Donkeys under Discussion

Donkey sentences have existential and universal readings, but they are not often perceived as ambiguous. We extend the pragmatic theory of nonmaximality in plural definites by Križ (2016) to explain how context disambiguates donkey sentences. We propose that the denotations of such sentences produce truth-value gaps — in certain scenarios the sentences are neither true nor false — and demonstrate that Križ’s pragmatic theory fills these gaps to generate the standard judgments of the literature. Building on Muskens’s (1996) Compositional Discourse Representation Theory and on ideas from supervaluation semantics, the semantic analysis defines a general schema for quantification that delivers the required truth-value gaps. Given the independently motivated pragmatic theory of Križ 2016, we argue that mixed readings of donkey sentences require neither plural information states, contra Brasoveanu 2008, 2010, nor error states, contra Champollion 2016, nor singular donkey pronouns with plural referents, contra Krifka 1996, Yoon 1996. We also show that the pragmatic account improves over alternatives like Kanazawa 1994 that attribute the readings of donkey sentences to the monotonicity properties of the embedding quantifier

Number and plural semantics: Empirical evidence from Marori

This paper presents new empirical evidence from Marori (a Papuan language of Southern New Guinea) for the semantics of number in a complex number system. Marori has a basic three-way number system, singular/dual/plural. Marori is notable for showing distributed number exponence and constructed number strategies, in sharp contrast with familiar twoway, morphologically simpler number systems in languages such as English. Unlike in English, the reference of plurals in Marori in many contexts is to a group of three or more individuals. While Marori’s number system is typologically quite different from English, it shows an intriguing similarity in that in certain contexts, plural/nonsingular forms allow an inclusive reading (i.e. reference to any number of individuals, including one). The paper also presents evidence that all number types, including constructed dual, can be used for generic reference. The paper concludes with remarks on the theoretical significance of our findings

Qualities, objects, sorts, and other treasures : gold digging in English and Arabic

In the present monograph, we will deal with questions of lexical typology in the nominal domain. By the term "lexical typology in the nominal domain", we refer to crosslinguistic regularities in the interaction between (a) those areas of the lexicon whose elements are capable of being used in the construction of "referring phrases" or "terms" and (b) the grammatical patterns in which these elements are involved. In the traditional analyses of a language such as English, such phrases are called "nominal phrases". In the study of the lexical aspects of the relevant domain, however, we will not confine ourselves to the investigation of "nouns" and "pronouns" but intend to take into consideration all those parts of speech which systematically alternate with nouns, either as heads or as modifiers of nominal phrases. In particular, this holds true for adjectives both in English and in other Standard European Languages. It is well known that adjectives are often difficult to distinguish from nouns, or that elements with an overt adjectival marker are used interchangeably with nouns, especially in particular semantic fields such as those denoting MATERIALS or NATlONALlTIES. That is, throughout this work the expression "lexical typology in the nominal domain" should not be interpreted as "a typology of nouns", but, rather, as the cross-linguistic investigation of lexical areas constitutive for "referring phrases" irrespective of how the parts-of-speech system in a specific language is defined

Typological parameters of genericity

Different languages employ different morphosyntactic devices for expressing genericity. And, of course, they also make use of different morphosyntactic and semantic or pragmatic cues which may contribute to the interpretation of a sentence as generic rather than episodic. [...] We will advance the strong hypo thesis that it is a fundamental property of lexical elements in natural language that they are neutral with respect to different modes of reference or non-reference. That is, we reject the idea that a certain use of a lexical element, e.g. a use which allows reference to particular spatio-temporally bounded objects in the world, should be linguistically prior to all other possible uses, e.g. to generic and non-specific uses. From this it follows that we do not consider generic uses as derived from non-generic uses as it is occasionally assumed in the literature. Rather, we regard these two possibilities of use as equivalent alternative uses of lexical elements. The typological differences to be noted therefore concern the formal and semantic relationship of generic and non-generic uses to each other; they do not pertain to the question of whether lexical elements are predetermined for one of these two uses. Even supposing we found a language where generic uses are always zero-marked and identical to lexical sterns, we would still not assume that lexical elements in this language primarily have a generic use from which the non-generic uses are derived. (Incidentally, none of the languages examined, not even Vietnamese, meets this criterion.

Formal foundations for semantic theories of nominalisation

This paper develops the formal foundations of semantic theories dealing with various kinds of nominalisations. It introduces a combination of an event-calculus with a type-free theory which allows a compositional description to be given of such phenomena like Vendler's distinction between perfect and imperfect nominals, iteration of gerunds and Cresswell's notorious non-urrival of'the train examples. Moreover, the approach argued for in this paper allows a semantic explanation to be given for a wide range of grammatical observations such as the behaviour of certain tpes of nominals with respect to their verbal contexts or the distribution of negation in nominals

Introduction

Introduction to genericity in the nominal, verbal and sentential domain

Acquisition of the Possessive Determiners his and her in pre-adolescent L1 Catalan / Spanish children

The present TFG provides insight into the acquisition of possessive determiners his/her in English by L1 Catalan/Spanish speakers. Fourteen pre-adolescent children were tested through two elicited production tasks. Results show that the possessive determiner his cannot be claimed to be operative as an unmarked default form. In fact, a slight preference for her was found. On the other hand, because Catalan and Spanish agree the possessive determiners with the object and not with the subject, gender transfer was expected. However, results show that gender transfer does not seem to be an issue. The animacy hierarchy cannot account for the errors produced either. Further research concerning prepositional phrases should be pursued as well as concerning developmental sequences of the acquisition of possessive determiner.El present treball aporta dades sobre l'adquisició dels determinants possessius his/her en anglès per parlants nadius de català i castellà. Catorze nens pre-adolescents van ser avaluats amb dues tasques de producció. Els resultats demostren que el possessiu his no s'utilitza com a forma predeterminada. De fet, s'ha trobat una lleugera preferència pel possessiu her. D'altra banda, s'esperava transferència de gènere a causa de les maneres divergents de concordar el possessiu en català/castellà i anglès. No obstant, els resultats mostren que la transferència de gènere no és remarcable. La jerarquia d'animacitat tampoc sembla poder justificar els errors comesos. S'encoratja més recerca en el camp de frases preposicionals i de seqüències de desenvolupament en l''adquisició dels determinants possessius

Information structure and the referential status of linguistic expression : workshop as part of the 23th annual meetings of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft in Leipzig, Leipzig, February 28 - March 2, 2001

This volume comprises papers that were given at the workshop Information Structure and the Referential Status of Linguistic Expressions, which we organized during the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS) Conference in Leipzig in February 2001. At this workshop we discussed the connection between information structure and the referential interpretation of linguistic expressions, a topic mostly neglected in current linguistics research. One common aim of the papers is to find out to what extent the focus-background as well as the topic-comment structuring determine the referential interpretation of simple arguments like definite and indefinite NPs on the one hand and sentences on the other