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Two Types of Definites in Natural Language University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Open Access Dissertations 9-2009 Two Types of Definites in Natural Language Florian Schwarz University of Massachusetts Amherst, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations Part of the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Schwarz, Florian, "Two Types of Definites in Natural Language" (2009). Open Access Dissertations. 122. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations/122 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TWO TYPES OF DEFINITES IN NATURAL LANGUAGE A Dissertation Presented by FLORIAN SCHWARZ 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 2009 Linguistics c Copyright by Florian Schwarz 2009 All Rights Reserved TWO TYPES OF DEFINITES IN NATURAL LANGUAGE A Dissertation Presented by FLORIAN SCHWARZ Approved as to style and content by: Angelika Kratzer, Chair Lyn Frazier, Member Christopher Potts, Member Charles E. Clifton, Jr., Member Barbara H. Partee, Consultant John McCarthy, Department Chair Linguistics For my fellow traveler, who waited on the other side. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Writing a dissertation is a humbling process. If it had not been for help and support along the way from a number of people, the process of writing this particular dissertation most certainly would have been even more humbling, and, moreover, less enjoyable and instructive for its author and less successful overall (leaving entirely aside the question of what its success might consist of). My committee has been as helpful, supportive, enthusiastic, and enduring as I only could have dreamed of. First and foremost, I would like to thank the chair of my committee, Angelika Kratzer, for her dedication to advising her students in general and my dissertation project in particular. She had to suffer through an endless seeming initial period of exploring German data while, at the same time, trying to situate their impact within the vast literature on definites. In similarly endless meetings (sometimes lasting through entire snow-storms), she guided me in carving out the theoretical context of my analysis and pushed me ever so hard to not take anything for granted. I can only wish that her immense ability of looking at basic theoretical questions from a radically fresh perspective will stay with me in spirit in the years to come. Lyn Frazier's enthusiasm and high-speed mind, as well as her ability to see con- nections between detailed and technical linguistic issues and much larger questions about the workings of the human mind, have made for many a long-lasting meeting that greatly benefited various aspects of this dissertation. In particular, our discus- sions of the bridging data that lead to the questionnaire study reported in chapter 2 and the analysis of larger situation uses (chapter 5) and relational anaphora (chap- ter 6) have greatly affected the overall analysis that I propose. In addition to this v intellectual support, her guidance and advice on all kinds of practical matters was always appreciated. Chris Potts always had ready (and rapid!), straightforward, and extremely useful advice on all levels, from big-picture theoretical issues to structuring the presentation of the analysis all the way to technical issues with LATEX. His ability to see bold and simple generalizations in a mess of data clarified my view of things substantially at numerous turns of this project. It turns out that we were at UMass for exactly the same time, and I am glad not to have missed out on a moment of his presence there. I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Chuck Clifton in various contexts throughout the years at UMass, and am grateful for his generous ways of sharing his vast resources in the domain of experimental psycholinguistics, from the theoretical and conceptual levels to the nuts and bolts. I only wish I had been able to include more experimental work here, but the theoretical part had to take the lead for the moment. I certainly intend to make up for this in the future. Chuck's insightful questions and comments always were on the spot (even though he'll tell you he barely understands any of the semantics) and highly useful. Barbara Partee, who would have been a member of the committee but only could be a consultant because she wasn't able to be at the defense, has been a rich source of advice and criticisms, more often than not packaged within an entertaining anecdote from the history of modern semantics. I had the pleasure of working with her in various capacities over the years, and am grateful for all the things I have learned from her. I've had the opportunity to present parts of this work on various occasions and very much appreciate the discussions that arose there, as well as in other contexts. In particular, I'd like to thank Luis Alonso-Ovalle, Pranav Anand, Jan Anderssen, Rajesh Bhatt, Emmanuel Chemla, Shai Cohen, Amy-Rose Deal, Karen Ebert, Paul Elbourne, Dave Embick, Donka Farkas, Ilaria Frana, Patrick Grosz, Irene Heim, vi Stefan Hinterwimmer, Kyle Johnson, Tony Kroch, Bill Labov, Andrew McKenzie, Paula Menendez-Benito, Keir Moulton, Lance Nathan, Pritty Patel, Kyle Rawlins, Craige Roberts, Aynat Rubinstein, Magdalena Schwager, Roger Schwarzschild, E. Allyn Smith, Tom Wasow, Lynsey Wolter, and Arnold Zwicky, as well as audiences at the OSU Workshop on Presupposition and Accommodation in 2006, the LSA meeting 2008, UC Santa Cruz, the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University for interesting discussions and helpful suggestions. (Apologies to anyone I may have forgotten!) Special thanks are due to Greg Carlson for getting me started on this work by ask- ing a seemingly simple question about how preposition-article contraction in German relates to his work on `weak definites’ (Carlson, Sussman, Klein and Tanenhaus 2006). I'd also like to thank Paula Menendez-Benito and Luis Alonso-Ovalle for our inter- esting discussions in connection with a joint project that related directly to parts of this thesis. Parts of this work have been supported by the U.S. National Science Founda- tion under Grant BCS-0418311 to Barbara H. Partee and Vladimir Borschev and under Grant No. BCS-0642752 to Christopher Potts. An early version of some of the ideas and materials included here were presented in a poster at the OSU Work- shop on Presupposition Accommodation, which was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Grant No. BCS-0548305. The experiment reported in chapter 2, section 2.2.4.2, was implemented together with Jan Anderssen, using the WebExp2 program for running experiments on the World Wide Web. On a more general, and personal, note, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank various people that have contributed their share along the way on the path that led to me becoming a semanticist. Early inspirations for studying natural language and its meaning came from a philosophy of language class with Eduardo Fermandois at the Free University in Berlin, as well as a great Latin class at the Technical University vii (taught by a Prof. Luehr, if my memory serves correctly) and the hint by a friend of a friend that if I liked both math and language, I should try linguistics. However, had it not been for Manfred Krifka's arrival at the Humboldt University and a wonderful introduction-to-semantics class, I almost certainly would not have become a profes- sional linguist. Working with him in Berlin subsequently was a great pleasure and I continue to be inspired by his work and his ability to connect broad perspectives on human language and communication with detailed linguistic arguments. Studying linguistics at UMass in graduate school has been a phenomenal intel- lectual experience. In addition to the great teachers I had there, I'd like to thank my classmates Tim Beechey, Ilaria Frana, Tanja Heizmann, Keir Moulton, and Matt Wolf for a great time at the beginning of the program. Fellow semantics students (and visitors), including (in addition to Keir and Ilaria) Jan Anderssen, Shai Cohen, Chris Davis, Amy-Rose Deal, Annahita Farudi, Helen Majewski, Andrew McKen- zie, Paula Menendez-Benito, Aynat Rubinstein, E. Allyn Smith, Uri Strauss, Kristen Syrett, and Youri Zabbal, and everyone that participated in semantics reading group made the experience over all these years so much more enjoyable, and much of what I have learned has come from discussions in this very friendly and lively research environment. In the later part of my time as a student at UMass, I had to commute from quite a distance, but always had generously welcoming places to stay at in Northampton when I needed to - thanks Tom Ernst, Rajesh, Valentine, Aynat, Jan, and Amy-Rose and Barak. On the administrative side, Kathy Adamczyk, Sarah Vega-Liros, and Tom Max- field always were extremely helpful with resolving any issues and made the linguistics office a pleasant place to be. Thanks also to Barbara Partee, Chris Potts, Lisa Selkirk, and Ellen Woolford for working out teaching and research appointments that allowed me to focus on my research even when commuting from a distance. viii The time in Northampton and Amherst would not have been the same without the fine company of and good times with friends - thanks (in no particular order) to Ila and the monkey-chips, Keir and Michael, Anne-Michelle, Jan (who never missed a move!), Paulita, Shai, Uri, Joe, Magda, Ram, Arun, Rajesh, Jen, Hillary, Valentine, Yolanda, Stacy, and Betsy and Shuli.
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