Interface Reflections

This paper supports the claim that the autonomy-of-syntax thesis must be given up in favour of a model in which the computational system is allowed to interface with discourse- related phenomena in order to arrive at a complete interpretation. The evidence for this claim is derived mainly from the area of pronominal reference, an area of crucial interest for the interface discussion since pronouns are elements subject to variable interpretations, so that utterances containing them cannot be interpreted merely in terms of their truth- conditional semantics. I first discuss the pro-drop parameter and its putative interaction with pragmatics. I then turn to overt pronouns and their characterisation in Government & Binding theory. The various types of pronouns are discussed, and it is concluded that, contrary to what is implied by Principle B of the Binding Theory, the class of pronouns is non-unitary. Definite NPs behave similarly, so that both classes are basically ambiguous, with an in-built appeal to discourse factors. More evidence is drawn from the area of presupposition and quantifier-variable binding. The final section contains some speculations regarding the relation between language and thought

Secondary predication and the distribution of raising to object

In Den Dikken (2017b) arguments are presented for a predicational approach to hyperraising and copy raising constructions in which the ‘raised’ DP serves as the subject of the matrix clause. In this sequel, I show that hyperraising and copy raising also occur in secondary predication constructions embedded under propositional attitude verbs such as consider. An examination of the properties of these hyperraising and copy raising to object constructions leads to the conclusion that overt subject-toobject raising (‘object shift’) definitely exists in English but is obligatory only for subjects of small-clause complements of verbs. Apart from yielding a clearer perspective on the distribution of overt object shift in English, the study also delivers a unified account of a variety of restrictions on the subject of the non-finite complement of propositional attitude verbs

The equi-noc-tial quandary

141211369Studia Anglica Posnaniensi

Printed in Great Britain. DEALING WITH A PRIORI KNOWLEDGE BY FUZZY LABELS

Abstract- The performances of two different estimators of a discriminant function of a statistical pattern recognizer are compared. One estimator is based on binary label values of the objects of the learning set (hard labels) and the other on continuous or multi-discrete label values in the interval [03] (fuzzy labels). By the latter estimator more detailed a priori knowledge of the contributing learning objects is used. In a discrete feature space, in which a multi-nomial distribution function has been assumed to exist, the expected classification error, based on fuzzy labels, can be more accurate than the one based on hard labels. Statistical pattern recognition Classification error I