Semantic Structures 2010

Henriëtte de Swart

Who is this course for?

Students in the research master in linguistics

Students in the MA CAI. Students in the one-year MA in

linguistics (linguistics, modern languages)

What is this course about? Semantics: empirical knowledge,

theories, research skills, integration in ongoing research

Focus: ongoing NWO programme “Weak referentiality: bare nominals at the interface of lexicon, syntax and semantics” (2008-12).

http://www.let.uu.nl/~Min.Que/personal/wr/index.htm

Organization

Group project collective teaching different perspectives

General intro (today) (Henriëtte) What are bare nominals? What is

weak referentiality? What are the research questions? Why do we worry about them? What is the approach? What are the results so far?

What are bare nominals? I Bare nominals are nominal structures

that do not have an article or a quantifier.

In English we find lots of bare plurals and bare mass nouns: I read books, I drank milk.

‘Totally’ bare nominals do not have any functional morphology (plurality). Mass nouns are different from count nouns.

What are bare nominals? II

In English, we cannot use bare, singular count nominals in regular argument position: *I read book, I ate apple.

But we find them elsewhere: at school, in hospital, the way to use knife and fork, door after door. WHY?

What are bare nominals? III In other languages, the use of bare

count singular is much more free. WHY?

Wò kànjiàn xióng le. [Chinese] I see bear ASP ‘I saw a bear/some bears.’

dan ra’a namer. [Hebrew] Dan saw tiger ‘Dan saw a tiger.’

Weak referentiality I We find bare nominals in English/Dutch

in contexts in which the referential force of the nominal is ‘weak’.

John is in prison. #It is a brick building. Ik weet dat Peter viool speelt. #Kan hii

‘m meenemen? [Dutch] I know that Peter plays violin. #Can he bring it?

Lexical restrictions

John is major of NY/is a lawyer. In prison/at school/at the office. Why does English permit bare

predication only with nouns that somehow have a uniqueness feature?

Why does English permit bare PPs with prison, school, etc. but not office?

Cross-linguistic differences.

In prison (E)/en prison (F)/in de gevangenis (D).

In hospital (Br.E.)/in the hospital (Am.E.)/ in het ziekenhuis (D).

At school (E)/ op school (D)/ à l’école (F).

There is overlap in nominal domains, but also differences: where? why?

Weak definites/indefinites

We also find weakly referential nominals that are not bare.

John is a lawyer (cf. Jan is advokaat --Dutch) Mary is listening to the radio (cf. Mary is watching television) How do we understand the def/indef

article in weakly referring contexts?

Back to organization General intro: issues, approach,

organization. Part I: cross-linguistic semantics of bare

nominals (corpus research, offline experiments) (Bert).

Part II: lexical restrictions on bare PPs, corpus research and the syntax-semantics interface (Joost).

Part III: processing weakly referential definites (eye-tracking) (Ana).

Website

http://www.let.uu.nl/~Bert.leBruyn/personal/semstruct2010/index.htm

Links to papers, other sources, exercises, results.

Please consult regularly for updates!

Participation

Each part covers two weeks: intro by project researcher followed by students’ presentations of research on theme.

NIAS Workshop: meet other researchers working on the topic embedding the research in a broader context.

Final paper: more or less elaborate research paper (depending on credit).

Languages

What languages do we speak?

Nominal structure: data

Does your language use definite articles?

Does your language use indefinite articles?

Bare plurals? Bare singulars? Please give examples!

Indefinite article: existentiality

A book, a student: existential quantification. GQ definition:

||a || = PQx[P(x) & Q(x)]

Indefinite article in discourse

A child was playing in the park. The funny little creature wore a green hat, and purple socks.

New (in discourse perspective): a P introduces a new discourse referent u and the condition P(u).

Definite article: uniqueness

What is the semantic contribution of a definite article? The sun, the queen of the Netherlands. GQ definition:

||the || = PQx[y[P(y) x=y] & Q(x)]

Uniqueness part is taken to be asserted (Russell) or presupposed (Strawson).

Definite article in discourse

A child was playing in the park. The funny little creature wore a green hat, and purple socks.

Familiarity (in discourse perspective): the P introduces a discourse referent v and the condition P(v), and v = u, where u is an accessible discourse referent in the DRS.

Bare plurals

Existential reading: I bought flowers, unicorns appeared on the horizon.

Generic reading: Cats hate dogs, Cats have four legs. (special semantics needed)

Semantics of existential reading: existential quantification + plurality (sums, sets)/new discourse referent (over sums).

Form/meaning mapping

Farkas and de Swart (2003): plural morphology presupposes discourse referent accomodation takes care of discourse referential force.

Bare plural with existential reading: similar to singular indefinite, but no article.

Lack of article: where does the existential semantics of bare plurals come from?

Cross-linguistic variation

Puzzle: semantics of definite/indefinite article alike across languages that have such an article.

But not all languages have a definite/indefinite article. Why?

Semantics of bare nominals in a language depends on presence/absence of plural morphology, definite/indefinite article. Why?

Form-meaning mapping

Assume: all humans make the same conceptual disctinctions (atoms vs. sums, old vs. new, uniqueness, …).

Language variation resides in mapping of meanings unto forms.

Approaches: ‘covert’ projections, lexical variation, optimality theory.

Speaker and hearer economy

Languages can choose economy of form (‘bare’ nominals, less elaborate functional morphology). Easy to produce, hard to interpret (ambiguities)

Language can choose elaborate functional morphology to convey uniqueness, newness, etc. Easy to interpret (semantics hardwired into form), hard to produce (formal complexity).

Markedness: economy

Basic markedness constraint: *FunctN.

*FunctN: avoid functional morphology in the nominal domain.

Markedness constraint bars formal complexity preference for bare nominals.

Faithfulness: plurality

Faithfulness constraints encode form-meaning correspondence.

FPl: Plural predication on a discourse referent maps to expression in Num.

Conceptual distinction between atom/sum triggers syntactic reflex (English –s).

Faithfulness: definiteness

Fdef: Uniqueness/familiarity of a discourse referent corresponds with a definite article in D.

Conceptual notion of uniqueness/ familiarity triggers reflex in D (English the).

Faithfulness: reference

Fdr: the presence of a discourse referent in the semantics corresponds with a strong functional layer above NP.

English: plural morphology (-s) or article/quantifier in D (last resort: a).

Ranking constraints

All constraints are universal; ranking is language specific.

Contraints are soft, violable. Ranking determines ‘weight’. Lower ranked constraints can be violated in order to satisfy higher ranked constraints.

Reranking constraints = language typology.

Mandarin Chinese *FunctN >> {FPl, Fdef, Fdr} Wò kànjiàn xióng le.

I see bear ASP ‘I saw a bear/some bears.’

No plural morphology, no definite/ indefinite article: bare nominals are number neutral, but can introduce discourse referents.

Hindi, Georgian, Russian, ..

FPl >> *FunctN >> {Fdef, Fdr} burtebi goravs.

[Georgian] balls.pl.nom roll.3sg ‘Balls/the balls are rolling.’

Plural morphology on the noun, no definite/indefinite article.

Hebrew {FPl, Fdef} >> *FunctN >> Fdr dan ra’a namer.

Dan saw tiger ‘Dan saw a tiger.’

ha-yam-im ‘avru maher. The day.pl pass.past.3pl quickly ‘The days passed quickly.’

Sg/pl morphology, def./bare contrast.

St’átimcets (Salish)

{Fpl, Fdr} >> *FunctN >> FDef Tecwm-mín-lhkan ti púkw-a lhkúnsa.

Buy.appl.1sg.sub det book.det today ‘I bought a/the book today.

Singular/plural morphology on noun, circumfixed determiner for discourse referentiality, but neutral for def/indef.

English, Dutch, Italian, …

{Fdr, Fdef, FPl} >> *FunctN I bought a book/the

book/books/the books. Def/indef contrast, no bare

singulars in regular argument position, bare plurals OK (strong pl).

French

{Fdr, Fpl, Fdef} >> *FunctN J’ai acheté un livre/le livre/des

livres/les livres. I bought a book/the book/indef_pl books/the books.

Def/indef contrast in sg and pl (weak pl morphology).

OT typologyranking features example*FunctN >> {Fpl, Fdef, Fdr}

No number, no articles

Chinese, Japanese

Fpl >> *FunctN >> {Fdr, Fdef}

Sg/pl contrast, no articles

Hindi, Georgian, Russian

{Fpl,Fdef} >> *FunctN >> Fdr

Sg/pl contrast, def/bare contrast

Hebrew

{Fpl, Fdr} >> *FunctN >> Fdef

Sg/pl contrast, no bare nominals (weak Num)

St’átimcets

{Fpl, Fdr, Fdef} >> *FunctN

Def/indef contrast, bare plurals OK

English, Dutch, Italian

{Fpl, Fdr, Fdef} >> *FunctN

Def/indef contrast, no bare nominals

French

Emergence of the unmarked

Bare nominal: satisfies *FunctN. Minimal form unmarked. Even in languages in which several

faithfulness constraints outrank *FunctN, we find bare nominal wherever we can.

Emergence of the unmarked

Semantics of bare nominals

The semantics of the bare nominal: complement of the marked expression under strong bidirectional optimization.

Hindi/Mandarin bare sg: def/indef Hebrew bare sg/pl: indef (for def is

marked) English bare plural: indef (for def is

marked).

English bare plurals

non-def def

bare pl

def pl

Distribution bare singulars

Ranking *FunctN >> Fdr: bare singulars OK in regular argument position (Mandarin, Hindi, Russian, Hebrew..)

Ranking Fdr >> *FunctN: bare singulars blocked from regular argument position (English, French, St’átimcets,…).

Semantic constraint: Arg

Semantic faithfulness constraint: Arg: parse an XP in argument position as a

discourse referent (where X= N, Num or D). Arg relates presence of nominal projection

(NP, NumP, DP) in regular argument position to discourse reference.

We don’t need form to convey meaning: bare nominal in argument position referential.

Bare sg escaping Arg

John is in prison. #It is a brick building. Ik weet dat Peter viool speelt. #Kan hii

‘m meenemen? [Dutch] I know that Peter plays violin. #Can he bring it?

Lack of discourse anaphoric binding lack of discourse referent Fdr does not apply bare sg OK.

Extension

Is this true for other environments in which bare nominals occur in languages like English, Dutch, French, ..?

Examples. Corpus research see part II. Production experiments on discourse

anaphora see part III

Semantics of bare sg

What do bare singulars mean in ‘weakly referring’ environments?

Lack of discourse referentiality in languages that have a high ranking of Fdr.

Pragmatic ‘enrichment’ to set aside meaning of bare nominal from full nominal.

Bare vs. marked I

John is in jail. John is in the jail. Full PP: location. Bare PP: location + activity sense

(John is a prisoner). Full PP: location – activity sense

(John is in the building, but not as a prisoner)

Bare vs. marked II

Henriëtte is manager. [Dutch] Henriëtte is een manager. Henriëtte is (a) manager. Bare predication: professional

interpretation (‘capacity’ reading). Non-bare predication: general (minus professional reading).

Horn’s division of pragm. labor

Unmarked forms pair up with unmarked meanings, marked forms pair up with marked meanings.

Minimal form preferred: bare nominal is unmarked form.

Stereotypical interpretation preferred: unmarked meaning.

Bare location (weak biOT)

prisoner

visitor

bare PP

def PP

Bare predication (weak biOT)

capacity metaphor

bare pred

indef pred.

Get to work.. We can account for the contrast between

bare/marked PPs/predication, but what are articles doing in these weakly referential environments and what do they mean?

Parts I and II: lexicon-syntax-semantics interface of bare nominals in a cross-linguistic semantics: corpus research and offline experiments (Bert, Joost).

Part III: processing weakly referential definites: online and offline experiments (Ana).