Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung
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A neurolinguistic investigation into semantic differences of evidentiality and modality
Get PDFCorpus and EEG studies were conducted to reveal behavioral and neurological differences between processing of Japanese modals and evidentials
Affirming and rejecting assertions in German Sign Language (DGS)
Get PDFResponse elements (REs) like English yes and no fulfil two functions. They may affirm or reject a previous utterance, or they may indicate that the response to the previous utterance has positive or negative polarity. In responses to negative sentences, these two functions come apart. Spoken languages investigated so far seem to display different preferences for the interpretation of REs to signal either the positive/negative polarity of the response clause or the affirmation/rejection of the truth of the previous utterance. The present paper investigates the meaning and use of REs in German Sign Language (DGS). We present the results of a discourse completion experiment in DGS, which is the first quantitative study of the response system of a sign language, and provide a preliminary theoretical analysis of this system. Sign languages are of particular interest in this context since they systematically use multiple articulatory channels, which can, in principle, encode truth and polarity at the same time. The results show that DGS employs manual and non-manual REs which encode both truth and polarity, i.e. are ambiguous, as well as REs that encode only truth. The ambiguous REs are used more often to encode truth than polarity, and are rarely disambiguated by simultaneous non-manual REs. Hence, DGS does not use the potential made available by the visual-gestural modality in the domain of response strategies
Intransitive causatives in English: Productivity regularities and asymmetries
Get PDFWe analyze a construction generally overlooked in the literature, with key implica- tions for of argument structure alternations and VP-internal configuration. This construction involves an object-less causative variant of change-of-state verbs (viz. Intransitive Causative). Unlike better-known monadic (inchoative/unaccusative) alternates, this construction selects for an external argument, an inanimate entity, interpreted by default as probable cause of a change of state. Here, intransitivity correlates with noneventivity. Data suggest that this construction renders an Individual-Level Predication—basically, a subject bearing the potential to eventually trigger an associated change of state as defining property. Based on the pure stative behavior of such a construction (clearly seen in Romance and Greek, cf. Mangialavori Rasia, to appear), we show that eventivity is structurally achieved, and that stative instances of these verbs are possible in various languages (Alexiadou and Iorda ?chioaia, 2014; Mangialavori Rasia, 2018). Such data argue against the prevalent view that verbs undergoing causative alternation involve change of state or eventive denotation as core part of their lexical meaning and that causative interpretation is a byproduct of transitivity (Hale and Keyser, 2002). In the present paper, we shift the empirical focus to English and note that English shows a productive regularity that deserves to be explored. Visible contrasts with null object constructions and related argument structure alternations (Null/Unspecified Object Alternations, Levin, 1993 i.a.) allowed by these verbs are also revealed
?aqa?: A generalized exclamation operator in ?ay?a?u??m
No full textIn this paper, we present a formal analysis of the common and yet not well- understood auxiliary ?aqa? in ?ay?a?u??m (a.k.a. Comox-Sliammon; Central Salish). Based on original fieldwork, we argue that speakers can use ?aqa? not only to express wishes or worries, but also to signal the unexpectedness or predictableness of the denoted proposition. To account for this initially perplexing banquet of meanings, we propose — in the spirit of Grosz (2011, 2014) — that ?aqa? functions as an exclamation operator (EX) that serves to express the speaker’s emotion towards the status of a proposition on a contextually salient scale. As predicted by this approach, the use of ?aqa? can give rise to optatives, adversatives, polar exclamatives, and congruent exclamatives — a novel type of exclamative we discover in the process. A claim that emerges from the analysis is that Grosz’s EX operator, which is covert in German and English, may be realized overtly in other languages
Interesting interrogatives
Get PDFThe stem interest has two syntactic variants that occur with both declarative and interrogative subordinate clauses. The presuppositions that such constructions carry are difficult to explain under predominant theories of how similar predicates semantically compose with subordinate clauses. I offer a new analysis, which puts together some ideas already found in this literature – in particular, the idea that certain interrogative clauses semantically encode (something like) the illocutionary force of asking and the idea that experiencer predicates (such as interest) are associated with acquaintance inferences
Conditionals on crutches: Expanding the modal horizon
Get PDFUsing truth-value judgment tasks, we investigated the on-line processing of counterfactual conditionals such as If kangaroos had no tails, they would topple over. Face-value plausibility of the counterfactual as well as the complexity of the antecedent were manipulated. Results show that readers’ judgments deviate from face-value plausibility more often when the antecedent is complex, and when the counterfactual is plausible rather than implausible. We interpret our results based on the modal horizon assumption of von Fintel (2001) and argue that they are compatible with a variably strict semantics for counterfactuals (Lewis, 1973). We make use of computational modeling techniques to account for reaction times and truth-value judgments simultaneously, showing that implementing detailed process models deepens our understanding of the cognitive mechanisms triggered by linguistic stimuli
The interaction of just with modified scalar predicates
Get PDFIt remains an open question whether the range of uses associated with the English particle just can be analyzed uniformly. Much previous literature has focused on the exclusive uses of just with relatively little attention paid to its non-exclusive uses. We provide an analysis for the approximative use of just, which occurs with modified scalar predicates in sentences like Mary is just taller than John or Mary is just as tall as John. We argue that this use of just has two effects: (1) it conveys that its prejacent is true at a maximal level of precision, and (2) it conveys that its prejacent is not true at any lower level of precision that would make a stronger claim. On this analysis, the approximative use of just is similar to the exclusive use in that the effect in both cases is that stronger alternatives to the prejacent are ruled out
Counterfactual wishing as multiple agreement
Get PDFCounterfactual (CF) wishes give rise to the wellknown puzzle that CF-marking on a desire predicate leaves the desire intact (von Fintel and Iatridou 2008, 2017). German is one of the languages that exhibits this pattern. This paper takes the desire’s intactness in German CF-wishes to speak in favor of viewing said CF-marking as semantically vacuous agreement morphology. All this morphology does is to reflect CF-displacement of a silent antecedent (vF&I 2017). The morphological pattern CF-wishes seem subject to might apply to CF-conditionals more generally
Utterances with themes as strategies to address a broad Question Under Discussion
Get PDFIn a QUD-model of discourse, any utterance elaborates on the maximal QUD in that context. QUDs play an essential role in defining the two parts in which an utterance can be divided: theme and rheme. An utterance must always contain a rheme, which is the part that elaborates on the QUD, and may contain a theme, which replicates content already present in the QUD. Since themes are replicating material already present in the QUD, one may wonder why themes are uttered at all. Vallduví (2016) proposes that themes signal the the QUD update will have an intermediate step and that the QUD being addressed is not the maximal one. In other words, themes mark that the QUD update is non-default. The goal of this paper is to empirically examine one of these non-default updates and, in particular, whether theme-containing utterances can be used to signal that the QUD being addressed is broader than the maximal one and, if so, whether they are necessary in this situation. Two discourse-completion studies in Catalan were carried out. The results show that theme-containing utterances are mostly used to address a broad QUD (as opposed to narrower ones) and that when speakers decide to address a broad QUD, the proportion of theme-containing utterances increases significantly. The use of themes is, however, not required to signal this change of QUD; themeless-utterances can also be used in this context
Non-resolving responses to polar questions: A revision to the QUD theory of relevance
Get PDFThe influential Question Under Discussion (QUD) theory of discourse (Roberts, 2012) formal- izes Grice’s notion of relevance. In this paper, we identify a class of relevant discourse moves where Roberts’s account undergenerates, and propose a more inclusive definition of relevance. For example, if asked Should we cancel the picnic?, one can reply If it rains without fully re- solving the question. However, in Roberts’s theory, all relevant responses to polar questions are predicted to fully resolve the question because a relevant answer must eliminate at least one alternative in the QUD. We propose that a non-resolving response to a polar question is relevant if it eliminates a set of worlds that overlaps with only some alternatives in the QUD. The new account turns out to make good predictions in the domain of polar questions, and beyond