Reference to individuals in natural language

1. Reference to individuals in natural language Henriëtte de Swart Barcelona, May 2005

2. What is this course about? • Reference to individuals in natural language • What is reference? • Why study reference to individuals in natural language? Across languages? • Relevance for linguistics? For cognitive science?

3. Semantics • Semantics: study of meaning expressed by elements of a language or combinations thereof. • What is meaning? • What is language?

4. What is meaning? • The red light means that you cannot go in. • {a,b,c} means ‘the set consisting of the elements a, b, and c.’ • The French word “chien” means ‘dog.’ • Do you know the meaning of the word hypochondriac? • To denote, to be described or defined as, sense, significance, acceptation, denotation.

5. Not our job.. • No deeper meaning or inner significance. • What is the meaning of life? • No intentions, purposes, etc. • What do you mean by that look? • No natural meaning. • Those clouds mean rain.

6. Semantics in linguistic theory • Natural language as a system of communication. • Function: transfer of information. • Communication implies speaker and hearer.

7. Speaker-hearer speaker hearer Intend  Phrase  Speak Comprehend  Understand  Hear Speech sound

8. Language-cognition-world language cognition world

9. Concepts and denotations language concepts denotations cognition world

10. Truth conditional and conceptual semantics language cognition world Truth-conditional semantics Conceptual semantics

11. Beyond words… • Lexical semantics: meaning of words. • Beyond words: meaning of constituents, sentences, even discourses. • Relevance of structure: • ‘John hit Peter’  ‘Peter hit John’ • Word order  Subject-Object relation  Agent-Patient relation.

12. Compositionality • Principle of Compositionality of meaning: the meaning of a complex whole is a function of the meaning of the composing parts, and the way in which they are put together. • Lexical and structural information jointly determine the meaning of constituents and sentences.

13. Variation across languages • Natural languages vary: lexicon, sounds, syntactic structure. • Generative linguistics: universal grammar (innate) and parametrisation. • Optimality theory (OT): universal constraints (innate/learnt) and different orders of constraints.

14. Pro-drop • Some languages allow ‘empty’ subjects (e.g. Italian), others don’t (e.g. English). • Piove [Italiaans] • It is raining [English] • Pro-drop parameter: on or off (child has to learn the right setting). Assumes empty categories in linguistic representations.

15. Competition in OT: ‘soft constraints’ • Subject constraint: ‘Every sentence has a subject.’ • Meaning constraint: ‘Every word in the sentence must be meaningful.’ • Prince & Smolensky (1997): relative weight of constraints determines English vs. Italian. • English: Subject C >> Meaning C • Italian : Meaning C >> Subject C.

16.   Typology in OT pro-drop no pro-drop

17. Variation in meaning • Basic assumption: human cognition is universal. • Knowledge of first-order logic or equivalent leads to similar claims about entailments and other inference relations. • Prediction: semantics is always universal. • No variation in meaning?????

18. Locus of semantic variation • Semantic variation arises: • (i) in the distribution of labor between forms and meanings. • (ii) at the syntax-semantics interface. • (iii) at the semantics-pragmatics interface.

19. Semantic Variation I • Tense and aspect. E.g. English Progressive vs. French Simple Present tense. • John is eating an apple • #John eats an apple/ John bikes to school. • Jean est en train de manger une pomme. • Jean mange une pomme/Jean va à l’école en vélo.

20. Perfect Tenses • ‘Universal’ Perfect; for or since • Mary has lived in London for three years (now). • Marie a vécu à Londres pendant trois ans (#maintenant). • Marie vit à Londres depuis trois ans. • Mary lives in London since three years.

21. Perfect tenses in discourse • French uses Passé Composé to tell a story (e.g. Camus); English does not; Dutch does sometimes. • Aujourd’hui, maman est morte (PC). Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas (PR). J’ai reçu un télégramme de l’asile (PC) (…). Mother died today (SP). Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know (PR). I had a telegram from the home (SP): (...). Vandaag is moeder gestorven (VTT). Of misschien gisteren, ik weet het niet (OTT). Ik ontving een telegram uit het gesticht (OVT): (...)

22. Questions about tense/aspect • Questions about tense and aspect in cross-linguistic semantics. • What forms are available in a language? • How are truth-conditional meanings distributed over available forms? • Are certain meanings only available as ‘hidden’ aspectual shifts (coercion)? • How are the forms used in discourse (dynamic semantics, pragmatics)?

23. Semantic variation II • Meaning of determiners. E.g. Dutch Sommige vs. English some. • Some flowers grew behind the shed. • #Sommige bloemen groeiden achter de schuur. • ‘Some do, others don’t’

24. Bare plurals • English bare plurals: existential or generic. • Dogs were playing in the garden.  • Dogs like to play. Gen • Bare plurals in Romance: existential, not generic.

25. Italian • Elefanti di colore bianco hanno creato in passato grande curiosità. • Elephants of color white have raised in the past great curiosity. • *Ucelli di zone paludose sono intelligenti. • Birds of the marshlands are intelligent. • Gli ucelli di zone paludose sono intelligenti.

26. French • No bare plurals, but indefinite plurals. • Only existential, not generic (like Italian). • Des enfants jouaient dans la rue. • Indef-pl children were playing in the street. • *Des enfants aiment le chocolat. • Indef-pl children like chocolate. • Les enfants aiment le chocolat.

27. Incorporation • Incorporation in West Greenlandic, Hindi, Hungarian, etc, not in English, Romance: direct relation between verb and object. • Arnajarq eqalut-tur-p-u-q. [WG] A.abs salmon-eat-Ind-[-tr]-3sg. ‘Arnajaraq eats salmon/is a salmon-eater.’

28. Questions about bare plurals • How are bare plurals related to other NPs/DPs (scope, anaphora, quantificational force, referential force, incorporation). • How are bare plurals related to bare singulars? To bare mass nouns? To indefinite plurals as in French? • If generic reference is strongly related to ‘bareness’, why do Romance bare plurals not allow generic readings?

29. Semantic Variation III • “Despite the simplicity of the one-place connective of propositional logic (p is true if and only if p is not true) and of the laws of inference in which it participates (e.g. the Law of Double Negation: from p infer p, and vice versa), the form and function of negative statements in ordinary language are far from simple and transparent.” Horn (1989)

30. Negative quantifiers • ‘Split’ scope in Germanic languages. • Iedereen is geen genie. Dutch • Everyone is no genius (split: ) • Jeder Arzt hat kein Auto. • Every doctor has no car.

31. ‘Split’ scope with modals. • Ze hoeven geen verpleegkundigen te ontslaan. • They need no nurses to fire  • Hanna sucht kein Buch • De re: there is no book that Hanna is looking for. • De dicto: the object of H’s quest is not a book. • ‘split’: it is not the case that what H. is looking for is a book.

32. Double Negation and Negative Concord • Multiple negations: DN and NC • Nobody said nothing. (Eng) xy • Niemand zei niets. (Dutch) xy • Nadie miraba a nadie. (Spa) xy • Nessuno ha parlato con nessuno. (Ital) xy • Personne n’a rien dit. (Fr) ambiguous

33. Questions about DN and NC • Negative Concord raises problems for the principle of compositionality of meaning: two negative expressions, but only one semantic negation. • How are double negation and negative concord languages related? (typology of negation).

34. Aims of this course • Learn semantic tools to address reference to individuals in natural language: type theory, lambda abstraction, type shift, DRT. • Learn to use these tools to address questions about reference to individuals in a particular language/ in a cross-linguistic perspective. • Enjoy doing natural language semantics!