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Decomposing coordination
(2014)
Natural languages display a surprising diversity of expression of elementary logical operations. The study of this variation is emerging as an important topic of cross-linguistic semantics. In this paper, we address the expression of coordination from this perspective, especially coordination of individual denoting expressions such as "John and Mary". We argue that there is an underlying universal structure for individual coordination, and that the cross-linguistic variation can be explained by assuming that languages pronounce different morphemes of this universal structure. In particular, we argue that there two main types of system for the expression of individual coordination: the J-type and the μ-type. In μ-type languages the morpheme used for individual coordination also has uses a quantificational or focus particle, while in the J-type languages it doesn't. Instead at least in many J-type languages the same morpheme is used for individual and propositional coordination. The evidence we present for our model comes from two sources: new data from specific data of the J-type and μ-type languages, and from a study of the historical development of the expression of individual coordination in Indo-European which switched from a μ-type to a J-type system.
In this study, I investigate the positions and interpretations available to 'manner' adverbs in English. My central claim, contra Wyner (1994, 1998), is that an association does exist between 'manner' adverb positions and interpretations, which is best characterized in terms of Peterson's (1997) distinction between 'restrictive' and 'non-restrictive' modification. I also claim, however, that the association in question is not as general as commonly claimed; and, in particular, does not apply directly to 'manner' adverbs in 'fronted' and 'parenthetical' positions, which require special syntactic description.
This paper develops the formal foundations of semantic theories dealing with various kinds of nominalisations. It introduces a combination of an event-calculus with a type-free theory which allows a compositional description to be given of such phenomena like Vendler's distinction between perfect and imperfect nominals, iteration of gerunds and Cresswell's notorious non-urrival of'the train examples. Moreover, the approach argued for in this paper allows a semantic explanation to be given for a wide range of grammatical observations such as the behaviour of certain tpes of nominals with respect to their verbal contexts or the distribution of negation in nominals.
Specificity distinction
(2001)
This paper is concerned with semantic noun phrase typology, focusing on the question of how to draw fine-grained distinctions necessary for an accurate account of natural language phenomena. In the extensive literature on this topic, the most commonly encountered parameters of classification concern the semantic type of the denotation of the noun phrase, the familiarity or novelty of its referent, the quantificational/nonquantificational distinction (connected to the weak/strong dichotomy), as well as, more recently, the question of whether the noun phrase is choice-functional or not (see Reinhart 1997, Winter 1997, Kratzer 1998, Matthewson 1999). In the discussion that follows I will attempt to make the following general points: (i) phenomena involving the behavior of noun phrases both within and across languages point to the need of establishing further distinctions that are too fine-grained to be caught in the net of these typologies; (ii) some of the relevant distinctions can be captured in terms of conditions on assignment functions; (iii) distribution and scopal peculiarities of noun phrases may result from constraints they impose on the way variables they introduce are to be assigned values.
Section 2 reviews the typology of definite noun phrases introduced in Farkas 2000 and the way it provides support for the general points above. Section 3 examines some of the problems raised by recognizing the rich variety of 'indefinite' noun phrases found in natural language and by attempting to capture their distribution and interpretation. Common to the typologies discussed in the two sections is the issue of marking different types of variation in the interpretation of a noun phrase. In the light of this discussion, specificity turns out to be an epiphenomenon connected to a family of distinctions that are marked differently in different languages.
Rethinking the adjunct
(2000)
The purpose of the present paper is twofold: first, to show that, when defining the adjunct, it is necessary to distinguish in a strict modular way between the syntactic level and the lexico-semantic level. Thus, the adjunct is a syntactic category on a par with the specifier and the complement, whereas the argument belongs to the same set as does (among others) the modifier. The consequence of this distinction is that there is no direct one-to-one opposition between adjuncts and arguments. Nor is there any direct one-to one relation between adjuncts and modifiers.
The second and main purpose of the paper is to account for the well-known difference between the position of a specific set of modifiers (cause, time, place etc.) in, on the one hand, English and Swedish, on the other, German. In English and Swedish the default position of these modifiers is postverbal, whereas in German it is preverbal. Further, in English and Swedish, these modifiers occur in a mirror order compared with their German counterparts, an order which, from a semantic point of view, is not the expected one. I shall demonstrate that this difference is due to the different settings of the verbal head parameter, the former languages being VO-languages and the latter being OV -languages. I shall further argue that in English and Swedish these modifiers are base generated as adjuncts to an empty VP, which is a complement of the main verb of what I shall call the minimal VP (MVP), whereas in German they are adjuncts on top of the MVP. Finally, I shall argue that the postverbal modifiers move at the latest at LF to the top of the MVP, in order to take scope over it, the restriction being 'Shortest move'. The movement results in the correct scope order of the postverbal modifiers.
The proposed structure also accounts for the binding data, in particular for the binding of a specific Swedish possessive anaphor 'sin'. This pronoun, which may occur within the MVP, must not occur within the postverbal modifiers in the empty VP. This supports the assumption that there is a strict borderline between the MVP and the assumed empty VP. The account is also in accordance with the focus data, the specific set of modifiers being potential focus exponents in a wide focus reading in English and Swedish, but not in German.
The paper investigates a recent proposal to resultativity by G. Jäger and R. Blutner (J&B). J&B say that the representation of result states of accomplishments by means of CAUSE and BECOME is not correct and should not be done in the syntax in terms of decomposition. They develop an axiomatic approach where each accomplishment/achievement is related to its result by a particular axiom. Modification of the result by "again" makes use of these axioms and the restitutive/resultative ambiguity is a matter of lexical ambiguity or polysemy. They argue that the classical decomposition theory cannot treat the restitutive reading of "A Delaware settled in New Jersey again" (there had been Delawares in New Jersey but not this particular one; and those earlier Delawares never moved to New Jersey but were borne there). I discuss (and dispute) these data and compare the two theories. J&B's contains an OT-part dealing with the disambiguating role of stress. While the decomposition theory cannot deal with the data mentioned, it can integrate the OT-part of J&B's theory.
This paper is concerned with the fact that a number of adverbal modifications involve a systematic reinterpretation of at least one of the expressions connected by the operation in question. It offers an approach in which such transfers of meaning turn out to be a result of contextually controlled enrichments of an underspecified as well as a strictly compositionally structured semantic representation. The approach proposed is general for three reasons: First, it takes into account not only reinterpretations in temporal but also such in non-temporal modification. Second, it allows considering so-called secondary predications as a particular kind of adverbal modification. Third, it explains the respective reinterpretations within a uniform formal framework of meaning variation.
This paper deals with a series of semantic contrasts between the copula "be" and the preposition "as", two functional elements that both head elementary predication structures. It will be argued that the meaning of "as" is a type lowering device shifting the meaning of its complement NP from generalized quantifier type to property type (where properties are conceived as relations between individuals and situations), while the copula "be" induces a type coercion from (partial) situations to (total) possible worlds. Paired with van der Sandt's 1992 theory of presupposition accommodation, these assumptions will account for the observed contrasts between "as" and "be".
Einführung
(2000)
Der vorliegende Band setzt im Anschluss an den Band ZAS Papers in Linguistics 14 (1999) die Vorpublikation von Arbeiten fort, die innerhalb oder im Umkreis des von der DFG geförderten Projekts "Schnittstellen der Semantik: Kopula-Prädikativ-Konstruktionen" am ZAS entstanden sind. Das Rahmenthema, wie es in ZAS PIL 14 einleitend knapp umrissen wurde, wird derzeit im Projekt in drei Untersuchungssträngen bearbeitet.
Der vorliegende Band setzt im Anschluß an den Band ZAS Papers in Linguistics 14 (1999) die Vorpublikation von Arbeiten fort, die innerhalb oder im Umkreis des von der DFG geförderten Projekts "Schnittstellen der Semantik: Kopula-Prädikativ-Konstruktionen" am ZAS entstanden sind. Das Rahmenthema, wie es in ZASPiL 14 einleitend knapp umrissen wurde, wird derzeit im Projekt in drei Untersuchungssträngen bearbeitet. Sie beinhalten
(1) die Klärung der in der Literatur auch weiterhin häufig bemühten, aber keineswegs eindeutig verankerten, sondern auf mehrere Domänen zu verteilenden Distinktion von Stage Level Predicates vs. Individual Level Predicates (kurz: SLP/ILP-Problematik);
(2) die Klärung des Situationsbezugs von Kopula-Prädikativ-Konstruktionen (KPK) im Hinblick auf die ontologische Natur, die lexikalische Fundierung und die syntaktische Verwaltung des referentiellen Arguments von KPK (kurz: Argumentstruktur von KPK);
(3) die vertiefte Analyse der notorisch idiosynkratischen Kopulaverben in Prädikationsstrukturen, nicht zuletzt im Hinblick auf diejenigen Vorkommen solcher Verben, in denen sie gemeinhin als "Hilfsverben" gelten, was wiederum eine umfassende Analyse der infiniten Verbformen einschließt (kurz: lexical vs. functional category features).