly as syntactic rules do. Consider English breakable, washable, erasable – their form and meaning is connected in a regular way to break, wash, erase. But comfortable does not mean “able to be comforted”, and livable does not mean “able to be lived”. Comfortable long ago took on a meaning of its own and does not seem related to that general rule at all any more. Livable is “close”, meaning something like ‘able to be lived in comfortably’. Even washable generally has a meaning more specific than “able to be washed”; it means something like “able to be washed without any damage”. You certainly can wash a sweater that’s labelled “not washable”; you just will be very unhappy with the result.
Dowty argued that the big difference between semi-productive word-formation rules and compositional syntactic and semantic rules is that the fully productive compositional rules are part of the grammar, whereas the word-formation rules are ways of “extending” the grammar. The rules may look almost identical in form, but their relation to the grammar is very different.
On Dowty’s account, the semi-productive rules give the most likely meaning for a newly formed word; subsequent lexicalization can involve shifts in that meaning. Examples of lexical rules: deriving intransitive read from transitive read; inchoative verb open from adjective open; causative open from intransitive open.
Dowty (1978, 1982) also helped to open up the argument of whether passive should be treated by a syntactic transformation or a lexical rule (or perhaps something in between, a “phrasal rule”, as argued by Bach (1980)).
We will study Dowty’s work, and subsequent developments of it, making the semantics explicit, in Lecture 6.
Problems of how much to put in the lexicon – this affects all approaches, not just formal semantics. Lexicon vs. encyclopedia. For computational linguistics, maybe ‘more is better’; for theoretical linguistics, the challenge is to find criteria for distinguishing. Hans Kamp’s work puts more into the ‘grammar’ than many others; see, for instance, (Kamp and Rossdeutscher 1994) and commentary on it in the same issue of Theoretical Linguistics, also (Kamp and Rossdeutscher 2005). Most theoretical linguists, including both formal and non- formal semanticists, focus on identifying those aspects of lexical meaning that (a) interact in
2 3/28/2013 5:36 AM Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, Lecture 4 Barbara H. Partee, MGU, March 28, 2013 systematic ways with syntax and/or compositional semantics, and (b) occur systematically in sizable subsets of lexical items within or across languages, and do not attempt to analyze the idiosyncratic parts of individual lexical meanings.
Prototype theory (Rosch 1978) challenged the idea that the referent of a predicate is a set of entities; Rosch emphasized the vagueness of extensions, and argued that for many terms (bird, chair), meaning should be thought of in terms of ‘degree of resemblance to a prototype’. (Smith and Osherson 1984) argued that prototype theory could not provide a suitable kind of meaning for compositional semantics to work with. (Kamp and Partee 1995) argued that with a theory of vagueness based on supervaluations (van Fraassen 1969), (Kamp 1975), one could indeed give a compositional semantics for a language in which some lexical items have meanings that are characterized in terms of something like prototypes. Kamp and Partee offered a somewhat different, and arguably more adequate, formalization of prototype theory, and emphasized the importance of distinguishing between words for which prototype may be genuinely relevant to meaning (red, chair) and words for which there may be a stereotype but it is not connected to truth-conditional content (grandmother, librarian). There has been much more work on vagueness since then.
Syntacticians have increasingly recognized the importance of the lexicon; early milestones in Chomskian linguistics include (Chomsky 1965, Chomsky 1970), and by now increasing numbers of linguists are inclined to consider that the whole grammar may be in some sense “in the lexicon”. (This is a particularly natural perspective in categorial grammar.) One area of lexical study that involves both syntax and semantics (formal and informal) is the domain of argument structure; see, for instance (Dowty 1991, Levin and Pinker 1992, Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1996, Ramchand 1997, van Geenhoven 1998, Wechsler 1995).
Formal semanticists have also been greatly enriching the study of the lexicon, usually driven by issues related to compositionality. Work on tense and aspect as well as concerns with argument structure have led to intensive study of verb semantics (Filip 2012, Kratzer 2000, Krifka 1989); work on degree modifiers and comparatives has motivated work on the semantics of adjectives and adverbs (Kennedy 2007, Morzycki 2009); the study of possessives and genitives has led to work on the semantics of relational nouns (Barker 1995, Borschev and Partee 2011, Partee and Borschev 2003); and there are many more examples in other domains.
In this lecture I will not cover all of these topics, but will discuss some of them a bit more and then go into details of a case study on the semantics of adjectives. We’ll come back to a number of these topics during the semester.
1.2. Language-World-Models. Natural language metaphysics. In the semantics of formal languages, we have models, and expressions of the language are interpreted relative to a model. The constants of artificial languages have no meanings other than those assigned to them by the interpretation function on the model. Models function as abstractions and representations of some aspects of some kind of reality. Their structure reflects on the one hand the structure of the given language, and on the other hand the nature of the reality they are intended to represent.
Model structures are like structural presuppositions about some aspect of the world. When we view a natural language as a formal language, as Montague did, we simultaneously view the world (or the set of possible worlds) as a model of it. This involves some abstraction and
3 3/28/2013 5:36 AM Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, Lecture 4 Barbara H. Partee, MGU, March 28, 2013 regimentation both of the language and of the world(s), as reflected in the type structure imposed on the language and the ontology of the model structures in which it is interpreted.
Ideally, this abstraction should mirror a “real” abstraction which our language faculty imposes on the real world, “natural language metaphysics”, in the terms of (Bach 1986b) or “naïve picture of the world” (naivnaja kartina mira in the terminology of Moscow semantic school).
In Montague’s formal semantics the simple predicates of the language of intensional logic (IL), like love, like, kiss, see, etc., are arbitrary “constants”, which can have different interpretations in different models as specified by the interpretation function I. We may consider that their “real meanings” are their interpretations in the “intended model”, but that is not formalized. Formal semantics does not pretend to give a complete characterization of this “intended model”, neither in terms of the model structure representing the “worlds” nor in terms of the interpretations to the lexical constants. But we can give a partial characterization of the class of appropriate models and of the intended interpretation by adding axioms. Within semantics, such axioms are often called meaning postulates (See Section 1.3 just below.)
In formal semantics, axioms play a role in at least two places. (i) They play a role in the axiomatization of “natural language metaphysics” (Bach) or the “naive picture of the world” (Apresjan). (ii) And axioms which describe the properties of the intended interpretations of lexical (non-logical) constants like parent and grandparent, called meaning postulates, have played a substantial role in connecting formal and lexical semantics.
1.3. Meaning postulates. History and examples. 1.3.1. Meaning postulates - history. Philosophers have long been interested in the distinction between analytic and synthetic sentences. Analytic sentences are those whose truth follows from their meaning along; synthetic sentences are those for which non-linguistic facts are needed for establishing their truth or falsity. Carnap (1952), who introduced the notion of meaning postulates, was concerned with how to capture a distinction between two different sorts of analytic sentences, which he illustrated with the pair in (1-2) (Carnap 1952, p.65): (1) Fido is black or Fido is not black. (2) If Jack is a bachelor, then he is not married. The first is true by virtue of its logical form; it is a tautology. The meanings of ‘not’ and ‘or’ are considered part of the logic, and that’s all that’s needed to know that (1) must be true. But the truth of (2) depends on the meanings not only of the logical ‘if-then’ and ‘not’, but also on the meanings of bachelor and married. To recognize the necessary truth of (2), we don’t need to know the complete meaning of those words, but we do need to know enough about them to know that being unmarried is part of the meaning of bachelor. To capture such relations between meanings, Carnap proposed that the usual interpretation rules for logic be supplemented by additional “postulates” such as (3). (3) ∀x(Bachelor(x) → ¬ Married(x)). As Carnap emphasized, it is not up to the logician to decide which meaning postulates are “correct”; he gives as an example the question of whether raven implies black, about which there could well be disagreement. (Montague continued this tradition of noting that lexical semantics is to a considerable extent an empirical study, requiring investigations quite different from what is needed to work out the compositional ‘semantics of syntax’.)
4 3/28/2013 5:36 AM Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, Lecture 4 Barbara H. Partee, MGU, March 28, 2013
1.3.2. Meaning postulates - examples. The sample meaning postulates included here are quite primitive. They are also oversimplified in omitting some essential modal and intensional operators; these are extensional approximations to rules which really must be stated in intensional terms.
(i) Illustrating the use of meaning postulates to spell out the content of “semantic features”. ∀x[king(x) → human(x)] ∀x[senator(x) → human(x)] etc. I.e., one can think of “semantic features” like “[+human]” as abbreviations for such meaning postulates.
(ii) Illustrating the use of meaning postulates to specify semantic properties that distinguish various semantic subclasses within a given semantic type. (More below in Section 5.) (a) ∀x∀P[skillful(P)(x) → P(x)] (a skillful surgeon is a surgeon; this meaning postulate does not apply to adjectives like former and alleged.) (b) ∀x∀P[former(P)(x) → ¬P(x)] (former is a “privative” adjective, like “counterfeit”)
(iii) A meaning postulate with enough information packed into it may constitute a definition; if the meaning postulate specifies necessary and sufficient conditions, it can be written with an “iff” (↔) rather than just as a one-way implication. (a) ∀x∀P[former(P)(x) ↔ [PAST(P(x)) & ¬P(x)]] (b) ∀x∀z(grandparent(x,z) ↔ ∃y(parent(x,y) & parent(y,z))) Whether such meaning postulates are possible for more than a small fraction of the lexicon of a natural language is a matter of debate which we do not aim to settle. But I believe not.
(iv) Meaning postulates can put constraints on the interrelations that must hold among the meanings of certain words without necessarily treating one word as “more basic” than another or decomposing both of them into some common “atoms”. Decompositional analyses are not forbidden but are not required; that issue can be open to exploration and debate.
∀x∀y[husband(y)(x) ↔ wife(x)(y)] ∀x∀y∀z[buy(from-z)(y)(x) → sell(to-x)(y)(z)]
The representation of argument structure illustrated here is exceedingly primitive and not to be taken seriously. The point of such an example is just to show that one can write axioms concerning the relation of pairs like buy and sell without trying to represent them as the “same relation” on any level.
(v) Montague included a number of meaning postulates in PTQ (Montague 1973); many of them concerned issues of intensionality in various subclasses of verbs, nouns, and prepositions. Below is one which concerns his analysis of seek as an intensional transitive verb. The type of seek makes its direct object position referentially opaque; this meaning postulate puts mutual constraints on the meanings of seek, try, and find. If one believes that the meaning of seek includes but is not fully identical to the meaning of try to find, one can replace the ↔ in this meaning postulate by → .
∀x∀S ▢[seek(x,S) ↔ try-to(x, ∧(find(S)))]
5 3/28/2013 5:36 AM Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, Lecture 4 Barbara H. Partee, MGU, March 28, 2013
2. Differences between lexical and compositional semantics
2.1. Is the “semantics of syntax” autonomous? Formal semantics is sometimes described as “the semantics of syntax”, in Elena Paducheva’s nice phrase. And indeed, much of the work that has been done in formal semantics is concentrated on the problem of compositionality, on how to describe the meaning of larger phrases as a function of the meanings of their parts: and the relevant part-whole structure is given primarily by syntax.
But two questions arise very quickly that bring the lexicon into the picture.
First, is there a clear boundary between syntax and lexicon? That question arises particularly sharply for “function words”, and is particularly noticeable when we compare languages. Function words are often described as words that “serve as syntactic glue to combine words into sentences” (Barker 2003) – the underlined words in his example He asked me to give her a haircut. As we have seen, Montague gave explicit semantics for a, the, every, is, not, and, or.
And of course in addition to function words there are function morphemes, morphemes like present and past tense, singular and plural number, the comparative and superlative morphemes. Formal semanticists certainly take the interpretation of those forms as part of their task. Such morphemes are clearly closely connected with syntax, and are often considered part of syntax.
Secondly, even the clear examples of “content words”, typified by the open classes of nouns, verbs, and adjectives, which Montague did not try to treat explicitly but just translated as constants of appropriate types in his intensional logic, often have semantic properties that are important for syntax and compositional semantics.
One of the most well-studied examples of this are aspectual classes of verbs. We need to understand such contrasts in grammaticality and meaning as the following.
(4) a. Mary swam in the sea for an hour. b. *Mary swam in the sea in an hour. c. *Mary swam all the way across the lake for an hour. d. Mary swam all the way across the lake in an hour. (5) a. Mary gazed at the stars for/*in an hour. b. Mary built the raft in/*for an hour.
Probably the *’s here, signaling ungrammaticality, should better be replaced by a symbol for “semantic anomaly” (often # is used for semantic anomaly, but it is also often used for pragmatic infelicity); the line between syntactic and semantic ill-formedness is not always clear, and the explanation for what’s “wrong” with these sentences is clearly semantic.
The compositional semantics of tense, aspect, and temporal adverbials depends very heavily on the semantic properties of verbs, properties that are connected with the concepts of events, processes, and states, an important domain of natural language metaphysics and naivnaja kartina mira. See the very brief introduction in (Barker 2003), and more in (Bach 1986a); the
6 3/28/2013 5:36 AM Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, Lecture 4 Barbara H. Partee, MGU, March 28, 2013 formal semantics of tense, aspect, and temporal adverbials has been an important topic of study in formal semantics almost since the beginning, and there has been a great deal of very interesting work the formal semantics of Slavic aspect by authors including Hana Filip, Atle Grønn, Sergei Tatevosov, Daniel Altshuler, Arnim von Stechow, and others. (I’ll give more references in Lecture 8, and there are some in Lecture 9 from MGU 2011.) Similarly, in the nominal domain, it is impossible to give an account of the syntax and semantics of noun phrases without taking account of some properties of nouns such as their division into mass vs. count, collective, etc.; these properties seem to be basically semantic, but with syntactic consequences as well. Another important property of many content words is their argument structure, and there is a great deal of work at the syntax-semantic interface on how semantic properties of a verb’s arguments, often described in terms of thematic roles like Agent, Patient, Instrument, etc. correlate with the morphosyntactic realization of those arguments, as Subject, Direct Object, Instrumental Phrase, etc. This is a domain in which formal semanticists and non-formal semanticists can communicate quite easily; compare the work of the formal semanticist David Dowty on thematic proto-roles and the Subject-Object choice (Dowty 1991) with the work of two acknowledged experts on lexical semantics who are not formal semanticists, Beth Levin and Malka Rappaport-Hovav, e.g. (Levin and Rappaport Hovav 2011); they do not always agree, but they can easily debate specific issues. And there is a similarity in goals; like formal semanticists, and unlike, say, either Jackendoff or Apresjan, Levin and Rappaport-Hovav do not aim in their work on lexical semantics to give a complete “semantic decomposition”, but rather to isolate and analyze semantic properties of lexical items that play a systematic role in syntax and compositional semantics. “In contrast, the goal of the work assuming LCS is not to provide an exhaustive semantic analysis, but rather to isolate only those facets of meaning which recur in significant classes of verbs and determine key facets of the linguistic behavior of verbs.”(Levin and Rappaport Hovav 2011, p.422) In sum, to answer the question at the beginning of this section: It is impossible to do compositional semantics “of the syntax” without also dealing with a number of aspects of lexical meaning, and with the semantics of function words and many “function morphemes”.
2.2. How much lexical semantics does formal semantics “need”? At this point, we will not try to give a definitive answer to this question, but we want to point out the question itself. For many linguists, including Apresjan (Apresjan 1995), Jackendoff (Jackendoff 2011), and Wierzbicka (Wierzbicka 1985, Wierzbicka 1996), the goal of lexical semantics is to give complete semantic analyses of lexical meaning within some theoretically grounded framework, usually involving decomposition into some sort of semantic “primes”, generally taken to correspond to basic concepts. There are major differences among the three linguists I have mentioned, but they share the goal of something like a complete semantic description of word meanings.
For others, including probably all formal semanticists and many non-formal semanticists like Levin and Rappaport-Hovav, the goal of lexical semantics is not a complete semantic analysis of lexical meaning, but only as much as is “needed”. When a causative verb like kill is analyzed as something like λy[λx[CAUSE (x, die (y))]], or perhaps further decomposed into λy[λx[CAUSE (x, BECOME (dead (y)))]], it is not assumed that dead or die are semantic primes, or basic concepts. The authors may be agnostic about the possibility of analyzing dead in terms of some semantic primitives, or may actively disbelieve in the existence of a universal set of semantic primitives that can serve for the analysis of all lexical
7 3/28/2013 5:36 AM Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, Lecture 4 Barbara H. Partee, MGU, March 28, 2013 meanings. In any case, they do not take it as part of their task to analyze the “left-over” bits of meaning that remain when the “significant” aspects of meaning are factored out.
In fact not all approaches to lexical semantics in formal terms take such a “factoring” approach, or not for all kinds of lexical meanings. If a noun is characterized as having a semantic property such as denoting a kind of concrete entity (chair), or a kind of event (war), that does not lead to a decomposition of its meaning as involving a predicate like CONCRETE-ENTITY plus some other predicate the way die can be analyzed as BECOME (dead). In these cases, meaning postulates may be invoked to capture the relevant lexical entailments; as noted earlier, semantic “features” can often be understood as abbreviations for meaning postulates.
3. What does formal semantics have to offer to lexical semantics?
3.1. An early proposal for synthesizing formal and lexical semantics by Borschev and Partee (1) Lexical semantics in the Moscow School: • Lexical definition is modeled as mathematical definition • There are some undefined notions, semantic primitives (atoms of meaning) • Meaning of other words described by lexical definitions. Such a definition is a text describing necessary and sufficient conditions • An early attempt to capture some aspects of the Moscow School approach in formal semantic terms were made by (Borschev and Partee 1998, Borschev and Partee 1999). • We represent the meaning of the word as a set of meaning postulates, the theory of this word. This is our version of the Moscow school approach, differing in that we did not aim to capture complete definitions, but just to give the compositionally important lexical entailments. (2) We considered a sentence or a text as a theory describing a model of the situation described by the sentence or text (Borschev 1996). (Recall the discussion in Section 1.2 of axioms, theories, and models.)
(3) This theory is formed from several sources: • the text itself, with its sentences considered as formulas (formal semantics) • meaning postulates corresponding to words of the text (lexical semantics) • contextual information (formal pragmatics in Montague’s sense) The theory includes all of these, and all the entailments that follow from them. The interaction of these constituents may be rather complicated. (Asher and Lascarides 1995, Borschev and Partee 2001, Borschev and Partee 2002).
3.2 A more general answer, and examples More generally, if one of the major goals of lexical semantics is to capture lexical entailments and to explain the interaction of lexical semantics with compositional semantics, the fact that formal semantics quite generally approaches semantics in terms of capturing entailments means that formal semanticists have developed useful tools and methods that can also be applied to the lexicon.
8 3/28/2013 5:36 AM Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, Lecture 4 Barbara H. Partee, MGU, March 28, 2013
Here are some topics in which I believe formal semantics has made important contributions to lexical semantics – in many cases in close connection with work on some compositionality puzzle. I do not include discussion here – just topics and some initial references. You might use this list for ideas for a project later in the semester – you can ask me for additional references.
Kratzer on meanings of modals: (Kratzer 1977)
Stage-level and individual-level predicates: (Carlson 1977, Kratzer 1989, Ladusaw 1994)
Polarity items (Israel 1996, Kadmon and Landman 1993, Ladusaw 1980, Szabolcsi 2004)
Lots of properties of verbs (two main sorts: aspectual properties, and argument-structure- related properties) – a few references mentioned earlier; there are many.
Properties related to measure and boundedness in both nouns (mass-count) and verbs (atelic- telic), and their interactions. (Bach 1986a, Filip 1997, Filip 2005, Krifka 1992, Krifka 1998, Link 1983, Link 1998)
Lots of properties of adjectives and other gradable predicates (Hofherr and Matushansky 2010, Kamp 1975, Kamp and Partee 1995, Kennedy 2007, Kennedy and Stanley 2009, Klein 1980, McNally and Boleda 2004, Morzycki 2009, Parsons 1970, Partee 1995, Partee 2009, Partee 2010, Siegel 1976a, Solt 2009)
Some properties of relational and functional nouns (Löbner 1998, Partee 1999, Partee and Borschev 2003, Partee and Borschev 2012, Vikner and Jensen 2002)
Practically everything about determiners and conjunctions – we’ve seen some, and there will be more in Lecture 5.
Lots about indexicals and other context-dependent items – see my Lecture 12, MGU 2009 .
Only, even, too; since, until; before, after; (Horn 1969)
… And many other topics.
4. Case study: adjective semantics
4.1. Introduction to adjective semantics Montague (1970) (in (Montague 1974) presented a semantic treatment of adjectives which he credited to unpublished work done independently by Hans Kamp and Terence Parsons; that work, and similar independent work of Romaine Clark, was subsequently published (Clark 1970, Kamp 1975, Parsons 1970). The central claim in that work was that adjective meanings should be analyzed as functions from properties to properties. Among adjective meanings, some might satisfy further constraints such as intersectivity or subsectivity, but no such constraint can be imposed on the class as a whole, the argument goes, because of the existence of adjectives like false, ostensible, alleged.
9 3/28/2013 5:36 AM Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, Lecture 4 Barbara H. Partee, MGU, March 28, 2013
The strategy of “generalizing to the worst case”, followed by Montague in order to have a uniform assignment of semantic types to syntactic categories, called for giving all adjectives the type of functions from properties to properties. More restricted subclasses of adjectives, such as the subsective (skillful, good) and intersective (purple, carnivorous) adjectives, might be indicated by the use of meaning postulates. In theories which allow type multiplicity and type-shifting, the intersective adjectives might indeed be assigned the simpler type of one- place predicates; this is now widely assumed. Kamp and Partee (1995) review the more or less standard “hierarchy” of classes of adjectives as a preliminary to arguing that arguments concerning the appropriateness of prototype theory as a part of the account of the semantics of adjective-noun combinations should be restricted to intersective adjectives. The hierarchy ranges from intersective adjectives like carnivorous to privative adjectives like counterfeit, fake, and fictitious. The same article makes some proposals for coercion of adjective meanings in context, driven by certain general constraints, which help to explain a number of kinds of shifts and adjustments that take place when adjective-noun combinations are interpreted in various kinds of contexts. Some problem cases remained, especially the case of stone lion, where it seems that the noun rather than the adjective shifts its meaning when faced with incompatibility of the primary senses of each word. More recently I have argued (Partee 2009, Partee 2010) that in fact adjective meanings are more constrained than was appreciated either at the time of the work of Montague, Kamp, Parsons and Clark or at the time of the work of Kamp and Partee. In particular, I have argued that some facts about the possibility of “NP-splitting” in Polish (Nowak 2000) cast serious doubt on the standard hierarchy, and that the data become much more orderly if privative adjectives like counterfeit, fake, and fictitious are reanalyzed as subsective adjectives. Further evidence for that move comes from long-standing puzzles about what to say about sentences like Is that gun real or fake? The revised account requires the possibility of coerced expansion of the denotation of the noun to which such an adjective (as well as adjectives like real, genuine, which were not examined in the earlier-cited literature) is applied. Such coercion can be motivated by treating the constraints on possible adjective meanings as presuppositions that must be satisfied by any use of an adjective; the corresponding coercion may then be seen as a form of presupposition accommodation. We will return to this last topic in a later lecture on adjectives (currently scheduled as Lecture 9).
4.2. Adjective classification (Kamp and Partee 1995, Partee 1995). Adjective classifications as related to formal/lexical integration.
The goals are to illustrate (i) formal semantic methods of investigation of semantic properties of lexical meanings that affect their combinatory potential with other meanings in a compositional semantics; (ii) how "semantic features" or "conceptual primitives" could be given either specific or relative content by means of meaning postulates. 4.2.1. The Intersection Hypothesis.
(1) Hypothesis: Given the syntactic configuration [CNP ADJ CNP], the semantic interpretation of the whole is ADJ ∩ CNP (set intersection, predicate conjunction)
(2) carnivorous = {x | x is carnivorous} mammal = {x | x is a mammal}
10 3/28/2013 5:36 AM Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, Lecture 4 Barbara H. Partee, MGU, March 28, 2013
carnivorous mammal = carnivorous ∩ mammal = {x | x is carnivorous and x is a mammal}
As a general hypothesis about the interpretation of ADJP CNP constructions, the intersection hypothesis is falsified by the examples of nonintersective adjectives in the following sections, but it is a correct account of the semantics of combining nouns with restrictive relative clauses, and it holds for some adjectives, called intersective. 4.2.2. Nonintersective Adjectives.. An adjective like carnivorous is intersective (Parsons: predicative), in that Meaning Postulate (1) holds for any N. (1) ||carnivorous N|| = ||carnivorous|| ∩ ||N|| But skillful is not, as shown by the invalid inference pattern in (2), familiar from the work of Kamp, Parsons, Clark, and Montague cited above. (2) Francis is a skillful surgeon. Francis is a violinist. Therefore Francis is a skillful violinist. [Not valid] Skillful is not intersective, but it is subsective (Parsons: standard): (3) holds for any N. (3) Subsectivity: ||skillful N|| ⊆ ||N|| 4.2.3. Nonsubsective Adjectives.. The adjectives former, alleged, counterfeit are neither intersective nor subsective. (4) (a) ||former senator|| ≠ ||former|| ∩ ||senator|| (b) ||former senator|| ⊄ ||senator|| Nonsubsective adjectives may either be “plain” nonsubsective (no entailments at all, no meaning postulate needed), or privative, entailing the negation of the noun property. The meaning postulate for privative adjectives is stated informally in (5). (5) ||counterfeit N|| ∩ ||N|| = ∅ Additional examples of each type are given below. (6) (i) intersective: sick, carnivorous, blond, rectangular, French. (ii) non-intersective but subsective: typical, recent, good, perfect, legendary. (iiia) non-subsective and privative: would-be, past, spurious, imaginary, fictitious, fabricated (in one sense), mythical (maybe debatable); there are prefixes with this property too, like ex-, pseudo-, non-. (iiib) plain non-subsective: potential, alleged, arguable, likely, predicted, putative, questionable, disputed. 4.2.4. Adjectives as Functions. Meaning postulates for adjective classes. The conclusion drawn by Parsons, Kamp, Clark and Montague was that the simplest general rule for interpretation of the combination of an adjective with a noun (or common noun phrase: CNP) is the following: Adjectives are functions that map the semantic value of a CNP (a property) they combine with onto the value of the ADJ + CNP combination (a new property). I.e., adjectives denote functions from properties to properties. (They are “modifiers”: they take a property and modify it.)
11 3/28/2013 5:36 AM Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, Lecture 4 Barbara H. Partee, MGU, March 28, 2013
Types (extensionalized): CNP: e→t; ADJ: (e→t)→(e→ t) (The relevant semantic values of CNPs must actually be properties rather than sets, i.e., intensions rather than extensions. Intensionality is not being discussed here.) Meaning postulates specify various restrictions on these functions, characterizing various subclasses of adjectives. "Semantic features" may be seen as labels for meaning postulates which give them determinate content. Intersective adjectives and only those can be interpreted in type e→t. On Montague’s “worst case” strategy, all adjectives would have to be interpreted as type (e→t)→(e→ t) (unless two separate syntactic categories were recognized), and the fact that intersective adjectives behave “as if” of type e→t would be captured by a meaning postulate of the following form:
(7) Intersective adjectives: For each intersective adjective meaning ADJ’,
∃P
(Alternatively, intersective adjectives (and only those) can be interpreted in type
(8) Subsective adjectives: For each subsective adjective meaning ADJ’,
▢∀Q
The “plain” nonsubsective adjectives (alleged, possible) have no meaning postulate; this class is "noncommittal": an alleged murderer may or may not be a murderer.
(9) Privative adjectives: For each privative adjective meaning ADJ’,
▢∀Q
The privative adjectives (fake, counterfeit) have a “negative” meaning postulate; a fake gun is not a gun. On this familiar classification, adjectives are seen as forming a hierarchy from intersective to subsective to nonsubsective, with the privative adjectives an extreme case of the nonsubsective adjectives. There are of course many questions and disputes when it comes to assigning particular adjectives to particular classes. Kamp (1975) added an important dimension to the discussion in arguing that adjectives like tall, which at first sight seem to be non-intersective, are actually intersective but context-dependent. Kamp’s analysis found linguistic support in Siegel’s analysis of long-form and short-form adjectives in Russian (Siegel 1976a, 1976b). There has been much further work on the semantics of adjectives in the intervening years, and the context-dependence of interpretation of adjectives is central in the work of Klein (1980) and most recently of Kennedy (1997). Among many other debated points, one which has always been troubling, and to which we will return, is the question of whether an adjective or adjectivally used noun like fake or toy is really privative. One nagging problem is the evident tension between the apparent truth of (10a) and the undeniable well-formedness and interpretability of (10b).
12 3/28/2013 5:36 AM Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, Lecture 4 Barbara H. Partee, MGU, March 28, 2013
(10) a. A fake gun is not a gun. b. Is that gun real or fake?
4.3. Puzzle: Is tall intersective or subsective?.
In section 4.2 above we indicated that the inference pattern (5) was a test of whether an adjective was intersective. By this test, it looks like vague adjectives like tall and young are non-intersective: (5’) a. Tom is a tall 14-year-old. b. Tom is a basketball player. c. ?? Therefore Tom is a tall basketball player.
Does that mean that tall is not intersective? No; perhaps it is intersective but vague and context-dependent. How can we tell the difference? First argument. Keep the ADJ-N sequence constant but change other aspects of the context. That can help to show whether it is the intension of the noun that is crucial.
(5’’) a. My two-year-old son built a really tall snowman yesterday. b. The linguistics students built a really tall snowman last weekend.
Further evidence that there is a difference between truly nonintersective subsective adjectives like skillful and intersective but vague and context- dependent adjectives like tall was noted by Siegel (1976b): the former occur with as-phrases, as in skillful as a surgeon, whereas the latter take for- phrases to indicate comparison class: tall for an East coast mountain. (An adjective can be nonintersective and also vague, and then one can use both an as-phrase and a for-phrase: very good as a diagnostician for someone with so little experience.) Kamp’s analysis also found linguistic support in Siegel’s analysis of long-form and short- form adjectives in Russian (Siegel 1976a, 1976b). There has been much further work on the semantics of adjectives in the intervening years, and the context-dependence of interpretation of adjectives is central in the work of Klein (1980) and most recently of Kennedy (1997). This classification is nevertheless controversial. You will be invited to think about it some more in the homework problems.
Homework #2: See separate page, online on the course website. Homework #2 is due on or before April 16.
References Apresjan, Jurij D. 1995. Izbrannye Trudy, Vol II: Integral'noe Opisanie Jazyka i Sistemnaja Leksikografia [Integrated Description of Language and Systematic Lexicography]. Moscow: Škola "Jazyki Russkoj Kultury". Asher, N., and Lascarides, A. 1995. Lexical disambiguation in a discourse context. Journal of Semantics 12:69- 108. Bach, Emmon. 1980. In defense of passive. Linguistics and Philosophy 3:297-341. https://udrive.oit.umass.edu/partee/Semantics_Readings/Bach1980L%26P.pdf. Bach, Emmon. 1986a. The algebra of events. Linguistics and Philosophy 9:5-16. Reprinted in Paul Portner and Barbara H. Partee, eds., Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings, Oxford: Blackwell (324-333) http://newstar.rinet.ru/~goga/biblio/essential-readings/13-Bach-The.Algebra.of.Events.djvu.
13 3/28/2013 5:36 AM Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, Lecture 4 Barbara H. Partee, MGU, March 28, 2013
Bach, Emmon. 1986b. Natural language metaphysics. In Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science VII, eds. Ruth Barcan Marcus, Georg J.W. Dorn and Paul Weingartner, 573-595. Amsterdam: North- Holland. https://http://www.scss.tcd.ie/Tim.Fernando/NLM/nlm.pdf. Barker, Chris. 1995. Possessive Descriptions. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI Publications. Barker, Chris. 2003. Lexical semantics. In Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, ed. Lynn Nadel. London: Macmillan. http://semarch.linguistics.fas.nyu.edu/barker/Research/barker-lexical.pdf. Borschev, V.B. 1996. Estestvennyi jazyk - naivnaja matematika dlja opisanija naivnoj kartiny mira [Natural language as naïve mathematics]. Moscow Linguistic Almanac 1:203-225. Borschev, Vladimir, and Partee, Barbara H. 1998. Formal and lexical semantics and the genitive in negated existential sentences in Russian. In Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 6: The Connecticut Meeting 1997, eds. Željko Bošković, Steven Franks and William Snyder, 75-96. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications. http://people.umass.edu/partee/docs/russian.pdf. Borschev, Vladimir, and Partee, Barbara H. 1999. Semantika genitivnoj konstrukcii: raznye podxody k formalizacii [Semantics of genitive construction: different approaches to formalization]. In Tipologija i teorija jazyka: Ot opisanija k ob"jasneniju. K 60-letiju Aleksandra Evgen'evia Kibrika [Typology and Linguistic Theory: From Description to Explanation. For the 60th birthday of Aleksandr E. Kibrik], eds. Ekaterina V. Rakhilina and Yakov G. Testelets, 159-172. Moscow: Jazyki Russkoj Kul'tury. http://people.umass.edu/partee/docs/BPGenitiveKibrikFest.pdf. Borschev, Vladimir, and Partee, Barbara H. 2001. Ontology and metonymy. In Ontology-Based Interpretation of Noun Phrases. Proceedings of the First International OntoQuery Workshop., eds. Per Anker Jensen and Peter Skadhauge, 121-138. Kolding:: Department of Business Communication and information Science, University of Southern Denmark. Borschev, Vladimir, and Partee, Barbara H. 2002. O semantike bytijnyx predloženij (On the semantics of existential sentences). Semiotika i Informatika 37 (Moscow:VINITI):59-77. http://people.umass.edu/partee/docs/BP2002RU.pdf Borschev, Vladimir, and Partee, Barbara H. 2011. Genitiv mery v russkom jazyke, tipy i sorta [The genitive of measure in Russian, Types and sorts]. In Slovo i jazyk. Sbornik statej k 80-letiju akademika Ju.D.Apresjana [Word and Language. A Collection of Articles for the 80th Birthday of Academician Ju.D. Apresjan], eds. I.M. Boguslavsky, L.L. Iomdin and L.P. Krysin, 95-137. Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskix kultur'. https://udrive.oit.umass.edu/partee/Borschev-Partee2011Prepublication.pdf. Carlson, Gregory N. 1977. Reference to Kinds in English, University of Massachusetts: Ph.D. dissertation. Distributed by GLSA, UMass. Carnap, Rudolf. 1952. Meaning postulates. Philosophical Studies 3:65-73. Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam. 1970. Remarks on Nominalization. In Readings in English transformational grammar, eds. R. Jakobs and P. Rosenbaum, 184-221. Waltham: Ginn. Clark, R.L. 1970. Concerning the Logic of Predicate Modifiers. Noûs 4:311-335. Dowty, David. 1978. Governed transformations as lexical rules in a Montague Grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 9:393-426. Dowty, David. 1979. Word meaning and Montague grammar. The semantics of verbs and times in Generative Semantics and in Montague's PTQ: Synthese Language Library. Dordrecht: Reidel. for Chapters 6 and 8: https://udrive.oit.umass.edu/partee/Semantics_Readings/Dowty1979LexSemExcerpt.pdf. Dowty, David. 1982. Quantification and the Lexicon: A Reply to Fodor and Fodor. In The Scope of Lexical Rules, eds. Teun Hoekstra, H. van der Hulst and Michael Moortgat, 79-106. Dordrecht: Foris. Dowty, David. 1991. Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language 67:547-619. https://udrive.oit.umass.edu/partee/Semantics_Readings/Dowty1991Proto-roles.pdf. Filip, Hana. 1997. Integrating telicity, aspect and NP semantics: the role of thematic structure. In Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 3: The College Park Meeting 1994, ed. Jindrich Toman, 61-96. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Michigan Slavic Publications. http://plaza.ufl.edu/hfilip/filip.integrating.telicity.pdf. Filip, Hana. 2005. Measures and indefinites. In Reference and Quantification: The Partee Effect, eds. Gregory N. Carlson and Francis Jeffry Pelletier, 229-288. Stanford: CSLI Publications. http://plaza.ufl.edu/hfilip/Measures.Indefinites.pdf. Filip, Hana. 2012. Aspectual class and aktionsart. In Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning (HSK 33.1), eds. Claudia Maienborn, Klaus von Heusinger and Paul Portner, 1186–1217. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. http://user.phil-fak.uni- duesseldorf.de/~filip/Filip.Handbook.Maienborn.Ed.2012.pdf. Harley, Heidi. 2006. English Words: A Linguistic Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Chapter 6: https://udrive.oit.umass.edu/partee/Semantics_Readings/Harley2006Chapter6LexicalSem.pdf. Hofherr, Patricia Cabredo, and Matushansky, Ora eds. 2010. Adjectives: Formal analyses in syntax and semantics Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 153. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
14 3/28/2013 5:36 AM Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, Lecture 4 Barbara H. Partee, MGU, March 28, 2013
Horn, Larry. 1969. A presuppositional approach to only and even. In CLS 5: Papers from the Fifth Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, ed. Robert Binnick, 98-107. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Israel, Michael. 1996. Polarity sensitivity as lexical semantics. Linguistics and Philosophy 19:619-666. terpconnect.umd.edu/~israel/Israel-96-L%26P.pdf. Jackendoff, Ray S. 2011. Conceptual semantics In Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning, eds. C. Maienborn, K. von Heusinger and P. Portner, 688-709. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/RayJackendoff/ConceptualSemantics.doc. Kadmon, Nirit, and Landman, Fred. 1993. Any. Linguistics & Philosophy 16:353-422. Kamp, Hans. 1975. Two theories about adjectives. In Formal Semantics of Natural Language, ed. Edward L. Keenan, 123-155: Cambridge University Press. Kamp, Hans, and Rossdeutscher, Antje. 1994. DRS construction and lexically driven inference. Theoretical Linguistics 20:165-235. Kamp, Hans, and Partee, Barbara. 1995. Prototype theory and compositionality. Cognition 57:129-191. http://bhpartee.narod.ru/kamp-partee95.pdf Kamp, Hans, and Rossdeutscher, Antje. 2005. Elements of a DRT-based Lexikon Ms. Stuttgart. http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/~antje/imslex.pdf. Kennedy, Christopher. 1997. Projecting the Adjective, University of California Santa Cruz: Ph.D. dissertation. Kennedy, Christopher. 2007. Vagueness and grammar: the semantics of relative and absolute gradable adjectives. Linguistics and Philosophy 30:1-45. https://udrive.oit.umass.edu/partee/Semantics_Readings/kennedy07vaguenessandgrammar.pdf. Kennedy, Christopher, and Stanley, Jason. 2009. On 'Average'. Mind 118.471:583-646. http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/%7Ejasoncs/ksfinal.pdf. Klein, Ewan. 1980. A semantics for positive and comparative adjectives. Linguistics and Philosophy 4:1-45. Kratzer, Angelika. 1977. What Must and Can Must and Can Mean. Linguistics and Philosophy 1:337-355. Kratzer, Angelika. 1989. Stage-Level and Individual-Level Predicates. In Papers on Quantification, ed. Emmon; Kratzer Bach, Angelika; Partee, Barbara: Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Kratzer, Angelika. 2000. Building statives. In BLS 26: Proceedings of the Twenty Sixth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society. http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/GI5MmI0M. Krifka, Manfred. 1989. Nominal reference, temporal constitution and quantification in event semantics. In Semantics and Contextual Expression, eds. Renate Bartsch, Johan van Benthem and Peter van Emde Boas, 75-115. Dordrecht: Foris. Krifka, Manfred. 1992. Thematic relations as links between nominal reference and temporal constitution. In Lexical Matters, eds. Ivan Sag and Anna Szabolcsi, 29-53. Stanford: CSLI. http://amor.rz.hu- berlin.de/~h2816i3x/Publications/Krifka 1992 Thematic Relations.PDF. Krifka, Manfred. 1998. The origins of telicity. In Events and grammar, ed. Susan Rothstein, 197-235. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Ladusaw, William. 1980. On the notion "affective" in the analysis of negative polarity items. Journal of Linguistic Research 1:1-16. Reprinted in Portner and Partee (2002), pp. 457-470 http://newstar.rinet.ru/~goga/biblio/essential-readings/18-Ladusaw- On.the.Notion.Affective.in.the.Analysis.of.Negative-polarity.Items.djvu. Ladusaw, William A. 1994. Thetic and categorical, stage and individual, weak and strong. In SALT IV: Proceedings of the Second Conference on Semantics and Linguistic Theory 1994, eds. Mandy Harvey and Lynn Santelmann, 220-229. Ithaca, N.Y.: CLC Publications, Department of Linguistics, Cornell University. in Horn, Laurence R. and Yasuhiko Kato, eds., Negation and Polarity: Syntactic and Semantic Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 232-42. Levin, Beth, and Pinker, Steven. 1992. Lexical & conceptual semantics: Cognition special issues. Cambridge, Ma.: Blackwell. Levin, Beth, and Rappaport Hovav, Malka. 1996. Lexical semantics and syntactic structure. In Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory, ed. Shalom Lappin, 487-507. Oxford: Blackwell. Levin, Beth, and Rappaport Hovav, Malka. 2011. Lexical Conceptual Structure. In Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning, eds. C. Maienborn, K. von Heusinger and P. Portner, 418- 438. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://udrive.oit.umass.edu/partee/Semantics_Readings/Levin_and_RapHovav2011-proofs.pdf. Link, Godehard. 1983. The logical analysis of plurals and mass terms: A lattice-theoretical approach. In Meaning, use and the interpretation of language, eds. R. Bäuerle, C. Schwarze and A. von Stechow, 303-323. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter; reprinted in Portner and Partee (2002), 127-146. Reprinted in Link, Godehard. 1998. Algebraic Semantics in Language and Philosophy: CSLI lecture
15 3/28/2013 5:36 AM Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, Lecture 4 Barbara H. Partee, MGU, March 28, 2013
notes No. 74. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI Publications. pp.11-34. Reprinted in Portner and Partee, eds., 2002, 127-146. http://newstar.rinet.ru/~goga/biblio/essential-readings/04-Link- The.Logical.Analysis.of.Plurals.and.Mass.Terms:A.Lattice-theoretical.Approach.djvu. Link, Godehard. 1998. Algebraic Semantics in Language and Philosophy: CSLI lecture notes No. 74. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI Publications. http://standish.stanford.edu/bin/object?00000058. Löbner, Sebastian. 1998. Definite associative anaphora. In Approaches to Discourse Anaphora. Proceedings of DAARC96 - Discourse Anaphora and Resolution Colloquium, Lancaster University July 17th-18th 1996, ed. Simon Botley. Lancaster: Lancaster University. http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/mU3YzU1N/Loebner_Definite_Associative_Anaphora.pdf. McNally, Louise, and Boleda, Gemma. 2004. Relational adjectives as properties of kinds. In Empirical Issues in Formal Syntax and Semantics 5, eds. O. Bonami and P. Cabredo Hofherr, 179–196. http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss5/mcnally-boleda/mcnally-boleda-eiss5.pdf Montague, Richard. 1970. English as a formal language. In Visentini et al., Bruno, Linguaggi nella Società e nella Tecnica, 189-224. Milan: Edizioni di Comunità. Reprinted in Montague 1974, 188-221 Montague, Richard. 1973. The proper treatment of quantification in ordinary English. In Approaches to Natural Language, eds. K.J.J. Hintikka, J.M.E. Moravcsik and P. Suppes, 221-242. Dordrecht: Reidel. Reprinted in Montague 1974, 247-270; Reprinted in Portner and Partee, eds., 2002, 17-34 http://newstar.rinet.ru/~goga/biblio/essential-readings/01-Montague- The.Proper.Treatment.of.Quantification.in.Ordinary.English.djvu. Montague, Richard. 1974. Formal Philosophy. Selected Papers of Richard Montague. Edited and with an introduction by Richmond H. Thomason. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. strangebeautiful.com/uwo/metaphys/montague-formal-phil.pdf. Morzycki, Marcin. 2009. Degree modification of gradable nouns: Size adjectives and adnominal degree morphemes. Natural Language Semantics 17.2:175–203. Nowak, Anita. 2000. On split PPs in Polish. Ms. Amherst (unpublished General Paper, UMass.). Parsons, Terence. 1970. Some problems concerning the logic of grammatical modifiers. Synthèse 21:320-334. Reprinted in Davidson and Harman 1972, 127-141. http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/phil/faculty/tparsons/SomeProblemsConcerning.pdf. Partee, Barbara. 1995. Lexical semantics and compositionality. In An Invitation to Cognitive Science (Second Edition). Volume 1: Language, eds. Lila Gleitman and Mark Liberman, 311-360. Cambridge: MIT Press. http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/jhjMGYwM/. Partee, Barbara H. 1999. Weak NP's in HAVE sentences. In JFAK [a Liber Amicorum for Johan van Benthem on the occasion of his 50th Birthday; CD-ROM], eds. J. Gerbrandy, M. Marx, M. de Rijke and Y. Venema. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. Reprinted in Partee, Barbara H. 2004. Compositionality in Formal Semantics: Selected Papers by Barbara H. Partee. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 282-291 https://udrive.oit.umass.edu/partee/parteeWeakNPsInHaveSentences.pdf. Partee, Barbara H., and Borschev, Vladimir. 2003. Genitives, relational nouns, and argument-modifier ambiguity. In Modifying Adjuncts, eds. E. Lang, C. Maienborn and C. Fabricius-Hansen, 67-112. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. http://people.umass.edu/partee/docs/ParteeBorschev2003ArgMod.pdf Partee, Barbara H. 2009. The dynamics of adjective meaning. In Computational Linguistics and Intellectual Technologies: Papers from the Annual International Conference "Dialogue 2009" (Bekasovo, May 27- 31, 2009), ed. A. E. Kibrik et al, 593-597. Moscow: Russian State Humanities University. https://udrive.oit.umass.edu/partee/Partee2009_Trondheim_Adjectives.ppt.pdf (handout that goes beyond published version) ; published version: https://udrive.oit.umass.edu/partee/Partee2009DialogueAdjs.doc. Partee, Barbara H. 2010. Privative adjectives: subsective plus coercion. In Presuppositions and Discourse: Essays offered to Hans Kamp, eds. Rainer Bäuerle, Uwe Reyle and Thomas Ede Zimmermann, 273- 285. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing. http://people.umass.edu/partee/docs/ParteeInPressKampFest.pdf. Partee, Barbara H., and Borschev, Vladimir. 2012. Sortal, relational, and functional interpretations of nouns and Russian container constructions. Journal of Semantics 29:445-486. http://jos.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/ffs009?ijkey=Nqzq7HKnmPT4g37&keytype=ref Ramchand, Gillian Catriona. 1997. Aspect and Predication. The Semantics of Argument Structure. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rosch, Eleanor. 1978. Principles of categorization. In Cognition and Categorization, ed. E.; Lloyds Rosch, B., 27-48. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc. Siegel, Muffy. 1976a. Capturing the Russian adjective. In Montague Grammar, ed. Barbara H. Partee, 293-309. New York: Academic Press. Siegel, Muffy E.A. 1976b. Capturing the Adjective, University of Massachusetts: Ph.D. dissertation.
16 3/28/2013 5:36 AM Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, Lecture 4 Barbara H. Partee, MGU, March 28, 2013
Smith, E.E., and Osherson, D.N. 1984. Conceptual combination for prototypes: a selective modification model. Ms. Cambridge, MA. Solt, Stephanie. 2009. The Semantics of Adjectives of Quantity, Linguistics, CUNY. http://www.zas.gwz- berlin.de/fileadmin/mitarbeiter/solt/Solt_Dissertation.pdf. Szabolcsi, Anna. 2004. Positive polarity -- negative polarity. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 22:409- 452. van Fraassen, B. 1969. Presuppositions, supervaluations and free logic. In The Logical Way of Doing Things, ed. K. Lambert. New Haven: Yale University Press. van Geenhoven, Veerle. 1998. On the argument structure of some noun incorporating verbs in West Greenlandic. In The projection of arguments: Lexical and compositional factors, eds. Miriam Butt and Wilhelm Geuder, 225-263. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Vikner, Carl, and Jensen, Per Anker. 2002. A semantic analysis of the English genitive. Interaction of lexical and formal semantics. Studia Linguistica 56:191-226. https://udrive.oit.umass.edu/partee/Semantics_Readings/ViknerJensen2002.pdf. Wechsler, Stephen. 1995. The semantic basis of argument structure. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Wierzbicka, Anna. 1985. Lexicography and conceptual analysis. Ann Arbor: Karoma. Wierzbicka, Anna. 1996. Semantics: Primes and Universals. Oxford [England] ; New York: Oxford University Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1922. Tractatus logico-philosophicus: International library of psychology, philosophy and scientific method. New York, London,: Harcourt, Brace & company, K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & co., ltd.
17 3/28/2013 5:36 AM