Semantics etc.

[from the “Philosophical Gourmet E-Mail Update Service”:http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/updates/default.htm]

IN MEMORIAM

Georg Henrik von Wright (1916-2003)

For information on his distinguished philosophical career, see http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gwright.htm.

[Note: the page lists the date of his death as July 16, 2003. I assume that this is a typo.]

“Mitchell Green”:http://www.people.virginia.edu/~msg6m/. Grice’s Frown: On Meaning and Expression, in G. Meggle and C. Plunze (eds.)

bq. I argue first that reflexive communicative intentions are not necessary for conversational implicature. Next, the Gricean framework for speaker meaning will be used to throw into relief a pervasive feature of communication that is invoked in a wide variety of philosophical discussions (as well as in the arts, in social psychology, psycholinguistics, and linguistics) but little explicated, namely the notion of expression. That notion is then shown to be important for another area of inquiry than that of implicature, particularly for our account of the phenomenon of Moorean absurdity. Finally, I argue that the notion of expression, construed as intentionally and overtly showing one’s intentional state, is a core concept in terms of which conversational implicature may be understood.

There are two appreciations of the late David Lewis in the most recent issue of “Mind and Language”.

• Frank Jackson: “David Kellogg Lewis — Philosopher and Philosopher of Mind
• Richard Holton: “David Lewis’s Philosophy of Language”:http://www.ingenta.com/isis/searching/Expand/ingenta?unc=1032288295

Here is the full program of the workshop on polarity & implicatures, at which Angelika Kratzer will give the talk noted “earlier”:http://fintel.mit.edu/blog/archives/000264.html. Polarity, Scalar Phenomena, Implicatures: At the Interface between Grammar and the Cognitive System, June 18-20, 2003, Milan, Italy. Continue Reading »

“Graeme Forbes”:http://www.tulane.edu/~forbes. “Depiction Verbs and the Definiteness Effect”:http://www.Tulane.EDU/~forbes/pdffiles/DVbs%26DefEffect.pdf (Draft 1, June 2003)

bq. This paper is about a puzzling aspect of the behavior of depiction verbs (’sketch’, ‘draw’, ’sculpt’, ‘imagine’ etc.). Most groups of intensional transitive verbs form verb phrases with quantified noun phrases in a way that permits a notional reading of the verb phrase, regardless of the quantificational determiner in the noun phrase. For example, “Perseus seeks exactly one gorgon”, “Perseus seeks another gorgon”, and “Perseus seeks every gorgon” can all be understood notionally (the coda “but no particular gorgon(s)” makes sense in each case). But if we change “seeks” to “drew”, the notional reading with “every gorgon” disappears. Similarly with “most”, “the” and “both”. I offer an account of why this happens in terms of Keenan’s classification of determiners vis à vis the definiteness effect.

This short paper (3060 words exc. notes and bibliography) is excerpted from “Depiction Verbs: The Languages of Art Semantics” (see below).

“Depiction Verbs: The Languages of Art Semantics”:http://www.Tulane.EDU/~forbes/pdf_files/DepictionVerbs.pdf (Draft 4, June 2003)

bq. This paper is a “reading” version of “Verbs of Creation and Depiction” (see below for abstract) prepared for the Society for Exact Philosophy and Logica 2003. Detailed discussion of the semantics of the progressive and some of the longer footnotes have been excised. Draft 4 contains substantial changes in the discussion of negative determiners and of the definiteness effect.

Reinhard Blutner, Petra Hendriks, and Helen de Hoop. “A New Hypothesis on Compositionality”:http://odur.let.rug.nl/~hendriks/sydney03.pdf. Paper to be presented at the 4th International Conference on Cognitive Science, Sydney, Australia, July 13-17, 2003.

bq. Abstract In this paper we put forward a new hypothesis on compositionality of meaning, namely that compositionality is bidirectional optimization. Underspecification approaches to natural language interpretation generally start with an underspecified or weak meaning, which is strengthened by contextual information. In contrast, the bidirectional optimization approach we advocate proceeds from the strongest possible meaning. This meaning can be changed or weakened by contextual information. Under this approach, the meaning of an utterance is composed in a functional rather than a concatenative way. Hence, this approach avoids a number of well-known empirical problems associated with concatenative compositionality.

[New at the “Semantics Archive”:http://semanticsarchive.net]

Mika Oksanen. “The English Progressive and the Finnish Partitive as Predicate Modifiers: A New Solution to the Imperfective Paradox”:http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/GM4ZjE4Z/.

bq. Abstract. In this article I want to present a new approach to the semantics of the English progressive and show how the same ideas can also be applied to the semantics of the Finnish partitive case. In nearly all formal semantical theories of the progressive I am familiar with the progressive is formalized with the aid of a sentential operator. I suggest that if we formalize the progressive as a predicate modifier instead, we can solve many of the problems that have plagued previous theories of the progressive. I will start from Dowty’s classic theory of the progressive, show what defects have been found in it and show how it can be corrected.

[New at the “Semantics Archive”:http://semanticsarchive.net]

Andrea Rocci. “On the nature of the epistemic readings of the Italian modal verbs: the relationship between propositionality and inferential discourse relations.”:http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/DQyM2E5M/

bq. Abstract The present contribution deals with the epistemic readings of the Italian modal verbs dovere (’must’) and potere (’may’/'can’). The two verbs show striking differences — both quantitative and qualitative — with respect to the possibility of epistemic interpretation, differences which have gone so far completely unnoticed in the — rather scarce — semantic literature on modal verbs in Italian. Even a cursory examination of corpus data shows that, contrary to standard assumptions, the occurrences of potere that are unambiguously to be interpreted epistemically, are much rarer than the epistemic/evidential readings of dovere, and, at least in the spoken language, tend to be limited to one particular syntactic pattern. A careful examination of the data shows that the epistemic readings of the two verbs differ systematically along two semantic dimensions: (1) The presence of an inferential evidential meaning and — consequently— the ability to function as trigger for the establishment of an inferential discourse relation between two discourse units (evidentiality). (2) The belonging of the modal predicate to the propositional (or truth-conditional) part of the meaning of an utterance or to the non propositional (non truth-conditional) part (propositionality). These observations, together with a reconsideration of the relationship between epistemic modality and deixis, lead us to conclude that the (so-called) “epistemic” interpretations of the verbs potere and dovere belong, in fact, to two semantically distinct kinds of modality and to hypothesise that they arise from different pragmatic processes.

[New at the “Semantics Archive”:http://semanticsarchive.net]

“Angelika Kratzer”:http://www.umass.edu/linguist/people/faculty/kratzer/kratzer.html has posted her slides (and the references) for her upcoming talk “Scalar Implicatures: Are There Any?”:http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/GJiYjQxN/ at the Workshop on Polarity, Scalar Phenomena, and Implicatures. University of Milan-Bicocca. June 18, 2003.

bq. This talk was inspired by and is a reaction to a talk given by Danny Fox at the University of Texas, Austin on April 21, 2003 (Fox 2003). In his talk, Fox made a proposal about the projection of scalar implicatures that made use of the discussion of only and lumping in Kratzer 1989. While thinking about Fox’s proposal, it occurred to me that within a situation semantics, the puzzle surrounding the projection of scalar implicatures might evaporate. I am grateful to Fox for sending me the handout and notes for his talk.

“Maribel Romero”:http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~sanguesa/ and “Chung-hye Han”:http://www.sfu.ca/~chunghye/. On Negative Yes/No Questions. 2002. Submitted to Linguistics & Philosophy.

bq. This paper is concerned with two generalizations involving negation in yes/no questions.

“Emmon Bach”:http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~ebach/. “Linguistic Universals and Particulars”:http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~ebach/papers/17thling.htm. Preconference version of paper for the 17th International Congress of Linguists in Prague, July, 2003.

bq. Summary. Reflections, retrospective and prospective, about the activities and results of linguistics. Theory and description: methodological desiderata. Linguistic universals and linguistic particulars. Language extinction and the politics and ethics of linguistics. Linguistic creativity at the level of grammar creation and transmission: humans as members of the species homo loquens grammaturgicus.

“Luisa Martí”:http://languages.wits.ac.za/~marti/ has posted her dissertation “Contextual Variables”:http://languages.wits.ac.za/~marti/research.html, as a chapter by chapter pdf-download.

bq. Abstract The hypothesis pursued in this dissertation is that contextual variables (C) of the kind assumed for quantifiers like every or only are pronouns. One major advantage of taking this position is that if the behavior of C reduces to the behavior of pronouns, no new machinery needs to be added to the grammar in order to deal with C.

The C of quantificational expressions like every or no can be bound and is subject to the kinds of constraints that bound pronouns are subject to. In particular, C is subject to WCO in English and Chinese. In addition, whenever we find exceptions to WCO with pronouns in English, we find the same exceptions with C. The distribution of Chinese bound pronouns is more constrained than in English, and the distribution of C in Chinese is also more constrained.

As for free instances of C, I argue against analyses of association with focus that postulate non-pronoun-like constraints on C, since such analyses force a departure from the hypothesis that C is a pronoun. In the alternative analysis of association with focus proposed here, the burden of explanation is shifted to constraints on (implicit) discourse structure (Roberts (1996/1998), to which I add a principle based on maximal informativity. These constraints narrow down the kinds of contexts where sentences are felicitous. It is because of properties of the contexts in which sentences with only are felicitous that association-with-focus readings obtain: they contain only one suitable antecedent for the contextual variable of only. The same analysis is pursued for even, also and always, where certain difference between always and only (Beaver and Clark (2001, 2002a, b), Cohen (1999)) are explained. Maximal informativity finds additional support from facts independent of association. Other analyses of association, such as Rooth’s (1992), are critically reviewed.

There is also a paper based on a section of Chapter 2: “The Syntactic Presence of Contextual Variables”:http://languages.wits.ac.za/~marti/syntacticpresenceC.pdf.

Here’s what I know, or rather what I think I know, about semantics jobs this year (in alphabetical order):

• “Ana Arregui”:http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~ana/, finishing at “UMass Amherst”:http://www.umass.edu/linguist/, has accepted a tenure-track offer from the “University of Ottawa”:http://www.arts.uottawa.ca/linguistique/eng/.
• “Bridget Copley”:http://web.mit.edu/copley/www/, recent PhD from “MIT”:http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/, has accepted a 2-year teaching and research post-doc position at “USC”:http://www.usc.edu, joint in linguistics and philosophy.
• Elena Guerzoni, finishing at “MIT”:http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/, has accepted a tenure-track offer from “USC”:http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/linguistics/.
• “Klaus von Heusinger”:http://ling.uni-konstanz.de/pages/home/heusinger/index-e.html, previously in Konstanz, has accepted a chair at the “Institute for Linguistics/German”:http://www.ilg.uni-stuttgart.de/ifl/staff.html at the University of Stuttgart.
• “Michela Ippolito”:http://www2.sfs.nphil.uni-tuebingen.de/%7Emichela/, recent PhD from “MIT”:http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/, currently post-doc at “Tübingen”:http://www.sfs.nphil.uni-tuebingen.de/, has accepted a visiting position at “UC Santa Cruz”:http://ling.ucsc.edu/.
• “Luisa Martí”:http://languages.wits.ac.za/~marti/, who got her degree from “UConn”:http://vm.uconn.edu/~wwwling/index.html in February, 2003, has taken a job as a lecturer in Linguistics at the “University of Witwatersrand”:http://www.wits.ac.za/, in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her dissertation is now available “on-line”:http://languages.wits.ac.za/~marti/research.html.
• “Chris Potts”:http://ling.ucsc.edu/~potts/, finishing at “UC Santa Cruz”:http://ling.ucsc.edu/, has accepted a tenure-track offer from “UMass Amherst”:http://www.umass.edu/linguist/.

If anyone knows more, perhaps you could post a comment, which I will then incorporate in an update of this post. [Thanks to Luis Alonso-Ovalle and Chris Potts for their help.]

“Robert van Rooy”:http://turing.wins.uva.nl/~vanrooy/. “Being polite is a handicap: Towards a game theoretical analysis of polite linguistic behavior”:http://turing.wins.uva.nl/~vanrooy/Politness2.pdf (manuscript to appear in the proceedings of TARK 9)

bq. In this paper I argue for a broad game theoretical perspective on language use. Polite linguistic behavior, in particular, should be taken as rational interaction of conversational partners that each come with their own beliefs and preferences. I argue that the function of making a request in a polite way is to turn a situation in which preferences are not well aligned to one where they are by assuming that to utter polite expressions is costly. This idea will be formalized by making use of Lewisean signaling games and the biological handicap principle.

“Jonny Butler”:http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~jrcb100/. 2003: “Sequence of Tense Phenomena and Non-Eventivity”:http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~jrcb100/sot_non-event.pdf.

bq. A squib looking at the well-known claim that the embedded verb in sequence of tense constructions has to be stative: I show that actually eventive verbs are fine too, so long as they get a generic/habitual reading; and I give an explanation for this constraint based on the tense construal systems of Stowell (1996) and Demirdache & Uribe-Etxebarria (2001)