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There is an elegant account, proposed by Beaver and Condoravdi (2003), that assumes that the temporal connectives before and after are converses (i.e., they are analyzed by means of a unified lexical schema), and that explains away their different logical and veridical behavior appealing to other factors. There is an elegant explanation that connects the licensing of Polarity Items to informational strengthening requirements: Polarity Items are viewed as existentials that lead to a widening of the domain of quantification, and they are predicted to be legitimate only when this widening leads to a stronger statement (roughly, in downward monotone contexts). My plan is to connect these two approaches – by proposing an amendment in the definition Beaver and Condoravdi presented for before and after that is meant to account also for their Polarity Items licensing behavior.
Modifiability by almost has been used as a test for the quantificational force of a DP without stating the meaning of almost explicitly. The aim of this paper is to give a semantics for almost applying across categories and to evaluate the validity of the almost test as a diagnosis for universal quantifiers. It is argued that almost is similar to other cross-categorial modifiers such as at least or exactly in referring to alternatives ordered on a scale. I propose that almost evaluates alternatives in which the modified expression is replaced by a value close by on the corresponding Horn scale. It is shown that a semantics for almost that refers to scalar alternatives derives the correct truth conditions for almost and explains selectional restrictions. At the same time, taking the semantics of almost seriously invalidates the almost test as a simple diagnosis for the nature of quantifiers.
Dealing with alternatives
(2006)
Traditionally, pure additive particles and scalar additive particles are both characterized by an existential presupposition. They differ insofar as the set of alternatives that is built is unordered for the former, and ordered for the latter, which carry the so-called scalar presupposition. As a result, the two characterisations cannot be cumulated, an impossibility that is at odds with the fact that several languages exhibit this combination of readings for a single item. The discussion of Italian neanche '(n)either/(not) even', an item that can both be additive and scalar, allows us to expose the connection between the oppositions non-ordered vs ordered set of alternatives and verified vs accommodated existential presupposition by adding content to the traditional view that the set of alternatives is made up of 'relevant' items in the context. The question of how to characterise this item is set against the backdrop of a more general discussion of the network of additive particles found in Italian.
Functions of English "man"
(2006)
This paper discusses the semantics of the English particle man. It is shown that this particle does different things when used sentence-initially and sentence-finally. The sentenceinitial use is further shown to separate into two distinct intonational types with different semantic content. A formal semantics is proposed for these types.
We propose a compositional analysis for sentences of the kind "You only have to go to the North End to get good cheese", referred to as the Sufficiency Modal Construction in the recent literature. We argue that the SMC is ambiguous depending on the kind of ordering induced by only. So is the exceptive construction – its cross-linguistic counterpart. Only is treated as inducing either a 'comparative possibility' scale or an 'implication-based' partial order on propositions. The properties of the 'comparative possibility' scale explain the absence of the prejacent presupposition that is usually associated with only. By integrating the scalarity into the semantics of the SMC, we explain the polarity facts observed in both variants of the construction. The sufficiency meaning component is argued to be due to a pragmatic inference.
The German causal preposition durch ('by', 'through') poses a challenge to formal-semantic analyses applying strict compositionality. To deal with this challenge, a formalism which builds on recent important developments in Discourse Representation Theory is developed, including a more elaborate analysis of presuppositional phenomena as well as the integration into the theory of unification as a mode of composition. It is argued that that the observed unificational phenomena belong in the realm of pragmatics, providing an argument for presuppositional phenomena at a sentence- and word-internal level.
This paper presents two experimental studies investigating the processing of presupposed content. Both studies employ the German additive particle auch (too). In the first study, participants were given a questionnaire containing bi-clausal, ambiguous sentences with 'auch' in the second clause. The presupposition introduced by auch was only satisfied on one of the two readings of the sentence, and this reading corresponded to a syntactically dispreferred parse of the sentence. The prospect of having the auch-presupposition satisfied made participants choose this syntactically dispreferred reading more frequently than in a control condition. The second study used the self-paced-reading paradigm and compared the reading times on clauses containing auch, which differed in whether the presupposition of auch was satisfied or not. Participants read the clause more slowly when the presupposition was not satisfied. It is argued that the two studies show that presuppositions play an important role in online sentence comprehension and affect the choice of syntactic analysis. Some theoretical implications of these findings for semantic theory and dynamic accounts of presuppositions as well as for theories of semantic processing are discussed.
The expressions few and a few are typically considered to be separate quantifiers. I challenge this assumption, showing that with the appropriate definition of few, a few can be derived compositionally as a + few. The core of the analysis is a proposal that few has a denotation as a one-place predicate which incorporates a negation operator. From this, argument interpretations can be derived for expressions such as few students and a few students, differing only in the scope of negation. I show that this approach adequately captures the interpretive differences between few and a few. I further show that other such pairs are blocked by a constraint against the vacuous application of a.
This paper discusses constructions like “We’ll have two beers and a coffee.” that are typically used for beverage orders in restaurant contexts. We compare the behaviour of nouns in these constructions in three Germanic languages, English, Icelandic, and German, and take a closer look at the correlation of the morpho-syntactic and semantic-conceptual changes involved here. We show that even within such a closely related linguistic sample, one finds three different grammatical options for the expression of the same conceptual transition. Our findings suggest an analysis of coercion as a genuinely semantic phenomenon, a phenomenon that is located on a level of semantic representations that serves as an interface between the conceptual and the grammatical system and takes into account inter- and intralinguistic variations.
Die deutsche Präposition-Artikel-Enklise bietet wie kaum eine andere Grammatikalisierung Einblicke in den Mikrobereich von Grammatikalisierungsprozessen: Klare, "zielorientierte" Verhältnisse sind hier nicht zu beschreiben, was der Grund für ihre bisher so geringe Beachtung durch die Grammatikalisierungsforschung sein dürfte. Es wurde deutlich, dass bezüglich der hier als zentral bewerteten Morphologisierung des Artikels das gesamte Spektrum von Nichtverschmelzbarkeit bis hin zu (kurz vor Flexiven stehenden) obligatorisch verschmelzenden speziellen Klitika abgedeckt ist. Diachron hat sich zwar insgesamt eine deutliche Rechtsdrift auf der Grammatikalisierungsskala vollzogen; bezüglich des Genitivartikels hat jedoch eine Degrammatikalisierung in Form von sog. retraction (gemäß Hapelmath 2004) stattgefunden, die hier in einer Demorphologisierung (Resyntaktisierung) eines Klitikons besteht. Dabei findet keine "Relexikalisierung" im Sinne einer lexikalischen Anreicherung eines bereits grammatikalisierten Elements statt (siehe hierzu Haspelmath 1999). Mittel- und frühneuhochdeutsche Verschriftungen deuten auf reichere Inventare an Verschmelzungs formen hin, doch sind hierzu diachrone Untersuchungen erforderlich. Ebenso ist der Übergangsbereich zwIschen einfachen und speziellen Klitika in sich abgestuft und weitaus komplexer gestaltet als hier dargestellt. Auch dazu besteht Bedarf an Detailanalysen unter der Fragestellung, welche der unter Abschnitt 2.2 aufgeführten Artikelfunkttonen am ehesten eine Präposition-Artikel-Verschmelzung erfordern. Einiges deutet auf den am stärksten desemantisierten (expletiven) Artikel z.B. vor Eigennamen hin. Um den Einfluss von Schriftlichkeit und Standardisierung auf Grammatikalisierungsprozesse ermitteln zu können, wurden zwei Dialekte in den Blick genommen: das Ruhrdeutsche, das die Erwartung nach deutlich fortgeschritteneren Verhältnissen erfüllt, und das Alemannische, das andere Phänomene ausgebildet hat wie etwa die Proklise des Artikels an das Substantiv, die Nullrealisierung klitischer Artikelformen und den kategorialen Umbau der vier Nominalkategorien am Artikel. Die Einbeziehung weiterer Dialekte und vor allem auch der gesprochenen "Umgangssprache" könnte weiteren Aufschluss über die Ratio dieser Grammatikalisierung liefern. Sollten flektierende Präpositionen Ziel dieses Wandels sein, so hätte dies tiefgreifende Konsequenzen für die Grammatikschreibung.
Fluch- und Schimpfwortschätze sind aus kontrastiver Perspektive bisher kaum analysiert worden, sieht man von einer Vielzahl populärwissenschaftlicher Publikationen ab. Wissenschaftliche Publikationen beziehen sich meist auf eine Einzelsprache und greifen bei der Erklärung der Motive oft zu kurz, weil sie gerade benachbarte Kulturen und Sprachen (auch Dialektgebiete) zu wenig im Blick haben (Dundes 1983). Der vorliegende Beitrag leistet eine vergleichende Zusammenstellung der Fluch- und Schimpfwortschätze dreier mehr oder weniger benachbarter Sprachen, des (nördlichen) Niederländischen, des Deutschen und des Schwedischen, also zweier eng verwandter westgermanischer und einer nordgermanischen Sprache.
Sprachvermögen und Zahlbegriff : zur Rolle der Sprache für die Entwicklung numerischer Kognition
(2004)
In welchem Zusammenhang stehen Sprache und Zahl als kognitive Domänen? Welche Rolle spielt das menschliche Sprachvermögen für die Entwicklung des Zahlbegriffs? In den letzten Jahrzehnten haben verschiedene Disziplinen aus dem Gebiet der Kognitionswissenschaft – darunter Psycholinguistik, Entwicklungspsychologie, Ethologie und kognitive Neurowissenschaft – wesentlich zu unserem Verständnis der Beziehung zwischen Sprache und numerischer Kognition beigetragen. Die unterschiedlichen Ergebnisse liefern Evidenz für eng verknüpfte ebenso wie für autonome Bereiche in den beiden Domänen.
This article analyses the German discourse particle wohl 'I suppose', 'presumably' as a syntactic and semantic modifier of the sentence types declarative and interrogative. It is shown that wohl does not contribute to the propositional, i.e. descriptive content of an utterance. Nor does it trigger an implicature. The proposed analysis captures the semantic behaviour of wohl by assuming that it moves to SpecForceP at LF, from where it can modify the sentence type operators in Force0 in compositional fashion. Semantically, a modification with wohl results in a weaker commitment to the proposition expressed in declaratives and in a request for a weaker commitment concerning the questioned proposition in interrogatives. Cross-linguistic evidence for a left-peripheral position of wohl (at LF) comes from languages in which the counterpart of wohl occurs in the clausal periphery overtly. Overall, the analysis sheds more light on the semantic properties of the left periphery, in particular of the functional projection ForceP.
Die vorliegende Publikation ist eine wohlverdiente Festschrift zu Ehren des Berliner Sprachwissenschaftlers Prof. Dr. Klaus-Dieter Ludwig zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, herausgegeben von der wissenschaftlichen Assistentin Dr. Undine Kramer am Institut für deutsche Sprache und Linguistik der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Die Festschrift vertritt in ausgewogener Weise die Interessengebiete des Jubilars, in denen die Archaismenforschung aus lexikologischer Sicht und lexikographischer Sicht in letzter Zeit im Vordergrund stand und die übrigen Arbeitsgebiete in Forschung und Lehre in sich einschloss.
What role does language play in the development of numerical cognition? In the present paper I argue that the evolution of symbolic thinking (as a basis for language) laid the grounds for the emergence of a systematic concept of number. This concept is grounded in the notion of an infinite sequence and encompasses number assignments that can focus on cardinal aspects ("three pencils"), ordinal aspects ("the third runner"), and even nominal aspects ("bus #3"). I show that these number assignments are based on a specific association of relational structures, and that it is the human language faculty that provides a cognitive paradigm for such an association, suggesting that language played a pivotal role in the evolution of systematic numerical cognition.
I give a unified account of numeral classifiers as lexical items that are reduced to the function of individuation in cardinal counting constructions with transnumeral nouns. I argue that individuation is a lexical-semantic phenomenon that triggers a focus shift from a whole set to its individual elements, but does not affect the conceptual representation. The semantic reduction of numeral classifiers to individuation functions is, on the one hand, reflected by a morpho-syntactic reduction; numeral classifiers do not project to full NPs, but occur as headadjuncts in QPs. On the other hand, it leads to a loss of conceptual features. As a result, nouns that are used as numeral classifiers are conceptually divorced from their NP counterparts. They integrate the nominal concept not as part of their interpretation, but via agreement features that govern the distribution of nouns in classifierconstructions. I show that the selection of conceptual features relevant for the distribution of numeral classifiers and nouns is lexically, not conceptually governed, supporting a model that distinguishes lexical-semantic and conceptual aspects in the generation of meaning.
In linguistics and the philosophy of language, the mass/count distinction has traditionally been regarded as a bi-partition on the nominal domain, where typical instances are nouns like "beef" (mass) vs."cow" (count). In the present paper, we argue that this partition reveals a system that is based on both syntactic features and conceptual features, and present experimental evidence suggesting that the discrimination of the two kinds of features has a psychological reality.
Auto - bil, Reha - rehab, Mikro - mick, Alki - alkis : Kurzwörter im Deutschen und Schwedischen
(2001)
Das Kurzwort wird nach BELLMANN 1980 und KOBLER-TRILL 1994 definiert als eine sowohl graphisch als auch phonisch realisierte gekürzte Form, die aus einem längeren sog. Basislexem (einschließlich eines Wortgruppenlexems) hervorgeht (im Folgenden auch Vollform genannt). Dabei besteht zwischen Kurzwort und Basislexem, die weiterhin nebeneinander bestehen, eine Synonymie-Beziehung, d.h. beide referieren auf das gleiche Objekt (vgl. Limo und Limonade, Kripo und Kriminalpolizei).