1,721,109 research outputs found
Questions
Get PDFIn this chapter we give an overview of the research area which studies the meaning of questions. We start with explaining some general notions and insights in this area, and then zoom in on the three most influential semantic theories of questions, which all attempt to characterize question meaning in terms of “answerhood conditions”. (They are thus following up on the notion of “truth conditions” as the core notion of a formal semantics for indicative sentences.) Next, we discuss some special topics in the study of questions and answers, where we focus on issues which are concerned with identity and questions which have to do with scope. Finally, we describe some pragmatic features of answering questions and the general role that questions play in the dynamics of discourse, leading up to a concise introduction of the recent framework of inquisitive semantics.Questions can be studied from various perspectives. For a syntactician, questions are linguistic entities, sentences of a certain kind with distinctive formal features. In English they typically display a change in word order (Is Marco smart? versus Marco is smart), they host wh-expressions with characteristic syntactic features (who, what, where, how, but also which students, which Canadians and the like), and in spoken language a question normally, but not invariably, comes with specific intonation, while in written language it is accompanied by a question mark.For a semanticist, questions are abstract objects taken as the denotations of the above-described type of syntactic expressions. A semanticist here may take his cue from the (formal) study of indicative sentences. There the aim is to uncover a domain of denotations (labeled “propositions” mostly), as, for instance, an algebra which hosts logical constructions (like that of conjunction, disjunction, negation) and logical relations (like entailment, synonymy, and (in-)consistency). In the semantic study of interrogatives the aim is to establish a corresponding domain of denotations that underlies suitable notions of question entailment and answerhood.From a pragmatic perspective, questions are essentially events in a discourse or dialogue. In response to the utterance of an interrogative sentence onemay legitimately ask “Was that a question?” Questions, then, are certain acts in a conversation the very performance of which is subject to linguistic and pragmatic rules
Le ossa di Antiloco: "Etiopide" e "Odissea" tra localismo e panellenismo
No full textNel corso della tradizione della poesia epica arcaica greca i poemi omerici (Iliade e Odissea) hanno avuto maggior successo di quelli del Ciclo: un'importante ragione può essere stata la maggior vocazione panellenica dell'epos omerico, quanto ai contenuti mitici, rispetto a una più accentuata dimensione locale dell'epos ciclico. C'è un chiaro esempio di questa differenziazione progressiva, sebbene non assoluta: i contenuti narrativi dell'Etiopide sono in generale legati alle tradizioni mitiche riguardanti Mileto, in particolare alla figura di Antiloco, figlio di Nestore, in rapporto alla tradizione genealogica locale dei Neleidi. Il tema della sua relazione privilegiata con Achille e quello della sua morte, centrale nel poema ciclico, è oggetto di riferimenti anche nell'epos omerico, in particolare nell'Odissea, ma con un maggiore bilanciamento tra il rilievo panellenico e quello locale del mito.During the tradition of Greek archaic epic poetry, at least from a certain chronological level, the Homeric poems (Iliad and Odyssey) had more success than the cyclic ones: an important reason may be the greater panhellenic inclination in the mythic content of Homeric epos against a stronger local dimension of the cyclic epos. There is a good example of this progressive, although not absolute, differentiation: the narrative contents of the Aithiopis are in general tied to the mythic traditions of Miletus, in particular the primary importance attributed to the figure of Antilochus, Nestor’s son, in connection with the genealogical local tradition of the Neleids. The theme of his privileged relationship with Achilles and the event of his death, so prominent in the cyclic poem, are object of reference also in Homeric poetry, especially in the Odyssey, but with a more careful bal- ance between local and panhellenic importance
Focus, uniqueness and soft presupposition triggers
No full textVon Heusinger (2007) shows that the definite article\’s uniqueness presupposition causes problems in a standard account of focus alternatives. He solves this problem by proposing a new lexical entry for the definite article, a solution adopted by Riester and Kamp (2010). This paper shows that the observed behavior is not limited to the definite article, making such a solution undesirable. Our argument is based on two observations: (1) The definite article is a soft presupposition trigger with respect to uniqueness and (2) soft presupposition triggers have a special behavior in focus alternatives
Eracle e le Esperidi. Geografia del mito nelle fonti poetiche e mitografiche greche arcaiche e tardoarcaiche
No full textThe tenth and the eleventh Labours of Herakles – Geryon and the Hesperides – display common features both in the complicated journey towards the Far West and the means of transport over Land and Sea, and in the breadth and depth of the adventures. These adventures are set in most remote lands ending in a boundary area on the furthest edges of the inhabited world. The analysis of ancient poetic sources and syggraphé concerning the episode of the Apples of the Hesperides is intended to highlight how the epic, lyric and historiographical account could both amaze and involve the archaic audience
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
On the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dysfluency
Get PDFGinzburg J, Fernández R, Schlangen D. On the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dysfluency. In: Aloni M, ed. Logic, Language and Meaning: 18th Amsterdam Colloquium, Amsterdam , The Netherlands, December 19-21, 2011, Revised Selected Papers. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol 7218. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012: 321-330
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