This paper develops a semantics with control over scope relations using Vermeulen’s stack valued assignments as information states. This makes available a limited form of scope reuse and name switching. The goal is to have a general system that fixes available scoping effects to those that are characteristic of natural language. The resulting system is called Scope Control Theory, since it provides a theory about what scope has to be like in natural language. The theory is shown to replicate a (...) wide range of grammatical dependencies, including options for, and constraints on, ‘donkey’, ‘binding’, ‘movement’, ‘Control’ and ‘scope marking’ dependencies. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky is responsible for creating the field of research on grammatical theory in its present form, and he has also been material in providing frameworks for syntactic analysis, from early transformational grammar to current implementations of the minimalist program. Against the background of these syntactic frameworks, a huge number of constraints on grammatical dependencies have been proposed over the years. Constraints initially suggested by Chomsky have a more troubled history, in the sense that they have variously (...) been claimed to be empirically falsified, considered conceptually flawed, or simply consigned to oblivion. This chapter aims to argue that some of the constraints arguably belonging to this latter group can, upon closer scrutiny, in fact be shown to be at the heart of current syntactic theory, and qualify as “good”, whereas this does not necessarily hold for constraints in the former group. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this study, we tested the linguistic relativity hypothesis by studying the effect of grammatical gender on affective judgments of conceptual representation in Italian and German. In particular, we examined the within- and cross-language grammatical gender effect and its interaction with participants’ demographic characteristics on semantic differential scales in Italian and German speakers. We selected the stimuli and the relative affective measures from Italian and German adaptations of the ANEW. Bayesian and frequentist analyses yielded evidence for the absence (...) of within- and cross-languages effects of grammatical gender and sex- and age-dependent interactions. These results suggest that grammatical gender does not affect judgments of affective features of semantic representation in Italian and German speakers, since an overt coding of word gram... (shrink)

In the House of Fame, Chaucer takes up the problem of the nature of traditional texts and suggests, with humor and skepticism, that literary discourse is reducible to a form of speech, spoken sounds inscribed in texts as a form of written memory perpetuated by the arbitrary institution of tradition. Lady Fame personifies this institution. Although many critics have considered the House of Fame to be a poem about poetry and the burden of the past, the key assumptions of medieval (...) literary theory upon which the poem depends have not yet been discussed. Chaucer exploits some common topics of medieval ars grammatica, the discipline directly concerned with language, writing, and the texts of the auctores, and the literary problems developed throughout the poem are to be understood in the light of medieval grammatical theory. Chaucer interpreted Ovid's description of the Hall of Fama in Metamorphoses 12 with the conceptual framework of grammatical theory, giving Ovid's account of repeated spoken utterances a literary significance, and the Eagle's lecture on speech follows the topics of exposition found in the commentaries, on Priscian's Institutiones grammaticae 1, De voce. Drawing from well-known treatises, commentaries, and encyclopedias of the medieval grammatical tradition, I will demonstrate that Chaucer relies upon, and assumes his reader's acquaintance with, some commonplaces of grammatica on the topics of speech, writing, texts, and history. (shrink)

In relative clause extraposition (RCE) in English, a noun is modified by a non-adjacent RC, resulting in a discontinuous dependency, as in: Three people arrived here yesterday who were from Chicago. Although discourse focus is known to influence the choice of RCE over truth-conditionally equivalent sentences with canonical structure (Rochemont and Culicover, English focus constructions and the theory of grammar, Cambridge University Press, 1990; Takami, A functional constraint on Extraposition from NP, John Benjamins, 1999), Hawkins (Efficiency and complexity in grammars, (...) Oxford University Press, 2004) and Wasow (Postverbal behavior, CSLI Publications, 2002) have proposed in addition that RCE should be preferred when the relative clause is long (or ‘heavy’) relative to the VP because such structures are processed more efficiently in comprehension and production. The current study tested this hypothesis based on Hawkins' (Efficiency and complexity in grammars, Oxford University Press, 2004) domain minimization principles. In an acceptability judgment task, canonical sentences were rated significantly higher than extraposition sentences when the RC was light, but this difference disappeared when the RC was heavy. In a self-paced reading task, extraposition sentences were read significantly faster than canonical sentences when the RC was heavy, but there was no difference when the RC was light. In an analysis of RCE in the ICE-GB corpus, extraposed RCs were significantly longer than the VP on average, whereas canonical RCs were significantly shorter, and the proportion of sentences with extraposition decreased as the ratio of VP-to-RC length increased. These findings support Hawkins' (Efficiency and complexity in grammars, Oxford University Press, 2004) domain minimization principles and help explain why a discontinuous dependency is allowed and sometimes preferred even in a language with relatively fixed word order. (shrink)

I explore one apparent source of conflict between our naïve view of grammatical properties and the best available scientific view of grammatical properties. That source is the modal dependence of the range of naïve, or manifest, grammatical properties that is available to a speaker upon the configurations and operations of their internal systems—that is, upon scientific grammatical properties. Modal dependence underwrites the possibility of conflicting grammatical appearances. In response to that possibility, I outline a compatibilist (...) strategy, according to which the range of grammatical properties accessible to a speaker is dependent upon their cognitive apparatus, but the properties so accessible are also mind-independent. (shrink)

Grammatical gender processing during language production has classically been studied using the so-called picture-word interference (PWI) task. In this procedure, participants are presented with pictures they must name using target nouns while ignoring superimposed written distractor nouns. Variations in response times are expected depending on the congruency between the gender values of targets and distractors. However, there have been disparate results in terms of the mandatory character of an agreement context to observe competitive gender effects and the interpretation of (...) the direction of these effects in Romance languages, this probably due to uncontrolled variables such as animacy. In the present study, we conducted two PWI experiments with European Portuguese speakers who were asked to produce bare nouns. The percentage of animate targets within the list was manipulated: 0, 25, 50, and 100%. A gender congruency effect was found restricted to the 0% list (all targets were inanimate). Results support the selection of gender in transparent languages in the absence of an agreement context, as predicted by the Gender Acquisition and Processing (GAP) hypothesis (Sá-Leite et al.,2019), and are interpreted through the attentional mechanisms involved in the PWI paradigm, in which the processing of animate targets would be favored to the detriment of distractors due to biological relevance and semantic prioritization. (shrink)

We describe the role of morphosyntactic categories and syntactic dependencies in the process of semantically interpreting composite expressions. Special attention will be paid to the combinatorial properties conveyed by morphosyntactic categories such as nominals and verbs, as well as by syntactic dependencies like subject, direct object, or nominal modification. The semantic characterisation of these grammatical structures is based on cognitive abilities and abstract conceptualisations. This will provide us with theoretical arguments to review and extend some basic assumptions (...) of Cognitive Grammar and related work. (shrink)

It is shown that there exists no grammatical translation into classical (propositional) logic of the modal logics, nor of intuitionistic logic and of the relatedness and dependence logics, as defined in Richard L. Epstein's bookThe Semantic foundations of logic. In the book the result is proved for translations without parameters.Classical propositional logicPC can be translated into other logics. Usually the grammatical structure of propositions is preserved, in the sense of the following definition.

The prevalence in Chinese of grammatical structures that translate into English in different word orders is an important cause of translation difficulty. While previous work has used phrase-structure parses to deal with such ordering problems, we introduce a richer set of Chinese grammatical relations that describes more semantically abstract relations between words. Using these Chinese grammatical relations, we improve a phrase orientation classifier (introduced by Zens and Ney (2006)) that decides the ordering of two phrases when translated (...) into English by adding path features designed over the Chinese typed dependencies. We then apply the log probability of the phrase orientation classifier as an extra feature in a phrase-based MT system, and get significant BLEU point gains on three test sets: MT02 (+0.59), MT03 (+1.00) and MT05 (+0.77). Our Chinese grammatical relations are also likely to be useful for other NLP tasks. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the semantics of distributivity, grammatical number, and cardinality predicates. I argue that constructions involving so-called ‘dependent plurals’, i.e. plurals lacking cardinality predicates occurring in the scope of certain quantificational items such as all and most, pose a challenge to familiar semantic frameworks that distinguish between two sources of multiplicity: mereological plurality and distributive quantification. I argue that dependent plural readings should be analysed as distinct both from cumulative readings and distributive readings, in the classical sense. (...) I demonstrate how this can be accomplished in a semantic framework where expressions are evaluated relative to sets of assignments, or plural info states Proceedings of the 7th Amsterdam Colloquium, ILLC, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 1990, in Dekker and Stokhof Proceedings of the 9th Amsterdam Colloquium, ILLC, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 1994, Some aspects of the Internal Structure of Discourse. The Dynamics of Nominal Anaphora. PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam, 1996). The specific formal implementation is based on a modified version of Brasoveanu’s :129–209. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-008-9035-0, 2008) Plural Compositional DRT. In this framework we are able to distinguish between two types of distributivity: weak distributivity across the assignments in a single plural info state and strong distributivity across multiple info states. I argue that both of these types of distributivity play a role in the semantics of natural language, accounting for the contrasting properties of ‘singular quantifiers’, such as each and every, and ‘plural quantifiers’, such as all and most. The contrasting properties of bare plurals and plurals involving cardinality modifiers are analysed in terms of the distinction between state-level and assignment-level plurality. (shrink)

We describe the role of morphosyntactic categories and syntactic dependencies in the process of semantically interpreting composite expressions. Special attention will be paid to the combinatorial properties conveyed by morphosyntactic categories such as nominals and verbs, as well as by syntactic dependencies like subject, direct object, or nominal modification. The semantic characterisation of these grammatical structures is based on cognitive abilities and abstract conceptualisations. This will provide us with theoretical arguments to review and extend some basic assumptions (...) of Cognitive Grammar and related work. (shrink)

Recent grammatical theory begins with the notion that the sentences of any natural language are generated by phrase structure rules whose base structural outputs are filled in by lexical insertion rules, the result brought to surface structure through transformational rules. Phrase structure rules rewrite particular items; transformational rules have the greater power of rearranging items. The claim that there are deep structures may be thought equivalent to the claim that the system of rules which will most economically and accurately (...) structurally-describe a language's sentences will also define a base, post-lexical and pre-transformational level. In addition Katz-Postal claimed that the deep structure level as defined above would also provide all the information needed for semantic interpretation. Obviously much will depend in all this on how one defines transformational rule. Bowers argues here that Chomsky's notion of transformational rule is an artifact of his commitment to syntactic deep structure, that it leads to inadequate, needlessly complicated and undecideable grammatical analyses; we cannot segregate phrase structural and lexical processes from purely syntactic transformational rules, and hence transformational rules state "cooccurrence relationships between sentences" rather than relating deep and surface structures. Bowers considers passivization and "causitivization," complement structure, topicalization, and some related matters. The sledding is heavy for those not familiar with these matters. There may have been a delay in publication of this book for the arguments, theories, and papers referred to belong to the late sixties-early seventies or earlier, though Bowers mentions more recent work in a prefatory paragraph: the trouble is that much of what Bowers criticizes has long since been criticized and repaired though not in Bowers's way by those in the Chomskian aegus. When he writes at a general level Bowers seems to conflate the claim that there is a syntactic deep structure with the Katz-Postal claim that this level also provides all that is needed for semantic interpretation: rationalism, nativism, deep structure, intensionality, and autonomous syntax are boated together and sink similarly. But syntax may be autonomous and largely unlearned, growing through exposure in a way sizably independent of the rest of cognition, without otherwise loading down the boat.--J.L. (shrink)

This paper describes a system for extracting typed dependency parses of English sentences from phrase structure parses. In order to capture inherent relations occurring in corpus texts that can be critical in real-world applications, many NP relations are included in the set of grammatical relations used. We provide a comparison of our system with Minipar and the Link parser. The typed dependency extraction facility described here is integrated in the Stanford Parser, available for download.

Cross-linguistic studies focus on inverse correlations (trade-offs) between linguistic variables that reflect different cues to linguistic meanings. For example, if a language has no case marking, it is likely to rely on word order as a cue for identification of grammatical roles. Such inverse correlations are interpreted as manifestations of language users’ tendency to use language efficiently. The present study argues that this interpretation is problematic. Linguistic variables, such as the presence of case, or flexibility of word order, are (...) aggregate properties, which do not represent the use of linguistic cues in context directly. Still, such variables can be useful for circumscribing the potential role of communicative efficiency in language evolution, if we move from cross-linguistic trade-offs to multivariate causal networks. This idea is illustrated by a case study of linguistic variables related to four types of Subject and Object cues: case marking, rigid word order of Subject and Object, tight semantics and verb-medial order. The variables are obtained from online language corpora in thirty languages, annotated with the Universal Dependencies. The causal model suggests that the relationships between the variables can be explained predominantly by sociolinguistic factors, leaving little space for a potential impact of efficient linguistic behavior. (shrink)

The first hurdle to overcome in approaching the complex topic of the relation between language and consciousness is terminology. So let me begin, in good philosophical style, by explaining the senses in which I use the three lexical terms in the title. Luckily I need not explain those of the three grammatical words the, of, and on: there is probably a minor library of semantic literature devoted to that. I need not, since I both know their meanings pre-theoretically, and (...) know that my readers, as users of English, know them. The significance of this simple fact concerning the meaning of all everyday words, in everyday constructs, is something that I will return to, since it plays a central role in the argument in Section 2. However, with abstract, theoretically loaded nominalizations such as dependence, language, and most of all consciousness, we need to beware since we cannot assume common knowledge -- myriads of misunderstandings arise since we mean somewhat different 'things' by them. I start with the easiest, by which I mean specifically ' dependence of language on consciousness', explaining only afterward what I mean by the latter terms. I ask the reader to bear this circularity with me. (shrink)

This paper presents a new take on how argument dependencies in natural language are established and constrained. The paper starts with a rather standard view that (quantificational) argument dependencies are operator-variable dependencies. The interesting twist the paper offers is to eliminate the need for syntax that serves to enforce what the operator-variable dependencies are. Instead the role of ensuring grammatical and generally unambiguous forms is taken up by semantics imposing what are dependency requirements for any (...) interpretation to go through at evaluation time. With this viewpoint there emerges an essential need for localities as the hiding of (embedded) expression material, together with a (limited) form of garbage collection to release grammatical resources used in the current locality for reuse in subsequent localities. (shrink)

When the Qur’ān was revealed, it primarily used the language of the first addressees, Arabic, in the most impressive and understandable way to convey its message. In doing so, it used all the possibilities allowed by the range of meanings and rules of the language. While the Qur’ān conveys its message to its addressees, it sometimes uses long expressions, sometimes quite concise ones, and even a word or preposition in some places. Due to the structure of the language, the words, (...) the smallest component of the language, and, peculiar to it, even the prepositions and letters, due to the morphological structure of Arabic, are the elements that completely affect the meaning. Like many other letters and prepositions in Arabic, the preposition “إنْ” handled in this study undoubtedly has an important effect on the meaning. We generally encounter, in many verses of the Qur’ān, the use of this preposition in the sense of condition, which is the most basic meaning in the language. In addition to this meaning, the negative, emphasis, and causal meanings are also the other uses of this preposition according to the integrity of Qur’ān and the context of the verses. Apart from the meaning of condition as the basic meaning of the preposition “إنْ” in the Qur’ān, whether the meaning of cause/ta‘līl exists in the language and this meaning is used in the Qur’ān is basically an issue discussed by the Basra and Kūfa language schools, the issue has still been discussed by the exegetes as well due to its effects on the meaning. It is quite important for correctly understanding the Qur’ān to determine the effect of the preposition “إنْ” on the meaning when it is mentioned in the Qur’ān and to give the appropriate meaning to the context. This paper is also important in that it aims to deal with the effect of the preposition in question on the meaning in the verses where there are controversial approaches and in the example of the use of the verb form “إِنْ كُنْتُمْ". In the study, the approaches of the exegetes to the verses on which there are problematic approaches are transferred from the major interpretations written from the early period to the modern period and some evaluations are included with an analytical view. Although the Basra language school and some exegetes following them say that “إنْ”does not mean causation, the linguists of Kūfa and the exegetes following the same line have stated that it also means that, and they showed examples from the āyāt (verses) and hadiths that it is not correct to use this preposition in the meaning of condition in some contexts in the Qur’ān. For example, they argued that the use of the expression “إِنْ كُنْتُمْ”used about angels in a verse in Sūrat al-Baqara 2/31, as “if you are of the truthful” would raise doubts as to whether they were truthful or not and this would contradict their qualifications as angels. On the other hand, they argued that giving a conditional meaning to “إِنْ كُنْتُمْ”at the end of the verses starting as “if you are believers” or the ones in which the believers is directly addressed as in al-Baqara, 2/278 and Āl ‘Imrān 3/139, would cause a contradiction between the beginning and the end of the verse, and that this style would cause a problem on the ground of belief about Allah. In the same way, some linguists argue that giving the meaning of conditions to some verses poses a problem in terms of the context and the style of the Qur’ān, and they explain this situation through al-Baqara 2/23 and similar verses. For, although it is certain that the polytheists doubted about the Qur’ān in the verse in question according to them, the statement “If you are in doubt about the Qur’ān, bring a sūra (chapter) like it” fits neither context nor fact. The Basra language school who constitutes the majority and think that the expression “إِنْ كُنْتُمْ”mostly found at the end of the verses in the Qur’ān includes the meaning of condition, and the other exegetes following them have systematically added the meaning of condition to all of the verses in which the aforementioned preposition is used, and in cases where the meaning of condition is problematic or subject to some objections in terms of context, they have resorted to various linguistic explanations such as omission (hazf), precedence-postponement (taqdīm-ta’khīr) and metaphor. As far as it can be determined in this study, except for some scholars of wujūh and naẓā’ir, there was no one who constantly gave the meaning of cause in the verses where the meaning of condition is open to discussion, whereas some exegetes gave the meaning of condition or cause/ta‘līl depending on the context and used all the possibilities of the language by acting more freely. However, it has not gone unnoticed that they present a problematic interpretation style by displaying different approaches in similar āyāt (verses) that come in the same context. (shrink)

To explain the phenomenon that certain English verbs resist passivization, Pinker proposed a semantic constraint on the passive in the adult grammar: The greater the extent to which a verb denotes an action where a patient is affected or acted upon, the greater the extent to which it is compatible with the passive. However, a number of comprehension and production priming studies have cast doubt upon this claim, finding no difference between highly affecting agent-patient/theme-experiencer passives and non-actional experiencer theme passives. (...) The present study provides evidence that a semantic constraint is psychologically real, and is readily observed when more fine-grained independent and dependent measures are used. We conclude that a semantic constraint on the passive must be incorporated into accounts of the adult grammar. (shrink)

This book presents a new theory of the relationship between vagueness, context-sensitivity, gradability, and scale structure in natural language. Heather Burnett argues that it is possible to distinguish between particular subclasses of adjectival predicatesDLrelative adjectives like tall, total adjectives like dry, partial adjectives like wet, and non-scalar adjectives like hexagonalDLon the basis of how their criteria of application vary depending on the context; how they display the characteristic properties of vague language; and what the properties of their associated orders are. (...) It has been known for a long time that there exist empirical connections between context-sensitivity, vagueness, and scale structure; however, a formal system that expresses these connections had yet to be developed. This volume sets out a new logical system, called DelTCS, that brings together insights from the Delineation Semantics framework and from the Tolerant, Classical, Strict non-classical framework, to arrive at a full theory of gradability and scale structure in the adjectival domain. The analysis is further extended to examine vagueness and gradability associated with particular classes of determiner phrases, showing that the correspondences that exist between the major adjectival scale structure classes and subclasses of determiner phrases can also be captured within the DelTCS system. (shrink)

Negative Concord (NC) constructions such as the news anchor didn’t warn nobody about the floods (meaning ‘the news anchor warned nobody’), in which two syntactic negations contribute a single semantic one, are stigmatized in English, while their Negative Polarity Item (NPI) variants, such as the news anchor didn’t warn anybody about the floods, are prescriptively correct. Equating acceptability with grammaticality, this pattern has led linguists to treat NC as ungrammatical in “Standard” or standardized English (SE). However, it is possible that (...) SE grammars do generate NC sentences, and their low incidence and acceptability is instead due to social factors. To explore this question, and the relationship between NC and NPI constructions, we compared the acceptability of overtly negative noun phrases (e.g. nobody), NPIs (e.g. anybody), and bare plurals (e.g. people), in negative contexts and in conditionals. Negative items were followed by a consequence which supported their single negative meaning, while conditional items were followed by a consequence compatible with the NPI and the bare plural but not the negative noun phrase. Acceptability ratings of the critical NC sentences were reliably lower than constructions with NPIs and bare plurals, but the consequences for all three of these sentence types were rated highly. This reflects an asymmetry in participants’ acceptance of NC and their readiness to interpret it in context. A follow-up study with only conditionals revealed that speakers can also find NPIs infelicitous in conditional contexts with consequences that are compatible with a negative interpretation of the NPI, and that negative arguments are felicitous in these same contexts. Taken together, the results support the hypothesis that speakers who do not accept NC have grammars that generate both NC and NPI constructions, and further, that these speakers have two underlying structures for any-NPIs in English. (shrink)

This paper examines the Stanford typed dependencies representation, which was designed to provide a straightforward description of grammatical relations for any user who could benefit from automatic text understanding. For such purposes, we argue that dependency schemes must follow a simple design and provide semantically contentful information, as well as offer an automatic procedure to extract the relations. We consider the underlying design principles of the Stanford scheme from this perspective, and compare it to the GR and PARC (...) representations. Finally, we address the question of the suitability of the Stanford scheme for parser evaluation. (shrink)

This study investigates processing of interrogative filler-gap dependencies in which the filler integration site or gap is not directly subcategorized by the verb. This is the case when the wh-filler is a structural adjunct such as how or when rather than subject or object. Two self-paced reading experiments in English and Slovenian provide converging cross-linguistic evidence that wh-adjuncts elicit a kind of memory storage cost similar to that previously shown in the literature for wh-arguments. Experiment 1 investigates the storage (...) costs elicited by the adjunct when in Slovenian, and Experiment 2 the storage costs elicited by how quickly and why in English. The results support the class of theories of storage costs based on the metric in terms of incomplete phrase structure rules or incomplete syntactic head predictions. We also demonstrate that the endpoint of the storage cost for a wh-adjunct filler provides valuable processing evidence for its base structural position, the identification of which remains a rather murky issue in current grammatical research. (shrink)

Language learning requires linguistic input, but several studies have found that knowledge of second language rules does not seem to improve with more language exposure. One reason for this is that previous studies did not factor out variation due to the different rules tested. To examine this issue, we reanalyzed grammaticality judgment scores in Flege, Yeni-Komshian, and Liu's study of L2 learners using rule-related predictors and found that, in addition to the overall drop in performance due to a sensitive period, (...) L2 knowledge increased with years of input. Knowledge of different grammar rules was negatively associated with input frequency of those rules. To better understand these effects, we modeled the results using a connectionist model that was trained using Korean as a first language and then English as an L2. To explain the sensitive period in L2 learning, the model's learning rate was reduced in an age-related manner. By assigning different learning rates for syntax and lexical learning, we were able to model the difference between early and late L2 learners in input sensitivity. The model's learning mechanism allowed transfer between the L1 and L2, and this helped to explain the differences between different rules in the grammaticality judgment task. This work demonstrates that an L1 model of learning and processing can be adapted to provide an explicit account of how the input and the sensitive period interact in L2 learning. (shrink)

All forms of nominal reference, whether quantificational, definite, rigid, deictic, or personal, require that the nominals in question appear in relevant grammatical configurations. Reference is in this sense a grammatical phenomenon. It is never determined lexically or a word-world relation in a purely semantic or causal sense. Here it is further argued that the principles of the grammar of object-reference naturally extend to cases where the reference of one nominal depends on that of another, i.e. the grammar of (...) referential dependence, without any further special grammatical relations such as ‘binding’ required. This further includes a relation of identity. (shrink)

Event-related potential components are sensitive to the processes underlying how questions are understood. We use so-called “covert” wh-questions in Mandarin to probe how such components generalize across different kinds of constructions. This study shows that covert Mandarin wh-questions do not elicit anterior negativities associated with memory maintenance, even when such a dependency is unambiguously cued. N = 37 native speakers of Mandarin Chinese read Chinese questions and declarative sentences word-by-word during EEG recording. In contrast to prior studies, no sustained anterior (...) negativity was observed between the cue word, such as the question-embedding verb “wonder,” and the in-situ wh-filler. SANs have been linked with working memory maintenance, suggesting that grammatical features may not impose the same maintenance demands as the content words used in prior work. (shrink)

The poverty of stimulus argument is one of the most controversial arguments in the study of language acquisition. Here we follow previous approaches challenging the assumption of impoverished primary linguistic data, focusing on the specific problem of auxiliary (AUX) fronting in complex polar interrogatives. We develop a series of corpus analyses of child-directed speech showing that there is indirect statistical information useful for correct auxiliary fronting in polar interrogatives and that such information is sufficient for distinguishing between grammatical and (...) ungrammatical generalizations, even in the absence of direct evidence. We further show that there are simple learning devices, such as neural networks, capable of exploiting such statistical cues, producing a bias toward correct AUX questions when compared to their ungrammatical counterparts. The results suggest that the basic assumptions of the poverty of stimulus argument may need to be reappraised. (shrink)

IN C.Q., 1933, 3/4, PP. 208–221, the passages in Herodotus where the subject of a clause is referred to pronominally in the same or a dependent clause were collected and classified according to the nature of the grammatical dependence. This was done to discover Herodotus' practice in using, or not using, the reflexive, so that the knowledge might serve as a guide in the recension of Attic authors, whose αντ and ατ are constantly and inevitably confounded with ατ. In (...) the present article I shall classify on the same scheme the 1,150 relevant passages of Thucydides, referring constantly to the habits of Herodotus already established, and noting the lessons which result for future editors of Thucydides' text. Some preliminary remarks are necessary. (shrink)

This paper discusses the main minimalist theory within the Minimalist Program, something I dub the (Weak) Merge Hypothesis (MH). (1) The (Weak) Merge Hypothesis (MH): Merge is a central G operation. I suggest that we extend (1) by adding to it a general principle that I dub the Fundamental Principle of Grammar (FPG). (2) The Fundamental Principle of Grammar (FPG): α and β can be grammatically related. (G-related) only if α and β have merged. Adding (1) and (2) gives us (...) the Strong Merge Hypothesis. (3) The Strong Merge Hypothesis (SMH): All grammatical dependencies are mediated by Merge. SMH has some interesting consequences which the rest of the paper briefly reviews. Highlights include the Movement Theory of Construal, The Periscope Property on selection, as well as preserving the standard results from the Weak Merge Hypothesis. (shrink)

IN C.Q., 1933, 3/4, PP. 208–221, the passages in Herodotus where the subject of a clause is referred to pronominally in the same or a dependent clause were collected and classified according to the nature of the grammatical dependence. This was done to discover Herodotus' practice in using, or not using, the reflexive, so that the knowledge might serve as a guide in the recension of Attic authors, whose αντ and ατ are constantly and inevitably confounded with ατ. In (...) the present article I shall classify on the same scheme the 1,150 relevant passages of Thucydides, referring constantly to the habits of Herodotus already established, and noting the lessons which result for future editors of Thucydides' text. Some preliminary remarks are necessary. (shrink)

The problem of self‐knowledge is examined and the linguistic strategy for tackling it is explored. The strategy attempts—as in Davidson's and Wright's discussions of self‐knowledge—to ground knowledge of one's mind on knowledge of what one means in speaking one's mind. If knowing what one is saying in speaking a language is to provide a means of knowing one's own mind, it cannot simply be a part of it. But if no account of knowledge of what one means is offered, there (...) will be a lacuna in the strategy. The paper considers what form a full account should take, and argues that it will have to combine first‐personal, third‐personal and sub‐personal elements of our knowledge of language. All three elements are necessary to explicate what is made available in, and expressed by, instances of disquotational knowledge, such as ‘Snow is white’ means that snow is white.. Immediate and authoritative knowledge of which sentences are grammatical depends on the internal workings of the language faculty and their impact on the conscious experience of the speaker, but immediate and authoritative knowledge of word meaning is not solely a matter internal to the speaker. Knowledge of word meaning is knowledge of public norms that govern our use of words, which introduce third‐personal standards into our first‐personal use. It is argued that our knowledge of word meaning is immediately authoritative about objective standards governing the proper use of our words, and so the authority attaching to these disquotational pronouncements is substantial and not merely an artefact of disquotation. Without an account of that knowledge the lacuna in the linguistic strategy remains. (shrink)

Many people have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty cannot be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould have suggested that language may have evolved as the by-product of selection for other abilities or as a consequence of as-yet unknown laws of growth and form. Others have argued that a biological specialization for grammar is incompatible with every tenet of Darwinian theory – that it shows no genetic variation, could not exist in any intermediate forms, confers (...) no selective advantage, and would require more evolutionary time and genomic space than is available. We examine these arguments and show that they depend on inaccurate assumptions about biology or language or both. Evolutionary theory offers clear criteria for when a trait should be attributed to natural selection: complex design for some function, and the absence of alternative processes capable of explaining such complexity. Human language meets these criteria: Grammar is a complex mechanism tailored to the transmission of propositional structures through a serial interface. Autonomous and arbitrary grammatical phenomena have been offered as counterexamples to the position that language is an adaptation, but this reasoning is unsound: Communication protocols depend on arbitrary conventions that are adaptive as long as they are shared. Consequently, language acquisition in the child should systematically differ from language evolution in the species, and attempts to analogize them are misleading. Reviewing other arguments and data, we conclude that there is every reason to believe that a specialization for grammar evolved by a conventional neo-Darwinian process. (shrink)

In the 1950s, Noam Chomsky offered a new vision for linguistic research and syntacticians. This chapter explores some ways in which Chomsky's linguistic work has influenced research on one domain of linguistic performance, sentence processing, over the last half century. It shows that Chomsky's claim in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax is largely borne out: "the study of performance will proceed only as far as the study of the underlying competence permits". The chapter briefly addresses a question about the (...) scope of modern sentence processing research and its relationship to specific grammatical formalisms. It reviews the literature on incremental ambiguity resolution, moves to the processing of long‐distance filler‐gap dependency processing, and provides information on the processing of anaphoric relations. In order to illustrate how the phenomenon has contributed to psycholinguistic theorizing, the chapter outlines a well‐known model and then considers how other models diverge. (shrink)

Can we talk meaningfully about God? The theological movement known as Grammatical Thomism affirms that religious language is nonsensical, because the reality of God is beyond our capacity for expression. Stephen Mulhall critically evaluates the claims of this movement to be a legitimate inheritor of Wittgenstein's philosophical methods as well as Aquinas's theological project. The major obstacle to this claim is that Grammatical Thomism makes the nonsensicality of religious language when applied to God a touchstone of Thomist insight, (...) whereas 'nonsense' is standardly taken to be solely a term of criticism in Wittgenstein's work. Mulhall argues that a place can be found in both his early work and his later writings for a more positive role to be assigned to nonsensical utterances--one which depends on exploiting an analogy between religious language and riddles. This allows us to see various ways in which his later work has a perfectionist dimension, and results in a radical reconception of the role of analogous usage in language, and in the relation between philosophy and theology. (shrink)

In this paper we document the developmental trajectory of the complementizer system (CP-system) in Italian by looking at the earliest spontaneous production of eleven young children, whose transcriptions are available on CHILDES. We conducted a novel corpus analysis, tracking down a number of constructions in which the clausal left-periphery is activated. First, we considered the appearance of the different complementizer particles in the CP-system, which overtly realize the three distinct functional projections ForceP, IntP, and FinP. The analysis revealed that children (...) acquiring Italian correctly use these complementizer particles already in the third year of life. Second, we looked for the simultaneous activation of different functional projections within the CP-system. We went through our corpus searching for complex sentences in which more than one constituent was moved to the left periphery. This option is allowed by the adult grammar of Italian and, as our search revealed, it is also attested in the grammar of young children. Soon after their second birthday, sequences in which a left-dislocated Topic and a Wh- element co-occur are attested, directly supporting the existence of a (high) Topic position above FocusP. Moreover, movement in general conforms to the constraints of the adult grammar, with no attested violation of obligatory inversion (a consequence of the Q-Criterion). Importantly, “why-questions” did not require inversion, much as in the adult grammar of Italian. Taken together, children's use of complementizer particles and their activation of multiple landing sites for movement show that 2-year-olds already possess a richly articulated functional structure of the CP-system, aligned to the layered adult structure. In concluding the paper, we also discuss some temporal differences between constructions activating high and low portions of the CP-system. In particular, we detect a temporal precedence for wh-questions over why-questions. Since the former activate a lower projection, this is consistent with the recently proposedGrowing Treeshypothesis, according to which the development of the CP-system proceeds stepwise. (shrink)

Cosmopolitan critics attack the scope-limitation of justice of egalitarian liberal theorists to states. They treat justice as the production of a given set of outcomes for people regardless of location or relationship. However, in doing so they either ignore the relevant agent towards whom principles of justice are addressed or see the question of agency as a practical, derivative question, of a secondary character. This paper argues that a principle of justice without a clearly justified agent is not a genuine (...) principle at all. This is what writers like Rawls mean by the "subject" of justice (analogous to the grammatical subject of a sentence, i.e.,the agent). We should reflect on agents and why they would or would not justifiably carry certain burdens for others and what kind of benefits or goods they are able to secure. The answers to those questions explain why the idea of cosmopolitan global justice is incomplete, either requiring a global basic structural agency or not applying because no relevant agent is present that can create cooperative arrangements between individual persons across the globe. Other moral principles will still apply globally, but they will be distinct from those that apply to basic-structural agencies. This account is not a practice dependence account, as it bases the distinctness of moral and political principles on purely moral and value-based considerations. (shrink)

A central concern of the cognitive science of language since its origins has been the concept of the linguistic system. Recent approaches to the system concept in language point to the exceedingly complex relations that hold between many kinds of interdependent systems, but it can be difficult to know how to proceed when “everything is connected.” This paper offers a framework for tackling that challenge by identifying *scale* as a conceptual mooring for the interdisciplinary study of language systems. The paper (...) begins by defining the scale concept—simply, the possibility for a measure to be larger or smaller in different instances of a system, such as a phonemic inventory, a word's frequency value in a corpus, or a speaker population. We review sites of scale difference in and across linguistic subsystems, drawing on findings from linguistic typology, grammatical description, morphosyntactic theory, psycholinguistics, computational corpus work, and social network demography. We consider possible explanations for scaling differences and constraints in language. We then turn to the question of *dependencies between* sites of scale difference in language, reviewing four sample domains of scale dependency: in phonological systems, across levels of grammatical structure (Menzerath's Law), in corpora (Zipf's Law and related issues), and in speaker population size. Finally, we consider the implications of the review, including the utility of a scale framework for generating new questions and inspiring methodological innovations and interdisciplinary collaborations in cognitive-scientific research on language. (shrink)

Most interpreting theories claim that different interpreting types should involve varied processing mechanisms and procedures. However, few studies have examined their underlying differences. Even though some previous results based on quantitative approaches show that different interpreting types yield outputs of varying lexical and syntactic features, the grammatical parsing approach is limited. Language sequences that form without relying on parsing or processing with a specific linguistic approach or grammar excel other quantitative approaches at revealing the sequential behavior of language production. (...) As a non-grammatically-bound unit of language sequences, frequency motif can visualize the local distribution of content and function words, and can also statistically classify languages and identify text types. Thus, the current research investigates the distribution, length and position-dependent properties of frequency motifs across different interpreting outputs in pursuit of the sequential generation behaviors. It is found that the distribution, the length and certain position-dependent properties of the specific language sequences differ significantly across simultaneous interpreting and consecutive interpreting output. The features of frequency motifs manifest that both interpreting output is produced in the manner that abides by the least effort principle. The current research suggests that interpreting types can be differentiated through this type of language sequential unit and offers evidence for how the different task features mediate the sequential organization of interpreting output under different demand to achieve cognitive load minimization. (shrink)

Verbs and nouns gear θ-dependencies, Case, agreement, or construal relations. Building on Chomsky’s 1974 decomposition of such categories into ±N, ±V features, by translating said features into ±1, ±i scalars that allow for the construction of a vector space, this paper studies the possibility of organizing said features into 2 × 2 square matrices. In the system proposed to explore “head-complement” relations, operating on nouns yields a measurable/observable (Hermitian matrix), which in turn limits other potential combinations with abstract lexical (...) categories. Functional/grammatical categories in the system deploy the same features, albeit organized differently in the matrix diagonal and off-diagonal. The algebraic result is a group with well-defined mathematical properties, which properly includes the Pauli group of standard use in quantum computation. In the system, the presumed difference between categories and interactions—here, in a context of the head-complement sort—reduces to whether the magnitude of the matrix eigenvalue is 1 or not, in the latter instance inducing asymmetric interactions. (shrink)

The restrictive grammatical format suggested in GPSG provides an extremely interesting alternative to transformational approaches to grammar. However, we have seen that the way the grammar is currently organized, it will in certain cases fail to give the correct interpretation to sentences with displaced constituents. Whenever a left or rightward displaced constituent contains an element that can stand in an anaphoric relation with some other element in the sentence, i.e. contains a quantifier or a pronoun, the semantic rules as (...) given do not provide the intended reading. It should be made clear, however, that this shortcoming pertains to one particular type of GPSG, namely one whose interpretation procedures make use of lambda abstraction. The problematic cases addressed here do not by themselves invalidate the syntactic framework of a GPSG. It seems quite plausible that one could construct a semantics that does not depend on lambda conversion, in which case the problem addressed in this note is presumably no longer relevant. One such proposal is put forward in Cooper (forthcoming) where a non-movement syntax is combined with interpretation procedures that do not involve translation into a lambda calculus. (shrink)

Many people have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty cannot be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould have suggested that language may have evolved as the by-product of selection for other abilities or as a consequence of as-yet unknown laws of growth and form. Others have argued that a biological specialization for grammar is incompatible with every tenet of Darwinian theory – that it shows no genetic variation, could not exist in any intermediate forms, confers (...) no selective advantage, and would require more evolutionary time and genomic space than is available. We examine these arguments and show that they depend on inaccurate assumptions about biology or language or both. Evolutionary theory offers clear criteria for when a trait should be attributed to natural selection: complex design for some function, and the absence of alternative processes capable of explaining such complexity. Human language meets these criteria: Grammar is a complex mechanism tailored to the transmission of propositional structures through a serial interface. Autonomous and arbitrary grammatical phenomena have been offered as counterexamples to the position that language is an adaptation, but this reasoning is unsound: Communication protocols depend on arbitrary conventions that are adaptive as long as they are shared. Consequently, language acquisition in the child should systematically differ from language evolution in the species, and attempts to analogize them are misleading. Reviewing other arguments and data, we conclude that there is every reason to believe that a specialization for grammar evolved by a conventional neo-Darwinian process. (shrink)

Based on the analysis of narrations in Free Indirect Discourse and the Historical Present, we argue that the grammatical notion of context of speech should be ramified into a Context of Thought and a Context of Utterance. Tense and person depend on the Context of Utterance, while all other indexicals are evaluated with respect to the Context of Thought. Free Indirect Discourse and the Historical Present are analyzed as special combinatorial possibilities that arise when the two contexts are distinct, (...) and exactly one of them is presented as identical to the physical point at which the sentence is articulated. (shrink)

Linguistic category learning has been shown to be highly sensitive to linear order, and depending on the task, differentially sensitive to the information provided by preceding category markers (premarkers, e.g., gendered articles) or succeeding category markers (postmarkers, e.g., gendered suffixes). Given that numerous systems for marking grammatical categories exist in natural languages, it follows that a better understanding of these findings can shed light on the factors underlying this diversity. In two discriminative learning simulations and an artificial language learning (...) experiment, we identify two factors that modulate linear order effects in linguistic category learning: category structure and the level of abstraction in a category hierarchy. Regarding category structure, we find that postmarking brings an advantage for learning category diagnostic stimulus dimensions, an effect not present when categories are non‐confusable. Regarding levels of abstraction, we find that premarking of super‐ordinate categories (e.g., noun class) facilitates learning of subordinate categories (e.g., nouns). We present detailed simulations using a plausible candidate mechanism for the observed effects, along with a comprehensive analysis of linear order effects within an expectation‐based account of learning. Our findings indicate that linguistic category learning is differentially guided by pre‐ and postmarking, and that the influence of each is modulated by the specific characteristics of a given category system. (shrink)

Linguistic category learning has been shown to be highly sensitive to linear order, and depending on the task, differentially sensitive to the information provided by preceding category markers (premarkers, e.g., gendered articles) or succeeding category markers (postmarkers, e.g., gendered suffixes). Given that numerous systems for marking grammatical categories exist in natural languages, it follows that a better understanding of these findings can shed light on the factors underlying this diversity. In two discriminative learning simulations and an artificial language learning (...) experiment, we identify two factors that modulate linear order effects in linguistic category learning: category structure and the level of abstraction in a category hierarchy. Regarding category structure, we find that postmarking brings an advantage for learning category diagnostic stimulus dimensions, an effect not present when categories are non‐confusable. Regarding levels of abstraction, we find that premarking of super‐ordinate categories (e.g., noun class) facilitates learning of subordinate categories (e.g., nouns). We present detailed simulations using a plausible candidate mechanism for the observed effects, along with a comprehensive analysis of linear order effects within an expectation‐based account of learning. Our findings indicate that linguistic category learning is differentially guided by pre‐ and postmarking, and that the influence of each is modulated by the specific characteristics of a given category system. (shrink)

Cognitive neuroscientists have anticipated the union of neural and behavioral science with ethics (Gazzaniga 2005). The identification of an ethical rule—the dictum that we should treat others in the manner in which we would like to be treated—apparently widespread among human societies suggests a dependence on fundamental human brain mechanisms. Now, studies of neural and molecular mechanisms that underlie the feeling of fear suggest how this form of ethical behavior is produced. Counterintuitively, a new theory presented here states that it (...) is actually a loss of social information that leads to sharing others' fears with our own, thus allowing us to treat others as we would like to be treated. Adding to that hypothetical mechanism is the well-studied predilection toward affiliative behaviors. Thus, even as Chomsky hypothesizes that humans are predisposed to utter grammatical sentences, we propose that humans are 'wired for reciprocity'. However, these two neural forces supporting ethical behavior do not explain individual or collective violence. At any given moment, the ability to produce behavior that obeys this ethical rule is proposed to depend on a balance between mechanisms for prosocial and antisocial behaviors. That balance results not only from genetic influences on temperament but also from environmental effects particularly during critical neonatal and pubertal periods. (shrink)

A central goal of modern generative grammar has been to discover invariant properties of human languages that reflect “the innate schematism of mind that is applied to the data of experience” and that “might reasonably be attributed to the organism itself as its contribution to the task of the acquisition of knowledge” (Chomsky, 1971). Candidates for such invariances include the structure dependence of grammatical rules, and in particular, certain constraints on question formation. Various “poverty of stimulus” (POS) arguments suggest (...) that these invariances reflect an innate human endowment, as opposed to common experience: Such experience warrants selection of the grammars acquired only if humans assume, a priori, that selectable grammars respect substantive constraints. Recently, several researchers have tried to rebut these POS arguments. In response, we illustrate why POS arguments remain an important source of support for appeal to a priori structure-dependent constraints on the grammars that humans naturally acquire. (shrink)

In this paper I suggest an answer to the question of what Frege means when he says that his logical system, the Begriffsschrift, is like the language Leibniz sketched, a lingua characteristica, and not merely a logical calculus. According to the nineteenth century studies, Leibniz’s lingua characteristica was supposed to be a language with which the truths of science and the constitution of its concepts could be accurately expressed. I argue that this is exactly what the Begriffsschrift is: it is (...) a language, since, unlike calculi, its sentential expressions express truths, and it is a characteristic language, since the meaning of its complex expressions depend only on the meanings of their constituents and on the way they are put together. In fact it is in itself already a science composed in accordance with the Classical Model of Science. What makes the Begriffsschrift so special is that Frege is able to accomplish these goals with using only grammatical or syncategorematic terms and so has a medium with which he can try to show analyticity of the theorems of arithmetic. (shrink)

Twitter is a linguistic marketplace in which the processes of self-branding and micro-celebrity depend on visibility as a means of increasing social and economic gain. Hashtags are a potent resource within this system for promoting the visibility of a Twitter update. This study analyses the frequency, types and grammatical context of hashtags which occurred in a dataset of approximately 92,000 tweets, taken from 100 publically available Twitter accounts, comparing the discourse styles of corporations, celebrity practitioners and ‘ordinary’ Twitter members. (...) The results suggest that practices of self-branding and micro-celebrity operate on a continuum which reflects and reinforces the social and economic hierarchies which exist in offline contexts. Despite claims that hashtags are ‘conversational’, this study suggests that participatory culture in Twitter is not evenly distributed, and that the discourse of celebrity practitioners and corporations exhibits the synthetic personalization typical of mainstream media forms of broadcast talk. (shrink)