Definiteness and determinacy

This paper distinguishes between definiteness and determinacy. Definiteness is seen as a morphological category which, in English, marks a (weak) uniqueness presupposition, while determinacy consists in denoting an individual. Definite descriptions are argued to be fundamentally predicative, presupposing uniqueness but not existence, and to acquire existential import through general type-shifting operations that apply not only to definites, but also indefinites and possessives. Through these shifts, argumental definite descriptions may become either determinate (and thus denote an individual) or indeterminate (functioning as an existential quantifier). The latter option is observed in examples like ‘Anna didn’t give the only invited talk at the conference’, which, on its indeterminate reading, implies that there is nothing in the extension of ‘only invited talk at the conference’. The paper also offers a resolution of the issue of whether possessives are inherently indefinite or definite, suggesting that, like indefinites, they do not mark definiteness lexically, but like definites, they typically yield determinate readings due to a general preference for the shifting operation that produces them.We thank Dag Haug, Reinhard Muskens, Luca Crnic, Cleo Condoravdi, Lucas Champollion, Stanley Peters, Roger Levy, Craige Roberts, Bert LeBruyn, Robin Cooper, Hans Kamp, Sebastian Lobner, Francois Recanati, Dan Giberman, Benjamin Schnieder, Rajka Smiljanic, Ede Zimmerman, as well as audiences at SALT 22 in Chicago, IATL 29 in Jerusalem, Going Heim in Connecticut, the Workshop on Bare Nominals and Non-Standard Definites in Utrecht, the University of Cambridge, the University of Gothenburg, the University of Konstanz, New York University, the University of Oxford, Rutgers University, the University of Southern California, Stanford University, and the University of Texas at Austin. Beaver was supported by NSF grants BCS-0952862 and BCS-1452663. Coppock was supported by Swedish Research Council project 2009-1569 and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond's Pro Futura Scientia program, administered through the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. (BCS-0952862 - NSF; BCS-1452663 - NSF; 2009-1569 - Swedish Research Council; Riksbankens Jubileumsfond's Pro Futura Scientia program

NP would like to meet GF: A Welsh Adjectival Construction

In this article we examine a Welsh adjectival construction which superficially looks simple but on closer examination proves to be somewhat challenging. The construction contains an NP constituent whose GF status is far from clear. We consider various analyses of this NP, as SUBJ, OBJ, and ADJ, and suggest that on balance the evidence favours the OBJ analysis. Beyond the purely parochial Welsh or Celtic interest, it may provide a useful case study of how difficult it is to determine the correct identification of grammatical functions beyond core cases

Chengyu in Chinese Language Teaching: A preliminary analysis of Italian learners’ data

Chengyu, also known as Chinese four-character idioms, are a type of traditional Chinese idiom, mostly consisting of four characters. They commonly derive from classic Chinese literary sources, including those of the three great philosophical and religious traditions that influenced the entire East Asia cultural sphere: Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism. Chengyu, therefore, possess a wide range of cultural references, and, from Chinese, spread to the languages of the other countries of the sinosphere, such as Japan and Korea. Although many scholars have emphasized the importance of the acquisition of chengyu, not much attention has been paid to chengyu learning in Chinese Language Teaching research so far. As a preliminary attempt to address this gap, this paper reports the results of two small-scale, exploratory experiments, aimed at investigating Italian learners’ general knowledge of chengyu and their main interpretation strategies, as well as comparing the effectiveness of direct and indirect instruction in chengyu teaching. The experiments involved participants from Bachelor and Master programs of Roma Tre University. The results show a predominant effect of negative transfer from Italian, as well as a better performance of the participants who received indirect instruction

Syntagmatic And Paradigmatic Features Of Relative Syntagmas In Azerbaijani And English Languages

The article deals with the definition of syntagma and relative syntagmas in Azerbaijani and English languages. At the same time, they are researched as syntactic units of linguistics. They are classified according to their types. Also, their meaning is spoken of widely in the article. It also talks about the semantic and stylistic features of syntagma as a unit of syntax. Syntagma is investigated as a syntactic unit of linguistics. Also, it comprehensively highlights its importance. This unit consisting of two members of the combined words is used in the functions of determining and being determined. It is explained as a semantic-syntactic event, and it studied and developed its semantic features. Signs perform the system of approaches in the form of syntagmatics and paradigmatics. Syntagmatic approaches are based on distributive potentials of signs. Their valence, but paradigmatic approaches are based on the selection of definite element of paradigm signs. Thus, this is the reason Saussure considers the morphology as the “sphere of paradigmatics”. The syntax is, however, known as the “sphere of syntagmatics”. A notion of “verticality” and “horizontality” exists even in the row of language signs of classic linguistics. Therefore, syntagmatics is explained as a “horizontality”, but paradigmatics as a “verticality”

Papers on predicative constructions : Proceedings of the workshop on secundary predication, October 16-17, 2000, Berlin

This volume presents a collection of papers touching on various issues concerning the syntax and semantics of predicative constructions. A hot topic in the study of predicative copula constructions, with direct implications for the treatment of he (how many he's do we need?), and wider implications for the theories of predication, event-based semantics and aspect, is the nature and source of the situation argument. Closer examination of copula-less predications is becoming increasingly relevant to all these issues, as is clearly illustrated by the present collection

Automating Fine Concurrency Control in Object-Oriented Databases

Several propositions were done to provide adapted concurrency control to object-oriented databases. However, most of these proposals miss the fact that considering solely read and write access modes on instances may lead to less parallelism than in relational databases! This paper cope with that issue, and advantages are numerous: (1) commutativity of methods is determined a priori and automatically by the compiler, without measurable overhead, (2) run-time checking of commutativity is as efficient as for compatibility, (3) inverse operations need not be specified for recovery, (4) this scheme does not preclude more sophisticated approaches, and, last but not least, (5) relational and object-oriented concurrency control schemes with read and write access modes are subsumed under this proposition

Frank Plumpton Ramsey

On the work of Frank Ramsey, emphasizing topics most relevant to philosophy of science

Problematyka opisu peryfrastycznej predykacji : między słowem a obrazem

W artykule rozważa się wybrane problemy opisu złożonych znaków predykacji (complex predicates, CPred) - m.in. ciągle kontrowersyjne problemy kryteriów ich wyróżniania i typologii, statusu w systemie leksykalno-gramatycznym oraz stosunku do pełnoznacznych jednostek (syntetycznych) z klasy verbum. CPred są interesujące również dlatego, że obserwowano je w wielu różnych językach (np. ros. ispytywat'' voschiščenije, pol. mieć // odczuwać podziw // zachwyt = zachwycać się, ang. to feel admiration (for); ros. polučit’ pomošč (+ot kogo) = otrzymać // dostać pomoc (od kogo) = to receive help (from sb.); zaviazywat’ družbu - zawrzeć, nawiązać przyjaźń = zaprzyjaźnić się; ang. to strike up a friendship, etc.). Skłania to do ponownego poszukiwania kompleksowych rozwiązań, korzystając także z nowszych ofert lingwistyki. Szczególnie kognitywna teza o prototypowej naturze kategorii gramatyczno-leksykalnych pozwala traktować Cpred jako typologicznie zróżnicowaną sferę znaków złożonych (o różnym stopniu utrwalenia) z klasy VERBUM, ujmowanej jako kategoria gradacyjna i policentryczna. Można wtedy wskazywać kilka typów (modeli strukturalnych) Cpred, różniących się strukturą, składem leksykalnym, stopniem "związania" znaczeń składników, a w efekcie: treścią globalną takich wyrażeń (jednostek z peryferyjnej strefy czasowników): 1) [ VCOP + NKONKR // Nabstr // Adj // Adv] 2) [ VMOD+ VINF] + ... (orzeczenia modalne) 3) [VFAZ +V // NA] + ... (orzeczenia fazowe) 4) [VGENER + NA // NE // Nabstr] + ... (orzeczenia analityczne właściwe) 5) [VMETAF // METAPRED + Nabstr // NA // NE ] + ... (orzeczenia peryfrastyczne jako część frazeologii werbalnej.The article discusses selected problems connected with description of complex predicates (CPred), i.a., the still controversial issue of criteria applied to diff erentiate and classify elements of this category, their status in lexical-grammatical system and their relationship with synthetic entities belonging to the class of VERBUM. What makes CPreds interesting is the fact that they have been encountered in various languages (e.g. ispytywat''voschiščenije (Russian) = mieć // odczuć podziw // zachwyt (Polish) = to feel admiration (for) (English); polučat’ pomošč (Russian) = otrzymać // dostać pomoc (Polish) = to receive help (from sb) (English); zaviazywat' družbu (Russian) = nawiązać przyjaźń // zaprzyjaźnić się (Polish) = to strike up a friendship // to become friends (English), etc.). This situation calls for a search for complex solutions, also with the aid of new linguistic theories. Especially the cognitivist thesis about the prototypical character of lexical-grammatical categories allows to classify Cpreds as a typologically diversifi ed group of complex entities (characterised by varied degrees of fixedness) functioning within the class of VERBUM understood as a gradated and polycentric category. Such an approach allows for diff erentiation of several types (structural models) of Cpreds, i.e. entities representing a peripheral group of verbs and diff ering with respect to structure, lexical composition and degree of ‘fi xedness’ of their meanings, and, as a result, with respect to their global content: 1) [VCOP + NKONKR // Nabstr // Adj // Adv] (standard nominal predicates); 2) [VMOD+ VINF] + ... (modal predicates); 3) [VFAZ +V // NA] + ... (phase-aspectual predicates); 4) [VGENER + NA // NE // Nabstr] + ... (verbo-nominal analytisms); 5) [VMETAF // METAPRED + Nabstr // NA // NE ] + ... (periphrastic predicates as part of verbal phraseology)