Los alumno del centro asociado “Gregorio Marañón” pueden encontrar aquí los ejemplarios de las tutorías del segundo cuatrimestre.

Semantica Composicional: notas para la tutoría de la UNED

Los alumnos de la tutoría de “Semántica y Lexicología de la Lengua Española” de la UNED del centro asociado Gregorio Marañón de Madrid pueden descargarse los resúmenes de los temas del primer bloque de la asignatura dedicado a la Semántica Léxica

Semántica y Lexicología de la Lengua Española: Semántica Léxica

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”:

• Schwarz, Florian, Charles Clifton and Lyn Frazier (2008). “Strengthening ‘or’: Effects of Focus and Downward Entailing Contexts on Scalar Implicatures”

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.

F. Moltmann (2008), “Intensional verbs and their intentional objects”. Natural Language Semantics, 16: 3

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
• Tim Fernando
  Branching from Inertia Worlds
  J Semantics 2008 25: 321-344; doi:10.1093/jos/ffn002

Más misterios alrededor de los modales: su interacción con los condicionales y con la disjunción.

• ‘Might’ Made Right, At Last < Semantics etc.
• Thoughts Arguments and Rants » Blog Archive » Conditionals, Disjunctions and Scope

Más sobre indefinidos. Un trabajo en el que mis alumnos de primero de Logopedia han actuado como informantes.

Luis Alonso-Ovalle · Another Look at Indefinites in Islands (with P. Menéndez-Benito) (2007)

@unpublished{alonso-menendez:2007,
Author = {Alonso-Ovalle, Luis and Men\’endez-Benito, Paula},
Date-Added = {2007-11-30 17:39:20 -0500},
Date-Modified = {2007-11-30 17:42:17 -0500},
Note = {Ms. UMass-Boston and UMass-Amherst},
Title = {Another Look at Indefinites in Islands}}

Por cierto, como ya mencionamos en una entrada anterior, “Sobre la investigación y la naturaleza del conocimiento científico” es importante poder duplicar los experimentos. Alonso-Ovalle y Menéndez-Benito ponen a nuestra disposición los datos experimentales para que comprobemos las afirmaciones estadísticas.

• Natural semantic metalanguage – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• UNE – natural semantics metalanguage – NSM Semantics in Brief

• Universals in Semantics Kai von Fintel and Lisa Matthewson. 2007. “Universals in Semantics”, ms, to appear in a special issue of The Linguistic Review devoted to universals.

Mis enlaces de 2007-07-1 a 2007-07-3:

• Andrés Pablo Salanova
• Luisa Martí’s research
• La Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos (UDHR) en Unicode

S&P: Editors’ Blog » Blog Archive » Announcement: LSA Affiliation

Nueva revista línea dedicada a la Semántica y a la Pragmática.

John Locke Lectures — Robert Stalnaker

Las conferencias de Robert Stalnaker en formato mp3 disponibles por cortesía de la Universidad de Oxford. Claridad sobre en qué consiste el conocimiento, la creencia o lo que podemos pensar de lo que otros piensan (además de los condicionales). Pienso escucharlo mientras conduzco. Me hará pre-claro. Más misterio alrededor y más preguntas también.

¿Cuál es la clase de verdad preservada por la sustitiución de equivalentes? Según Paterson, la sustitución de términos con idéntica denotación preserva la verdad definicional, no necesariamente la verdad lógica, la matemática o la necesaria.

Truth-Definitions and Definitional Truth

• Resumen. Tarski’s procedure for defining truth is often criticized for turning contingent truths about meaning into necessary or even logical or mathematical truths. The criticism is widely accepted, but I will argue that it is misguided because it rests on confusions about definition, in particular confusions about what is supposed to be preserved by the substitutions licensed by a definition. The result, I hope, will be a vindication of Tarski as well as a clarification of what is involved in evaluating semantic definitions, claims and theories. I intend the discussion, however, to be of interest not just to those with a scholarly interest in Tarski, and not just to those engrossed in the minutiae of the truth literature, but to anyone who has ever taken an interest in definitions and the relation of definitional truth to other sorts of truth, for instance logical truth, mathematical truth, and necessary truth. The more general thesis of this paper is that definitions, in the familiar sense of explanations of the meanings of words, need not be logically or even necessarily true.