Questions with definite markers in (Old) Romance, with focus on Old Spanish

We will depart from the observation that Romance languages can be subdivided into two groups with respect to free relatives under question-embedding predicates (Kellert 2017). One group has grammaticalized the definite element (e.g. Pt.[1] o, Fl. i' 'the') and que/che into one question pronoun (e.g. Pt. o que 'what' and Fl. icché 'what'); the other group has not (e.g. Spanish and French). We will show that in one group free relatives that are embedded under question predicates resemble more complex nouns (as in Spanish and French), whereas in the other group they are clausal and have the structure of ordinary questions as in Portuguese and Florentine. We will look at the evolution of lo que sentences in Old Spanish and demonstrate that they were used as relative clauses under non-question predicates such as ser 'be' and factive predicates such as 'know' with much higher frequency than under genuine question predicates such as preguntar 'to ask'. We will suggest that the interrogative interpretation of lo que- relative clauses has its source in the ambiguity of factive predicates. Factive predicates can select both DPs interpreted as definite descriptions and CPs interpreted as interrogatives. Lo que-relatives can thus be interpreted as definite descriptions and as interrogatives under factive predicates. As we will argue, this ambiguous interpretation was the precondition for the use of lo que-sentences to be used in non-ambiguous question contexts. However, the reanalysis of lo que-sentences as questions has not been fully accomplished in Modern Spanish in contrast to Modern Portuguese, as these sentences still show syntactic and semantic differences from ordinary questions.[1] Fl. stands for Florentine, Sp. for Spanish, Pt. for Portuguese, and Fr. for French. Mo. for Modern and O. for Old and Mi. for Middle languages

On the role of prosody in disambiguating wh-exclamatives and wh-interrogatives in Cosenza Italian

International audienceThis work investigates the role of prosody in the perception wh-exclamatives and (information seeking) wh-interrogatives in Cosenza Italian. We used reaction times (RTs) as a diagnostic of listeners' (in)security in sentence type disambiguation during a two-forced choice identification task. Our results show that listeners identify the two sentence types after the end of the utterance in most of the trials, and not before it. This suggests that prosodic cues that occur before the end of the utterance (e.g., in the prenuclear section of the intonational contour) are not strong enough by themselves guide the pragmatic interpretation of the utterances. Furthermore, our study shows that exclamatives are processed faster than interrogatives, but this effect disappears when segmental duration is taken into account

Experimenting with UD Adaptation of an Unsupervised Rule-based Approach for Sentiment Analysis of Mexican Tourist Texts

This paper summarizes the results of experimenting with Universal Dependencies (UD) adaptation of an Unsupervised, Compositional and Recursive (UCR) rule-based approach for Sentiment Analysis (SA) submitted to the Shared Task at Rest-Mex 2023 (Team Olga/LyS-SALSA) (within the IberLEF 2023 conference). By using basic syntactic rules such as rules of modification and negation applied on words from sentiment dictionaries, our approach exploits some advantages of an unsupervised method for SA: (1) interpretability and explainability of SA, (2) robustness across datasets, languages and domains and (3) usability by non-experts in NLP. We compare our approach with other unsupervised approaches of SA that in contrast to our UCR rule-based approach use simple heuristic rules to deal with negation and modification. Our results show a considerable improvement over these approaches. We discuss future improvements of our results by using modality features as another shifting rule of polarity and word disambiguation techniques to identify the right sentiment words.Comment: Proceedings of IberLEF 2023, Ja\'en, Spain, 202

A diachronic study of the (negative) additive anche in Italian

Resum: En italià modern (IM), els mots additius negatius són elements focalitzadors que típicament se sotmeten a la concordança negativa amb una negació oracional o amb un altre element legitimador de la negació. En aquest article investiguem l’evolució diacrònica d’un element additiu negatiu, neanche ‘ni/ni tan sols’. En italià antic (IA, varietat florentina entre 1200 i 1370), no hi ha testimonis de focalitzadors additius negatius morfològicament complexos com neanche. En canvi, l’element corresponent no negatiu additiu, anche, podia combinar-se amb un marcador negatiu o amb algun altre element negatiu: né/non… anche ‘ni/ni tan sols’. Mostrem que en IA (i) el mot additiu no negatiu anche es pot fer servir tant com un element de polaritat afirmativa com negativa; (ii) anche pot funcionar com un marcador aspectual/temporal amb el significat de ‘(no) encara’ i també com un focalitzador additiu amb el significat ‘ni tampoc/ni tan sols’; (iii) les diferents interpretacions es reflecteixen en diferents posicions sintàctiques, p. ex., anche té una interpretació aspectual en la posició postverbal amb abast sobre el sintagma verbal (vP), i té una interpretació additiva en posició preverbal prenent abast sobre un sintagma determinant (DP); i, finalment, (iv) anche desencadena una interpretació semàntica de focus en els dos casos: com a marcador additiu i com a marcador aspectual/temporal (vg. Rooth 1985, Chierchia 2013 per a la semàntica de focus). També afirmem especulativament, basant-nos en arguments teòrics i empírics, que la interpretació aspectual podria ser un subtipus d’interpretació additiva. Expliquem l’evolució diacrònica que porta de ‘neg(ació) + anche’ en IA a neanche en IM suggerint que la gramaticalització de neanche s’origina a partir d’una construcció en la qual l’element additiu anche és immediatament adjacent a la dreta a la disjunció negativa né (p. ex., né + anche > neanche). Paraules clau: additiu, additiu negatiu, focus, marcador aspectual, gramaticalització.Abstract: In Modern Italian (MI), negative additives are focalizing elements that typically obey negative concord with a clausal negation or another licensing negative element. In this paper we investigate the diachronic evolution of one negative additive element, neanche ‘neither/not even’. In Old Italian (OI, Florentine variety of 1200-1370), there is no evidence of morphologically complex negative additive focalizers such as neanche. Instead, the non-negative additive counterpart of neanche, anche, could combine with a negative marker or some other negative element: e.g. né/non… anche ‘neither/not even’. We show that, in OI, (i) the morphologically non-negative additive anche can be used both as a negative and as a positive polarity item; (ii) anche can function either as an aspectual marker with the meaning ‘(not) yet’, or as an additive focalizer with the meaning ‘neither/not even’; (iii) its different interpretations are mirrored by different syntactic positions, i.e. anche has an aspectual interpretation in the postverbal position taking scope over a verbal phrase (vP), and it has an additive interpretation in the preverbal position taking scope over a determiner phrase (DP); and (iv) anche triggers a focus semantic interpretation under both conditions: as an additive and an aspectual marker (see Rooth 1985, Chierchia 2013 on focus semantics). We account for the diachronic evolution from neg(ation) + anche in OI to neanche in MI by suggesting that the grammaticalization of neanche originates from a particular construction in which the additive anche is immediately to the right adjacent to the negative disjunction né (i.e. né+anche>neanche). Key words: additive, negative additives, focus, aspectual marker, grammaticalization

Quantification and scales in change

This volume contains thematic papers on semantic change which emerged from the second edition of Formal Diachronic Semantics held at Saarland University. Its authorship ranges from established scholars in the field of language change to advanced PhD students whose contributions have equally qualified and have been selected after a two-step peer-review process.   The key foci are variablity and diachronic trajectories in scale structures and quantification, but readers will also find a variety of further (and clearly non-disjoint) issues covered  including reference, modality, givenness, presuppositions, alternatives in language change, temporality, epistemic indefiniteness, as well as - in more general terms -  the interfaces of semantics with syntax, pragmatics and morphology.    Given the nature of the field, the contributions are primarily based on original corpus studies (in one case also on synchronic experimental data) and present a series of new findings and theoretical analyses of several languages, first and foremost from  the Germanic and Romance subbranches of Indo-European (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish) and from Semitic (with an analysis of universal quantification in Biblical Hebrew)

Quantification and scales in change

This volume contains thematic papers on semantic change which emerged from the second edition of Formal Diachronic Semantics held at Saarland University. Its authorship ranges from established scholars in the field of language change to advanced PhD students whose contributions have equally qualified and have been selected after a two-step peer-review process.   The key foci are variablity and diachronic trajectories in scale structures and quantification, but readers will also find a variety of further (and clearly non-disjoint) issues covered  including reference, modality, givenness, presuppositions, alternatives in language change, temporality, epistemic indefiniteness, as well as - in more general terms -  the interfaces of semantics with syntax, pragmatics and morphology.    Given the nature of the field, the contributions are primarily based on original corpus studies (in one case also on synchronic experimental data) and present a series of new findings and theoretical analyses of several languages, first and foremost from  the Germanic and Romance subbranches of Indo-European (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish) and from Semitic (with an analysis of universal quantification in Biblical Hebrew)

Quantification and scales in change

This volume contains thematic papers on semantic change which emerged from the second edition of Formal Diachronic Semantics held at Saarland University. Its authorship ranges from established scholars in the field of language change to advanced PhD students whose contributions have equally qualified and have been selected after a two-step peer-review process.   The key foci are variablity and diachronic trajectories in scale structures and quantification, but readers will also find a variety of further (and clearly non-disjoint) issues covered  including reference, modality, givenness, presuppositions, alternatives in language change, temporality, epistemic indefiniteness, as well as - in more general terms -  the interfaces of semantics with syntax, pragmatics and morphology.    Given the nature of the field, the contributions are primarily based on original corpus studies (in one case also on synchronic experimental data) and present a series of new findings and theoretical analyses of several languages, first and foremost from  the Germanic and Romance subbranches of Indo-European (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish) and from Semitic (with an analysis of universal quantification in Biblical Hebrew)

Quantification and scales in change

This volume contains thematic papers on semantic change which emerged from the second edition of Formal Diachronic Semantics held at Saarland University. Its authorship ranges from established scholars in the field of language change to advanced PhD students whose contributions have equally qualified and have been selected after a two-step peer-review process.   The key foci are variablity and diachronic trajectories in scale structures and quantification, but readers will also find a variety of further (and clearly non-disjoint) issues covered  including reference, modality, givenness, presuppositions, alternatives in language change, temporality, epistemic indefiniteness, as well as - in more general terms -  the interfaces of semantics with syntax, pragmatics and morphology.    Given the nature of the field, the contributions are primarily based on original corpus studies (in one case also on synchronic experimental data) and present a series of new findings and theoretical analyses of several languages, first and foremost from  the Germanic and Romance subbranches of Indo-European (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish) and from Semitic (with an analysis of universal quantification in Biblical Hebrew)

Quantification and scales in change

This volume contains thematic papers on semantic change which emerged from the second edition of Formal Diachronic Semantics held at Saarland University. Its authorship ranges from established scholars in the field of language change to advanced PhD students whose contributions have equally qualified and have been selected after a two-step peer-review process.   The key foci are variablity and diachronic trajectories in scale structures and quantification, but readers will also find a variety of further (and clearly non-disjoint) issues covered  including reference, modality, givenness, presuppositions, alternatives in language change, temporality, epistemic indefiniteness, as well as - in more general terms -  the interfaces of semantics with syntax, pragmatics and morphology.    Given the nature of the field, the contributions are primarily based on original corpus studies (in one case also on synchronic experimental data) and present a series of new findings and theoretical analyses of several languages, first and foremost from  the Germanic and Romance subbranches of Indo-European (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish) and from Semitic (with an analysis of universal quantification in Biblical Hebrew)

Quantification and scales in change

This volume contains thematic papers on semantic change which emerged from the second edition of Formal Diachronic Semantics held at Saarland University. Its authorship ranges from established scholars in the field of language change to advanced PhD students whose contributions have equally qualified and have been selected after a two-step peer-review process.   The key foci are variablity and diachronic trajectories in scale structures and quantification, but readers will also find a variety of further (and clearly non-disjoint) issues covered  including reference, modality, givenness, presuppositions, alternatives in language change, temporality, epistemic indefiniteness, as well as - in more general terms -  the interfaces of semantics with syntax, pragmatics and morphology.    Given the nature of the field, the contributions are primarily based on original corpus studies (in one case also on synchronic experimental data) and present a series of new findings and theoretical analyses of several languages, first and foremost from  the Germanic and Romance subbranches of Indo-European (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish) and from Semitic (with an analysis of universal quantification in Biblical Hebrew)