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This paper describes the revision of the Vietnamese version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN). We first introduce the Vietnamese language and Vietnamese-speaking populations after which we describe the translation and adaptation process of the Vietnamese MAIN and present results from monolingual and bilingual children.
The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN), an assessment tool in the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) battery, aims to improve the assessment of bilingual children. This paper describes the process of adapting MAIN to Urdu. Given the lack of language assessment tools for Urdu-speaking children, the Urdu MAIN is an important new instrument that is made widely and freely accessible to researchers and practitioners, allowing them to examine the narrative abilities of children acquiring Urdu as a first, heritage, second, or additional language.
This paper presents a short overview of Turkey and the Turkish language, and then outlines the process of adapting the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) to Turkish and how the Turkish MAIN has been used with monolingual and bilingual children. The grammatical features of Turkish, the critical points in the adaptation process of MAIN to Turkish and our experiences of extensive piloting of the Turkish MAIN with typically developing monolingual children are described.
Torwali, a Dardic language of the Indo-Aryan family spoken in the District Swat in Pakistan, is an endangered language that lacks a literary tradition. This paper gives a background on the Torwali language and people, and describes the development of an orthography for Torwali and the establishment of Torwali-medium schools by the local organization Idara Baraye Taleem-o-Taraqi ‘institute for education and development’ (IBT). Finally, the process of adapting the Multilingual Assessment Instruments for Narratives (MAIN) to Torwali is outlined.
This paper briefly presents the current situation of bilingualism in the Philippines, specifically that of Tagalog-English bilingualism. More importantly, it describes the process of adapting the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) to Tagalog, the basis of Filipino, which is the country’s national language. Finally, the results of a pilot study conducted on Tagalog-English bilingual children and adults (N=27) are presented. The results showed that Story Structure is similar across the two languages and that it develops significantly with age.
In this paper, we present some features of the European Spanish adaptation of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN), most of them related to specificities of the Spanish grammar as compared to English, the source language of the original MAIN (Gagarina et al., 2012). These two languages differ in e.g. 1) the use of 3rd grammatical person to address the hearer; 2) the ways of maintaining nominal cohesion: English (non-pro drop) vs. Spanish (pro-drop); 3) the verbal paradigm with regard to morphological tense and aspect morphology. Finally, preliminary results for micro- and macrostructure measures in the narratives of children with Spanish as L1 and L2 confirm their consistency across MAIN stories and procedures.
Using MAIN in South Africa
(2020)
South Africa is a country marked by cultural and linguistic diversity with 11 official languages. The majority of school children do not receive their formal schooling in their home language. There is a need for language assessment tools in education and rehabilitation contexts to distinguish between children with language learning problems and/or SLI, and language delay as a result of limited exposure to the language of learning. The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) provides clinicians and researchers with an appropriate and culturally relevant tool to assess bilingual children in both languages. So far MAIN has been widely used in Afrikaans-English bilingual children. However, translating and adapting MAIN to our other nine official languages to achieve functional and cultural equivalence is more challenging.
The adaptation of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) for use with Slovak speaking children is a vital step in the process of creating a transparent evaluation of children’s narrative abilities. Since its first translation and adaptation in 2012, new pilot data from different groups of children has been collected in Slovakia. This paper describes the process of adapting the instrument to fit the Slovak language and reports on analyses of narrative production in monolingual (103 Slovak-speaking children) and bilingual (37 Slovak-English speaking) pre-school children. Within a pilot study, the story elicitation method was also compared (telling vs. retelling) within a small sample of 10 monolingual Slovak-speaking children. All results show transparent and detailed possibilities in terms of finding a meaningful evaluation that can evaluate a child’s complex narrative abilities.
This paper provides the background to the process of translation and piloting of the Serbian version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN), Multilingvalni Test za Procenu Narativa (MTPN). Our review of the sparse research literature on Serbian children’s narrative abilities reveals a need for a well-designed narrative instrument, which will enable researchers and practitioners to assess the production and comprehension of narratives in children of a wide age range, typically and atypically developing, monolingual and bilingual, crucially allowing for cross-linguistic comparisons. We encountered two kinds of challenges during the process of translation and adaptation of the instrument from English into Serbian. The first concerned the lack of established Serbian technical terminology needed to describe test administration to the future users of the test: researchers and practitioners working in different disciplines such as linguistics, psychology, Speech and Language Therapy. The second challenge concerned the translation of linguistic structures required to produce a successful rendition of the narrative: in contrast to English, but in line with other Slavic languages, Serbian relies heavily on verbs marked for perfective aspect in story-telling. Our discussion of preliminary data from four Serbian monolingual children, aged 5;5-10, demonstrates that MTPN is a successful tool in assessing narrative abilities in children acquiring Serbian.
A translation process is often seen as only a simple code exchange, but, in fact, it always requires an adaptation of terms, expressions, and structures, which is not exactly straightforward. This paper describes the process of translating and adapting the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) to Brazilian Portuguese. A brief description of the project, concerning both historic and linguistic aspects, was done in order to emphasize the cultural and linguistic challenges faced during the process.
This paper describes in detail the development of the Polish version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN). We first describe its two earlier versions, the unpublished version and the published version, developed in 2012, as well as the revised version. We also justify the differences between the unpublished Polish version developed in 2012 and the original MAIN. Then we summarize the results from studies that used the unpublished version of the Polish MAIN. We end with outlining a study that could be conducted to compare the two slightly different procedures in order to examine whether the results obtained with MAIN are resistant to changes in the procedure details.
This paper describes the experience of using the Norwegian and Russian versions of LITMUS-MAIN to elicit narrative data from bilingual Norwegian-Russian children as well as from Norwegian- and Russian-speaking monolinguals (Rodina 2017, 2018). The paper reports on the slight adaptations to the standardized design, procedure and analysis that were done to make the tasks more suitable for this specific population. It highlights the advantages, challenges, and potential associated with the task against a backdrop of the research conducted with Norwegian-Russian bilinguals in Norway.
This paper introduces the Mandarin version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) and describes the adaptation process. The Mandarin MAIN not only extends the empirical coverage of MAIN by including one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, but also offers an important tool to assess the narrative abilities of monolingual and bi-/ multi- lingual children acquiring Mandarin as a first, heritage, second, or additional language across the globe.
This paper describes the addition of Luxembourgish to the language versions of MAIN, the adaption process and the use of MAIN in Luxembourg. A short description of Luxembourg’s multilingual society and trilingual school system as well as an overview of selected morphosyntactic and syntactic features of Luxembourgish introduce the Luxembourgish version of MAIN.
This paper introduces the Kam version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN). Kam is a minority language in southern China which belongs to the Kam-Tai language family and is spoken by the Kam ethnic minority people. Adding Kam to MAIN not only enriches the typological diversity of MAIN but also allows researchers to study children’s narrative development in a sociocultural context vastly distinctly different from the frequently examined WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) societies. Moreover, many Kam-speaking children are bilingual ethnic minority children who are “left-behind” children living in Mainland China, growing up in a unique socio-communicative environment
This paper presents the Italian version of the Multilingual Assessment tool for Narratives (MAIN), describes how it was developed and reports on some recent uses of MAIN within the Italian context. The Italian MAIN has been used in different research projects and for clinical purposes; results have been presented at conferences and in peer reviewed papers. The results indicate that MAIN is an appropriate assessment tool for evaluating children’s narrative competence, in production and comprehension from preschool age (5 years) to school age (8 years) in typical language development, bilingual development and language delay/disorders.
Irish (Gaeilge) is the first official language of the Republic of Ireland. It is a fast-changing, endangered language. Almost universal bilingualism (i.e. almost all Irish speakers also speak English), frequent code-switching to English, and loan words are features of the sociolinguistic context in which the language is spoken. This paper describes the adaptation of the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings - Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN, Gagarina et al., 2019) to Irish. Data was collected using the retell mode (Cat story) and the comprehension questions. Eighteen children participated ranging in age from 5;3 to 8;7 (six female and 12 male). Results suggest that story structure is not sensitive to exposure to Irish at home and indicate that MAIN Gaeilge (Irish) is a promising tool for assessing language in Irish-speaking children from a range of Irish language backgrounds.
Immigration in Iceland has a short history and so does the Icelandic language as an L2. This paper gives a brief introductory overview of this history and of some characteristics of the Icelandic language that constitute a challenge for L2 learners but also make it an interesting testing ground for cross-linguistic comparisons of L1 and L2 language acquisition. It then describes the adaptation process of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) to Icelandic. The Icelandic MAIN is expected to fill a gap in available assessment tools for multilingual Icelandic speaking children.
The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) was developed to assess the narrative abilities of bi- and multilingual children in the various languages that they speak. This paper presents the details of the adaptation of MAIN to three Indian languages, Kannada, Hindi and Malayalam. We describe some typological features of these languages and discuss the challenges faced during the process of adaptation. Finally, we give an overview of results for narrative comprehension and production from Kannada-English and Hindi-English bilinguals aged 7 to 9.
This paper presents an overview of the adaptation of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives in Greek, focusing on its use in Greek academic and diagnostic settings. A summary of the properties of the Greek language and the concomitant challenges these language-specific properties posed to MAIN adaptation are presented along with a summary of published studies with monolingual Greek-speaking children and bilingual children with Greek as L2, with and without Developmental Language Disorder.
This paper presents the adaptation of MAIN to Gondi (Dantewada), Halbi and Hindi for Gondi-Hindi and Halbi-Hindi bilinguals. The Gondi and Halbi communities and the context in which Gondi-Hindi and Halbi-Hindi bilingual children are growing up are described, and the adaptation process is outlined together with its theoretical underpinnings. Finally, results from a study of 54 Halbi-Hindi bilinguals from Grade 3 (Mean age = 8.5 years), Grade 5 (Mean age = 10.9 years) and Grade 7 (Mean age = 12.9 years) are presented. The results showed that, for the macrostructure of Grade 3 and Grade 5, L1 retelling was significantly better than L2 retelling, though this pattern was not found in Grade 7 where the performance was at the same level across languages for retelling. Narrative macrostructure was consistently higher in tellings than in the retellings regardless of languages and grades.
This paper describes the rationale for the adaptation of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) (Gagarina et al., 2012, 2015, 2019) to Scottish Gaelic (Gaelic) and presents some preliminary results from the macrostructure measures. Gaelic is a heritage minority language in Scotland being revitalised through immersion education, which spans across all levels of compulsory education (preschool, primary and secondary level). MAIN was adapted to Gaelic for two reasons: (i) to gauge the language abilities of children attending Gaelic immersion schools using an ecologically valid test, and (ii) to help identify areas of language impairment in children with Developmental Language Disorders within a broader battery of language tasks. Preliminary results from the macrostructure component indicate a wider range of Gaelic language abilities in six- to eight-year-old typically developing children in Gaelic-medium education. These results set the stage for future use of the tool within this context.
This paper describes the current state of affairs concerning the West Frisian adaptation of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). We provide a short description of the West Frisian language, the process of adapting MAIN into West Frisian and the results of recent research using this adaptation.
This paper describes Estonian version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) to Estonian. A short description of Estonian, some challenges in the adapting MAIN to Estonian, the first experiences of using the Estonian MAIN and a summary of the first results are presented.
This contribution provides an overview of the current state of affairs with respect to the Dutch version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). We describe properties of the Dutch MAIN, the creation of the Dutch MAIN, and the results of recent research with this new instrument to measure narrative competence.
This paper describes the process of adapting the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) to Danish and the use of MAIN in a Danish context. First, there is a brief description of the Danish language followed by details of the process of translating and adapting the MAIN manual to Danish. Finally, we briefly describe some of the research contexts in which the current and previous MAIN materials have been piloted and applied.
This paper presents the Croatian version of the Multilingual Assessment tool for Narratives (MAIN), outlines its development and describes the research that has used it to assess narrative skills in monolingual and bilingual speakers. The Croatian version of MAIN has so far been used in three research projects and results have been presented in five peer-reviewed articles (published or in press) covering a total of 175 children in the age range from 5;0 to 9;0 (20 with developmental language disorder) and 60 adults, age range from 22 to 76. The accumulated results indicate that MAIN can differentiate narrative skills of speakers in distinct age groups and can distinguish children with language disorders form children with typical language development.
The adaptation of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN; Gagarina, et al., 2019) to Catalan contributes to advancing our knowledge of the development of children’s narrative skills in a diversity of languages using the same protocol, making it possible to evaluate narratives also in Catalan-speakers. The adaptation of MAIN will be very useful in Catalonia, because it is a region where two official languages (Catalan and Spanish) coexist, Catalan being the language of schooling, so that most of the population is bilingual. However, currently there is no instrument for assessing narrative skills that allows for parallel assessment of Catalan in bilingual children. For these reasons, this adaptation will be of great value to promote the study of narratives in the bilingual population considering Catalan within the possible language combinations. The present paper describes the process of adapting MAIN to Catalan and reports results from the first pilot study using the Catalan MAIN.
This paper gives an introduction to the Cantonese adaptation of Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN), which is part of the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) battery. We here discuss the motivation for adapting this assessment instrument into Cantonese, the adaptation process itself and potential contexts for use of the Cantonese MAIN.
Bulgarian belongs to the South Slavic language group but exhibits specific linguistic features shared with the non-Slavic languages of the Balkan Sprachbund. In this paper, we discuss linguistic and cultural aspects relevant for the Bulgarian adaptation of the revised English version of The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN). We address typological properties of the verbal system pertaining to a differentiated aspectual system and to a paradigm of verbal forms for narratives grammaticalized as renarrative mood in Bulgarian. Further, we consider lexical, derivational and discourse cohesive means in contrast to the English markers of involvement and perspective taking in the MAIN stories.
Adapting MAIN to Arabic
(2020)
Preface: New language versions of MAIN: Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives - revised
(2020)
This paper addresses the question of how to account for the semantic variability of weak free adjuncts. Weak free adjuncts are non-clausal adjuncts that associate with an argument of the main predicate, contribute propositional content, and can interact with temporal or modal operators, which leads to different, adverbial-clause-like interpretations. I focus on a specific type of weak adjuncts, non-clausal as-phrases, and propose a unified semantic analysis for the full range of interpretational possibilities that takes into account the interpretational contingency on different syntactic positions. I show that this analysis improves on Stump’s (1985) original analysis of weak adjuncts. I then go on to discuss the limitations of both Stump’s account and the unified account. Both accounts fail to capture that the interaction of weak adjuncts with modal operators underlies certain restrictions on the properties of the modal operators—an observation that has not been discussed in the literature so far.
'Enough'-/'too'-constructions (E/T constructions) have an implicative reading: e.g., "Mary was clever enough to leave early yesterday" entails Mary left early yesterday. I argue that this implicative reading is not due to the lexical semantics proper of 'enough'/'too', but due to its bi-clausal structure (e.g., the above-mentioned example is analyzed as "Mary left early yesterday because she was clever enough"). I analyze 'enough' and 'too' simply as degree modifiers that involve a comparison: 'enough' means reaching the lower bound of an interval, while 'too' means exceeding the upper bound of an interval. Then inspired by Schulz (2011), Baglini and Francez (2015), and Nadathur (2016), I relate the semantics of E/T constructions to causal dependence: due to some sufficiency/excess, the infinitival complement clause in E/T constructions is episodically or generically (depending on its aspect being perfective or imperfective) true/false. I also argue that this infinitive has its tense and aspect marked on the main predicate of sentences, resulting in the seeming correlation between aspect and implication in languages that overtly make a distinction between perfective and imperfective aspects (e.g., French).
Generics and typicality
(2018)
Cimpian et al. (2010) observed that we accept generic statements of the form 'Gs are f' on relatively weak evidence, but that if we are unfamiliar with group G and we learn a generic statement about it, we still interpret it in a much stronger way: (almost) all Gs are f .
This paper makes use of notions like 'representativeness' and 'contingency' from (associative learning) psychology to provide a semantics of generics that explains why people accept generics based on weak evidence. We make use of the Heuristics and Biases approach of Tversky and Kahneman (1974) and the Associative Theory of Probability Judgements to explain pragmatically why people interpret generic statements in a much stronger way. The spirit of the approach has much in common with Leslie's (2008) cognition-based ideas about generics, but the semantics is grounded on Cohen's (1999) relative readings of generic sentences. The basic intuition is that a generic of the form 'Gs are f' is true, not because most Gs are (or tend to have) f , but because f is typical for G, which means that f is valuably associated with G.
Shared mechanism underlying unembedded and embedded enrichments:
evidence from enrichment priming
(2018)
In this paper, we use a priming paradigm to explore the mechanisms underlying unembedded and embedded scalar enrichments. In particular, the aim is to see if local pragmatic enrichment could be a shared mechanism, involved in both. The two experiments presented adopt Bott & Chemla's (2016) enrichment priming paradigm and test whether unembedded and embedded enrichments could prime each other. The goal is to investigate whether local pragmatic enrichment is indeed being accessed for the interpretation of the unembedded scalar and whether local enrichments, like other lexical semantic phenomena, are susceptible to priming.
The paper proposes a new semantics for good-predications involving finite if -and that-clauses. The proposal combines a standard semantics for conditionals with a standard semantics for the positive form of gradable adjectives and a minimal semantics for modal good. The predicted truth-conditions and conditions of use solve the mood puzzle presented in the first part of the paper. The remainder of the paper defends the classical notion of comparative goodness in terms of a comparison between possible worlds against Lassiter (2017)’s challenge.
This paper investigates the interpretation of Japanese -toka and -tari, two nonexhaustive particles that receive conjunctive interpretations in upward-entailing environments, but disjunctive interpretations in downward-entailing and question contexts.
We analyze -toka and -tari as items that introduce unstructured sets of alternatives in a Hamblin-style alternative semantics (Hamblin, 1973; Kratzer and Shimoyama, 2002), and derive their conjunctive and disjunctive readings via an interaction between these sets and the semantics of the environment containing them.
Based on a sample of seven languages, I show that the so-called modal inferences in ever free relatives (ignorance and indifference) are not universally available. The primary reading of ever free relatives crosslinguistically turns out to be a “non-modal” one, which is available to all languages under investigation. The implication is that if there is a modal inference triggered by the use of the ever-morpheme in FRs, the inference is likely to have a source external to the ever free relative (Lauer, 2009; Condoravdi, 2015; Hirsch, 2016). In line with this conclusion, I propose to generalize Hirsch’s (2016) analysis of ignorance ever free relatives, suggesting that all ever free relatives, no matter how they are ultimately interpreted, are instances of (un)conditionals + donkey-anaphoric definite descriptions.
Revising a proposal by Guerzoni (2003), we propose to derive universal projection of presuppositions in wh-questions, where attested, from a family of three felicity conditions on question use. Assuming that these felicity conditions can be violated under certain conditions, this proposal predicts a typology of contexts where universal projection can exceptionally be unattested. We propose that this prediction is correct, presenting a family of scenarios where the expected absence of universal projection is observed.
The meaning of counterfactual conditionals is standardly described using the similarity approach (Stalnaker, 1968; Lewis, 1973). This approach has recently been challenged by Ciardelli et al. (2018). They argue that the similarity approach is in principle unable to account for the meaning of counterfactuals with an antecedent consisting of a conjunction embedded under a negation (¬(p^q)). Ciardelli et al. (2018) dismiss the approach on these grounds and offer an alternative. The main goal of the present paper is to defend the similarity approach against this attack. I will argue that the problem that underlies the observations in Ciardelli et al. 2018 is more general and not solved by the solution they offer. I will furthermore argue, against Ciardelli et al. (2018), that the cause of the problem is not the similarity approach, but the interaction of negation with the meaning of counterfactual conditionals. The paper will conclude with a first outline of a solution for the problem, which still uses the similarity approach, but combines it with an alternative semantics for negation.
This paper deals with topic markers interacting with discourse information in imperatives. It compares two topic markers from Slovenian (‘pa’) and Japanese (‘-wa’) and shows that while they mostly match in terms of the foci they associate with, their functions differ in imperatives: only ‘pa’ may yield a concessive imperative reading. It is shown that this reading can be derived while keeping a single entry for ‘pa’ by making attitudes of discourse participants part of the focus ‘pa’ associates with. The split between Slovenian and Japanese can then be attributed to minor differences in terms of which foci ‘pa’ and ‘-wa’ may associate with.
This paper explores Turkish numeral constructions, which have typologically two interesting properties: (i) the existence of an optional classifier, (ii) the incompatibility of plurals with them. I argue that numerals are modifiers of type <<e,t>,<e,t>> defined only for atomic properties (Ionin and Matushansky 2006). The explanation rests on the semantics of bare singulars proposed to denote sets of atoms (contra Bale et al. 2010), and the semantics of the classifier claimed to be a partial identity function presupposing atomic properties.
Schlenker (2012) proposes that when framed within a modern Stalnakerian view of presupposition and common ground (Stalnaker, 1998, 2002), Maximize Presupposition! (Heim, 1991; Sauerland, 2008) can be viewed as a special case of the maxim of Quantity (Grice, 1975).
We provide data suggesting that in some cases, Maximize Presupposition! applies even when speakers are not expected to use a presupposition as vectors of new information. We argue that these data support the view that Maximize Presupposition! is an independent pragmatic principle, distinct from Quantity.
The proper semantic treatment of the complements of Responsive Predicates (ResPs), those predicates which may embed either declarative or interrogative clauses, is a longstanding puzzle, given standard assumptions about complement selection. In order to avoid positing systematic polysemy for ResPs, typical treatments of ResP complements treat their arguments either as uniformly declarative-like (propositional) or interrogative-like (question).
I shed new light on this question with novel data from Estonian, in which there are verbs think-like meanings with declarative complements and wonder-like meanings with interrogative complements. I argue that these verbs’ meaning is fundamentally incompatible with a proposition-taking semantics for ResPs, and therefore a question-taking semantics is to be preferred.
This paper presents the results of two experiments in German testing the acceptability of (non-)restrictive relative clauses (NRCs/RRCs) with split antecedents (SpAs). According to Moltmann (1992), SpAs are only grammatical if their parts occur within the conjuncts of a coordinate structure and if they have identical grammatical functions. Non-conjoined SpAs that form the subject and the object of a transitive verb are predicted to be ungrammatical. Our study shows that the acceptability of such examples improves significantly if the predicate that relates the parts of the SpA is symmetric. Moreover, it suggests that NRCs and RRCs behave differently in these cases with respect to the SpA-construal. We can make sense of this observation if we follow Winter (2016) in assuming that transitive symmetric predicates have to be analyzed as unary collective predicates and thus provide a collective antecedent for the RC at the semantic (not the syntactic) level. As we will argue, this accounts for some of the disagreement we found in the literature and gives us new insights into both the semantics of symmetric predicates and the semantics of NRCs.
Schlenker (2010) recently provided data from English and French suggesting that, contrary to standard assumptions (McCawley, 1982; Potts, 2005; Arnold, 2007; AnderBois et al., 2011), non-restrictive relative clauses (NRCs) can take narrow scope under operators of the sentence within which they are embedded. This paper presents three experiments in German confirming this claim. The results show that embedded readings are available with NRCs in German and give first insights into the puzzle under which conditions these embedded readings do or do not show up.
This paper argues that traces only range over individual semantic types and cannot be type shifted into higher types to circumvent this restriction. The evidence comes from movement targeting positions where DPs must denote properties and the behavior of definite descriptions in these positions. These constraints on possible traces demonstrate that syntactic operations impose active restrictions on permissible semantic types in natural language.
This paper presents an exploratory production study of Bharatanatyam, a figurative (narrative) dance. We investigate the encoding of coreference vs. disjoint reference in this dance and argue that a formal semantics of narrative dance can be modeled in line with Abusch’s (2013, 2014, 2015) semantics of visual narrative (drawing also on Schlenker’s, 2017a, approach to music semantics). A main finding of our investigation is that larger-level group-boundaries (Charnavel, 2016) can be seen as triggers for discontinuity inferences (possibly involving the dynamic shift from one salient entity to another).
The verb ‘rise’ can be used both with property-denoting nouns like ‘temperature’ but also with NPs like ‘a Titan’ or ‘China’. Whereas in the former case the change triggered by a rising event is directly related to the subject (its current value increases), this does not hold for ‘a titan’ or ‘China’. In this case it is a property of these objects, say their height or their political power, which increases in value. Furthermore, ‘rise’ does not target a particular property as the examples above show. This data has led Cooper (2010) to the conclusion that it is presumably not possible (i) “to extract a single general meaning of words which covers all the particular meanings of the word in context”, and (ii) “to determine once and for all the set of particular contextually determined meanings of a word”. In this article we present a solution to the two problems raised by ‘rise’ in a frame theory. ‘Rise’ is analyzed as a scalar verb which does not lexicalize a complete scale in its meaning. Rather, it shows underspecification relative to the dimension (property) parameter of a scale. The set of admissible properties is determined by a constraint on the value ranges of properties. If the property is not uniquely determined by the subject, the comprehender uses probabilistic reasoning based on world knowledge and discourse information to defeasibly infer the most likely candidates from this set (2nd problem).
The first problem is solved not by simply introducing objects into the representation of a discourse but instead by pairs consisting of an object and an associated frame component which collects the object information contributed by the discourse. Changes triggered by events like the one denoted by ‘rise’ are modelled as update operations on the frame component while the object component is left unchanged.
Some kind of relative clause
(2018)
Amount Relatives (ARs) differ from restrictive relative clauses in that they do not refer to a particular object denoted by the head of the relative clause, but to an amount of such objects (Carlson, 1977a; Heim, 1987). Traditionally, ARs have been regarded as degree expressions.
In this paper I argue against this view and propose instead that amount interpretations of relative clauses are in fact a special case of kind interpretation.
Extreme nouns and maximizers
(2018)
Maximizers (completamente ‘completely’, totalmente ‘totally’) are degree modifiers restricted to maximum standard adjectives. Spanish adjectives of completeness [ACs] (completo ‘complete’, total ‘total’) display a behavior similar to that of their adverbial counterparts when they combine with nouns like idiot. This paper argues that ACs are maximality modifiers of idiot-like nouns, which are defended to be gradable and denote extreme degrees of properties.
Establishing a parallelism between adverbs and adjectives of completeness allows us to explore scalarity across categories and the relevance of scale structure in the nominal domain.
In this paper, I address verbal predicates of change in Southern Aymara, an understudied Andean language. I concentrate on verbs that are derived with the suffix -cha. This suffix derives degree achievements and creation predicates. I propose that they should be analyzed uniformly as degree achievements. The main empirical point of this paper is that there are two degree morphemes that combine with verbs with -cha, namely, a covert positive morpheme v.POS and an overt suffix -su. The latter is a degree morpheme that restricts the standard of comparison to lexical or contextual maximal degrees. I propose an analysis in terms of Maximize Presupposition: v.POS and -su constitute lexical alternatives where the latter is preferred over the former when maximal values are reached. v.POS is thus felicitous when no maximum is reached. The discussion bears on how telicity is achieved cross-linguistically when degree achievements are considered, thus enriching our typologies on the topic.
It is traditionally assumed that lexical causative verbs (e.g. kill) express direct causation only, while periphrastic (bi-clausal) causatives (e.g. cause to die) may also express indirect causation. In favour of this constraint, Fodor famously observed that the (change of) state introduced by lexical causative verbs is not accessible for separate adverbial modification by temporal (or manner) adverbials. In this paper, I present old and new arguments against the direct causation constraint under the definitions of directness of Fodor and Wolff. I then propose a new definition of directness in terms of ab-initio causal sufficiency framed in Kvart’s probabilistic account of singular causation. I argue that directness so redefined is an implicature rather than an entailment of lexical causative verbs, which enables me to account for old and new data. Furthermore, I account for why the constraint on separate modification by temporal adverbials can be relaxed with eventuality-denoting subjects.
Whether degrees should be modeled as simple semantic primitives or ontologically complex entities has been an issue in recent formal semantic research. This article aims to make a contribution to this scholarly enterprise by investigating the Differential Verbal Comparative (DVC) construction in Chinese. DVCs exhibit peculiar properties : (i) obligatory differentials, and (ii) DPs as differentials(e.g., liang ben xiaoshuo ‘two CL novel’).
We propose that a degree is the entity correlate of a property that is formed on the basis of a measure, akin to Chierchia-style kind. This new kind of degree, coupled with a difference function-based semantics for comparatives, correctly predicts the behaviors of DVCs which would otherwise remain formally inscrutable. This article’s contributions are twofold: (i) it provides direct support for the degree-as-kind analysis by extending its empirical scope; and (ii) by combining degrees as kinds with a difference function-based semantics, it represents an improvement over the previous degree-as-kind analysis based on linear ordering.
This paper investigates the meaning adaptability of change of state (CoS) verbs. It
argues that both coercion and underspecification are necessary mechanisms in order to properly
account for the semantic adaptability observable for CoS verbs in combination with their
complements. This type of meaning adaptability has received little formal attention to date,
although some recent work has already led the way on this topic (Spalek, 2014; Lukassek and
Spalek, 2016; Asher et al., 2017). Our paper is part of a cross-linguistic case study of German
einfrieren and Spanish congelar (‘freeze’). We model the meaning adaptability of this test case
within Type Composition Logic (TCL) (Asher, 2011). We build on Asher’s coercion mechanism
and introduce an additional mechanism for underspecification that exploits the fine-grained type
system in TCL.
Questioning speech acts
(2018)
The function of mapping from the semantic content of an utterance to its convention of use (a division of labor first made by Frege (1956)) has been attributed to abstract speech act operators (also known as force operators), such as ASSERT, QUESTION, and COMMAND. These operators have been traditionally assumed to occupy the highest echelons of the clausal periphery. The precise formulation of these operators has attracted a lot of attention from semanticists, as they are crucial for formalizing the diverse discourse functions of speech acts (Farkas and Bruce, 2009; Farkas and Roelofsen, 2017; Malamud and Stepheson, 2015; Krifka, 2015). These high operators usually come packaged with two assumptions: i) they are not embeddable under other elements, and ii) they belong to the realm of pure pragmatics and not compositional semantics. Recent research in both semantics and syntax have challenged these assumptions (Krifka, 2015; Davis, 2011; Wiltschko, 2017; Heim et al., 2016). Based on evidence from a language with a rich array of sentence-final particles (SFPs), Cantonese, we argue in this paper that not only are abstract speech operators embeddable, it is also the case that we need compositional mechanisms in these high regions of the clause. We will investigate the SFP stacking phenomenon, and argue that such grammaticalized operations on speech act operators reveal the need for a system that can compose the content of an utterance with multiple particles that update the discourse in a number of different, non-trivial ways.
Schwager (2011) and Sudo (2014) argued that there are cases of the so-called third readings of attitude reports, initially discovered by Fodor (1970), that cannot be accounted for in terms of a theory of indexed world variables (Percus, 2000), which is often referred to as the Standard Solution. More complicated alternatives to the Standard Solution have been recently formulated in the literature in a number of papers. We argue that all the seemingly problematic cases can be naturally accounted for in terms of the Standard Solution, if we take into account the existence of previously unrecognized elided material in these reports.
This paper argues that Double Access sentences in English (Smith, 1978) are a kind of loose talk. When the meaning of a Double Access sentence is computed literally, the result is infelicity. Double Access sentences can be used meaningfully only when rescued by pragmatics which intervenes to interpret the embedded clause loosely. A formal model for loose interpretation, building on Klecha (2018), is provided.
Counteridenticals are counterfactual conditional sentences whose antecedent clauses contain an identity statement, e.g. "If I were you, I’d buy the blue dress". Here, we argue that counteridenticals are best analyzed along the lines of dream reports. After showing that counteridenticals and dream reports exhibit striking grammatical and perceptual parallels, we suggest an analysis of counteridenticals with Percus and Sauerland’s (2003) analysis of dream reports. Following their proposal, we propose to make use of concept generators, realized as centered worlds. To this end, we argue that the presence of 'if' licenses the presence of an 'imagine'-operator, which constitutes the attitude the antecedent clause "x be-PAST y" is taken under. The speaker predicates, in the imagine mode, the consequent property to his/her imagined self.
To capture the different degrees of identification between the subject and the predicate of the identity statement of counteridenticals’ antecedents observed in the literature, we incorporate Percus and Sharvit’s (2014) notion of asymmetric be into the analysis. This proposal has several advantages over existing analyses (Lakoff, 1996; Kocurek, 2016) of counteridentical meaning, as it both explains the different degrees of identification observed for counteridenticals and correctly predicts the parallels between counteridenticals and dream reports.
This paper is about what Ninan (2014) (following Wollheim 1980) calls the Acquaintance Inference (AI): a firsthand experience requirement imposed by several subjective expressions such as Predicates of Personal Taste (PPTs) (delicious). In general, one is entitled to calling something delicious only upon having tried it. This requirement can be lifted, disappearing in scope of elements that we will call obviators. The paper investigates the patterns of AI obviation for PPTs and similar constructions (e.g., psych predicates and subjective attitudes). We show that the cross-constructional variation in when acquaintance requirements can be obviated presents challenges for previous accounts of the AI (Pearson 2013, Ninan 2014). In place of these, we argue for the existence of two kinds of acquaintance content: (i) that of bare PPTs; and (ii) that of psych predicates, subjective attitudes and overt experiencer PPTs.
For (i), we propose that the AI arises from an evidential restriction that is dependent on a parameter of interpretation which obviators update. For (ii), we argue that the AI is a classic presupposition. We model both (i) and (ii) using von Fintel and Gillies’s (2010) framework for directness and thus connect two strands of research: that on PPTs and that on epistemic modals. Both phenomena are sensitive to a broad direct-indirect distinction, and analyzing them along similar lines can help shed light on how natural language conceptualizes evidence in general.
Imposters are grammatically third-person expressions used to refer to the firstperson speaker or second-person addressee (e.g. ‘the present authors’ when used to refer to the first-person writer, ‘Mommy’ or ‘Daddy’ when used by parents for self-reference in child-directed speech). Current analyses of imposters differ in whether they derive the unusual referential properties of imposters using syntactic means or attribute them to semantic and pragmatics. We aim to shed light on these competing approaches by means of a psycholinguistic experiment focusing on first-person imposters that investigates the kinds of pronouns (first-person vs. third-person) used to refer to imposter antecedents. Our results show that manipulating the prominence of the first-person speaker does not significantly boost the acceptability of first-person pronouns in imposter-referring contexts. However, our results suggest that a purely syntactic approach may not be sufficient either, as psycholinguistic processing factors also appear to be relevant.
The Epistemic Containment Principle (ECP) requires that epistemic modals take wider scope than strong quantifiers such as every or most (von Fintel and Iatridou, 2003). Although fairly robust in its realization, a few systemic classes of counterexamples to the ECP have been noted. Based on these, previous work has argued for two claims: subjective modals obey the ECP, whereas objective ones don’t (Tancredi, 2007; Anand and Hacquard, 2008); and every respects the ECP, whereas each violates it (Tancredi, 2007). This paper argues that explicit Questions Under Discussion (QUDs; Roberts, 1996; Ginzburg, 1996) also systematically influence the ECP: scopal orderings that provide relevant answers to the given QUDs are preferred, and this tendency can override the ECP. To support this claim, the paper presents an experimental study. The results corroborate the existence of systematic QUD effects on the ECP, and support the view that the ECP is derived from a confluence of various pragmatic and lexical biases.
This paper compares the modal particle fei (Schlieben-Lange, 1979; Thoma, 2009) with the modal particle/sentence adverb aber (not to be confused with the conjunction aber, ‘but’). Intuitively, both items express some form of contrast and correction. We will show that both are special among discourse particles in the following sense: They make a contribution that is interpreted at a level distinct from the level where at-issue content (Potts, 2005) is interpreted, as is standard for modal particles (see Gutzmann, 2015 and the references therein). But more interestingly, they exclusively relate to propositions that have not entered the Common Ground via being the at-issue content of an assertion made by the addressee.
Experimental studies investigating logical reasoning performance show very high error rates of up to 80% and more. Previous research identified scalar inferences of the sentences of logical arguments as a major error source. We present new analytical tools to quantify the impact of scalar inferences on syllogistic reasoning. Our proposal builds on a new classification of Aristotelian syllogisms and a closely linked classification of reasoning behaviors/strategies.
We argue that the variation in error rates across syllogistic reasoning tasks is in part due to individual variation: reasoners follow different reasoning strategies and these strategies play out differently for syllogisms of different classes.
We bring experimental considerations to bear on the structure of comparatives and on our understanding of how quantifiers are processed. At issue are mismatches between the standard view of quantifier processing cost and results from speeded verification experiments with comparative quantifiers. We build our case in several steps:
1. We show that the standard view, which attributes processing cost to the verification process, accounts for some aspects of the data, but fails to cover the main effect of monotonicity on measured behavior. We derive a prediction of this view for comparatives, and show that it is not borne out.
2. We consider potential reasons - experimental and theoretical - for this theory-data mismatch.
3. We describe a new processing experiment with comparative quantifiers, designed to address the experimental concerns. Its results still point to the inadequacy of the standard view.
4. We review the semantics of comparative constructions and their potential processing implications. 5. We revise the definition of quantifier processing cost and tie it to the number of Downward Entailing (DE) operators at Logical Form (LF). We show how this definition successfully reconciles the theory-data mismatch. 6. The emerging picture calls for a distinction between the complexity of verified representations and the complexity of the verification process itself.
In this paper I argue for a new constraint on questions, namely that a question denotation (a set of propositions) must map to a partition of a Stalnakerian Context-Set by point-wise exhaustification (point-wise application of the function Exh). The presupposition that Dayal attributes to an Answer operator follows from this constraint, if we assume a fairly standard definition of Exh (Krifka, 1995). But the constraint is more restrictive thereby deriving the sensitivity of higher order quantification to negative islands (Spector, 2008).
Moreover, when combined with recent proposals about the nature of Exh - designed primarily to account for the conjunctive interpretation of disjunction (e.g. Bar-Lev and Fox, 2017) - Dayal’s presupposition follows only in certain environments. This observation allows for an account of the "mention-some" interpretation of questions that makes specific distributional predictions.
This paper is an attempt to systematically investigate how contrastive focus interacts with various types of not-at-issue content (co-speech and post-speech gestures, lexical presuppositions, and appositives). I look, in particular, at when focus forces at-issue interpretations of typically not-at-issue content, when it does not, and when such at-issue interpretations are impossible even to satisfy focus-related requirements.
I conclude that the main factors affecting how a given type of content aligns along these dimensions are its prosodic (in)dependence and level of attachment in the syntax. The two factors also interact in a non-trivial way, in particular for gestures, which I use as a basis for an analysis of gestures that does not assume that their temporal alignment directly determines their semantics (contra Ebert and Ebert, 2014; Ebert, 2017; Schlenker, 2018), but instead relies on syntax/semantics and syntax/prosody interaction.
I present data that suggest the universal entailments of counterfactual donkey sentences aren’t as universal as some have claimed. I argue that this favors the strategy of attributing these entailments to a special property of the similarity ordering on worlds provided by some contexts, rather than to a semantically encoded sensitivity to assignment.
Tiwa (Tibeto-Burman; India) has two series of epistemic indefinites: one whose epistemic effects arise via an anti-singleton constraint similar to Spanish alg´un (Alonso-Ovalle and Men´endez-Benito, 2010), and another, wide-scope indefinite whose epistemic effects must be derived differently. I propose that for these latter indefinites, ignorance arises not through domain constraints, but as a result of their choice functional nature through competition with other indefinites. Tiwa’s wide scope indefinites then constitute a new kind of epistemic indefinite, showing that ignorance implicatures for indefinites can arise through different sorts of competition.
This paper experimentally investigates presupposition projection from the scope of the quantifiers every and at least one, as triggered by the factive verb be aware and the iterative adverb again.
The first issue we are concerned with is whether presuppositions project universally or existentially from quantified sentences. Different theoretical accounts endorse opposing views here (e.g., Heim, 1983; Geurts, 1999; Beaver, 2001; Schlenker, 2008, 2009; Fox, 2012), while recent experimental work (Chemla, 2009; Tiemann, 2014) suggests that the force of the projected presupposition varies by quantifier.
The second issue we look at is how the descriptively observed readings arise—in particular, as a direct result output from the projection mechanism, or via additional, independent mechanisms such as domain restriction (e.g., Geurts and van Tiel, 2016): if the domain of the quantifier is restricted, this can yield what looks like non-universal inferences in light of the overall, unrestricted domain, even if the projection mechanism itself yields a universal presupposition. Finally, we test whether the presupposed content also forms part of the entailed content, at least for certain triggers (Sudo, 2012; Klinedinst, 2016; Zehr and Schwarz, 2016).
Our results yield clearly different patterns for every and at least one, with every giving rise to universal presuppositions, which, to a very limited extent, can be weakened by domain restriction, and at least one overwhelmingly giving rise to non-universal presuppositions. Our results also indicate the availability of presupposition-less readings for both triggers in the task at hand, apparently more prevalent than domain restriction. Thereby, we present novel evidence that helps to pinpoint which of the theoretical options can be substantiated experimentally.
This paper argues that extant approaches to presupposition projection that either rely on strict linear order (Schlenker, 2009) or hierarchy (Romoli and Mandelkern, 2017) cannot provide a uniform account of data drawn from head-final languages. While building on Schlenker’s theory, this paper resolves the issues by restricting the calculation of local contexts to specific points in the parsing process. The consequence is that the theory makes a prediction robust to the head directionality parameter
Reference of pronouns may be constrained via lexical presuppositions, including marked F-features, implicated presuppositions, and deictic center shifting in certain languages.
This paper explores the acquisition of personal reference terms in Thai, a language that has a highly complex personal reference system. The participants of the study were 67 typicallydeveloping children (TD) and 29 children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), a population which has long been observed to have difficulties with pronouns. The children were asked to complete simple production and comprehension tasks on personal reference terms. Overall, ASD children performed on par in production but significantly poorer in comprehension than TD children. Given the freedom of choice in the production task, ASD children preferred using fixed referential terms for self-reference, whereas TD children opted for personal pronouns. In terms of comprehension, ASD children were shown to generally be able to detect the person features but they seemed to struggle the most with the pragmatic aspects of personal reference terms. Our results support previous literature that lexical presuppositions are acquired earlier than implicated presuppositions. We add to the literature that the types or the amount of implicated presuppositions matter in acquisition
Depiction verbs such as paint license i(mage)- and p(ortrait)-readings; for instance, Ben painted a cow can convey that Ben produced an image of an unspecific cow or a portrait of a specific cow. This paper takes issue with a property-based intensional analysis of depiction verbs (Zimmermann, 2006b, 2016) and instead argues for an extensional account. Accordingly, the i-reading is rooted in the introduction of worldly representations by the explicit noun cow as such, whereas the p-reading is rooted in the interpolation of an implicit representation via coercion. This take on the ambiguity captures the following key traits. On i-readings, only representations are accessible to quantifiers and anaphors; moreover, intensional effects such as substitution failure disappear once ordinary objects and representations are adequately distinguished. P-readings, by contrast, involve representations that depend on the portrayed ordinary objects as particulars; correspondingly, only ordinary objects are accessible to quantifiers and anaphors. The proposal is spelled out in Asher’s (2011) Type Composition Logic.
We present an experiment which tests children’s comprehension of the requirements of use of pronouns and definites. An adult-like use of definites and pronouns imposes different but related requirements. In the case of definites, a unique referent is required in the context, whereas in the case of a pronoun, the referent in the context has to be salient. In this experiment, we use a novel word task to test three-year-olds’ sensitivity to these requirements. Our results show that children are adult-like in their sensitivity to salience in their comprehension of pronouns, compared to definites. However, they failed to show sensitivity to the uniqueness requirement on the use of definites.
Miners and modals
(2018)
I generalise Kolodny and MacFarlane’s miners puzzle by showing epistemic analogues of their case exist. After motivating various conservative approaches to the original problem, I show how they fail to solve the problem in its epistemic guise. I argue that a probabilistic approach to information-sensitivity gives a general solution to the problem.
The Wolof imperfective auxiliary di is compatible with event-in-progress, habitual and future readings. Furthermore, while varieties of all these readings are available for di when it sits in a syntactically low position, only future readings are available when it sits in a syntactically high position. We aim to account for this puzzle by combining several ingredients independently motivated in the literature: (i) event-relative circumstantial modality for event-in-progress, habitual, and a subset of future readings; (ii) metaphyisical modality for generalized future readings; (iii) the idea that syntactic height determines the type of modal anchor that projects a modal base. This study contributes to our understanding of the relation between syntactic height and modal flavor, as well as the nature of modal-aspectual interactions cross-linguistically.
In recent years, experimental research has demontrated great variability in the rates of scalar inferences across different triggering expressions (Doran et al. 2009, 2012, van Tiel et al. 2016). These studies have been taken as evidence against the so-called uniformity assumption, which posits that scalar implicature is triggered by a single mechanism and that the behaviour of one scale should generalize to the whole family of scales. In the following, we present an experimental study that tests negative strengthening for a variety of strong scalar terms, following up on van Tiel et al. (2016). For example, we tested whether the statement John is not brilliant is strengthened to mean that John is not intelligent (see especially Horn 1989). We show that endorsement rates of the scalar implicature (e.g., John is intelligent but not brilliant) are anti-correlated with endorsements of negative strengthening. Further, we demonstrate that a modified version of the uniformity hypothesis taking into account negative strengthening is consistent with van Tiel et al.’s data. Therefore, variation across scales may be more systematic than suggested by the van Tiel et al. study.
Alternative Questions with "or not" (NAQ) convey a cornering effect, which is not found with they polar counterparts (PQ). This effect has been claimed to consist of two parts (Biezma 2009): NAQs (i) cannot be used discourse-initially and (ii) they do not license followup questions/subquestions.
In this paper, we ask the following: Are both parts of cornering linked to the same property of NAQs? Or do they reflect distinct linguistic phenomena? We explore the issue by comparing the behavior of NAQs to Complement Alternative Questions (CAQ), a type of question that, like NAQs, presents logically opposite alternatives but, unlike NAQs, fully spells out the second one. Results from two experiments suggest that both parts of cornering can instead be explained in terms of independent semantic and pragmatic principles, which operate beyond the domain of alternative questions.
Sentences containing subjective predicates - e.g., "The movie was awesome"” - are intuitively anchored to a particular perspective; this makes them different from sentences describing objective facts - e.g., "The movie was set in 1995".
While authors have long debated on whether this intuition tracks a lexical distinction between subjective and factual predicates, much remains to be explored on whether, and how, the difference between these two assertions is reflected at the illocutionary level. Relying on evidence from two experiments, we show that assertions containing subjective predicates display different discourse behavior from objective assertions. We take these findings to support the idea that SAs should be assigned a special illocutionary profile, unveiling a genuine empirical difference between subjective and factual speech.
Analyses of scope reconstruction typically fall into two competing approaches: 'semantic reconstruction', which derives non-surface scope using semantic mechanisms, and 'syntactic reconstruction', which derives it by positing additional syntactic representations at the level of Logical Form. Grosu and Krifka (2007) proposed a semantic-reconstruction analysis for relative clauses like the gifted mathematician that Dan claims he is, in which the relative head NP can be interpreted in the scope of a lower intensional quantifier. Their analysis relies on type-shifting the relative head into a predicate of functions. We develop an alternative analysis for such relative clauses that replaces type-shifting with syntactic reconstruction. The competing analyses diverge in their predictions regarding scope possibilities in head-external relative clauses. We use Hebrew resumptive pronouns, which disambiguate a relative clause in favor of the head-external structure, to show that the prediction of syntactic reconstruction is correct. This result suggests that certain type-shifting operations are not made available by Universal Grammar.
According to Ogihara (1995), the usage of the embedded present in a speech report such as John said that Mary is in the room is restricted by the cause of John’s belief (the state that made John think that Mary is in the room): the present tense can be used only if this cause still holds at the time that John said that Mary is in the room is uttered.
This paper presents experimental evidence demonstrating that this is only one of the factors that licenses a felicitous usage of the embedded present tense. In particular, we show that the cause of belief still holding is not a necessary condition, and identify two additional, sufficient (but not necessary) factors: in cases of false belief, who is aware of the falsity of the belief and duration of the reported state. While these factors are independent, they collectively support the idea that the present tense encodes ‘current relevance’, even in embedded contexts (e.g. Costa 1972; McGilvray 1974). This gives rise to the question of how we can derive ‘current relevance’ and, in particular, whether previous analyses of the embedded present tense are adequately equipped to do so.
This paper presents a new account of the generalization that focused elements cannot be elided, framed within Unalternative Semantics, a framework that does away with syntactic F-marking. We propose the mirror image of the generalization: what is elided cannot introduce alternatives. We implement this as a focus restriction in UAS and then go on to show how to account for MAXELIDE effects using the same technique, without making reference to any transderivational constraints.
The semantics of adjectives related to nominals denoting societal roles, such as presidential (from president), have remained understudied. We examine the semantics of what we call role-denoting relational adjectives, providing a formal analysis using the notion of a frame, a unified representation for lexical knowledge, world knowledge, and context. The frames we propose are based on a constructivist philosophical understanding of social roles, leading us to posit a multi-tiered ontology of events and individuals. Using frames and our ontology, we provide a general semantics for role-denoting relational adjectives and roles
Discourses in the historical (or narrative) use of the simple present in English prohibit backshifting, though they allow forward sequencing. Unlike both reference time theories and discourse coherence theories of these temporal inferences, we propose that backshifting has a different source from narrative progression. In particular, we argue that backshifting arises through anaphora to a salient event in the preceding discourse.
The goal of this paper is to evaluate two approaches to quantification in event semantics, namely the analysis of quantificational DPs in terms of generalized quantifiers and the analysis proposed in Schein (1993) according to which quantifiers over individuals contain an existential quantifier over sub-events in their scope. Both analyses capture the fact that the event quantifier always takes scope under quantifiers over individuals (the Event Type Principle in Landman (2000)), but the sub-events analysis has also been argued to be able to account for some further data, namely for adverbs qualifying ‘ensemble’ events and for mixed cumulative/ distributive readings. This paper shows that the sub-events analysis also provides a better account of the Event Type Principle if a broader range of data is considered, including cases with non-existential quantifiers over events: unlike the generalized quantifiers analysis, it can successfully account for the interpretation of indefinites in bare habituals and sentences that contain overt adverbs of quantification.
Korean is a generalized classifier language where classifiers are required for numerals to combine with nominals. This paper presents a number construction where the classifier is absent and the numeral appears prenominally. This construction, which I call the classifier-less number construction (Cl-less NC), results in a definite or a partitive reading where the referent must be familiar: ‘the two women’ or ‘two of the women’. In order to account for this, I argue that Korean postnominal number constructions are ambiguous between a plain number construction and a partitive construction. After motivating and proposing an analysis for the partitive structure, I argue that Cl-less NC is derived from the partitive construction, explaining its distributional restriction and the interpretation.
Counter to the often assumed division of labour between content and function words, we argue that both types of words have lexical content in addition to their logical content. We propose that the difference between the two types of words is a difference in degree. We conducted a preliminary study of quantificational determiners with methods from Distributional Semantics, a computational approach to natural language semantics. Our findings have implications both for distributional and formal semantics. For distributional semantics, they indicate a possible avenue that can be used to tap into the meaning of function words. For formal semantics, they bring into light the context-sensitive, lexical aspects of function words that can be recovered from the data even when these aspects are not overtly marked. Such pervasive context-sensitivity has profound implications for how we think about meaning in natural language.
This study investigates macrostructure in elicited narratives of 69 monolingual German-, Russian- and Swedish-speaking adults. Using the LITMUS-MAIN (Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives), and its Baby Goats and Baby Birds stories, story structure and story complexity, concerning episodic organization, were examined across the 3 languages. As theoretical underpinnings, a multidimensional model of macrostructure was used. This model includes analyses of story structure (SS), in which a narrative merits a maximum score of 17, based on the occurrence of five types of macrostructural components (Internal states as initiating event and as reaction, Goal, Attempt and Outcome), and of story complexity (SC), which measures combinations of Goals, Attempts and Outcomes within one episode. The highest attainable complexity is the GAO-sequence, when a Goal, Attempt and Outcome are produced within the same episode. The results for SS were similar for German, Russian and Swedish, where adults included 11-12 components per story. A more detailed analysis of the individual components revealed striking similarities across the 3 languages, both for frequently used and seldom occurring components. SC did not differ significantly across languages nor across stories, whilst for SS, a slight difference between the two stories was found. We interpret this finding as story complexity (a qualitative measure of macrostructure) being of a more universal nature. Furthermore, our results indicate that caution is warranted when conclusions about children’s narrative skills are to be drawn on the basis of the MAIN Baby Goats and Baby Birds stories.
For this study one hundred sixty-seven Russian-/Turkish-German preschool children were tested with a battery of language proficiency tests in both languages. On the basis of 1.5 SD below monolingual norm for L2 German and 1.25 SD below bilingual mean for either home language, 9 children at risk of developmental language disorders (DLD) (mean age of 4 years and 5 months) were identified and 16 age-matched TD children were selected out of the cohort. All these children were tested with the LITMUS-MAIN and –SR tests in German. The results across TD and at risk of DLD group were compared. TD clearly outperformed at risk of DLD in SR. In elicited narratives, macrostructure and microstructure were scrutinized across groups. Similar to the previous findings, our results show significant differences between at risk of DLD und TD in the microstructure, e.g. total number of word tokens and verb-based communication units and SR. For the macrostructure, TD outperformed at risk children only for story complexity. The study expands our knowledge on the cut-off criteria for the identification of bilinguals at risk of DLD, scrutinized very early narratives for bilinguals at risk of DLD features and questions the similarity of cognitive skills in TD and at risk of DLD children.
A growing body of evidence shows a positive relation between the language skills of a child and the socio-economic status (SES) of his/her parents. These studies have mainly been conducted in an American English monolingual context. The current paper addresses the question of whether SES has a comparable impact on the simultaneous bilingual language acquisition. In this study, noun and verb test scores of German simultaneous bilingual children with Turkish and Russian as heritage languages are related to the SES of their parents – to verify the existence and the nature of a common pattern. The results do not show common patterns across the two heritage language groups, suggesting the existence of other confounding factors.
The aim of this paper is to analyse the development of narrative macrostructure and the impact of socio-economic status (SES) and home literacy environment (HLE) on the narrative macrostructure of monolingual preschoolers in Germany when retelling and telling a story. The analysis of narrative macrostructure includes three components: story structure, story complexity, and story comprehension. Oral narratives were elicited via Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN). 198 monolingual children between age 4;6 and 5;11 participated (M=63 months, SD=5 months). The comparison of narrative macrostructure in three age groups (4;6 to 4;11 years, 5;0 to 5;5 years, 5;6 to 5;11 years) illustrate significant age effects in story structure, story complexity and story comprehension skills. There were weak significant positive correlations of some of these skills with aspects of socio-economic status and home literacy environment, for example between story comprehension skills and the educational background, the frequency and duration of the child’s exposure to books and the number of books in the household.
In this paper, data from a current study on bilingual language acquisition and language promotion of children is presented. 96 narratives from 32 Turkish-German and Russian-German bilingual children were examined with regard to the acquisition of narrative ability in three rounds of tests. The macrostructure of each narrative was evaluated based on the theories of Westby (2005), Stein and Glenn (1977) and Gagarina et al. (2012). In the quantitative analysis, the factor age of onset (AoO) was considered and therefore, two hypotheses were introduced: 1) There is an influence of AoO on the narrative ability of L2 German bilingual children. And 2) The narrative ability will converge over time and after three years there will be no difference between the groups. Neither of those hypotheses could be confirmed by the examined narrative data. Hence, other influences on narrative ability were discussed in the last chapter and prospects for further research were given. In sum, the article shows that more narrative data of these children should be collected to make a comprehensive conclusion about the influence of AoO on narrative ability.
Introduction
(2019)
German underwent a typological change from a syllable language in Old High German towards a word language today (Szczepaniak 2007). Proper names followed this development until the last century (cf. Christel, Gertrud, Klaus, Wolfgang). Some of the most popular German first names from 2010, however, such as Mia, Lea, Leon, Noah, show completely different structures compared to common nouns. In sharp contrast to common nouns, first names dispose of CV-structures, full vowels in unstressed syllables and different accent positions. Thus, there must have been a deep-rooted onomastic change. The most frequent baby names of 1945 were still in harmony with the usual word structures. This article shows that the decrease of transgenerational transmission of first names led to a departure fom native phonological structures. The following factors are analyzed: the number of syllables; accent position; and the number of consonant clusters, hiatuses, schwa and unstressed full vowels. It will be demonstrated that the phonological distance between first names (particularly female names) and common nouns has increased over time and that there is an increasing tendency for names to contain syllable language structures. Thus, a typological difference developed between these two nominal classes. The reason behind this change can be found in the individualizing function of proper names and social individualization over time.
In German, female and male first names are strictly segregated: there are two big inventories with the only purpose to separate women and men. Unisex names are extremely seldom. If they are chosen, they have to be followed by a sex-specific middle name (e.g. Kim Uwe, Kim Annette). If we look at the phonological components of first names, i.e. at their sounds, we can state that male and female names became more similar over the last decades. Whereas in the 1950's, typical first names such as Katharina and Rolf diverged considering their phonic inventory considerably, today, many girls are named Leah and Lara and many boys Noah and Luca. These names share nearly the same sounds, they consist of two syllables and are stressed on the first one. If we look behind the scenes, it becomes clear that the officially required onomastic separation of the two sexes is undermined. In this paper, I will present a socalled phonetic gender score for German first names for the first time (see also Schmidt-Jüngst in this volume). It allows for measuring a degree of femaleness and maleness of names. In a second step, it will be asked whether unofficial names such as pet names, which are not obliged to mark sex also tend to be gendered or if they disobey the gender barrier. It will be shown that the most intimate names are not interested in stressing the denoted person's sex. In contrast to first names, pet names tend to be maximally de-gendered.
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.
The claim of this paper is that embedded definites can, despite the appearances, be accounted for on the uniqueness approach. Far from being a surprise, we argue that the behavior of embedded definites is actually expected once two independent facts are taken into account: the ability of noun phrases to take scope, i.e., to be interpreted in a different place from their syntactic position, and the interaction of presuppositions and scope-taking elements. Specifically, we analyze embedded definites as a case of inverse linking (Gabbay and Moravscik, 1974; May, 1977): the embedded definite takes scope over the embedding one. The presupposition of the embedded definite is weakened as a result of the independently motivated process of intermediate accommodation (Kratzer, 1989; Berman, 1991). In our case, this process transfers the presupposition of the embedding definite into the restrictor of the embedded one.
Like other scope-taking processes, inverse linking is generally taken to be subject to locality constraints: if a syntactic island, such as a finite clause boundary, intervenes in the path of a scope-taking element, then the resulting reading is unavailable or degraded (Rodman, 1976). Since our account views embedded definites as cases of inverse linking, we predict that inserting an island into an embedded definite, all else being equal, should lead to a similar degradation. We report results from an online survey with 800 participants that confirm this prediction.