Processing underspecified semantic representations in the constraint language for lambda structures

The constraint language for lambda structures (CLLS) is an expressive language of tree descriptions which combines dominance constraints with powerful parallelism and binding constraints. CLLS was introduced as a uniform framework for defining underspecified semantics representations of natural language sentences, covering scope, ellipsis, and anaphora. This article presents saturation-based algorithms for processing the complete language of CLLS. It also gives an overview of previous results on questions of processing and complexity.Liegt nicht vor

Processing underspecified semantic representations in the constraint language for lambda structures

The constraint language for lambda structures (CLLS) is an expressive language of tree descriptions which combines dominance constraints with powerful parallelism and binding constraints. CLLS was introduced as a uniform framework for defining underspecified semantics representations of natural language sentences, covering scope, ellipsis, and anaphora. This article presents saturation-based algorithms for processing the complete language of CLLS. It also gives an overview of previous results on questions of processing and complexity.Liegt nicht vor

On Davidsonian and kimian states

Davidsonian event semantics has an impressive track record as a framework for natural language analysis. In recent years it has become popular to assume that not only action verbs but predicates of all sorts have an additional event argument. Yet, this hypothesis is not without controversy in particular wrt the particularly challenging case of statives. Maienborn (2003a, 2004) argues that there is a need for distinguishing two kinds of states. While verbs such as sit, stand, sleep refer to eventualities in the sense of Davidson (= Davidsonian states), the states denoted by such stative verbs like know, weigh,and own, as well as any combination of copula plus predicate are of a different ontological type (= Kimian states). Against this background, the present study assesses the two main arguments that have been raised in favour of a Davidsonian approach for statives. These are the combination with certain manner adverbials and Parsons (2000) so-called time travel argument. It will be argued that the manner data which, at first sight, seem to provide evidence for a Davidsonian approach to statives are better analysed as non-compositional reinterpretations triggered by the lack of a regular Davidsonian event argument. As for Parsons´s time travel argument, it turns out that the original version does not supply the kind of support for the Davidsonian approach that Parsons supposed. However, properly adapted, the time travel argument may provide additional evidence for the need of reifying the denotatum of statives, as suggested by the assumption of Kimian states

Constructing concepts and word meanings: the role of context and memory traces

The main aim of this thesis is to develop a new account of concepts and word meaning which provides a fully adequate basis for inferential accounts of linguistic communication, while both respecting philosophical insights into the nature of concepts and cohering with empirical findings in psychology on memory processes. In accord with the ‘action’ tradition in linguistic theorising, I maintain that utterance/speaker meaning is more basic than sentence meaning and that the approach to word meaning that naturally follows from this is ‘contextualism’. Contextualism challenges two assumptions of the traditional ‘minimalist’ approach to semantics: (i) that semantics (rather than pragmatics) is the appropriate locus of propositional content (hence truth-conditions); and, (ii) that words contribute stable, context-independent meanings to the sentences in which they appear. I set out two stages in the development of an adequate contextualist account of utterance content. The first provides an essential reformulation of the early insights of Paul Grice by demonstrating the unavoidability of pragmatic contributions to truth-conditional content. The second argues that the ubiquity of context-dependence justifies a radically different view of word meaning from that employed in all current pragmatic theorising, including relevance theory: rather than words expressing concepts or encoding stable meanings of any sort, both concepts and word meanings are constructed ad hoc in the process of on-line communication/interpretation, that is, in their situations of use. Finally, I show how my account of word meaning is supported by recent research in psychology: context-dependence is also rampant in category and concept formation, and multiple-trace memory models show how information distributed in memory across a multitude of previous occasions of language use can come together to build an occasion-specific word meaning, thereby bypassing the need for fixed word meanings

Reanalysis processes in native and non-native language comprehension

Temporarily ambiguous sentences (e.g., When Mary dressed the baby laughed happily.) are known to cause comprehension difficulties, as initially assigned interpretations (Mary dressed the baby) need to be revised but are not always fully discarded from memory. The similarities and differences between native (L1) and non-native (L2) sentence processing have been widely debated, and many studies have examined L1 and L2 ambiguity resolution. How L2 speakers deal with misinterpretation is however less known. Further, while studies have looked at ambiguous sentences, how reanalysis occurs in both L1 and L2 speakers in sentences containing filler-dependencies (e.g., It was the book which the boy read the article about.) is not known. This thesis reports three studies investigating these issues in L1 and L2 processing, using offline, eyetracking while reading and structural priming tasks. The results showed that L2 participants performed syntactic reanalysis like L1 participants during the processing of garden-path sentences, with both groups showing evidence of lingering misinterpretation. Lingering misinterpretation was also found in filler-gap sentences, but there were some L1/L2 differences in certain fillergap constructions such that reanalysis may be less complete for L2 than L1 speakers during online reading, depending on the nature of disambiguating cues and/or reanalysis difficulty. In general, the lingering misinterpretation observed in temporarily ambiguous and filler-gap sentences in both L1and L2 readers results at least partly from failures to discard initially assigned misinterpretations

Three event-related potential studies on phonological, morpho-syntactic, and semantic aspects

Sign languages have often been the subject of imaging studies investigating the underlying neural correlates of sign language processing. To the contrary, much less research has been conducted on the time-course of sign language processing. There are only a small number of event-related potential (ERP) studies that investigate semantic or morpho-syntactic anomalies in signed sentences. Due to specific properties of the manual-visual modality, sign languages differ from spoken languages in two respects: On the one hand, they are produced in a three-dimensional signing space, on the other hand, sign languages can use several (manual and nonmanual) articulators simul¬taneously. Thus, sign languages have modality-specific characteristics that have an impact on the way they are processed. This thesis presents three ERP studies on different linguistic aspects processed in German Sign Language (DGS) sentences. Chapter 1 investigates the hypothesis of a forward model perspec¬tive on prediction. In a semantic expectation mismatch design, deaf native signers saw videos with DGS sentences that ended in semantically expected or unexpected signs. Since sign languages entail relatively long transition phases between one sign and the next, we tested whether a prediction error of the upcoming sign is already detectable prior to the actual sign onset. Unexpected signs engendered an N400 previous to the critical sign onset that was thus elicited by properties of the transition phase. Chapter 2 presents a priming study on cross-modal cross-language co-activation. Deaf bimodal bilingual participants saw DGS sentences that contained prime-target pairs in one of two priming conditions. In overt phonological priming, prime and target signs were phonologically minimal pairs, while in covert orthographic priming, German translations of prime and target were orthographic minimal pairs, but there was no overlap between the signs. Target signs with overt phonological or with covert orthographic overlap engendered a reduced negativity in the electrophysiological signal. Thus, deaf bimodal bilinguals co-activate their second language (written) German unconsciously during processing sentences in their native sign language. Chapter 3 presents two ERP studies investigating the morpho-syntactic aspects of agreement in DGS. One study tested DGS sentences with incorrect, i.e. unspecified, agreement verbs, the other study tested DGS sentences with plain verbs that incorrectly inflected for 3rd person agreement. Agreement verbs that ended in an unspecified location engen¬dered two independent ERP effects: a positive deflection on posterior electrodes (220-570 ms relative to trigger nonmanual cues) and an anterior effect on left frontal electrodes (300-600 ms relative to the sign onset). In contrast, incorrect plain verbs resulted in a broadly distributed positive deflection (420-730 ms relative to the mismatch onset). These results contradict previous findings of agreement violation in sign languages and are discussed to reflect a violation of well-formedness or processes of context-updating. The stimulus materials of all four studies were consistently presented in continuously signed sentences presented in non-manipulated videos. This methodological innovation enabled a distinctive perspective on the time-course of sign language processing

Arrows for knowledge-based circuits

Knowledge-based programs (KBPs) are a formalism for directly relating agents' knowledge and behaviour in a way that has proven useful for specifying distributed systems. Here we present a scheme for compiling KBPs to executable automata in finite environments with a proof of correctness in Isabelle/HOL. We use Arrows, a functional programming abstraction, to structure a prototype domain-specific synchronous language embedded in Haskell. By adapting our compilation scheme to use symbolic representations we can apply it to several examples of reasonable size

Temporal implicatures

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-213).This dissertation proposes a theory of temporal implicatures, and applies it to the study of tense in Mbyá Guaraní. It is composed of two parts. In the first one, I discuss the analyses of temporal implicatures developed by Musan (1995, 1997) and Magri (2009). Although I argue in favor of Magri's (2009) analysis, I reject two aspects of his proposal: that tense is universally or generically quantified in individual level sentences, and that the present tense is vacuous (following Sauerland 2002). Building on the semantics of tense presented in chapter 2, I propose a revision of Magri's analysis in chapter 3, which integrates Katzir's (2008) theory of structurally defined alternatives, and relies on a more conservative non-vacuous analysis of the present. Sauerland's (2002) arguments that the present tense is vacuous are criticized in chapter 5. In the second part of the dissertation, I study the expression and interpretation of tense in Mbyá. Like its close relative Paraguayan Guarani, Mbyá has two temporal morphemes -kue and -rã that can be used either in clauses or inside noun phrases. However, the nominal uses of -kue and -rã license inferences that are not attested in their clausal uses. This lead Tonhauser (2006, 2007, 2011b) to argue that the nominal uses of -kue and -rã are not tenses, and that Paraguayan Guarani is a tenseless language. I challenge both of these claims in Mbyá. After presenting a descriptive overview of the expression of tense in Mbyá in chapter 6, I argue in chapter 7 that -kue in its clausal uses is best analyzed as a relative past tense, and -rã as a future oriented modal. I conclude that Mbyá is not a tenseless language. In chapter 8, I propose a unified analysis of nominal and clausal uses of -kue and -rã. I argue that the special properties of their nominal uses are due to the interaction between temporal implicatures and independently attested presuppositions of noun phrases. I show that these temporal implicatures are also attested in clausal uses of -kue and -rã, although they are obligatory in their nominal uses, while they can be blocked in their clausal uses. I propose an explanation of this contrast.by Guillaume Thomas.Ph.D