Reference to individuals in natural language

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Reference to individuals in natural language

• Henriëtte de Swart
• Barcelona, May 2005

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What is this course about?

• Reference to individuals in natural language
• What is reference?
• Why study reference to individuals in natural
  language? Across languages?
• Relevance for linguistics? For cognitive science?

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Semantics

• Semantics study of meaning expressed by elements
  of a language or combinations thereof.
• What is meaning?
• What is language?

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What is meaning?

• The red light means that you cannot go in.
• a,b,c means the set consisting of the
  elements a, b, and c.
• The French word chien means dog.
• Do you know the meaning of the word
  hypochondriac?
• To denote, to be described or defined as, sense,
  significance, acceptation, denotation.

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Not our job..

• No deeper meaning or inner significance.
• What is the meaning of life?
• No intentions, purposes, etc.
• What do you mean by that look?
• No natural meaning.
• Those clouds mean rain.

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Semantics in linguistic theory

• Natural language as a system of communication.
• Function transfer of information.
• Communication implies speaker and hearer.

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Speaker-hearer
speaker
hearer
Intend ? Phrase ? Speak
Comprehend ? Understand ? Hear
Speech sound
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Language-cognition-world

• language

cognition
world
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Concepts and denotations

• language

concepts
denotations
cognition
world
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Truth conditional and conceptual semantics

• language

cognition
world
Truth-conditional semantics
Conceptual semantics
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Beyond words

• Lexical semantics meaning of words.
• Beyond words meaning of constituents, sentences,
  even discourses.
• Relevance of structure
• John hit Peter ? Peter hit John
• Word order ? Subject-Object relation ?
  Agent-Patient relation.

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Compositionality

• Principle of Compositionality of meaning the
  meaning of a complex whole is a function of the
  meaning of the composing parts, and the way in
  which they are put together.
• Lexical and structural information jointly
  determine the meaning of constituents and
  sentences.

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Variation across languages

• Natural languages vary lexicon, sounds,
  syntactic structure.
• Generative linguistics universal grammar
  (innate) and parametrisation.
• Optimality theory (OT) universal constraints
  (innate/learnt) and different orders of
  constraints.

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Pro-drop

• Some languages allow empty subjects (e.g.
  Italian), others dont (e.g. English).
• Piove Italiaans
• It is raining English
• Pro-drop parameter on or off (child has to learn
  the right setting). Assumes empty categories in
  linguistic representations.

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Competition in OT soft constraints

• Subject constraint Every sentence has a
  subject.
• Meaning constraint Every word in the sentence
  must be meaningful.
• Prince Smolensky (1997) relative weight of
  constraints determines English vs. Italian.
• English Subject C gtgt Meaning C
• Italian Meaning C gtgt Subject C.

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Typology in OT
pro-drop
no pro-drop
raining MeanC SubjC
piove
it piove
raining SubjC MeanC
? is raining
It is raining

• ?

• ?

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Variation in meaning

• Basic assumption human cognition is universal.
• Knowledge of first-order logic or equivalent
  leads to similar claims about entailments and
  other inference relations.
• Prediction semantics is always universal.
• No variation in meaning?????

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Locus of semantic variation

• Semantic variation arises
• (i) in the distribution of labor between forms
  and meanings.
• (ii) at the syntax-semantics interface.
• (iii) at the semantics-pragmatics interface.

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Semantic Variation I

• Tense and aspect. E.g. English Progressive vs.
  French Simple Present tense.
• John is eating an apple
• John eats an apple/ John bikes to school.
• Jean est en train de manger une pomme.
• Jean mange une pomme/Jean va à lécole en vélo.

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Perfect Tenses

• Universal Perfect for or since
• Mary has lived in London for three years (now).
• Marie a vécu à Londres pendant trois ans
  (maintenant).
• Marie vit à Londres depuis trois ans.
• Mary lives in London since three years.

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Perfect tenses in discourse

• French uses Passé Composé to tell a story (e.g.
  Camus) English does not Dutch does sometimes.
• Aujourdhui, maman est morte (PC). Ou peut-être
  hier, je ne sais pas (PR). Jai reçu un
  télégramme de lasile (PC) ().
• Mother died today (SP). Or maybe yesterday, I
  dont know (PR). I had a telegram from the home
  (SP) (...).
• Vandaag is moeder gestorven (VTT). Of
  misschien gisteren, ik weet het niet (OTT). Ik
  ontving een telegram uit het gesticht (OVT)
  (...)

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Questions about tense/aspect

• Questions about tense and aspect in
  cross-linguistic semantics.
• What forms are available in a language?
• How are truth-conditional meanings distributed
  over available forms?
• Are certain meanings only available as hidden
  aspectual shifts (coercion)?
• How are the forms used in discourse (dynamic
  semantics, pragmatics)?

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Semantic variation II

• Meaning of determiners. E.g. Dutch Sommige vs.
  English some.
• Some flowers grew behind the shed.
• Sommige bloemen groeiden achter de schuur.
• Some do, others dont

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Bare plurals

• English bare plurals existential or generic.
• Dogs were playing in the garden. ?
• Dogs like to play. Gen
• Bare plurals in Romance existential, not
  generic.

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Italian

• Elefanti di colore bianco hanno creato in passato
  grande curiosità.
• Elephants of color white have raised in the past
  great curiosity.
• Ucelli di zone paludose sono intelligenti.
• Birds of the marshlands are intelligent.
• Gli ucelli di zone paludose sono intelligenti.

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French

• No bare plurals, but indefinite plurals.
• Only existential, not generic (like Italian).
• Des enfants jouaient dans la rue.
• Indef-pl children were playing in the street.
• Des enfants aiment le chocolat.
• Indef-pl children like chocolate.
• Les enfants aiment le chocolat.

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Incorporation

• Incorporation in West Greenlandic, Hindi,
  Hungarian, etc, not in English, Romance direct
  relation between verb and object.
• Arnajarq eqalut-tur-p-u-q. WG
• A.abs salmon-eat-Ind--tr-3sg.
• Arnajaraq eats salmon/is a salmon-eater.

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Questions about bare plurals

• How are bare plurals related to other NPs/DPs
  (scope, anaphora, quantificational force,
  referential force, incorporation).
• How are bare plurals related to bare singulars?
  To bare mass nouns? To indefinite plurals as in
  French?
• If generic reference is strongly related to
  bareness, why do Romance bare plurals not allow
  generic readings?

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Semantic Variation III

• Despite the simplicity of the one-place
  connective of propositional logic (?p is true if
  and only if p is not true) and of the laws of
  inference in which it participates (e.g. the Law
  of Double Negation from ??p infer p, and vice
  versa), the form and function of negative
  statements in ordinary language are far from
  simple and transparent. Horn (1989)

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Negative quantifiers

• Split scope in Germanic languages.
• Iedereen is geen genie. Dutch
• Everyone is no genius (split ???)
• Jeder Arzt hat kein Auto.
• Every doctor has no car.

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Split scope with modals.

• Ze hoeven geen verpleegkundigen te ontslaan.
• They need no nurses to fire ???
• Hanna sucht kein Buch
• De re there is no book that Hanna is looking
  for.
• De dicto the object of Hs quest is not a book.
• split it is not the case that what H. is
  looking for is a book.

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Double Negation and Negative Concord

• Multiple negations DN and NC
• Nobody said nothing. (Eng) ??x??y
• Niemand zei niets. (Dutch) ??x??y
• Nadie miraba a nadie. (Spa) ??x?y
• Nessuno ha parlato con nessuno. (Ital)
  ??x?y
• Personne na rien dit. (Fr) ambiguous

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Questions about DN and NC

• Negative Concord raises problems for the
  principle of compositionality of meaning two
  negative expressions, but only one semantic
  negation.
• How are double negation and negative concord
  languages related? (typology of negation).

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Aims of this course

• Learn semantic tools to address reference to
  individuals in natural language type theory,
  lambda abstraction, type shift, DRT.
• Learn to use these tools to address questions
  about reference to individuals in a particular
  language/ in a cross-linguistic perspective.
• Enjoy doing natural language semantics!