Review of the Logic of Conventional Implicatures by Chris Potts Patricia
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Making Logical Form Type-Logical Glue Semantics for Minimalist Syntax
Making Logical Form type-logical Glue Semantics for Minimalist syntax Matthew Gotham University of Oslo UiO Forum for Theoretical Linguistics 12 October 2016 Slides available at <http://folk.uio.no/matthegg/research#talks> Matthew Gotham (Oslo) Making LF type-logical FTL, 12.10.2016 1 / 63 What this talk is about Slides available at <http://folk.uio.no/matthegg/research#talks> An implementation of Glue Semantics —an approach that treats the syntax-semantics interface as deduction in a type logic— for Minimalist syntax, i.e. syntactic theories in the ST!EST!REST!GB!...‘Chomskyan’ tradition. Q How Minimalist, as opposed to (say) GB-ish? A Not particularly, but the factoring together of subcategorization and structure building (in the mechanism of feature-checking) is, if not crucial to this analysis, then certainly useful. and a comparison of this approach with more mainstream approaches to the syntax-semantics interface. Matthew Gotham (Oslo) Making LF type-logical FTL, 12.10.2016 2 / 63 Outline 1 The mainstream approach 2 A fast introduction to Glue Semantics 3 Implementation in Minimalism The form of syntactic theory assumed The connection to Glue 4 Comparison with the mainstream approach Interpreting (overt) movement Problems with the mainstream approach Glue analysis Nested DPs Scope islands Matthew Gotham (Oslo) Making LF type-logical FTL, 12.10.2016 3 / 63 The mainstream approach How semantics tends to be done for broadly GB/P&P/Minimalist syntax Aer Heim & Kratzer (1998) Syntax produces structures that are interpreted recursively -
Proceedings of the LFG 00 Conference University of California, Berkeley Editors: Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King 2000 CSLI P
Proceedings of the LFG 00 Conference University of California, Berkeley Editors: Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King 2000 CSLI Publications ISSN 1098-6782 Editors' Note This year's conference was held as part of a larger Berkeley Formal Grammar Conference, which included a day of workshops and the annual HPSG conference. The program committee for LFG'00 were Rachel Nordlinger and Chris Manning. We would like to thank them for putting together the program that gave rise to this collection of papers. We would also like to thank all those who contributed to this conference, especially the local organizing committee, namely Andreas Kathol, and our reviewers, without whom the conference would not have been possible. Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King Functional Identity and Resource-Sensitivity in Control Ash Asudeh Stanford University and Xerox PARC Proceedings of the LFG00 Conference University of California, Berkeley Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King (Editors) 2000 CSLI Publications http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/ 2 1 Introduction1 Glue semantics provides a semantics for Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) that is expressed using linear logic (Girard, 1987; Dalrymple, 1999) and provides an interpretation for the f(unctional)-structure level of syntactic representation, connecting it to the level of s(emantic)-structure in LFG’s parallel projection archi- tecture (Kaplan, 1987, 1995). Due to its use of linear logic for meaning assembly, Glue is resource-sensitive: semantic resources contributed by lexical entries and resulting f-structures must each be used in a successful proof exactly once. In this paper, I will examine the tension between a resource-sensitive semantics which interprets f-structures and structure-sharing in f-structures as expressed by functional control resulting from lexical functional identity equations. -
RELATIONAL NOUNS, PRONOUNS, and Resumptionw Relational Nouns, Such As Neighbour, Mother, and Rumour, Present a Challenge to Synt
Linguistics and Philosophy (2005) 28:375–446 Ó Springer 2005 DOI 10.1007/s10988-005-2656-7 ASH ASUDEH RELATIONAL NOUNS, PRONOUNS, AND RESUMPTIONw ABSTRACT. This paper presents a variable-free analysis of relational nouns in Glue Semantics, within a Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) architecture. Rela- tional nouns and resumptive pronouns are bound using the usual binding mecha- nisms of LFG. Special attention is paid to the bound readings of relational nouns, how these interact with genitives and obliques, and their behaviour with respect to scope, crossover and reconstruction. I consider a puzzle that arises regarding rela- tional nouns and resumptive pronouns, given that relational nouns can have bound readings and resumptive pronouns are just a specific instance of bound pronouns. The puzzle is: why is it impossible for bound implicit arguments of relational nouns to be resumptive? The puzzle is highlighted by a well-known variety of variable-free semantics, where pronouns and relational noun phrases are identical both in category and (base) type. I show that the puzzle also arises for an established variable-based theory. I present an analysis of resumptive pronouns that crucially treats resumptives in terms of the resource logic linear logic that underlies Glue Semantics: a resumptive pronoun is a perfectly ordinary pronoun that constitutes a surplus resource; this surplus resource requires the presence of a resumptive-licensing resource consumer, a manager resource. Manager resources properly distinguish between resumptive pronouns and bound relational nouns based on differences between them at the level of semantic structure. The resumptive puzzle is thus solved. The paper closes by considering the solution in light of the hypothesis of direct compositionality. -
Chapter 22 Semantics Jean-Pierre Koenig University at Buffalo Frank Richter Goethe Universität Frankfurt
Chapter 22 Semantics Jean-Pierre Koenig University at Buffalo Frank Richter Goethe Universität Frankfurt This chapter discusses the integration of theories of semantic representations into HPSG. It focuses on those aspects that are specific to HPSG and, in particular, re- cent approaches that make use of underspecified semantic representations, as they are quite unique to HPSG. 1 Introduction A semantic level of description is more integrated into the architecture of HPSG than in many frameworks (although, in the last couple of decades, the integra- tion of syntax and semantics has become tighter overall; see Heim & Kratzer 1998 for Mainstream Generative Grammar1, for example). Every node in a syntactic tree includes all appropriate levels of structure, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics so that local interaction between all these levels is in principle possible within the HPSG architecture. The architecture of HPSG thus follows the spirit of the rule-to-rule approach advocated in Bach (1976) and more specifi- cally Klein & Sag (1985) to have every syntactic operation matched by a semantic operation (the latter, of course, follows the Categorial Grammar lead, broadly speaking; Ajdukiewicz 1935; Pollard 1984; Steedman 2000). But, as we shall see, only the spirit of the rule-to-rule approach is adhered to, as there can be more 1We follow Culicover & Jackendoff (2005: 3) in using the term Mainstream Generative Grammar (MGG) to refer to work in Government & Binding or Minimalism. Jean-Pierre Koenig & Frank Richter. 2021. Semantics. In Stefan Müller, Anne Abeillé, Robert D. Borsley & Jean- Pierre Koenig (eds.), Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar: The handbook. Prepublished version. -
Anaphoric Reference to Propositions
ANAPHORIC REFERENCE TO PROPOSITIONS A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Todd Nathaniel Snider December 2017 c 2017 Todd Nathaniel Snider ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ANAPHORIC REFERENCE TO PROPOSITIONS Todd Nathaniel Snider, Ph.D. Cornell University 2017 Just as pronouns like she and he make anaphoric reference to individuals, English words like that and so can be used to refer anaphorically to a proposition introduced in a discourse: That’s true; She told me so. Much has been written about individual anaphora, but less attention has been paid to propositional anaphora. This dissertation is a com- prehensive examination of propositional anaphora, which I argue behaves like anaphora in other domains, is conditioned by semantic factors, and is not conditioned by purely syntactic factors nor by the at-issue status of a proposition. I begin by introducing the concepts of anaphora and propositions, and then I discuss the various words of English which can have this function: this, that, it, which, so, as, and the null complement anaphor. I then compare anaphora to propositions with anaphora in other domains, including individual, temporal, and modal anaphora. I show that the same features which are characteristic of these other domains are exhibited by proposi- tional anaphora as well. I then present data on a wide variety of syntactic constructions—including sub- clausal, monoclausal, multiclausal, and multisentential constructions—noting which li- cense anaphoric reference to propositions. On the basis of this expanded empirical do- main, I argue that anaphoric reference to a proposition is licensed not by any syntactic category or movement but rather by the operators which take propositions as arguments. -
Chapter 30 HPSG and Lexical Functional Grammar Stephen Wechsler the University of Texas Ash Asudeh University of Rochester & Carleton University
Chapter 30 HPSG and Lexical Functional Grammar Stephen Wechsler The University of Texas Ash Asudeh University of Rochester & Carleton University This chapter compares two closely related grammatical frameworks, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) and Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG). Among the similarities: both frameworks draw a lexicalist distinction between morphology and syntax, both associate certain words with lexical argument structures, both employ semantic theories based on underspecification, and both are fully explicit and computationally implemented. The two frameworks make available many of the same representational resources. Typical differences between the analyses proffered under the two frameworks can often be traced to concomitant differ- ences of emphasis in the design orientations of their founding formulations: while HPSG’s origins emphasized the formal representation of syntactic locality condi- tions, those of LFG emphasized the formal representation of functional equivalence classes across grammatical structures. Our comparison of the two theories includes a point by point syntactic comparison, after which we turn to an exposition ofGlue Semantics, a theory of semantic composition closely associated with LFG. 1 Introduction Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar is similar in many respects to its sister framework, Lexical Functional Grammar or LFG (Bresnan et al. 2016; Dalrymple et al. 2019). Both HPSG and LFG are lexicalist frameworks in the sense that they distinguish between the morphological system that creates words and the syn- tax proper that combines those fully inflected words into phrases and sentences. Stephen Wechsler & Ash Asudeh. 2021. HPSG and Lexical Functional Gram- mar. In Stefan Müller, Anne Abeillé, Robert D. Borsley & Jean- Pierre Koenig (eds.), Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar: The handbook. -
Sentential Negation and Negative Concord
Sentential Negation and Negative Concord Published by LOT phone: +31.30.2536006 Trans 10 fax: +31.30.2536000 3512 JK Utrecht email: [email protected] The Netherlands http://wwwlot.let.uu.nl/ Cover illustration: Kasimir Malevitch: Black Square. State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. ISBN 90-76864-68-3 NUR 632 Copyright © 2004 by Hedde Zeijlstra. All rights reserved. Sentential Negation and Negative Concord ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op gezag van de Rector Magnificus Prof. Mr P.F. van der Heijden ten overstaan van een door het College voor Promoties ingestelde commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Aula der Universiteit op woensdag 15 december 2004, te 10:00 uur door HEDZER HUGO ZEIJLSTRA geboren te Rotterdam Promotiecommissie: Promotores: Prof. Dr H.J. Bennis Prof. Dr J.A.G. Groenendijk Copromotor: Dr J.B. den Besten Leden: Dr L.C.J. Barbiers (Meertens Instituut, Amsterdam) Dr P.J.E. Dekker Prof. Dr A.C.J. Hulk Prof. Dr A. von Stechow (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen) Prof. Dr F.P. Weerman Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen Voor Petra Table of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................ I ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................V 1 INTRODUCTION................................................................................................1 1.1 FOUR ISSUES IN THE STUDY OF NEGATION.......................................................1 -
Downloaded from Brill.Com09/28/2021 06:09:44PM Via Free Access 142 Bağrıaçık
Journal of Greek Linguistics 17 (2017) 141–189 brill.com/jgl Representing discourse in clausal syntax The ki particle in Pharasiot Greek Metin Bağrıaçık* Ghent University [email protected] Abstract In Pharasiot Greek, an Asia Minor Greek dialect, a certain particle copied from Turkish, ki, is employed in a number of seemingly unrelated constructions. Close scrutiny, however, reveals that in each of these constructions, ki is employed as a device geared to influencing the interlocutor’s epistemic vigilance. Based on the Cartographic Approach which defends the syntactization of the interpretive domains, I propose that this unique semantics of ki should be represented in the clause structure. Following recent work which advocates the existence of a pragmatic field—Speech Act Phrase (sap) in particular—above the cp-layer, where discourse and pragmatic roles are mapped onto syntax, I propose that ki is the overt exponent of sa0 and is further endowed with a [+sentience] feature indexing the speaker as the sentient mind. The apparent differences between various construction types which involve ki—hence, in which sap projects—then reduce to whether the [+sentience] feature on sa0 is checked by an internally or externally merging category in Spec, sap. * I would like to thank Jan Casalicchio, Guglielmo Cinque, Federica Cognola, Lieven Danckaert, Liliane Haegeman, Aslı Göksel, Mark Janse, Io Manolessou, Anna Roussou, Ioanna Sitari- dou, the members of gist—Generative Initiatives in SyntacticTheory—and two anonymous reviewers for their various comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. My deep- est gratitude is to Andreas Konstantinidis, his family and to Konstantinos Kalaitzidis for their hospitality, and to my informants who helped with the data with greater enthusiasm than mine: Despoina K.†, Kathina P., Anastasia I., Eirini P., Evlambia Ch., Georgios S., Georgios K., Leftheris K., Maria S., Nikos T., Prodromos K., Sophia K.†, Theodorakis K., Miranda M., and Maria A. -
Towards Glue Semantics for Minimalist Syntax∗
cambridge occasional papers in linguistics COP i L Volume 8, Article 4: 56–83, 2015 j ISSN 2050-5949 TOWARDS GLUE SEMANTICS FOR MINIMALIST SYNTAX∗ Matthew Gotham University College London Abstract Glue Semantics is a theory of the syntax/semantics interface according to which syntax generates premises in a fragment of linear logic, and semantic interpretation proceeds by deduction from those premises. Glue was originally developed within Lexical-Functional Grammar and is now the mainstream view of semantic composition within LFG, but it is in principle compatible with any syntactic framework. In this paper I present an implementation of Glue for Minimalism, and show how it can bring certain advantages in comparison with approaches to the syntax/semantics interface more conventionally adopted. 1 Introduction Take a simple example of quantifier scope ambiguity like (1). (1) A boy trains every dog. There are various theoretical options available when deciding where the ambi- guity of (1) should be located. One option would be to say that that the lexical entry of one (or more) of the words in the sentence is polymorphic (Hendriks 1987). Another would be to say that there is more than one syntactic analysis of (1): either in terms of constituent structure (May 1977) or derivational history (Montague 1973). There is a third option, however, which is to say that the ambiguity resides in the nature of the connection between syntax and semantic composition. This is the approach taken in Glue Semantics.1 What the lexical polymorphism and syntactic ambiguity accounts have in common is the view that, given a syntactic analysis of a sentence and a choice ∗ This paper is based on material that was presented at the event Interactions between syntax and semantics across frameworks at Cambridge University on 8 January 2015, and to the Oxford Glue Group on 19 February and 5 March 2015. -
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 . -
MISSING RESOURCES in a RESOURCE-SENSITIVE SEMANTICS Gianluca Giorgolo and Ash Asudeh King's College, London & Carleton
MISSING RESOURCES IN A RESOURCE-SENSITIVE SEMANTICS Gianluca Giorgolo and Ash Asudeh King’s College, London & Carleton University & University of Oxford University of Oxford Proceedings of the LFG12 Conference Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King (Editors) 2012 CSLI Publications http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/ Abstract In this paper, we present an investigation of the argument/adjunct distinction in the context of LFG. We focus on those cases where certain grammatical functions that qualify as arguments according to all standard tests (Needham and Toivonen, 2011) are only optionally realized. We argue for an analy- sis first proposed by Blom et al. (2012), and we show how we can make it work within the machinery of LFG. Our second contribution regards how we propose to interpret a specific case of optional arguments, optional objects. In this case we propose to generalize the distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs to a continuum. Purely transitive and intransitive verbs rep- resent the extremes of the continuum. Other verbs, while leaning towards one or the other end of this spectrum, show an alternating behavior between the two extremes. We show how our first contribution is capable of accounting for these cases in terms of exceptional behavior. The key insight we present is that the verbs that exhibit the alternating behavior can best be understood as being capable of dealing with an exceptional context. In other words they display some sort of control on the way they compose with their context. This will prompt us also to rethink the place of the notion of subcategorization in the LFG architecture 1 Introduction The distinction between arguments and adjuncts is central for the LFG architec- ture as it influences the way in which representations of linguistic expressions are generated both at the functional and the semantic level. -
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