56 research outputs found

    A Formal Account of Disorders in Dialogues

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    Formal modelling of dialogue: how words interact (not only in the dictionary!)

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    Deverbal semantics and the Montagovian generative lexicon

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    We propose a lexical account of action nominals, in particular of deverbal nominalisations, whose meaning is related to the event expressed by their base verb. The literature about nominalisations often assumes that the semantics of the base verb completely defines the structure of action nominals. We argue that the information in the base verb is not sufficient to completely determine the semantics of action nominals. We exhibit some data from different languages, especially from Romance language, which show that nominalisations focus on some aspects of the verb semantics. The selected aspects, however, seem to be idiosyncratic and do not automatically result from the internal structure of the verb nor from its interaction with the morphological suffix. We therefore propose a partially lexicalist approach view of deverbal nouns. It is made precise and computable by using the Montagovian Generative Lexicon, a type theoretical framework introduced by Bassac, Mery and Retor\'e in this journal in 2010. This extension of Montague semantics with a richer type system easily incorporates lexical phenomena like the semantics of action nominals in particular deverbals, including their polysemy and (in)felicitous copredications.Comment: A revised version will appear in the Journal of Logic, Language and Informatio

    A Semantic Framework for the Analysis of Privacy Policies

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    Some Formal Properties of Higher Order Anaphors

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    An Analysis of Japanese ta / teiru in a Dynamic Semantics Framework and a Comparison with Korean Temporal Markers a nohta / a twuta

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    In this paper I will shed new light on the semantics of Japanese tense-aspect markers ta and teiru from dynamic semantics and contrastive perspectives. The focus of investigation will be on the essential difference between ta and teiru used in an aspectual sense related to a perfect. I analyze the asymmetry between ta and teiru with empirical data and illustrate it in the DRT framework (Discourse Representation Theory: Kamp and Reyle (1993)). Defending the intuition that ta and teiru make respectively an eventive and a stative description of eventualities, I argue that ta is committed to an assertion of the triggering event whereas teiru is not. In the case of teiru, a triggering event, if there is any, is only entailed. In DRT, ta and teiru introduce respectively an event and a state as a codition into the main DRS. Teiru may introduce a triggering event only as a codition in an embedded DRS. I also illustrate how the proposed analysis of the perfect meaning fits into a more general scheme of ta and teiru. and analyze ta and teiru in a discourse. Furthermore, in DRT terms, I will compare Japanese ta / teiru with Korean perfect-related temporal markers a nohta / a twuta in light of Lee (1996)

    The Montagovian Generative Lexicon ΛT yn: a Type Theoretical Framework for Natural Language Semantics

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    International audienceWe present a framework, named the Montagovian generative lexicon, for computing the semantics of natural language sentences, expressed in many-sorted higher order logic. Word meaning is described by several lambda terms of second order lambda calculus (Girard’s system F): the principal lambda term encodes the argument structure, while the other lambda terms implement meaning transfers. The base types include a type for propositions and many types for sorts of a many-sorted logic for expressing restriction of selection. This framework is able to integrate a proper treatment of lexical phenomena into a Montagovian compositional semantics, like the (im)possible arguments of a predicate, and the adaptation of a word meaning to some contexts. Among these adaptations of a word meaning to contexts, ontological inclusions are handled by coercive subtyping, an extension of system F introduced in the present paper. The benefits of this framework for lexical semantics and pragmatics are illustrated on meaning transfers and coercions, on possible and impossible copredication over different senses, on deverbal ambiguities, and on “fictive motion”. Next we show that the compositional treatment of determiners, quantifiers, plurals, and other semantic phenomena is richer in our framework. We then conclude with the linguistic, logical and computational perspectives opened by the Montagovian generative lexicon

    Intervention Effects follow from Scope Rigidity in Turkish

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    Intervention effects in Turkish wh-questions can be obviated by the overt movement of the wh-phrase past the intervener. This cross-linguistically robust method of intervention obviation raises an important question: what is it that bans the covert movement of the wh-phrase? I argue that this question finds a natural answer in Scope Rigidity, a general restriction on the availability of inverse scope. Importantly, including wh-phrases in the domain of Scope Rigidity calls for a scopal account of wh-phrases. I argue that this general approach has welcome consequences in explaining the source of intervention effects and in predicting what can intervene, and can even accommodate how extraction islands containing wh-phrases behave in intervention configurations
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