El laboratorio de fonética del CCHSC (Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, CSIC) convoca FONHISPANIA 2009. Un interesante encuentro con investigadores en la interfase foneticofonológica, algunos de ellos clásicos como Larry Hyman y otros emergentes como Charles Reiss.
En los últimos años, el surgimiento de ciertos modelos fonológicos, como por ejemplo la Teoría de la Optimidad, ha reactivado el debate -por otro lado, nunca apagado- acerca de la relación que existe entre la fonología y la fonética, al entenderse que la aparición de estos enfoques puede tender nuevos puentes entre las dos disciplinas. En este contexto, el Laboratorio de Fonética del CSIC desea contribuir a la reflexión sobre estos aspectos reuniendo en Madrid, los días 2 y 3 de marzo de 2009, a algunos de los más destacados fonólogos y/o fonetistas que han investigado la interfaz entre el plano fonético y el plano fonológico del lenguaje. FONHISPANIA 2009 es una actividad científica complementaria del Posgrado Oficial de Estudios Fónicos.
Cómo llegar al CCHSC
La interpretación de la conjunción disyuntiva “or” sigue produciendo resultados interesantes, sobre todo en su interacción con los fenómenos de escalaridad. En particular, la escalaridad y los efectos inducidos por la máxima de cantidad permiten explicar por ejemplo la interpretación exclusiva de “o”:
Resumen: If a speaker chooses one scalar term (e.g., three, or) rather than a stronger one (e.g., four, and), listeners may assume that the speaker lacked evidence for the stronger claim, giving rise to strengthened meanings like exactly three or exclusive or. Three experiments investigate the circumstances under which or is interpreted as exclusive or. The first tests the hypothesis that accenting a scalar term increases the number of scalar implicatures that are computed. The second tests the hypothesis that fewer scalar implicatures are drawn in Downward Entailing (DE) contexts than in non-DE contexts, not confounded with potential focus effects as in a previous study on the issue. The third study examines the role of DE versus non-DE contexts in a selfpaced reading study. The results indicate that both focus and DE vs. non-DE context affects
interpretation of or as predicted, and that the latter appears as an on-line effect.
Tres artículos de reciente aparición en Natural Language \& Linguistic Theory cuyos temas o bien tienen que ver con la naturaleza de mi trabajo o me han interesado en algún momento.
- Bošković, Željko. (2008):”On the operator freezing effect”. NLLT 26.2:249-287
Abstract: Based on a number of operations creating operator-variable chains, namely, wh-movement, focalization, topicalization, quantifier raising, and the NPI-licensing movement, the article argues that operators in operator-variable chains cannot undergo further operator movement. It is shown that the generalization in question can be deduced from Chomsky’s (2000, 2001a) Activation Condition. The article also discusses the contexts where Bulgarian, a multiple wh-fronting language, allows extraction out of wh-islands. A new generalization is proposed regarding the ability of languages like Bulgarian to violate the Wh-Island Constraint in the contexts in question, which dissociates it from multiple wh-fronting and ties it to a property of D, in particular, availability of affixal articles
- Sigurðsson, Halldór. (2008): “The case of PRO”. NLLT 26.2:403-450
Abstract: Icelandic case agreement suggests that nominative case is active in PRO infinitives in much the same way as in finite clauses, thus posing a difficult and a long-standing problem for generative (GB and minimalist) case theory and the PRO Theorem. In this article, I examine the Icelandic facts in detail, illustrating that the unmarked and common nominative morphology in Icelandic PRO infinitives is regular structural nominative morphology, suggesting that PRO cannot be reduced to a copy. What went wrong in the GB approach to PRO was not PRO itself but the binding theoretic and ‘Case’ theoretic conception of it. PRO is an empty category that is simultaneously a reference variable (like overt pronouns and anaphors) and a phi-feature variable (unlike overt expressions). Due to this unique combination of variable properties, PRO cannot be deduced from other traits of grammar, such as movement, nor can it possibly be lexicalized. Importantly, also, the facts studied here suggest that case is a post-syntactic category, assigned in morphology. In contrast, Person is evidently a syntactically active category, having some of the properties and effects that have commonly been attributed to ‘Case’.
- Stepanov, Arthur and Tsai, Wei-Tien. (2008): “Cartography and licensing of wh-adjuncts: a cross-linguistic perspective”. NLLT Online First
Abstract: This article has two major foci. The first concerns the ‘cartography’of structural placement of wh-adjuncts how and why, a somewhat elusive and murky issue in modern syntactic research. The non-trivial character of this issue becomes clear once it is realized that each of these items encodes more than one lexical entry in some languages, and, furthermore, different lexical entries display different syntactic distribution. One goal is then to characterize the syntactic distribution of how and why controlling for their different cross-linguistic varieties. Once the “cartographical” issue is clarified, a number of novel questions arise concerning the mode of licensing of different varieties of how and why. This brings us to the second, theoretical, focus of the paper: a proper mechanism for licensing wh-in situ, and, in a broader sense, wh-items lower than CP. On the basis of diverse cross-linguistic material, we provide a number of arguments strengthening the Unselective Binding approach to licensing wh-in situ and show how potential challenges can be met in a revealing and explanatory manner.
Dos trabajos recientes sobre implicaturas escalares y disyunción que aparecen en la versión en línea de Linguistics & Philosophy:
- Katzir, Roni (2008): Structurally-defined alternatives. Linguistics & Philosophy, Online First.
Abstract: Scalar implicatures depend on alternatives in order to avoid the symmetry problem. I argue for a structure-sensitive characterization of these alternatives: the alternatives for a structure are all those structures that are at most as complex as the original one. There have been claims in the literature that complexity is irrelevant for implicatures and that the relevant condition is the semantic notion of monotonicity. I provide new data that pose a challenge to the use of monotonicity and that support the structure-sensitive definition. I show that what appeared to be a problem for the complexity approach is overcome once an appropriate notion of complexity is adopted, and that upon closer inspection, the argument in favor of monotonicity turns out to be an argument against it and in favor of the complexity approach.
- Singh, Raj (2008): On the interpretation of disjunction: asymmetric, incremental, and eager for inconsistency. Linguistics & Philosophy, Online First.
Abstract: Hurford’s Constraint (Hurford, Foundations of Language, 11, 409–411, 1974) states that a disjunction is infelicitous if its disjuncts stand in an entailment relation: {\#}John was born in Paris or in France. Gazdar (Pragmatics, Academic Press, NY, 1979) observed that scalar implicatures can obviate the constraint. For instance, sentences of the form (A or B) or (Both Aand B) are felicitous due to the exclusivity implicature of the first disjunct: A or B implicates `not (A and B)’. Chierchia, Fox, and Spector (Handbook of semantics, 2008) use the obviation of Hurford’s Constraint in these cases to argue for a theory of local implicature. I present evidence indicating that the constraint needs to be modified in two ways. First, implicatures can obviate Hurford’s Constraint only in earlier disjuncts, not later ones: #(Both A and B) or (A or B). Second, the constraint rules out not only disjuncts that stand in an entailment relation, but also disjuncts that are even mutually consistent: #John is from Russia or Asia. I propose to make sense of these facts by providing an incremental evaluation procedure which checks that each new disjunct to the right is inconsistent with the information to its left, before the disjunct can be strengthened by local implicature.
Un artículo de Friederike Moltmann sobre verbos intensionales.
Abstract: The complement of transitive intensional verbs, like any nonreferential complement, can be replaced by a ‘special quantifier’ or ‘special pronoun’ such as something, the same thing, or what. In previous work on predicative complements and that-clauses I argued that special quantifiers and pronouns introduce entities that would not have occurred in the semantic structure of the sentence without the special quantifier, entities that one would refer to with the corresponding nominalization. Thus something in John thinks something or the same thing in John thinks the same thing as Mary ranges not over propositions, but rather over entities of the sort ‘John’s thought that S’ or ‘the thought that S’, without those entities acting as arguments of the think-relation. Despite initial apparent lack of evidence for this view for transitive verbs like need, a closer inspection of a greater range of data gives in fact further support for the ‘Nominalization Theory’ of special quantifiers, once ‘nominalization’ is viewed in a suitably extended and flexible way.
Todo un número especial de Journal of Semantics dedicado a MODALIDAD Y EVIDENCIALIDAD. El índice es el siguiente:
- Takao Gunji, Stefan Kaufmann, and Yukinori Takubo
Modality and Evidentiality
J Semantics 2008 25: 221-227; doi:10.1093/jos/ffn006
- Yurie Hara
Evidentiality of Discourse Items and Because-Clauses
J Semantics 2008 25: 229-268; doi:10.1093/jos/ffn001
- James Isaacs and Kyle Rawlins
Conditional Questions
J Semantics 2008 25: 269-319; doi:10.1093/jos/ffn003
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Tim Fernando
Branching from Inertia Worlds
J Semantics 2008 25: 321-344; doi:10.1093/jos/ffn002
Un profesor de Literatura, Robin J. Sowards, que recomienda el estudio de la Lingüística Teórica y Formal en Why everyone should study Linguistics, The Minnesota Review, Primavera 2007.
“Una aproximación a la Lingüística puede darnos un visión más clara de qué es el lenguaje humano y como encaja en la vida social, pero también puede servir para resolver cuestiones acerca de los rasgos lingüísticos de las obras literarias”
La Unesco celebra el día internacional de la Lengua Materna. La fecha escogida recuerda la muerte de varios estudiantes bengalíes a manos de la policía pakistaní el 21 de febrero de 1952 cuando reclamaban el reconocimiento del Bengalí, Bangla [baŋgla], como lengua oficial del Pakistán Este (más tarde Bangladesh).
Aproximadamente el 50% de las 6 700 lenguas habladas en la actualidad están en peligro de extinción. El pasado 21 de enero de 2008, moría Marie Smith Jones, la última hablante nativa de Eyak, la lengua de uno de los grupos de indios nativos de Alaska. Con su muerte, se extinguía el Eyak y con él una parte importante de la herencia cultural y biológica de la Humanidad.
Las lenguas son mucho más que herramientas culturales y de comunicación. Son un producto excepcional de la mente humana que, por lo que sabemos, no tiene analogía en el reino animal. Si una de ellas desaparece, no hay manera de que la evolución deshaga el camino para volver a recrearla.
Algunos enlaces sobre este asunto:
