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Morphological, syntactic and semantic aspects of dispositions
Get PDFThis volume gathers a subset of the papers presented at the Workshop on the Morphological, Syntactic and Semantic Aspects of Dispositions held at the University of Stuttgart from June 25 to June 27 2015. The invited speakers were Artemis Alexiadou, Nora Boneh, Elena Castroviejo, Ariel Cohen, Bridget Copley, Hans Kamp, Marika Lekakou, John Maier, Christopher Piñón, Károly Varasdi and Barbara Vetter. Other contributions have been presented by Simona Aimar, Saveria Colonna, Marta Donazzan, Berit Gehrke, Daniel Kodaj, Nick Kroll, Isabelle Roy and Lucia Tovena.
While appeals to dispositions have been made in just about every area of linguistics and philosophy, the syntax, semantics and ontology of dispositions is still subject to debate. A first obvious reason why dispositions are hard to deal with in linguistics is that the predominant Neo-Davidsonian account of logical forms is based on the isolated analysis of actual relations between causes and effects, whereas dispositions pertain to potential cause-effect relations, difficult to grasp in traditional syntax/semantic frameworks. Besides, whereas for actual causations, the binary distinction between the roles Agent/Causer and Theme/Patient makes perfect sense, possible cause-effect relations partly escape these distinctions. The instantiation of a disposition in an object is not related to being an Agent or to being a Theme of the disposition. A second obvious difficulty raised by dispositions is due to the versatility of dispositional predicates. Those are commonly used to describe either permanent or temporary properties of individuals, or manifestations of these properties through events, not to mention their other (e.g. epistemic) readings.
The goal of the workshop was to subject to critical scrutiny the Neo-Davidsonian foundation of syntax and semantics in the light of the linguistic expression of dispositional causal powers. We aimed to bring together linguists and philosophers interested in contributing to a common point of departure in the analysis of dispositions beyond the Neo-Davidsonian framework.
Three central questions emerged as central issues of the workshop:
1. Uncontroversially, dispositions are properties - but what kind of properties are dispositions?
2. What are dispositions properties of?
3. Do the different expressions we find in natural languages differentiate between different types of dispositions?
The papers collected in this volume represent the variety of answers that have been provided by the workshop participants to one or more of these questions.
Concerning the first question, centered on the nature of dispositions, the paper by Vetter argues that dispositions are irreducible modal properties, and proposes a modal semantics which uses the resources of an ‘anti-Humean’ metaphysics instead of possible worlds. The papers by Boneh and Cohen approach in more detail the specificity of the modal properties that correspond to dispositions. Boneh examines the relation between dispositional and habitual readings. She argues that in bare generic sentences, there is no sound linguistic criteria to set apart dispositional readings from habitual readings. Cohen proposes a classification of dispositions according to whether their argument is a causer or not, and whether they are always, or only sometimes realized. He demonstrates that each such type of disposition is expressed by a distinct linguistic expression.
The bearer of dispositions is the subject of the papers of Kroll, Donazzan & Tovena and Cohen. Kroll analyzes events in progress as being the bearers of dispositions. Donazzan and Tovena, like Cohen, highlight the fact that bearers of dispositions are often systems consisting of one or more protagonists situated in an environment.
With respect to the linguistic expression of dispositions, Castroviejo & Oltra-Massuet present a case study on the semantics of the Spanish expression ser capaz ‘be capable’, which is carefully compared to its English counterpart.
The paper by Alexiadou examines the restrictions on the formation of -able adjectives from object experiencer verbs. She argues that their availability depends not only on their aspectual properties, but also on the Voice system of a language - i.e. dispositional -able formation takes as input a structure involving passive resp. middle Voice. Finally, Roy et. al. consider how grammatical and conceptual knowledge affect children’s and adults’ interpretation of derived -er nominals such as cutter of branches (a phrasal -er nominal) and branch cutter (a compound -er nominal) in English
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
Verankerte Diskursrepräsentationstheorie : auf dem Weg zu einer Semantik-Pragmatik-Schnittstelle als Grundlage der Zusammenarbeit von Mensch und Maschine
No full textThis study introduces Grounded Discourse Representation Theory (GDRT), a formalism for the semantics-pragmatics interface of a robot in the framework of goal-oriented human-machine collaboration. The theory of Grounded Discourse Representation Theory (GDRT) as developed in this thesis aims at a uniform processing of speech, thought and action, of object recognition, motor control and natural language meaning, of semantics and pragmatics. Developing a formalism that enables a robot to naturally engage in joint interaction is a demanding enterprise which combines major problems from areas such as computer science, linguistics, robotics, logics, psychology and philosophy. The prominent aspect highlighted in this thesis is that the combination of insights from research in these different areas leads to a revised and novel picture of the standard conceptions of meaning, reference and model theory. From a technical point of view, GDRT embeds the established formalism of Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) into a system of Computational Tree Logic and the Procedural Reasoning System. The main technical innovations of GDRT are the consequent use of anchors to model the referential relations between semantic representations, planning and reality and the introduction of a normative pragmatics of interpretation to the framework of truth-conditional formal semantics. The definition of an interface between action theory (pragmatics) and natural language (semantics) as proposed with GDRT allows for the elegant treatment of phenomena which constitute the core concepts underlying the intentional use of language: propositional attitudes, planning and practical reason. This thesis can also be understood as an attempt to break the ground for other areas of application to DRT (in the sense of a 'language of thoughts' that fills in the gap between linguistics and robotics) without loss of the ability to process the wide range of natural language phenomena DRT has been designed for.Die vorliegende Arbeit formuliert einen theoretischen Ansatz für die Verarbeitung zielgerichteter Interaktionen zwischen Menschen und Robotern an der Schnittstelle zwischen formaler Semantik und Pragmatik. Die Entwicklung eines solchen Formalismus, der es einem Roboter erlaubt in natürlicher Weise an gemeinsamen Aufgabenstellungen zu partizipieren, involviert zentrale Problemstellungen aus verschiedenen Wissenschaftsdisziplinen: Informatik, Linguistik, Robotik, Logik, Psychologie und Philosophie. Die in dieser Arbeit entwickelte 'Grounded Discourse Representation Theory' (GDRT) zielt darauf ab, in integrativer Weise Forschungsergebnisse dieser unterschiedlichen Wissenschaftsdisziplinen in einer Theorie der Semantik-Pragmatik Schnittstelle zu vereinen. Im Fokus steht dabei die Verankerung von expliziten semantischen Repräsentationen im Sinne der Diskursrepräsentationstheorie (DRT) in einer formalen Modelltheorie, die ihrerseits in Perzeptionen und Planungsstrukturen eines Roboters verankert ist. Es ist diese Form der Rückführung der Referenzstrukturen von Repräsentationen auf reale Zustände und zukünftige Pläne, die die Interpretation von semantischen Repräsentationen fundiert (daher 'Grounded' Discourse Representation Theory). Andersherum kann die Arbeit als Versuch verstanden werden, die sensomotorischen Fähigkeiten eines Roboters um den Umgang mit komplexen semantischen Repräsentationen zu erweitern und damit an die Forschungsrichtung der Computerlinguistik anzuschliessen. Prinzipiell stellt die GDRT damit einen Versuch dar, eine Brücke zwischen Robotik und Linguistik zu schlagen, indem sie dynamische Modellstrukturen als Mittler zwischen der hardwarenahen Seite der Objekterkennung und Motorkontrolle und der kognitionstheoretisch motivierten Seite des Gebrauchs von Repräsentationsstrukturen installiert
Ontology and argument structure in nominalizations
Get PDFBased on data from German -ung nominalizations, I argue that selection restriction tests are not suitable as linguistic tools for ontological disambiguation. Consequently, I question the significance of ontology as a starting point for linguistic theorizing. Instead, I argue for an underspecified account of the ontology of nominalizations, in which disambiguation looses its central role in the commerce with ambiguity
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
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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