DOCSLIB.ORG

Context Dependence and Procedural Meaning: the Semantics of Definites

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Context Dependence and Procedural Meaning: the Semantics of Definites Context Dependence and Procedural Meaning: The Semantics of Definites Richard Breheny University College London Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD University of London 1999 ProQuest Number: 10608947 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10608947 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Abstract This thesis argues that there is a theoretically interesting connection between members of the intuitive category of context-dependent expressions, including “we”, “tall”, “local”, “every man”, “the woman”, “it”, “those donkeys” and so on. A treatment of the linguistic meaning of these expressions will be proposed based on the idea that their use raises issues for the audience about the proper understanding of the utterances in which they occur. The proposal will be developed in terms of a semantics for questions, which draws on the idea that to know the meaning of a question is to know what would count as an answer. It can be summarised along similar lines: to know the meaning of a context-dependent expression is to know what properties or relations (of the appropriate type) it could be used to express. The framework in which this idea will be developed can account for why the expressions that are given this issue-based treatment can also be given dependent, bound readings. The class of definite expressions, including descriptions and pronouns, is analysed in detail. A quantificational approach, where the determiner is existential, is assumed for all forms of definiteness. In all cases, the restrictor is interpreted by an atomic definite concept. The audience’s grasp of the properties which definite concepts express is the result of inferential processes which take the linguistic meaning of a definite expression as input. These processes are constrained by pragmatic principles. The analysis of context-dependent expressions is extended to account for dependent interpretations. A treatment of donkey sentences that accounts for their variable quantificational force is shown to follow naturally from the analysis. A pragmatic account of infelicitous uses of definites is provided and shown to compare favourably with that provided by dynamic semantic theories. Also, a novel treatment of plural definites is provided which accounts for their variable quantificational force. 2 Contents Acknowledgements 6 Chapter 1 Introduction 9 1 Issues relating to context-dependent expressions 9 2 Definites and context dependence 12 3 Dynamic semantics 14 4 Outline 18 Chapter 2 Definites: Empirical Issues 19 Section I Introduction 19 Section II Static Approaches 22 1 Definites as quantifiers 22 2 Incomplete descriptions and context dependence 27 3 Plural descriptions 34 4 Issues and problems for the Russellian account 40 4.1 Linguistics and the Russellian view 40 4.2 Uniqueness and identifiability 44 4.3 Maximality 50 5 Summary 53 Section III Plurals 53 1 Introduction 53 2 Plurals 55 2.1 Background 55 2.2 Issues 58 2.3 Distributive/Collective 61 3 A grammar with plurals 65 4 Plural definites 76 4.1 Introduction 76 4.2 Definites denote collections 77 4.3 Maximality 81 4.4 Plurals and negation 87 4.5 Cumulative readings 102 5 Pragmatic possibilities 116 5.1 Introduction 116 5.2 Loosening 117 5.3 Strengthening 121 3 6 Summary 125 Section IV Pronouns 126 1 Introduction 126 2 Cross-sentential cases and E-type pronouns 132 3 Donkey pronouns and quantificational force 153 3.1 Uniqueness 153 3.2 Non-unique alternatives 161 Section V Identifiability, Partiality, and Dynamic Semantics 175 1 Introduction 175 2 Situation semantics 179 3 Dynamic semantics 182 4 Dual strategies 208 Chapter 3 An Issue Based Approach to Context Dependence 222 Section I Introduction 222 Section II The Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction: 224 Classical and Presuppositional Views 1 The classical semantics-Gricean nexus 224 2 Dynamic presuppositional approaches 230 Section III The Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction: 234 The Psychological View 1 An intermediate level of representation 234 2 Decoding 236 Section IV The Conceptual Systems and Context Dependence 239 1 Basic issue 239 2 The conceptual system 243 3 Context dependence 246 4 “tall” 247 4.1 The semantics of issues 248 4.2 Issue resolution 250 4.3 Descriptive vs. rigid 253 4 5 Quantification 255 6 Quantification and the focus of joint attention 259 Section V Definites 262 1 Basics 262 2 Singular definites and partial resolution 268 3 Referential use 275 4 Loose ends 282 Chapter 4 Binding 285 Section I Introduction 285 Section II Binding into Context-Dependent Expressions 288 1 The uniformity issue 288 2 Variable-free binding 289 3 Dependent interpretations of context-dependent expressions 292 Section III Conditional Donkey Sentences 310 Chapter 5 Pragmatics 320 Section I Overview 320 1 Introduction 320 2 The semantics/pragmatics interface 320 3 Relevance theory 323 Section II Infelicity and Gratuitous Effort 330 1 Pointing and focus 330 2 Marbles 334 Section III Justifying the Strongest Meaning 337 1 Default based strategies 337 2 Which Strategy? 341 3 Maximal/Non-maximal 346 4 Summary 353 Bibliography 355 5 Acknowledgments I consider myself to have been very fortunate to come to UCL when I did to take an MA in Linguistics. In that introductory year, I was both given as good an introduction to the subject as one could hope for, and I was inspired by the manner in which the subject is approached in London, emphasising issues of theoretical principle, conceptual rigour and integrity. As a thesis of this type is as much a product of formative experiences as anything else, I gladly acknowledge the input not only of my ‘meaning’ teachers, Deirdre Wilson, Ruth Kempson and Robyn Carston, but also the other faculty at UCL and SOAS that I have had the pleasure of listening to over the years. In particular, Neil Smith, Rita Manzini and Michael Brody. My good fortune continued into my second year at UCL in that I was taken on by Annabel Cormack as an assistant. I think that this year was as important for my linguistic development as anything else. I’m not sure how much use I was to Annabel at this stage, but I certainly gained a lot from the experience; both with regards education concerning the syntax- semantics interface, but also in terms of just doing linguistics. In that same year, I also attended some seminars on donkey anaphora given by Shalom Lappin at SOAS. Though at the time I didn’t know that I myself would be working on that subject in my thesis, I benefitted greatly from the input. I had the greatest good fortune, however, to be supervised by Deirdre Wilson. Apart from anything else, working on this thesis for the past few years has been mostly just fun and having Deirdre as a supervisor was a major reason for this. I don’t think that I ever had a formal supervision, just a lot of long chats which happened to be on the subject of what I was currently working on. Of course, I must acknowledge the intellectual debt that I owe to Deirdre in as far as this thesis draws on her work with Dan Sperber. But more importantly, I should say that I have been inspired by working with Deirdre to look for answers beyond the sometimes narrow confines of one sub-discipline or another. I should also say that I am indebted for her contribution to the final written version; for helping me to transform a very 6 rushed and rough first draft not only with useful comments but also with (more than a few) stylistic suggestions. There are many other people who have read or listened to earlier versions of parts of this thesis. I should mention Robyn Carston, Annabel Cormack, Ruth Kempson, David Adger and the members of UCL’s pragmatics reading group who sat through some fairly long presentations in the past couple of years. These include Corinne Iten, Eun-ju Noh, Milena Nuti, Anna Papaffagou, George Powell, Villy Rouchota and Vlad Zegerac. I thank them for their feedback. I would finally like to mention some people whose friendship and (especially) support were instrumental in the completion of this thesis: my sister Fiona, Paul Novotny, Anja Belz and especially to Milena Nuti, who helped me in very many ways to get the final version together in time and who supported me through some pretty hectic months of working full-time on two things at once. 7 To my family. Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Issues relating to context-dependent expressions There is a fairly substantial class of natural-language expressions which we might classify, in a pre-theoretical sense, as context dependent. There are the indexical expressions, such as "I" and "now". There are comparative adjectives, such as "tall" and "fast". There are very many expressions which are implicitly perspectival, such as "local", "come" and "arrive". Expressions involving quantification are also commonly regarded as being, in some sense, context dependent. An utterance of (1) could be understood in any number of different ways depending on the circumstances in which it is uttered: (1) Everyone brought a gift. Not only quantified noun phrases but also adverbial quantifiers generally have their domain implicitly restricted by context: (2) John usually takes Bill to the movies.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Making a Pronoun: Fake Indexicals As Windows Into the Properties of Pronouns Angelika Kratzer
    University of Massachusetts Amherst From the SelectedWorks of Angelika Kratzer 2009 Making a Pronoun: Fake Indexicals as Windows into the Properties of Pronouns Angelika Kratzer Available at: https://works.bepress.com/angelika_kratzer/ 6/ Making a Pronoun: Fake Indexicals as Windows into the Properties of Pronouns Angelika Kratzer This article argues that natural languages have two binding strategies that create two types of bound variable pronouns. Pronouns of the first type, which include local fake indexicals, reflexives, relative pronouns, and PRO, may be born with a ‘‘defective’’ feature set. They can ac- quire the features they are missing (if any) from verbal functional heads carrying standard ␭-operators that bind them. Pronouns of the second type, which include long-distance fake indexicals, are born fully specified and receive their interpretations via context-shifting ␭-operators (Cable 2005). Both binding strategies are freely available and not subject to syntactic constraints. Local anaphora emerges under the assumption that feature transmission and morphophonological spell-out are limited to small windows of operation, possibly the phases of Chomsky 2001. If pronouns can be born underspecified, we need an account of what the possible initial features of a pronoun can be and how it acquires the features it may be missing. The article develops such an account by deriving a space of possible paradigms for referen- tial and bound variable pronouns from the semantics of pronominal features. The result is a theory of pronouns that predicts the typology and individual characteristics of both referential and bound variable pronouns. Keywords: agreement, fake indexicals, local anaphora, long-distance anaphora, meaning of pronominal features, typology of pronouns 1 Fake Indexicals and Minimal Pronouns Referential and bound variable pronouns tend to look the same.
    [Show full text]
  • Minimal Pronouns1
    1 Minimal Pronouns1 Fake Indexicals as Windows into the Properties of Bound Variable Pronouns Angelika Kratzer University of Massachusetts at Amherst June 2006 Abstract The paper challenges the widely accepted belief that the relation between a bound variable pronoun and its antecedent is not necessarily submitted to locality constraints. It argues that the locality constraints for bound variable pronouns that are not explicitly marked as such are often hard to detect because of (a) alternative strategies that produce the illusion of true bound variable interpretations and (b) language specific spell-out noise that obscures the presence of agreement chains. To identify and control for those interfering factors, the paper focuses on ‘fake indexicals’, 1st or 2nd person pronouns with bound variable interpretations. Following up on Kratzer (1998), I argue that (non-logophoric) fake indexicals are born with an incomplete set of features and acquire the remaining features via chains of local agreement relations established in the syntax. If fake indexicals are born with an incomplete set of features, we need a principled account of what those features are. The paper derives such an account from a semantic theory of pronominal features that is in line with contemporary typological work on possible pronominal paradigms. Keywords: agreement, bound variable pronouns, fake indexicals, meaning of pronominal features, pronominal ambiguity, typologogy of pronouns. 1 . I received much appreciated feedback from audiences in Paris (CSSP, September 2005), at UC Santa Cruz (November 2005), the University of Saarbrücken (workshop on DPs and QPs, December 2005), the University of Tokyo (SALT XIII, March 2006), and the University of Tromsø (workshop on decomposition, May 2006).
    [Show full text]
  • Resumptive and Bound Variable Pronouns in Tongan
    UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics, no. 12, September 2005 Proceedings of AFLA XII, Heinz & Ntelitheos (eds.) RESUMPTIVE AND BOUND VARIABLE PRONOUNS IN TONGAN Randall Hendrick University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill [email protected] This paper describes the distribution of bound variable pronouns in Tongan and two classes of resump- tive pronouns that appear in the language (apparent and true resumptives). Bound variable pronouns and apparent resumptive pronouns are given a movement analysis, which is able to explain their com- mon behavior with respect to weak crossover and reconstruction effects. It also allows a derivational explanation for why they do not interact with true resumptive pronouns. 1. INTRODUCTION Pronouns are often viewed as shorthand expressions for their antecedents. This intuition stood behind the pronominalization transformations of the 1960s (cf. Stockwell et al. (1973)) in which a grammatical rule replaced the second occurrence of a DP with an appropriate pronoun. Sub- sequent work challenged this simple view of pronouns in two ways. Firstly, classes of structures were identified in which pronouns were not stylistic circumlocutions for a previously mentioned antecedent, and secondly, the hypothesized pronominalization transformation did not fit with well motivated constraints on movement transformations. Bound variable pronouns (pronouns that have quantified DPs as their antecedents) were taken to illustrate the first point (cf. Partee (1987)). The second point was illustrated by resumptive pronouns (pronouns that recapitulate an initial DP ei- ther in relative clauses or topicalized constructions), which are insensitive to island constraints that restricted wh-movement (e.g. Chomsky (1976)). In place of the transformational account, pronouns were taken to be lexical items inserted into syntactic structures like other lexical items.
    [Show full text]
  • Meanings of Determiners Heading Non-Topic Dps to the Meanings of the Corresponding Topics
    Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my teachers and supervisors Manfred Bierwisch and Reinhard Blutner. Without their sympathetic help in a personally very difficult situation, I would have been unable even to start writing this dissertation. Besides this, they patiently supported me with their advice and experience in every stage of my work. The people that inspired me with discussions and comments are so numerous that there is no hope to mention all of them. Among them are Kai Alter, Daniel Büring, Johannes Dölling, Bernhard Drubig, Hans Martin Gärtner, Edward Göbbel, Michael Herweg, Caroline Heycock, Helen de Hoop, Inga Kohlhof, Manfred Krifka, Annette Lessmöllmann, Christine Maaßen, André Meinunger, Marga Reis, Michal Starke, Markus Steinbach, Wolfgang Sternefeld, Anatoli Strigin, Hubert Truckenbrodt, Enric Vallduví, Ralf Vogel, Chris Wilder, Susanne Winkler, Werner Wolff, Henk Zeevat, and Ede Zimmermann. I am indebted to the "Max-Planck-Gesellschaft" for its financial support. Special thanks go to Elena Demke, Annette Lessmöllmann, Anatoli Strigin, and Chris Wilder for correcting my English. All remaining mistakes are of course subject to my own responsibility. Last but not least, I thank my parents and my brother for everything. Table of Contents 1 Introduction . 1 2 The Dynamic Framework . 5 2.1 Donkey Sentences and Cross-sentential Anaphora . 5 2.2 Montague Semantics and File Change Semantics: A Comparison . 7 2.2.1 Montague Semantics: The General Picture . 7 2.2.2 File Change Semantics: An Overview . 11 2.2.2.1 The Strategy . 11 2.2.2.2 Files . 13 2.2.2.3 LF-Construal . 13 2.2.2.4 The Interpretation of LF .
    [Show full text]
  • The Theory of Movement: an Introduction Kyle Johnson Crete Summer School of Linguistics University of Crete 16 July 2018 Rethymno
    The Theory of Movement: An Introduction Kyle Johnson Crete Summer School of Linguistics University of Crete 16 July 2018 Rethymno Syntacticians of Old developed a simple, but largely e!ective, model of con- De$ned this way, !"#$" requires every phrase to have exactly two elements. "at stituency. "e point of that model is to map strings of words, ormaybemor- is controversial. We won’t ever $nd a need to increase the number of elements a phemes, into larger units. For this class, we can think of those units as semantic phrase can contain. But we will $nd a need to decrease it. So, somewhat unortho- objects, though it will be the syntax that individuates them. "e units are called doxically, I will also allow ()). phrases. ()) !"#$"(α)=γ (#) Goal:De$ne P. www ...wn ← P → {{w i , {w j , wk }},{wk , wm}, ...} α Phrases (indicated with “{}”) are those sets of words that havecompositionalde- Let us understand that when !"#$" takes one argument, that argument must be notations, and behave as units for the syntax and prosody. Likewords,phrasescan awordanditsoutputmustbeaphrase. P themselves be parts of phrases. Two ingredients in are the denotations of the Aworkinghypothesisisthatγ is always the same morphosyntactic category words and phrases and the morphosyntactic category of the words and phrases. as one of its elements. "ere are regularities that seem to govern which element For this class, I’ll assume that words and morphemes come into the syntactic sys- determines that category but I will treat this as an independent, phrase speci$c, tem with their morphosyntactic category speci$ed.
    [Show full text]
  • T P C C U I F D by Tomohiro Yokoyama a Thesis Submitted In
    The Person Case Constraint Unconditional Interfaces and Faultless Derivations by Tomohiro Yokoyama A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics University of Toronto © Copyright 2019 by Tomohiro Yokoyama Abstract The Person Case Constraint Unconditional Interfaces and Faultless Derivations Tomohiro Yokoyama Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics University of Toronto 2019 This thesis advances a theoretical move toward a grammatical model devoid of interface conditions by proposing a novel feature-based structure-building mechanism. In the standardly assumed architecture of grammar, ungrammaticality is often explained in terms of a violation of some condition on an output of the syntactic module. However, some recent research in lin- guistics has attempted to move away from such an approach to ungrammaticality and proposed to reinterpret ungrammaticality as non-generability. In this approach, ill-formed structures are construed not as defective but as impossible to generate with the available syntactic operations. In order to advocate for the latter approach to ungrammaticality, this thesis examines an in- terface condition called the Person Licensing Condition (PLC), which was proposed to account for a linguistic phenomenon known as the Person Case Constraint (PCC). It is shown in the thesis that the PLC fails to capture cross-linguistic variation in the PCC patterns and in the way illicit structures are remedied. It is further argued that previous, Agree-based accounts of the PCC variation, also reliant on an interface condition, cannot fully explain all the patterns and that they obscure the source of the variation. This thesis proposes an alternative account of the PCC, which involves a version of Merge that is constrained by feature valuation, and what is known as articulated person features.
    [Show full text]
  • Lecture 5. Formal Semantics and the Lexicon. Meaning Postulates And
    Topics in Formal Semantics, Lecture 5 Topics in Formal Semantics, Lecture 5 B.H. Partee, MGU, March 22, 2005 B.H. Partee, MGU, March 22, 2005 Lecture 5. Formal semantics and the lexicon. Ideally, this abstraction should mirror a “real” abstraction which our “language faculty” Meaning postulates and the lexicon. Adjective meanings. imposes on the real world, “natural language metaphysics” or “naïve picture of the world” (naivnaja kartina mira in the terminology of Moscow semantic school). We will discuss this later when considering the integration of formal and lexical semantics. 1. The Lexicon in Model-theoretic Semantics. .................................................................................................1 1.1. Languages, world, models. Axioms.............................................................................................................1 In Montague’s formal semantics the simple predicates of the language of intensional 1.2. Axioms and theories. ..................................................................................................................................2 logic (IL), like love, like, kiss, see, etc., are regarded as symbols (similar to the “labels” of 2. Integrating formal semantics, lexical semantics, natural language metaphysics ...............................................4 PC) which could have many possible interpretations in many different models, their “real 2.1. Formal semantics in the broader setting of natural language use. ...............................................................4
    [Show full text]
  • Binding and Coreference in Vietnamese
    University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses October 2019 Binding and Coreference in Vietnamese Thuy Bui University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics Commons, Semantics and Pragmatics Commons, and the Syntax Commons Recommended Citation Bui, Thuy, "Binding and Coreference in Vietnamese" (2019). Doctoral Dissertations. 1694. https://doi.org/10.7275/ncqc-n685 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1694 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BINDING AND COREFERENCE IN VIETNAMESE A Dissertation Presented by THUY BUI Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September 2019 Linguistics c Copyright by Thuy Bui 2019 All Rights Reserved BINDING AND COREFERENCE IN VIETNAMESE A Dissertation Presented by THUY BUI Approved as to style and content by: ————————————————– Kyle Johnson, Co-Chair ————————————————– Brian Dillon, Co-Chair ————————————————– Rajesh Bhatt, Member ————————————————– Adrian Staub, Member ————————————————– Joe Pater, Department Chair Department of Linguistics ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I now realize how terrible I really am at feelings, words, and expressing feelings with words, as I spent the past three weeks trying to make these acknowledge- ments sound right, and they just never did. With this acute awareness and abso- lutely no compensating skills, I am going to include a series of inadequate thank yous to the many amazing people whose overflowing acts of kindness towards me exceeds what words can possibly describe anyway.
    [Show full text]
  • Semantic and Metasemantic Notions of Analyticity
    Asian Social Science; Vol. 10, No. 22; 2014 ISSN 1911-2017 E-ISSN 1911-2025 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education Semantic and Metasemantic Notions of Analyticity Artur Ravilevich Karimov1 & Valentina Alexandrovna Kazakova2 1 Kazan Federal University, Russian Federation 2 Kazan State University of Architecture and Engineering, Russian Federation Correspondence: Artur Ravilevich Karimov, Kazan Federal University, 420008, Kremlevskaya 18, Kazan, Russian Federation. E-mail: [email protected] Received: August 1, 2014 Accepted: August 18, 2014 Online Published: October 30, 2014 doi:10.5539/ass.v10n22p285 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ass.v10n22p285 Abstract In this article the evolution of main conceptions of analyticity is analyzed. Kant’s criteria for analytic/synthetic distinction are discussed. Frege and Carnap notions of analyticity are set out. It is shown that Frege and Carnap shifted the criteria of analyticity to the justificatory status of judgments. The notion of truth in virtue of meaning and its criticism is exposed. Critical arguments against analyticity by W. V. O. Quine are discussed. Williamson’s arguments against traditional notions of analyticity are formulated. Williamson maintains that analytic truths are reduced to truths of other base classes-necessary, semantic or logical. It is shown that the stipulative definition of analyticity is vulnerable to Williamson’s argument. Russell’s conception of truth in virtue of reference determiner is exposed and evaluated. It is defended that the notion of truth in virtue of reference determiner is immune to many standard objections against analyticity. Keywords: analyticity, meaning, stipulation, reference 1. Introduction Analyticity is one the most controversial concepts in the history of analytic philosophy.
    [Show full text]
  • Anti-Agreement with Bound Variables
    Anti-agreement with Bound Variables Nico Baier and Michelle Yuan 1. Introduction In many languages, regular ϕ-agreement with a DP becomes disrupted when that DP is involved in an A-dependency¯ (e.g. wh-movement, relativization). Since Ouhalla (1993), this phenomenon has been known as anti-agreement. For example, in Berber (Afro-Asiatic), shown in (1), verbs agree with their subjects for person, number, and gender; however, in A-extraction¯ contexts the verb appears instead as an invariant participle form. In Abaza (Northwest Caucasian), regular ϕ-agreement is replaced by a specialized form of agreement indexing A-extracted¯ arguments, (2).1 (1) Berber a. t-zra tamghart Mohand 3SG.F-see.PFV woman Mohand ‘The woman saw Mohand’ (Ouhalla, 1993) b. man tamgharti ay yzrin/*t-zra i Mohand which woman C see.AA/3SG.F-see.PFV Mohand ‘Which woman saw Mohand?’ (Ouhalla, 1993) (2) Abaza w a. proi prok S @k-li-bat’ 3SG.F 2PL ABS.2PL-ERG.3SG.F-see ‘She saw you.PL.’ (O’Herin 2002) j j b. d@zdai s-axcˇ a z@i-G@cˇ who POSS.1SG-money ERG.AA-steal ‘Who stole my money?’ (O’Herin, 2002) In this paper, we investigate anti-agreement with bound variables (henceforth ‘bound anti-agreement’), an anti-agreement phenomenon that has, to our knowledge, received little attention in previous literature. As illustrated in (3), bound anti-agreement surfaces when an A-extracted¯ argument triggers anti- agreement not only on its locally ϕ-agreeing head, but also on a lower head that ϕ-agrees with a pronoun bound by the extracted argument.
    [Show full text]
  • Three Approaches of Word Sentence Meaning in Translation of English Slang Word Into Indonesian in the Novel “The Adventure of Oliver Twist”
    THREE APPROACHES OF WORD SENTENCE MEANING IN TRANSLATION OF ENGLISH SLANG WORD INTO INDONESIAN IN THE NOVEL “THE ADVENTURE OF OLIVER TWIST” Ni Putu Wintia Sunny Kumara Sakti Villa Jln. Suweta Banjar Sambahan Ubud Phone: +62 361 437806 , Celular Phone: +62 89685689099 [email protected] ABSRACT The slang expression means coming to democratic atmosphere in language since the meaning embodied is not absolute. It depends upon who uses it, in which group the users belong to, and in what situation slang word occur. Having knowledge of slang, it means the user is bilingual, or even multilingual. The question emerged is how the user of slang employ slang in their daily communication. Their choice of certain slang replacing the standard may have a certain purposes. Therefore, it is really difficult to translate it in Indonesian. How to transfer the meaning of slang that contains senses about culture, habit, and identity of specific group of people is a complex undertaking. The form of English slang used in the novel "The Adventure of Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens is generally in the form of primary slang. There were sixteen primary slang words uttered by the character in the novel. However, there was only four secondary slang words found in the novel. So the primary slang more common used by the character in novel. There are three approaches that can be used to find the conceptual meaning of word in the process of translation. There are reference theory, componential analysis, and meaning postulate. Keywords: slang word, reference theory, componential analysis, meaning postulate. ABSTRAK Kata Slang merupakan expresi demokratis dalam bahasa yang menganduk makna tidak mutlak.
    [Show full text]
  • Problems in the Representation of the Logical Form of Generics, Plurals, and Mass Nouns
    12 Problems in the Representation of the Logical Form of Generics, Plurals, and Mass Nouns LENHART K. SCHUBERT FRANCIS JEFFRY PELLETIER Department of Computing Science University of Alberta INTRODUCTION We wish to discuss some problems involved in representing the 'logical form' of sentences whose subjects are generics, (bare) plurals and mass terms. We shall not here have much to say about the syntax of such sentences, except occasionally to refer to such (arguably) syntactic features as [ ±stative]. We shall also not get embroiled in such issues as exactly what information should be counted as part of the 'logical form' of a sentence in general. We will, for example, remain agnostic on the question of the proper place for (Montague-style) meaning postulates, the proper place for Quantifier Raising, and the proper place for the representation of certain ambiguities involving quantifiers and other logical operations. Instead, om concern is with the final representation of certain natural language sentences, a represe11tation which is immediately correlated with the truth conditions of the original sentence. We take this to be more-or-less first­ order quantification theory augmented with certain operators, but feel free to bring in Montagovian intensional logic, expecial!y when discussing those 385 NEW DIREcnONS IN SEMANTICS Copyright© 1987. by Academic Press Inc. (London) Ltd. A I! ..;~1.•~ ~f ••~•...,.1.,.-.;~n ;" ~nv fn~ ••~•~, • .-1 386 L. K. Schubert and F. J~ Pelletier theorists who make it central in their account. To give a feel for what level our concerns lie at, consider (1) (a) Whales are mammals Now, there are many 'levels of representation' that different theorists have proposed for such a sentence.
    [Show full text]