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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.
Judging by appearances : a study of human-oriented metonymic developments in the domain of dress
(2008)
This paper discusses a semantic analysis of three syntactic types of English each, namely, floated each, binominal each, and prenominal each. It is argued that floated each consists of two parts, a quantifier and an inaudible element which functions as its restrictor, which together form a tripartite quantificational structure when they compose with the predicate. Binominal each and an associated NP such as two topics (which is generally called the 'distributive share') are syntactically analyzed as forming a subject-predicate relation within a DP in which the NP undergoes so-called 'predicate inversion'. Semantically, binominal each is analyzed as having the same semantic value as floated each, while prenominal each is shown to have a different logical type from floated and binominal each. As can be seen from analogous constructions in some Romance languages, it does not lexically contain its restrictor.
Old masters and new frameworks : a pilot analysis of selected semantic changes in the field economy
(2003)
Metonymy and the growth of lexical categories related to the conceptual category female human being
(2000)
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.
On the Indo-European nature of non-Indo-European animals metaphor : the case of Chinese zoosemy
(2007)
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.
It is argued that there is a surprising gap in the distribution of adverbial modifiers, namely that there are (practically) no adverbs that modify exclusively stative verbs. Given the general range of selectional restrictions associated with adverb/verb modification, this comes as a surprise. It is argued that this gap cannot be the result of standard selectional restrictions. An independently motivated account of the state-event verb contrast, in which state verbs are proposed to lack Davidsonian arguments is presented and argued to account for this stative adverb gap. Some apparent and real problems with the analysis are discussed.
It has been claimed and widely assumed that caseless direct objects in Turkish exhibit a sort of syntactic incorporation, and only their cased counterparts are true syntactic arguments (Kornfilt 1997; Knecht 1986; Nilsson 1986; Öztürk 2005 among others). Cased and caseless objects are thus widely taken as derivationally related, crystallized in Kelepir's (2001) proposal that objects pick up overt accusative as they move out of the VP. In this paper, I would like to revisit both the empirical evidence and the interpretation leading to these claims and propose revisions.
I first show that not all caseless objects are the same. Mostly drawing on Aydemir (2004), I argue that bare caseless objects and those with indefinite expressions have differences that would be very unusual if they were both incorporated. However, adopting Öztürk (2005) and against Aydemir (2004), neither of the cases can be analyzed as head incorporation.
I then turn to the cased vs. caseless distinction and argue that cased and caseless objects are not that different after all. Based on data with strictly controlled information structure, I arrive at a different generalization than most of the earlier reports and claim that caseless objects are morphosyntactically as moveable as their cased counterparts.
Hence, I propose to replace the notion of incorporation in the literature of Turkish syntax with the notion of weak case (de Hoop 1992) and conclude by a discussion of the domain of syntactic analysis in this primarily semantic phenomenon.
According to standard Binding Theory, pronouns and reflexives are in (nearly) complementary distribution. However, representational NPs (e.g. 'picture of her/herself') allow both. It has been suggested that in English, reflexives in representational NPs (RNPs) have a preference for 'sources of information' and that pronouns prefer 'perceivers of information.' We conducted two experiments investigating the effects of structural and non-structural (source/perceiver) factors on the interpretation of two kinds of RNP structures in a typologically different language, namely Finnish. Our results reveal source/perceiver effects for postnominal but not for prenominal RNPs in Finnish, with a difference in the degree of sensitivity that pronouns and reflexives exhibit to the source/perceiver manipulation, and our results also suggest that morphological differences in Finnish reflexives correspond to interpretation differences. As a whole, these results support a multiple-factor model of reference resolution, which assumes that multiple factors can play a role in reference resolution and that the relative contributions of these factors can be different for different anaphoric forms (Kaiser 2003b, Kaiser & Trueswell in press).
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.
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".
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.
How the left-periphery of a wh-relative clause determines its syntactic and semantic relationships
(2004)
This paper discusses a certain class of German relative clauses which are characterized by a wh-expression overtly realized at the left periphery of the clause. While investigating empirical and theoretical issues regarding this class of relatives, it argues that a wh-relative clause relates syntactically to a functionally complete sentential projection and semantically to entities of various kinds that are abstracted from the matrix clause. What is shown is that this grammatical behaviour clearly can be attributed to the properties of the elements positioned at the left of a wh-relative clause. Finally, a lexically-based analysis couched in the framework of HPSG is given that accounts for the data presented.
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.
As a traditional notion of fundamental importance in linguistics and philosophy (logic), "predication" is fraught with controversial issues. It is thus difficult to delimit the scope of this paper without becoming involved in some major issue. The following distinctions seem to me to be plausible on an intuitive basis. Evidence for why they are useful and legitimate will be found in the body of the paper. The discussion will focus on morphosyntactic predication […].
In this paper, I argue that this informally given list of characteristics covers only a certain subclass of specific indefinites. […] In particular, I dispute the definition of specific indefinites as "the speaker has the referent in mind" as rather confusing if one is working with a semantic theory. Furthermore, I discuss "relative specificity", it. cases in which the specific indefinite does not exhibit wide, but intermediate or narrow scope behavior. Based on such data, I argue that specificity expresses a referential dependency between introduced discourse items. Informally speaking, the specificity of the indefinite expression something [...] expresses that the reference of the expression depends on the reference of another expression, here, on the expression a monk, not the speaker.
The interface of lexical semantics and conceptual structure deverbal and denominal nominalizations
(2002)
Nominalizations can refer to events, instances of events or participants in an event. The particular reference is determined by the lexical semantics of the base and the suffix, and by the conceptual structure of the base. The comparison between deverbal and denominal nominalization in -ata in Italian reveals that the conceptual structure plays a crucial role in determining the reference of a nominalization. Italian nominalizations of -ata are productively derived from verbal and nominal bases. Derivations from verbal bases refer to a single event denoted by the base. Derivations from a nominal base N denote events or results corresponding to a limited number of pattems, such as a hit by N, a characteristic action of N, a period of N, a quantity that is contained in N, etc. The paper argues that the function of the suffix operates on the lexical meaning of the base, but the con~positiono f the lexical meaning of the base with the lexical meaning of the suffix is restricted by the conceptual properties of the base.
This paper will examine the role of various factors in affecting the salience, and hence the accessibility to pronominal reference, of entities introduced into a discourse by a full clause. We begin with the premise that the possibility of pronominal reference with it versus that depends on the cognitive status of the referent, in the sense of Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharski (1993). This formulation of the problem provides grounds for an explanation of the data presented above, and provides a framework within which we examine the role of various other factors in promoting the salience of a clausally introduced entity, including the information structure of the utterance in which the entity is introduced. For entities introduced by clausal complements to bridge verbs, we show that the information structure of the utterance introducing the entity has a partial, or one-sided, effect on the salience of the entity. When the complement clause is focal, the salience of the entity depends only on its referential givenness-newness (in the sense of Gundel 1988, 1999b), as we would expect. But when the complement clause is ground material, the salience of an entity introduced by the clause is enhanced. Other factors, including the presuppositionality of factive and interrogative complements, also serve to enhance the salience of entities introduced by complement clauses.
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.
"Je suis Charlie" was used over 619.000 times in the two days that have followed the attack of the editorial team of Charlie Hebdo (Le Progrès, The Huffington Post) and has regularly been taken up in both written and spoken form since. In this paper, we argue that the structure of this sentence actually clashes with its meaning. More specifically, whereas its word order and default rightmost sentence stress are compatible either with an all-focus reading or a narrow focusing of Charlie, the context of use of this sentence as well as the solidarity/empathy message it intends to communicate suggest that its subject is narrowly focused. We will propose that two strategies have emerged to solve this conflict: (i) various alternative forms have appeared that allow proper subject focusing and (ii) speakers have reinterpreted the structure so as to pragmatically retrieve the (additive) focused nature of the subject.
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.
This paper proposes a new strategy for accounting for the narrow scope readings of quantificational contrastive topics in Hungarian, which is based on a consideration of the types of questions that declaratives with such contrastive topics can be uttered as partial or complete congruent answers to. The meaning of the declaratives with contrastive topics will be represented with the help of the structured meaning approach to matching questions proposed in Krifka 2002.
"Back to basics" : a cognitive analysis of conversion de-adjectival nominalisation in English
(2003)
With the rise of minimalism, many concepts related to the geometrical relations of phrase structure held fast to in earlier approaches have been reconsidered. This article deals with distinguishing (relational and technical) properties of specifiers and adjuncts in a Bare Phrase Structure framework (X'-Theory). I extend specific aspects of X-structure relevant to the discussion of specifiers vs. adjuncts. I argue that unique specifiers can be derived from the system and that adjunction, possibly multiple, results from Direct Merge only. The final product is a series of relationships in line with recent thoughts and minimalist premises, but formally more similar to earlier conceptions of the X'-schema.
I address conceptual, empirical and theoretical arguments against multiple specifiers and related issues next, that is beyond the predictions immediately following from the tripartitional view of clause structure proposed in Grohmann (2000). After laying out my motivations to critically consider the issue, I present a set of data that casts serious doubt over the justifications offered to replace Agr with v as the accusative casemarker. Having conceptual and empirical back-up, I then tackle the theoretical validity of specifiers, and ways to distinguish unique specifiers from (multiple) adjuncts. I introduce a version of Bare Phrase Structure that does so, yet keeps the spirit of defining structural identification over relational rather than categorial properties.
This paper pursues the question what the implications of the Anti-Locality Hypothesis could be for the syntax of secondary predication. Focus of the discussion will be an investigation of what their internal structure of small clause complements must look like, how these small clause complements connect to their matrix environments, and what the relevance could be for the formulation of anti-locality presented here. Anti-locality is defined over a tripartite clause structure (split into three Prolific Domains) and a PF-condition on the computation (the Condition on Domain-Exclusivity). The investigation revolves around two leading questions: (i) does the syntax of small clauses involve more structure than simply [SC DP XP] and (ii) do small clauses constitute their own Prolific Domain (or maybe even more)? The results, affirmative answers to both questions, are also relevant for other types of secondary predication.
We will see how it is reasonable to speak of a minimum distance that an element must cross in order to enter into a well-formed movement dependency. In the course of the discussion of this notion of anti-localiry, a theoretical framework unfolds which is compatible with recent thoughts on syntactic computation regarding local economy and phrase structure, as well as the view that certain pronouns are grammatical formatives, rather than fully lexical expressions. The upshot will be that if an element does not move a certain distance, the derivation crashes at PF, unless the lower copy is spelled out as a pronominal element. The framework presented has a number of implications for the study of clause-typing, of which some will be discussed towards the end.
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.
This paper employs empirical methods to examine verbs such as seem, for which the traditional raising to subject analysis relates pairs of sentences which differ by taking an infinitival or sentential complement. A corpus-driven investigation of the verbs seem and appear demonstrates that information structure and evidentiality both play a determinate role in the choice between infinitival or sentential complementation. The second half of the paper builds upon the corpus results and examines the implications for the standard claims concerning these constructions. First, pairs of sentences related by the subject-to-subject raising analysis of verbs are often viewed as equivalent. New evidence from indefinite generic subjects shows that whether an indefinite generic subject occurs in the infinitival or sentential complement construction leads to truth-conditional differences. Further implications are explored for the claim that subjects of the infinitival variant may take narrow-scope: once various confounds are controlled for, the subject of the infinitival construction is shown to most naturally take wide-scope.
Specifics
(2001)
In all these examples there appears to be mismatch between the position at which an indefinite appears and its preferred interpretation. Following many of the more recent contributions to the literature, I will assume that this is the hallmark of specificity (e.g. Ahusch 1994, Reinhart 1997, Winter 1997, van Geenhoven 1998). Such mismatches are not the norm: indefinites are often interpreted in situ, and there is some reason for taking this to be the default option. The reason is that comparatively 'neutral', i.e. semantically attenuate, indefinites have a preference for in situ readings [...].
In a recent contribution to a long-standing discussion in semantics as to whether the neo-Davidsonian analysis should be extended to stative predicates or not, Maienborn (2004, 2005) proposes to distinguish two types of statives; one of them is said to have a referential argument of the Davidsonian type, the other not. As one of her arguments for making such a distinction, Maienborn observes that manner modification seems to be supported only by certain statives but to be excluded by others (thus linking the issue to the use of manner modification as one major argument in favour of event semantics, cf. Parsons 1990). In this paper, it is argued that the absence of manner modification with Maienborn's second group of statives is actually due to a failure of conceptual construal: modification of a predicate is ruled out whenever its internal conceptual structure is too poor to provide a construal for the modifier; hence, the effects observed by Maienborn reduce to the fact that eventive predicates have a more complex conceptual substructure than stative ones. Hence, the issue of manner modification with statives is shown to be orthogonal to questions of logical form and event semantics. The explanatory power of the conceptual approach is demonstrated with a case study on predicates of light emission, adapting the representation format of Barsalou's (1992) frame model.
The syntax and semantics of the resumptive dependency in hungarian focus-raising constructions
(2004)
Previous work (Gervain, forthcoming) has established that focus-raising may be derived by two strategies in Hungarian. One of them is the traditional movement derivation, the other a resumptive dependency created between the focus constituent base-generated in its matrix focus position and a phonologically null resumptive pronoun in the corresponding argument position in the embedded clause. However, the previous account (Gervain, forthcoming) does not give a detailed description of the nature of this resumptive dependency. The present work aims to address this question. More specifically, by providing a series of empirical tests, it attempts to determine whether the dependency is purely syntactic in nature, i.e. obligatory variable binding, or whether a semantic option is also available, i.e. coreference between the focus constituent and the resumptive pronoun. Thus, it provides new insights into the ongoing debate about the nature of resumptive pronouns.
The ultimate goal of this paper is to find a representation of modality compatible with some basic conditions on the syntax-semantic interface. Such conditions are anchored, for instance, in Chomsky's (1995) principle of full interpretation (FI). Abstract interpretation of modality is, however - be it "only" in semantic terms - already a hard nut to crack, way too vast to be dealt with in any comprehensive way here. What is pursued instead is a case-study-centered analysis. The case in point are the English modals (EM) viewed in their development through time - a locus classicus for a number of linguistic theories and frameworks. The idea will be to start out from two lines of research - continuous grammaticalization vs. cataclysmic change - and to explain some of their incongruities. The first non-trivial point here consists in deriving more fundamental questions from this research. The second, possibly even less trivial one consists in answering them. Specifically, I will argue that regardless of the actual numerical rate of change, there is an underlying and more structured way to account for the notions of change and continuity within the modal system, respectively.
Russian and Spanish each have two variants of the predicational copular sentence. In Russian, the variation concerns the case of the predicate phrase, which can be nominative or instrumental, while in Spanish, the variation involves the choice of the copular verb, either ser or estar. It is shown that the choice of the particular variant of copular sentence in both languages depends on the speaker’s perspective, i.e., on whether or not the predication is linked to a specific topic situation.
This article discusses some syntactic peculiarities of Chinese yes/no questions. Starting from the observation that Standard Mandarin shares significant typological features with prototypical SOV languages, Chinese is treated as an underlyingly verb-final language. Based on this heuristic principle, A-not-AB, AB-not-A and AB-not questions are uniformly derived by means of one simple raising rule that operates within the sentence constituent V'. This novel idea is elaborated on in great detail in the first part of the article. In contrast to the prevailing trend, it is argued that the question operator contained in A-not-A and A-not sentences CANNOT be raised to "Comp". In consequence, A-not-A and A-not questions are "typed" in the head position of a sentence-internal functional phrase that we call Force2 Phrase (F2P) in the present paper. This position is not to be confused with Drubig's (1994) Polarity 1 Phrase (PollP), in the head position of which assertive negations and an abstract affirmative element are located. The existence of a head position F2° other than Poll° is supported by the fact that F2° can be occupied by certain overt question operators, such as assertive shi-bu-shi, which are compatible with negations. In contrast to the assertive question operator shi-bu-shi which is obligatorily associated with information focus, non-assertive shi-bu-shi serves as a compound focus and question operator whose focus feature is complex insofar as it is composed of two subfeatures: a contrastivity and an exhaustivity subfeature. Non-assertive shi-bu-shi is obligatorily associated with identificational focus in the sense of Kiss (1998). In accordance with some basic ideas of Chomsky's checking theory, the two subfeatures of the complex focus feature carried by the non-assertive shi-bu-shi operator check a correlating subfeature in the head position of a corresponding functional phrase (Contrastive Phrase and Focus Phrase, respectively). The question feature contained in the non-assertive shi-bu-shi operator is attracted by the head of Force1 Phrase (F1') at the level of LF. Due to the fact that F1° is sentence-final, the question feature of non-assertive shi-bu-shi must be Chomsky-adjoined to F1'. Unlike identificational focus phrases which are inherently contrastive, topics are non-contrastive in the default case. As separate speech acts, they are located in a c-commanding position outside the sentence structure. Semantically, there is a difference between Frame-Setting Topics and Aboutness Topics. As shown in the article, both A-not-A and A-not questions on the one hand and yes/no questions ending with ma on the other can be used in neutral and non-neutral contexts. The decisive advantage of mu questions, however, is that their question operator has scope over the whole sentence.
In this article, I will present a survey of control structures in Korean. The survey is based on a sample of seventy SOA-argument-taking predicates, which are classified with respect to their complementation patterns and control properties. As a result, Korean is characterized as a language in which semantically determined control is predominant, whereas constructionally induced control is only marginal. In the discussion of the sample, I will show that there are two major classes of verbs exhibiting semantic control: the first class consists of matrix verbs such as hwuhoyhata 'regret' or kangyohata 'force', which require obligatory coreference between a matrix argument and the embedded subject due to their lexical meaning. The verbs of the second class are utterance verbs such as malhata 'tell', which select clauses headed by the quotative complementizer ko. With these verbs, subject, object, or split control arises if specific modal suffixes are attached to the verb heading the complement clause. In the second part of the paper, I will provide a lexical analysis of control in Korean, which adopts the Principle of Controller Choice proposed by Farkas (1988) as well as additional constraints which have to be assumed independently.
Remarks on deixis
(1992)
The prevailing conception of deixis is oriented to the idea of 'concrete' physical and perceptual characteristics of the situation of speech. Signs standardly adduced as typical deictics are I, you, here, now, this, that. I and you are defined as meaning "the person producing the utterance in question" and "the person spoken to", here and now as meaning "where the speaker is at utterance time" and "at the moment the utterance is made" (also, "at the place/time of the speech exchange"); similarly, the meanings of this and that are as a rule defined via proximity to speaker's physical location. The elements used in such definitions form the conceptual framework of most of the general characterisations of deixis in the literature. [...] There is much in the literature, of course, that goes far beyond this framework . A great variety of elements, mostly with very abstract meanings, have been found to share deictic characteristics although they do not fit into the personnel-place-time-of-utterance schema. The adequacy of that schema is also called into question by many observations to the effect that the use of such standard deictics as here, now, this, that cannot really be accounted for on its basis, and by the far-reaching possibilities of orienting deictics to reference points in situations other than the situation of speech, to 'deictic centers' other than the speaker. [...] Analyses along the lines of the standard conception regularly acknowledge the existence of deviations from the assumed basic meanings. One traditional solution attributes them to speaker's "subjectivity", or to differences between "physical" and "psychological" space or time; in a similar vein, metaphorical extensions may be said to be at play, or a distinction between prototypical and non-prototypical meanings invoked. Quite apart from the question of the relative merits of these explanatory principles, which I do not wish to discuss here, the problem with all such accounts is that the definitions of the assumed basic meanings themselves are founded on axiom rather than analysis of situated use. The logical alternative, of course, is to set out for more abstract and comprehensive meaning definitions from the start. In fact, a number of recent, discourse-oriented, treatments of the demonstratives proceed this way; they view those elements as processing instructions rather than signs with inherently spatial denotation (Isard 1975, Hawkins 1978, Kirsner 1979, Linde 1979 , Ehlich 1982.)
The paper characterizes three different domains in the German middle field which are relevant for the interpretation of an indefinite. It is argued that the so-called 'strong' reading of an indefinite is the basic one and that the 'weak' reading needs special licensing which is mirrored by certain syntactic requirements. Some popular claims about the relation between the position and the interpretation of indefinites as well as some claims about scrambling are discussed and rejected. From the findings also follows that the strong reading of an indefinite is independent of its information status.
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.
The present study offers the analysis of the role of adverbials in the semantic structure of a sentence. To clarify this role new notions "Adverbials with floating and fixed semantic scope" are proposed. This classification also can clarify the role of adverbials from the point of view of the division into arguments vs. adjuncts.
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.
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.
This paper proposes that we can predict which adverbs cannot adjoin to the right in headinitial languages by means of a particular semantic property, that of being a "subjective" adverb, one which maps an event or proposition onto a scale with the high degree of indeterminacy and context-dependence. Such adverbs, such as 'probably' or 'luckily', cannot adjoin to the right with non-manner readings, while other adverbs (like 'politically', 'often', or 'deliberately') may. This supports the view that the distribution of adverbs depends heavily, and subtly, on their lexicosemantic properties.
In this paper, we deal with the semantic interaction between ung-nominalizations of different event types and temporal prepositions like wiihrend 'during', vor 'before', nach 'after', bis 'until' and seit 'since'. According to the two-level-approach to selnantics (Bierwisch 1983, Bierwisch / Lang 1989), we will argue that the meaning of ten~poral prepositions is determined on the level of semantic form (SF). When combined with an event nominal, the period in time required by the preposition has to be inferred on the level of conceptual structure (CS). Very often, the exact nature of the period in time is determined by pragmatic factors. There are, however, some important restrictions to this inference procedure which rely on the event noun's Aktionsart. In Ehrich/Rapp (2000), it was claimed that eventive ungnominals inherit the Aktionsart of their base verb. This assumption receives strong support by the data presented in this paper.
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.
War and death in business : some remarks on the nature of conceptualisation in the field economy
(2005)
Recent work on argument selection couched in a lexical decomposition approach (Ehrich & Rapp 2000) postulates different linking properties for verbs and nouns, challenging current views on argument inheritance. In this paper, I show that the different behavior with respect to verbal and nominal linking observed for Present-Day German does not carry over to ung-nominals in Early New High German. Deverbal nouns and corresponding verbs rather behave alike with respect to argument linking. I shall argue that this change is motivated by the growing rift between ung-nominals and their verbal bases both focussing on different parts oftheir lexicosemantic structure in Present-Day German. Evidence for the verb-like behavior of ung-nominals in Early New High German comes from the regular meaning relation between verbs and corresponding derived nouns, the actional properties of event-denoting nouns, and the patterning of ung-nominals with nominalized infinitives. Even their syntactic behavior reflects the verbal character of ung-nominals during that period of the German language. The diachronic facts can be accounted for in a straightforward way once we adopt a lexical decomposition approach to argument selection.
Mention some of all
(2006)
In the interpretation of natural language one may distinguish three types of dynamics: there are the acts or moves that are made; there are structural relations between subsequent moves; and interlocutors reason about the beliefs and intentions of the participants in a particular language game. Building on some of the formalisms developed to account for the first two types of dynamics, I will generalize and formalize Gricean insights into the third type, and show by means of a case study that such a formalization allows a direct account of an apparent ambiguity: the ‘exhaustive’ versus the ‘mention some’ interpretation of questions and their answers. While the principles which I sketch, like those of Grice, are motivated by assumptions of rationality and cooperativity, they do not presuppose these assumptions to be always warranted.
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.
In this paper, a class of sentences in German is discussed that are often called whexclamatives. […]
So called wh-exclamatives can be roughly characterized as wh-clauses that are embedded under exclamative predicates like erstaunt sein/to be amazed at [...] or that are used as the basis for an exclamation [...].
One can ask if wh-exclamatives are a clause-type of their own, in particular, whether they are different from wh-clauses in question environments, that is under question predicates like to ask or to wonder or used as questions. It is often assumed that wh-clauses in exclamative contexts, both embedded and unembedded, are indeed different from wh-clauses in interrogative or question environments [...], at least regarding their semantical type, see for example Elliot (1971, 1974), Grimshaw (1979, 1981), Zaefferer (1983, 1984), Altmann (1 987, 1993). […]
I assume with Grimshaw (1979) that so called wh-exclamatives and wh-interrogatives are alike with respect to their syntactical properties. In addition, I think that they are also alike semantically. So, what I like to do here is to evaluate the following hypothesis:
So-called wh-exclamatives are of the same semantical type as wh-interrogatives.
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.
Fronting a noun phrase changes the focus structure of a sentence. Therefore, it may affect truth conditions, since some operators, in particular quantificational adverbs, are sensitive to focus. However, the position of the quantificational adverb itself, hence its informational status, is usually assumed not to have any semantic effect. In this paper I discuss a reading of some quantificational adverbs, the relative reading, which disappears if the adverb is fronted. I propose that this reading relies not only on focus, but on B-accent (fall-rise intonation) as well. A fronted Q-adverb is usually pronounced with a B-accent; since only one element can be B-accented, this means that the scope of the adverb contains no B-accented material, hence no relative readings. Thus, the effects of fronting range more widely than is usually assumed, and quantificational adverbs are a useful tool with which to investigate these effects.
In this paper I discuss four type of bare nominal, and note that, in some sense, all of them appear to imply stereotypicality. I consider an account in terms of Bidirectional Optimality Theory: unmarked (bare) forms give rise to unmarked (stereotypical) interpretations. However, it turns out that, while the form of bare numerals is unmarked, the interpretation sometimes is not. I suggest that the crucial notion is not unmarkedness, but optimal inference: unmarked forms give rise to interpretations that are best used for drawing inferences. I propose a revision of Bidirectional Optimality Theory to reflect this.
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
The aim of this paper is to give the semantic profile of the Greek verb-deriving suffixes -íz(o), -én(o), -év(o), -ón(o), -(i)áz(o), and -ín(o), with a special account of the ending -áo/-ó. The patterns presented are the result of an empirical analysis of data extracted from extended interviews conducted with 28 native Greek speakers in Athens, Greece in February 2009. In the first interview task the test persons were asked to force(=create) verbs by using the suffixes -ízo, -évo, -óno, -(i)ázo, and -íno and a variety of bases which conformed to the ontological distinctions made in Lieber (2004). In the second task the test persons were asked to evaluate three groups of forced verbs with a noun, an adjective, and an adverb, respectively, by using one (best/highly acceptable verb) to six (worst/unacceptable verb) points. In the third task nineteen established verb pairs with different suffixes and the ending -áo/-ó were presented. The test persons were asked to report whether there was some difference between them and what exactly this difference was. The differences reported were transformed into 16 alternations. In the fourth task 21 established verbs with different suffixes were presented. The test persons were asked to give the "opposite" or "near opposite" expression for each verb. The rationale behind this task was to arrive at the meaning of the suffixes through the semantics of the opposites. In the analysis Rochelle's Lieber's (2004) theoretical framework is used. The results of the analysis suggest (i) a sign-based treatment of affixes, (ii) a vertical preference structure in the semantic structure of the head suffixes which takes into account the semantic make-up of the bases, and (iii) the integration of socioexpressive meaning into verb structures.
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
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.
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.
In his 1995 monograph, Apresyan suggests that it would be extremely interesting to investigate the means of expressing the definiteness/indefiniteness opposition in languages that do not have articles. In this paper, I will attempt to find possible correlations between the organization of discourse and the positions in which the (in)definite nominals may appear within a sentence of Russian. I will examine the information structure of Russian sentences and, based on the previous analyses, provide a new account of their organization with respect to information packaging. I will then look at various nominal elements contained in certain parts of a sentence and arrive at a system describing the distribution of NPs in Russian with respect to the information structure. The ultimate goal of this paper is to establish and motivate a system of correlations between various types of NPs and functions of information structure. This goal will be achieved by determining which characteristic of a NP may serve as a criterion allowing to provide a one-to-one mapping.
The present article is a crosslinguistic discussion of the distinction between a word class of nouns and a word class of verbs in the UNI TYP framework of the dimension of PARTICIPATION (for a first overall sketch of PARTICIPATION see Seiler 1984). According to this framework the noun/verb-distinction (henceforth N/V-D) must be regarded as a gradable, continuous phenomenon ranging from the stage of a clear-cut distinction with no overlap to almost a non-distinction. Although there is no question that most, if not all, languages do differentiate between nouns and verbs, it is also quite apparent that the languages do so to a different degree and by different means, and that it only makes sense to use the terms "noun" and "verb" in different languages when one actually has a common functional denominator in mind (see below). After a general introduction to the notion of a noun/verb-continuum (chapter 1) the reader will be presented with a survey of languages as diverse as German. English, Russian, Hebrew, Turkish, Salish. and Tongan (see chapter 2) in support of the continuum hypothesis. In chapter 3 the facts are coordinated in an overall pattern of regularities underlying the Increase or decrease of categorical restrictions between the respective word classes. Also, chapter 3 raises the issue to what degree a N/V-D can be considered a matter of certain lexemes or a matter of the morphosyntactic environment of certain lexical units. Lastly, we shall seek for an answer to the question why it is not a necessary requirement for languages to draw a sharp distinction between a word class of nouns and a word class of verbs.
This is a survey of the development of the model of PARTICIPATION (P'ATION) with reference to the postulated sequence of the techniques on the dimension of P'ATION. Along with a brief explanation of the techniques this article contains a discussion of the major claims with regard to the sequence of the techniques and the possibilities of subjecting the claims to empirical verification.
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.
Many authors who subscribe to some version of generative syntax account for the two readings of [...] sentences [...] in terms of LF-ambiguity. There is assumed to be covert quantifier raising (QR), which results in two distinct possibilities for the indefinite quantificational expressions involved to take scope over each other [...] In this paper, an alternative account is proposed which dispenses with the idea that there are different scope relations involved in the readings of […] sentences [...] and, consequently, with QR as the syntactic operation to be assumed for generating the respective LFs. I argue that it is rather focus structure in connection with type semantic issues pertaining to the indefinite quantificational expressions involved which result in the different readings associated with [...] sentences.
The paper investigates the interpretation of the Romanian subjunctive B (subjB) mood when it is embedded under the propositional attitude verb crede (believe). SubjB is analyzed as a single package of three distinct presuppositions: temporal de se, dissociation and propositional de se. I show that subjB is the temporal analogue of null PRO in the individual domain: it allows only for a de se reading. Dissociation enables us to show that subjB always takes scope over a negation embedded in a belief report. Propositional de se derives this empirical generalization. The introduction of centered propositions (generalizing centered worlds), together with propositional de se, dissociation and the belief 'introspection' principles, derives the fact that subjB belief reports (unlike their indicative counterparts) are infelicitous with embedded probabil.
The effects of different forms of predication have been insightfully (and almost exclusively) studied for 'simple' cases of predication, of which the 'presentational sentence' is maybe the paradigm instantiation. It is the aim of this paper to show that thc same kind of effects as well as in fact the same kind of structures are present at embedded levels in thematically and otherwise more complex structures. Beyond presentational sentences, 'unaccusative' experiencing constructions involving a dative subject, 'double object constructions' and - to a lesser extent - spraylload constructions are discussed. For all of these, it is argued that they comprise a predication encoding the ascription of a transient temporal property to a location. On this basis, a proposal is made as to how the scope asymmetry between the two arguments involved in the colistructions can be explained. Furthermore, a proposal is made as to how what has been called 'argument shift' is motivated.
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 cognitive framework seems to comply with the need of interdisciplinary outlook on the issue of emotions, as it itself draws upon findings of psychological, anthropological and philosophical research. Along with undertaking further studies on the conceptualization of emotions in different languages, from the detailed analysis of the repertoire of linguistic means used for talking about emotions to investigation into tendencies to use metaphors or metonymies to talk about emotions, some broader conclusions could be drawn. The greatest challenge seems to be establishing whether there are any cultural (social, economical, conventional, political, religious) conditions that may influence the relevant changes in conceptualizing emotions in different languages and whether it is possible to point to any laws or regularities that would govern these changes.
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.
The present investigation steps back to the claims of the 1990s by assuming that there is a functional opposition in the use of P- and D-PRO which affects the status of the pronoun's referent in the mental model of the discourse. We interpret the earlier findings as an indication of an information structural difference which is specifically relevant on the discourse level. The question we address here is twofold. Firstly, we ask whether the assumed opposition in the information status of P- and D-PRO referents has consequences on referent continuation in the ongoing discourse. So far, the effects of P- vs. D-PRO use were determined concerning the status of the pronoun referent in the actual sequence of discourse, i.e. they were determined by a judgement on the salience or the topic/focus status of the pronominal DP. As far as we can see, this determination has not been operationalized further. Since there are contexts in which both P- and D-PRO would fit in with only a feeling of a difference but without clear-cut exclusiveness, the opposition is empirically not well validated. If we could show that there are effects of type of pronoun on the ongoing discourse this would, in our view, provide the lacking empirical validation. Secondly, we ask whether there are effects of the narrator's point of view on P- and D-PRO use. The idea behind this question is that the way of information unfolding in discourse depends on the speaker. S/he decides which pieces of information come next, what is foreground and what is background information. If type of pronoun choice is related to the processes of discourse organization by the speaker – via fore- and backgrounding of information – and if internal or external location of the narrator's point of view influences the organization strategies of the speaker/narrator this might have an ffect on the use of P- and D-PRO.