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Semantic Structures 2011

Semantic Structures 2011. Henriëtte de Swart revisions by Joost Zwarts. 0 Table of contents. 0 Introduction. 0 Who is this course for?. Students in the research master in linguistics Students in the MA CAI. Students in the one-year MA in linguistics (linguistics, modern languages).

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Semantic Structures 2011

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  1. Semantic Structures 2011 Henriëtte de Swart revisions by Joost Zwarts

  2. 0 Table of contents 0 Introduction

  3. 0 Who is this course for? • Students in the research master in linguistics • Students in the MA CAI. • Students in the one-year MA in linguistics (linguistics, modern languages)

  4. 0 What is this course about? • Semantics: empirical knowledge, theories, research skills, integration in ongoing research • Focus: ongoing NWO programme “Weak referentiality: bare nominals at the interface of lexicon, syntax and semantics” (2008-12). • http://www.hum.uu.nl/medewerkers/b.s.w.lebruyn/weakreferentiality/

  5. 0 What is this course about? • Group project  collective teaching  different perspectives • General intro (today) (Joost) • What are bare nominals? What is weak referentiality? What are the research questions? Why do we worry about them? What is the approach? What are the results so far?

  6. 0 What are bare nominals? I • Bare nominals are nominal structures that do not have an article or a quantifier. • In English we find lots of bare plurals and bare mass nouns: I read books, I drank milk. • ‘Totally’ bare nominals do not have any functional morphology (plurality). Mass nouns are different from count nouns.

  7. 0 What are bare nominals? II • In English, we cannot use bare, singular count nominals in regular argument position: *I read book, I ate apple. • But we find them elsewhere: at school, in hospital, the way to use knife and fork, door after door. WHY?

  8. 0 What are bare nominals? III • In other languages, the use of bare count singular is much more free. WHY? • Wò kànjiàn xióng le. [Chinese] I see bear ASP ‘I saw a bear/some bears.’ • dan ra’a namer. [Hebrew] Dan saw tiger ‘Dan saw a tiger.’

  9. 0 Weak referentiality • We find bare nominals in English/Dutch in contexts in which the referential force of the nominal is ‘weak’. • John is in prison. #It is a brick building. • Ik weet dat Peter viool speelt. #Kan hii ‘m meenemen? [Dutch] I know that Peter plays violin. #Can he bring it?

  10. 0 Lexical restrictions • John is major of NY/is a lawyer. • In prison/at school/at the office. • Why does English permit bare predication only with nouns that somehow have a uniqueness feature? • Why does English permit bare PPs with prison, school, etc. but not office?

  11. 0 Cross-linguistic differences • In prison (E)/en prison (F)/inde gevangenis (D). • In hospital (Br.E.)/in the hospital (Am.E.)/ in het ziekenhuis (D). • At school (E)/ op school (D)/à l’école (F). • There is overlap in nominal domains, but also differences: where? why?

  12. 0 Weak definites/indefinites • We also find weakly referential nominals that are not bare. • John is a lawyer • (cf. Jan is advokaat --Dutch) • Mary is listening to the radio • (cf. Mary is watching television) • How do we understand the def/indef article in weakly referring contexts?

  13. 0 Back to organization • General intro: issues, approach, organization. • Part I: cross-linguistic semantics of bare nominals (corpus research, offline experiments) (Bert, week 2-3). • Part II: bare prepositional phrases, corpus research and the syntax-semantics interface (Bert & Joost, week 4-5). • Part III: processing weakly referential definites (Ana, week 6-7).

  14. 0 Website • http://www.hum.uu.nl/medewerkers/b.s.w.lebruyn/semstruct2011/ • Links to papers, other sources, exercises, results. • Please consult regularly for updates!

  15. 0 Participation • Discussion of reading materials. • Workshop on bare nominals. • Presentations of research on theme. • Final paper: more or less elaborate research paper (depending on credit).

  16. 0 Languages • What languages do we speak?

  17. 0 Nominal structure: data • Does your language use definite articles? • Does your language use indefinite articles? • Bare plurals? • Bare singulars? • Please give examples!

  18. 1 Articles: Indefinite • A book, a student: existential quantification. GQ definition: • ||a || = PQx[P(x) & Q(x)]

  19. 1 Articles: Indefinite • A child was playing in the park. The funny little creature wore a green hat, and purple socks. • New (in discourse perspective): a P introduces a new discourse referent u and the condition P(u).

  20. 1 Articles: Definite • What is the semantic contribution of a definite article? The sun, the queen of the Netherlands. GQ definition: • ||the || = PQx[y[P(y)  x=y] & Q(x)] • Uniqueness part is taken to be asserted (Russell) or presupposed (Strawson).

  21. 1 Articles: Definite • A child was playing in the park. The funny little creature wore a green hat, and purple socks. • Familiarity (in discourse perspective): the P introduces a discourse referent v and the condition P(v), and v = u, where u is an accessible discourse referent in the DRS.

  22. 1 Articles: Bare plurals • Existential reading: I bought flowers, unicorns appeared on the horizon. • Generic reading: Cats hate dogs, Cats have four legs. (special semantics needed) • Semantics of existential reading: existential quantification + plurality (sums, sets)/new discourse referent (over sums).

  23. 1 Articles: Bare plurals • Farkas and de Swart (2003): plural morphology presupposes discourse referent  accommodation takes care of discourse referential force. • Bare plural with existential reading: similar to singular indefinite, but no article. • Lack of article: where does the existential semantics of bare plurals come from?

  24. 2 Cross-linguistic variation • Puzzle: semantics of definite/indefinite article alike across languages that have such an article. • But not all languages have a definite/indefinite article. Why? • Semantics of bare nominals in a language depends on presence/absence of plural morphology, definite/indefinite article. Why?

  25. 2 Form-meaning mapping • Assume: all humans make the same conceptual disctinctions (atoms vs. sums, old vs. new, uniqueness, …). • Language variation resides in mapping of meanings unto forms. • Approaches: ‘covert’ projections, lexical variation, optimality theory.

  26. 2 Speaker and hearer economy • Languages can choose economy of form (‘bare’ nominals, less elaborate functional morphology). Easy to produce, hard to interpret (ambiguities) • Language can choose elaborate functional morphology to convey uniqueness, newness, etc. Easy to interpret (semantics hardwired into form), hard to produce (formal complexity).

  27. 2 Markedness: economy • Basic markedness constraint: *FunctN. • *FunctN: avoid functional morphology in the nominal domain. • Markedness constraint bars formal complexity  preference for bare nominals.

  28. 2 Faithfulness: plurality • Faithfulness constraints encode form-meaning correspondence. • FPl: Plural predication on a discourse referent maps to expression in Num. • Conceptual distinction between atom/sum triggers syntactic reflex (English –s).

  29. 2 Faithfulness: definiteness • Fdef: Uniqueness/familiarity of a discourse referent corresponds with a definite article in D. • Conceptual notion of uniqueness/ familiarity triggers reflex in D (English the).

  30. 2 Faithfulness: reference • Fdr: the presence of a discourse referent in the semantics corresponds with a strong functional layer above NP. • English: plural morphology (-s) or article/quantifier in D (last resort: a).

  31. 2 Ranking constraints • All constraints are universal; ranking is language specific. • Contraints are soft, violable. Ranking determines ‘weight’. Lower ranked constraints can be violated in order to satisfy higher ranked constraints. • Reranking constraints = language typology.

  32. 2 Mandarin Chinese • *FunctN >> {FPl, Fdef, Fdr} • Wò kànjiàn xióng le. I see bear ASP ‘I saw a bear/some bears.’ • No plural morphology, no definite/ indefinite article: bare nominals are number neutral, but can introduce discourse referents.

  33. 2 Hindi, Georgian, Russian, .. • FPl >> *FunctN >> {Fdef, Fdr} • burtebi goravs. [Georgian] balls.pl.nom roll.3sg ‘Balls/the balls are rolling.’ • Plural morphology on the noun, no definite/indefinite article.

  34. 2 Hebrew • {FPl, Fdef} >> *FunctN >> Fdr • dan ra’a namer. Dan saw tiger ‘Dan saw a tiger.’ • ha-yam-im ‘avru maher. The day.pl pass.past.3pl quickly ‘The days passed quickly.’ • Sg/pl morphology, def./bare contrast.

  35. 2 St’átimcets (Salish) • {Fpl, Fdr} >> *FunctN >> FDef • Tecwm-mín-lhkan ti púkw-a lhkúnsa. Buy.appl.1sg.sub det book.det today ‘I bought a/the book today. • Singular/plural morphology on noun, circumfixed determiner for discourse referentiality, but neutral for def/indef.

  36. 2 English, Dutch, Italian, … • {Fdr, Fdef, FPl} >> *FunctN • I bought a book/the book/books/the books. • Def/indef contrast, no bare singulars in regular argument position, bare plurals OK (strong pl).

  37. 2 French • {Fdr, Fpl, Fdef} >> *FunctN • J’ai acheté un livre/le livre/des livres/les livres. I bought a book/the book/indef_pl books/the books. • Def/indef contrast in sg and pl (weak pl morphology).

  38. 2 OT typology

  39. 2 Semantics of bare nominals • The semantics of the bare nominal: complement of the marked expression under strong bidirectional optimization. • Hindi/Mandarin bare sg: def/indef • Hebrew bare sg/pl: indef (for def is marked) • English bare plural: indef (for def is marked).

  40. 2 English bare plurals

  41. 2 Emergence of the unmarked • Bare nominal: satisfies *FunctN. • Minimal form  unmarked. • Even in languages in which several faithfulness constraints outrank *FunctN, we find bare nominal wherever we can. • Emergence of the unmarked

  42. 3 Distribution bare singulars • Ranking *FunctN >> Fdr: bare singulars OK in regular argument position (Mandarin, Hindi, Russian, Hebrew..) • Ranking Fdr >> *FunctN: bare singulars blocked from regular argument position (English, French, St’átimcets,…).

  43. 3 Semantic constraint: Arg • Why do argument positions need marking? • Step 1: Argument positions require referentiality (Arg). • Step 2: Referentiality requires marking. (Fdr) • Semantic faithfulness constraint: Arg: parse an XP in argument position as a discourse referent (where X= N, Num or D). • Since Fdr requires discourse referents to be expressed by a strong functional layer, arguments will have marking.

  44. 3 Bare constructions • See the separate handout for bare constructions in English. • What about bare constructions in other languages?

  45. 3 Bare sg escaping Arg • John is in prison. #It is a brick building. • Ik weet dat Peter viool speelt. #Kan hii ‘m meenemen? [Dutch] I know that Peter plays violin. #Can he bring it? • Lack of discourse anaphoric binding  lack of marking • Not all objects of V and P are arguments.

  46. 3 Extension • Is this true for other environments in which bare nominals occur? • Is it true for other languages? • For production experiments on discourse anaphora  see part III

  47. 4 Semantics of bare sg • What do bare singulars mean in ‘weakly referring’ environments? • Lack of discourse referentiality in languages that have a high ranking of Fdr. • Also: pragmatic ‘enrichment’ of the bare nominal.

  48. 4 Bare vs. marked I • John is in jail. • John is in the jail. • Full PP: location. • Bare PP: location + activity sense (John is a prisoner). • Full PP: location – activity sense (John is in the building, but not as a prisoner)

  49. 4 Bare vs. marked II • Henriëtte is manager. [Dutch] • Henriëtte is een manager. • Henriëtte is (a) manager. • Bare predication: professional interpretation (‘capacity’ reading). Non-bare predication: general (minus professional reading).

  50. 4 Horn’s division of pragm. labor • Unmarked forms pair up with unmarked meanings, marked forms pair up with marked meanings. • Minimal form preferred: bare nominal is unmarked form. • Stereotypical interpretation preferred: unmarked meaning.

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