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.

A contrastive study of quantifying expressions in English and Chinese

Quantifizierung ist eine wichtige Funktion der Kommunikation. Wenn man ueber Gegenstände spricht, ist es oft essentiell deren Mengen anzugeben. Die Wichtigkeit der Quantifizierung existiert nicht nur in der englischen Sprache, sondern auch in anderen Sprachen. Diese Arbeit zeigt die Unterschiede und Ähnlichkeiten zwischen englischen und chinesischen Ausdruecken der Quantifizierung auf, anschliessend werden die Forschungsergebnisse in ein alltägliches Fremdsprachen-Unterrichtsszenario übertragen.Quantification is an important communicative function. When we talk about things, it is often essential to signal their quantities. The importance of quantification can not only be seen in English but also in other languages. This thesis shows differences and similarities between English and Chinese quantifying expressions and transfers the findings to use in a day-to-day foreign language classroom setting

Quantification and Predication in Mandarin Chinese: A Case Study of Dou

In the more recent generalized quantifier theory, \u27every\u27 is defined as a relation between two sets such that the first set is a subset of the second set (Cooper (1987), van Benthem (1986)). We argue in this dissertation that the formal definition of \u27every\u27 ought to reflect our intuition that this quantifier is always associated with a pairing. For instance, \u27Every student left\u27 means that for every student there is an event (Davidson (1966), Kroch (1974), Mourelatos (1978), Bach (1986)) such that the student left in that event. We propose that the formal translation of EVERY be augmented by relating its two arguments via a skolem function. A skolem function links two variables by making the choice of a value for one variable depend on the choice of a value for the other. This definition of EVERY, after which \u27every\u27 and its Chinese counterpart \u27mei\u27 can be modeled, can help us explain the co-occurrence pattern between \u27mei\u27 and the adverb \u27dou\u27. It was observed in S.-Z. Huang (1995a) that \u27mei\u27 requires either \u27dou\u27, or an indefinite phrase, or a reflexive in its scope. Under the skolemized definition of EVERY, this is explainable: The skolem function needs a variable in the scope of EVERY. We stipulate that only morphologically/lexically licensed variables are available for quantification (of this kind). \u27Dou\u27 occurs with \u27mei\u27 because \u27dou\u27 can license the event variable for skolemization. This function of \u27dou\u27 is performed by the tense operator in English, while Chinese, lacking tense, resorts to \u27dou\u27. \u27Dou\u27, we will argue, is a sum operator on the event variable. Thus, \u27dou VPs\u27 always assert plural events, which predicts that the distribution of \u27dou\u27 may or may not involve universal quantification. Among other things, our account explains scope ambiguity in Chinese, the optionality of \u27dou\u27, and the interchangeability, in a number of contexts, between \u27dou\u27 and conjunction/additive words for VPs such as \u27ye\u27 also, and , \u27you\u27 also, again , and \u27hai\u27 also, still

Formal approaches to number in Slavic and beyond (Volume 5)

The goal of this collective monograph is to explore the relationship between the cognitive notion of number and various grammatical devices expressing this concept in natural language with a special focus on Slavic. The book aims at investigating different morphosyntactic and semantic categories including plurality and number-marking, individuation and countability, cumulativity, distributivity and collectivity, numerals, numeral modifiers and classifiers, as well as other quantifiers. It gathers 19 contributions tackling the main themes from different theoretical and methodological perspectives in order to contribute to our understanding of cross-linguistic patterns both in Slavic and non-Slavic languages

Nominal Possession in Mandarin Chinese

PhDThe present thesis investigates possessive constructions in Mandarin Chinese (MC), with a focus on the peculiarities of the syntactic realisations of kinship, bodypart and property-denoting relationships. These can be expressed grammatically without the appearance of the possessive marker de, in contrast to other types of possession. In opposition to the traditional view that these phenomena are derived by deleting the possessive marker de, I argue that they have a distinct syntax and semantics. I defend the idea that a DP is projected in the nominal domain in MC and propose that the noun phrase in MC has the following hierarchy: [DP [DemP [NumP [ClP NP]]]]. I argue that the morpheme men is a plural marker bearing a dependency to D, and it follows that instances where a nominal or pronominal is suffixed by men are phrasal. On this basis, I examine the syntax and semantics of juxtaposed possessive (JP) expressions where a personal pronoun is juxtaposed with a kinship noun, arguing that the kinship term is a head taking a pro complement, projecting a KinP projection. This KinP is then combined with a D head (a personal pronoun), which agrees in phi-specification with pro. This predicts the absence of proper names and plural pronouns in this construction, and provides the correct semantics without the possessive marker de being involved. I then develop a new analysis of double nominal constructions (DNCs) where the second nominal represents a property of the first. I argue that the second nominal is interpreted as a dimension along which the main predication is made to the subject DP. Also, I re-analyse the obligatory presence of hen and other elements in adjectival predication, tying these elements to the focus semantics of the predication. I further extend the dimension analysis and the focus analysis to the BI comparative constructions in MC

Definiteness across languages

Definiteness has been a central topic in theoretical semantics since its modern foundation. However, despite its significance, there has been surprisingly scarce research on its cross-linguistic expression. With the purpose of contributing to filling this gap, the present volume gathers thirteen studies exploiting insights from formal semantics and syntax, typological and language specific studies, and, crucially, semantic fieldwork and cross-linguistic semantics, in order to address the expression and interpretation of definiteness in a diverse group of languages, most of them understudied. The papers presented in this volume aim to establish a dialogue between theory and data in order to answer the following questions: What formal strategies do natural languages employ to encode definiteness? What are the possible meanings associated to this notion across languages? Are there different types of definite reference? Which other functions (besides marking definite reference) are associated with definite descriptions? Each of the papers contained in this volume addresses at least one of these questions and, in doing so, they aim to enrich our understanding of definiteness