Post on 22-Dec-2015
transcript
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Spoon was
The phenomenon of bare coordination
I saw cats dogsand I saw
Context
We had to set the table for the queen. We arranged one crystal goblet, one silver spoon, two antique gold forks and two platinum knives.
Forks and knives were equally dirty
indefinite interpretation
definite interpretation
Plurals
Singulars
was set to the right of the plate* set to the right of the plate*Goblet spoon wereand only definite interpretation
Heycock & Zamparelli (2003)
??? There were goblet and spoon on the table.
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The phenomenon of bare coordination
Heycock & Zamparelli (2003)
coordinatednot coordinated
bare singulars
bare plurals
indefinite definite indefinite definite
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The phenomenon of bare coordination
Why is it bare singulars cannot occur bare whereas coordinated bare singulars can ?
When and why do bare coordinated nouns get a definite reading?
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• New facts• Previous analyses• Our analysis in a nutshell• Our analysis in OT• The semantics of and
Roadmap
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• New facts• Previous analyses• Our analysis in a nutshell• Our analysis in OT• The semantics of and
Roadmap
8
New facts
coordinatednot coordinated
bare singulars
bare plurals
indefinite definite indefinite definite
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New facts: English
We had to set the table for the queen. We arranged one crystal goblet, one silver spoon, two antique gold forks and two platinum knives. Goblet and spoon were set on the right of the plate.(Heycock & Zamparelli 2003)
We had to set the table for the queen. We arranged one crystal goblet, one silver spoon, two antique gold forks and two platinum knives. Forks and knives were equally dirty. (Heycock & Zamparelli 2003)
He had pad and pencil to picture the whole event.
There were forks and knives on the table.(Heycock & Zamparelli 2003)
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• New facts• Previous analyses• Our analysis in a nutshell• Our analysis in OT• The semantics of and• Surprise Bonus
Roadmap
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• New facts• Previous analyses• Our analysis in a nutshell• Our analysis in OT• The semantics of and• Surprise Bonus
Roadmap
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Roodenburg (2004)
The analysis in a nutshell
Premise 1: Bare Coordinated NPs are plural.
Conclusion: Bare coordinated NPs are allowed in argument position.
Premise 2: Bare Plural NPs are allowed in argument position.
> Cat and dog were fighting.
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Roodenburg (2004)
The analysis in a nutshell
As for the definite readings: they’re akin to functional readings of bare plurals (Condoravdi 1994)
> Ghosts haunted the campus. Students were aware of the danger.
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Roodenburg (2004)
Problem
Roodenburg predicts bare coordination always to behave on a par with bare plural.
> Ghosts haunted the campus and we had to warn the students, the faculty and the rest of the staff. ??It turned out though that students were already aware of the danger. > Ghosts haunted the campus and we had to warn the students, the faculty and the rest of the staff. It turned out though that students and faculty were already aware of the danger.
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Heycock & Zamparelli (2003)
The analysis in a nutshell
Focus on deriving the definite reading of bare coordinated nominals.
Proposal: allow for N-to-D raising of the coordinated phrase.
DP
CoordP
NP1 and NP2
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• New facts• Previous analyses• Our analysis in a nutshell• Our analysis in OT• The semantics of and
Roadmap
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• New facts• Previous analyses• Our analysis in a nutshell• Our analysis in OT• The semantics of and
Roadmap
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Our analysis in a nutshell
coordinatednot coordinated
bare singulars
bare plurals
indefinite definite indefinite definite
> Classic blocking account:
indefinite bare singulars are blocked bydefinite bare singulars are blocked bydefinite bare plurals are blocked by the definite plural article
the definite singular articlethe indefinite singular article
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Our analysis in a nutshell
coordinatednot coordinated
bare singulars
bare plurals
indefinite definite indefinite definite
> Not so classic blocking account:
A, thesing and theplural don’t apply at the coordination level.As a consequence they cannot be taken to block indefinite or definite readings of coordinated bare nominals.
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Our analysis in a nutshell
A, thesing and theplural don’t apply at the coordination level.
>Indirect evidence
un homme et une femme (amale man and afemale woman) 1760000
un homme et femme (amale man and woman) 696
une femme et une fille (afemale woman and afemale girl) 885
une femme et fille (afemale woman and girl) 15
les hommes et les femmes (the men and the women) 3030000
les hommes et femmes (the men and women) 361000yahoo.fr 11/11/2010
Generalization:
Strong preference for repetition of the determiner; Suggests that the repetition of the determiner is the default; Suggests that the cases in which there is no repetition involve elided Ds.
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Our analysis in a nutshell
A, thesing and theplural don’t apply at the coordination level.
>Direct evidence
Dog and cat were fighting. > bare coordination can trigger plural agreement
> there is a level of syntactic representation at which CoordPs have to have plurality specified (see also de Vries 1992)
> If Ds were to apply to CoordPs we would predict CoordPs to be able to take a plural article, even if both conjuncts are singular.
> This is however not the case.
*Dog and cat was fighting.
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Our analysis in a nutshell
les hommes et les femmes the men and the women 3030000
les hommes et femmes the men and women 361000
les homme et femme the man and woman 99
les hommes et les garçons the men and the boys 2570
les hommes et garçons the men and boys 175
les homme et garçon the man and boy 1
les femmes et les filles the women and the girls 164000
les femmes et filles the women and girls 16000
les femme et fille the woman and girl 18
yahoo.fr 11/11/2010
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Recap
Basic dataCoordination lifts all semantic constraints on the absence of articles.
Basic insightDeterminers don’t apply at the coordination level.
ImplementationClassic blocking ...
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• New facts• Previous analyses• Our analysis in a nutshell• Our analysis in OT• The semantics of and• Surprise Bonus
Roadmap
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• New facts• Previous analyses• Our analysis in a nutshell• Our analysis in OT• The semantics of and• Surprise Bonus
Roadmap
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From ‘informal’ blocking to OTDP
NumP
CoordP
AND
NumP
NP
N
NumP
NP
N
DP DP
N-domain
CoordP-domain
N.B. Coordination can apply at the DP, NumP or NP-level.
N N
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From ‘informal’ blocking to OT
a. FdrMark discourse referents
b. FplMark reference to a group
For each type of functional projection we have a faithfulness constraint.
DP
NumP
c. FdefMark definiteness
We add an extra one for D projections.
DP
For the two domains we add a markedness constraint.
d. *FunctNDon’t mark functional structure in the N-domain
e. *FunctCoordPDon’t mark functional structure in the CoordP-domain.
N-dom
CoordP-dom
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From ‘informal’ blocking to OT
a. FdrMark discourse referents
b. FplMark reference to a group
For French and English the following ranking holds:
c. FdefMark definiteness
e. *FunctCoordPDon’t mark functional structure in the CoordP-domain.
d. *FunctNDon’t mark functional structure in the N-domain.
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From ‘informal’ blocking to OT
Depending on the level at which coordination applies the ranking derives the following possibilities:
the cats and the dogsDP level coordination
cats and dogsNumP level coordination
cat and dogNP level coordination
Testable illegal structures:
I saw *(a) cat.Bare singular arguments
several cat and dogDs applying at CoordP
Untestable (?) illegal structures:
I saw cat and dogs (?)(meaning I saw cats and dogs)
Number at CoordP
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Recap
Basic dataCoordination lifts all semantic constraints on the absence of articles.
Basic insightDeterminers don’t apply at the coordination level.
ImplementationClassic blocking ... and its formalization in OT.
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• New facts• Previous analyses• Our analysis in a nutshell• Our analysis in OT• The semantics of and
Roadmap
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• New facts• Previous analyses• Our analysis in a nutshell• Our analysis in OT• The semantics of and
Roadmap
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The semantics of coordination
We assume the basic semantics of coordination at the level of sets is that of set intersection.
X Y
Bare coordination never has this basic semantics.
X and Y
> Bride and groom were extremely happy.
There was an extremely happy person who was both bride and groom.
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The semantics of coordination
Two types of coordination:
> coordination with ‘joint’ readings
> coordination with ‘split’ readings
Bare coordination always concerns coordination with ‘split’ readings.
Our challenge will be to derive split readings without giving up the basic intuition of coordination being an instance of set intersection.
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The semantics of coordination
How to go about this?
> Enrichment of and
> First enrichment: turn and into a ‘matchmaker’
PQ ( )PQ x E E x( ) ( )
> Based on a proposal by Yoad Winter (p.c.)
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The semantics of coordination
> Enrichment of and
> First enrichment: turn and into a ‘matchmaker’
PQ ( )PQ x E E x( ) ( )
> Second enrichment: add a function that turns (singular) couples into plural individuals.
> Based on a proposal by Yoad Winter (p.c.)
PQ ( )PQ x E E x( ) ( )RtoI
Relations to Individuals
RtoI(R) = {xy : R(x,y)}
How to go about this?
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The semantics of coordinationbride and groom
> Bride and groom were extremely happy.
> the unique plural individual consisting of a bride and groom was extremely happy
> extremely_happy( )
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Recap
Basic dataCoordination lifts all semantic constraints on the absence of articles.
Basic insightDeterminers don’t apply at the coordination level.
ImplementationClassic blocking ... and its formalization in OT.
The semantics of bare coordinationEnriched version of an intersective semantics.
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• New facts• Previous analyses• Our analysis in a nutshell• Our analysis in OT• The semantics of and
Roadmap
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• New facts• Previous analyses• Our analysis in a nutshell• Our analysis in OT• The semantics of and• Surprise Bonus
Roadmap
shortcut to conclusion
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Why cat and dog is ‘definite’ by default
coordinatednot coordinated
bare singulars
bare plurals
indefinite definite indefinite definite
coordinatednot coordinated
bare singulars
bare plurals
indefinite definite indefinite definite
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Cat and dog were fighting.
> Implicature of uniqueness
If there had been more cats and dogs, we could have told you so.
Given that we did not tell you, you can assume that there was only one cat and one dog.
> The effect of this implicature is almost indistinguishable from the contribution of the definite article.
Even though our semantic account predicts both a definite and an indefinite reading, pragmatically the indefinite reading is so close to the definite reading that one gets the impression there’s only a definite reading.
Why cat and dog is ‘definite’ by default
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Predictions
... coordinated bare plurals should not have any preference for definite readings.
... the preference for definite interpretations should be cancelable.
Given that the implicature depends on the nouns being singular...
Given that we assume the default definite interpretation is an implicature...
> This is arguably what we find (see Heycock & Zamparelli).
> This is what we have demonstrated for existential contexts.
Why cat and dog is ‘definite’ by default
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More predictions
... the definiteness effect should not only be found for coordinated nouns but also for uncoordinated singular nouns in languages that have a singular/plural distinction but no articles
Given that the implicature arises because of the competition between bare singulars and plurals...
> Languages like Hindi and Russian have indeed been argued to only allow for definite readings for bare singulars, despite their acceptability in existential environments (see Dayal 2004).
Why cat and dog is ‘definite’ by default
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More predictions
... the definiteness effect should not only be found for coordinated nouns but also for uncoordinated singular nouns in languages that have a singular/plural distinction but no articles
... uncoordinated plural nouns in these languages should not show any preference for definite readings
Given that the implicature arises because of the competition between bare singulars and plurals...
> Languages like Hindi and Russian have indeed been argued to only allow for definite readings for bare singulars, despite their acceptability in existential environments (see Dayal 2004, Geist 2010).
> Uncoordinated bare plurals in Hindi and Russian have indeed been argued to allow both definite and indefinite readings (see Dayal 2004).
Why cat and dog is ‘definite’ by default
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One more prediction
... there should be no definiteness effect in Chinese comparable to the one in Hindi and Russian
Given that the implicature arises because of the competition between bare singulars and plurals...
> Bare nominals in Chinese have indeed been argued to freely allow both for a definite and an indefinite reading (see Yang 2001).
N.B.
This implicature account can be formulated both under the analysis of the singular/plural contrast of Farkas & de Swart (2010) and the one in the tradition of Krifka (1989) (see a.o. Sauerland et al. 2005).
Why cat and dog is ‘definite’ by default
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• New facts• Previous analyses• Our analysis in a nutshell• Our analysis in OT• The semantics of and• Surprise Bonus
Roadmap
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The phenomenon of bare coordination
Why is it bare singulars cannot occur bare whereas coordinated bare singulars can ?
When and why do bare coordinated nouns get a definite reading?
> Articles don’t apply at the coordination level
> No blocking of bare coordinated forms
> Semantically, definite/indefinite readings are available through type-shifting > Pragmatically, bare singulars prefer ‘definite’ readings
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Current work
How to account for cases like the following:
We hinted at a covert D in front of woman but this has been challenged in the literature.
this man and woman
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References
Dayal, 2004, ‘Number marking and (in)definiteness in kind terms’, Linguistics and Philosophy 27, 393-450.
Farkas & de Swart, 2010, “The semantics and pragmatics of plurals”, Semantics and Pragmatics 3.
Geist, 2010, “Indefinite NPs without indefinite articles”, presentation at SUB 2010.
Heycock & Zamparelli, 2003, “Coordinated bare definites”, Linguistic Inquiry 34, 443-469.
Heycock & Zamparelli, 2005, “Friends and colleagues”, Natural Language Semantics 13, 201-270.
Krifka, 1989, “Nominal reference, temporal constitution and quantification in event semantics”, in: Bartsch, van Benthem & van Emde Boas (eds.), Semantics and contextual expression, Foris.
Roodenburg, 2004, Pour une approche scalaire de la déficience nominale, Ph.D. Dissertation, Universiteit van Amsterdam.
Sauerland, Anderssen & Yatsushiro, 2005, “The plural is semantically unmarked”, in: Kepser & Reis (eds.), Linguistic evidence, de Gruyter.
Yang, 2001, Common nouns, classifiers, and quantification in Chinese, Ph.D. Dissertation, Rutgers University.
Zwarts, 2009, Bare constructions in Dutch, Ms., Utrecht University.
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Shorthand convention
In principle negation is of type <t,t>.
The <<e,t>,<e,t>> variant can be obtained as follow:
come(k)
S<e,t> -S come(k)
-come(k)
x-come(x)
function application
lambda abstraction
In these slides, the notation x(-come(x)) obtained through negation of the type <<e,t>,<e,t>> is shorthand for the above process. back
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Carlson
Come1Come2NotSome childrenChildren
Some children didn’t come.
x[come(x)]ykx[R(x,yk)&come(x)]P<e,t>-P<e,t> / St-St P<e,t>x[children(x)&P<e,t>(x)]childrenk
P<e,t>x[children(x)&P<e,t>(x)]<<e,t>,t>
x[come(x)]<e,t>
P<e,t>-P<e,t> / St-St
<<e,t>,<e,t>> <t,t>
(1) x[come(x)]P<e,t>x[children(x)&P<e,t>(x)]x[children(x)&come(x)]St-St -
(2) P<e,t>-P<e,t> x[come(x)] x[-come(x)]P<e,t>x[children(x)&P<e,t>(x)]x[children(x)&-come(x)]
shorthand!
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Chierchia
Come1NotSome childrenChildren
Children didn’t come.
e
x[come(x)]childrenk
x[come(x)]P<e,t>-P<e,t> / St-St P<e,t>x[children(x)&P<e,t>(x)]childrenk
<e,t>
x[come(x)] childrenkcome(childrenk)St-St-come(childrenk)
=-(come(childrenk))=-(x[R(x,childrenk)&come(x)])=-x[R(x,childrenk)&come(x)]
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Van Geenhoven
Come1NotSome childrenChildren
Children didn’t come.
<e,t>
x[come(x)]x[children(x)]
x[come(x)]P<e,t>-P<e,t> / St-St P<e,t>x[children(x)&P<e,t>(x)]x[children(x)]
<e,t>
x[come(x)]x[children(x)]
x[come(x)]P<e,t>-P<e,t>x[-come(x)] x[children(x)]
= P-x[come(x)&P(x)] x[children(x)]
= -x[come(x)&children(x)]
?
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Carlson
Come1Come2NotSome childrenChildren
Children didn’t come.
<<e,t>,t>
x[come(x)]<e,t>
P<e,t>-P<e,t> / St-St
<<e,t>,<e,t>> <t,t>
(1)(2)
childrenk
x[come(x)]ykx[R(x,yk)&come(x)]P<e,t>-P<e,t> / St-St P<e,t>x[children(x)&P<e,t>(x)]childrenk
ykx[R(x,yk)&come(x)]<e,t>
x[come(x)]P<e,t>-P<e,t>
(3)(4)
P<e,t>-P<e,t> ykx[R(x,yk)&come(x)]
x[-come(x)]
yk - x[R(x,yk)&come(x)]
childrenk
childrenk
-come(childrenk)
-x[R(x,childrenk)&come(x)]
x[come(x)]
ykx[R(x,yk)&come(x)]
childrenk
childrenk
come(childrenk)
x[R(x,childrenk)&come(x)]
St-St
St-St
-come(childrenk)
-x[R(x,childrenk)&come(x)]
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Krifka
Come1NotSome childrenChildren
Children didn’t come.
<e,t>
x[come(x)]x[children(x)]
x[come(x)]P<e,t>-P<e,t> / St-St P<e,t>x[children(x)&P<e,t>(x)]x[children(x)]
<e,t>
x[come(x)]x[children(x)]
x[come(x)]P<e,t>-P<e,t>x[-come(x)] x[children(x)]
= -come(x[children(x)])
= -(come(x[children(x)]))= -x[children(x)&come(x)]
not allowed in standard Montague grammar!!!
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Conclusion
> Narrow scope is always accounted for by local type-shifting and doesn’t presuppose that bare nominals always refer to kinds.
Carlson builds type-shifting into predicates.
Van Geenhoven applies local type-shifting to predicates.
Krifka applies local type-shifting to nouns.
Chierchia applies local type-shifting to nouns with a small detour via kinds.
> General constraint on covert type-shifting: apply it as locally as possible.
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Do bare nouns take wide scope?
YES!NO!
Min QueThe rest of the world
If they do, there is no reason to assume a locality constraint on type-shifting...
The answer...
English (Carlson), Spanish (Espinal and McNally 2010 and references therein), Hungarian (Farkas and de Swart 2003), Russian (Geist 2010), Albanian (Kalluli 2001), Hebrew (Doron 2003), Hindi (Dayal 2003, 2004), Mandarin Chinese (Yang 2001, Rullmann & You 2006), Indonesian (Chung 2000, Sato 2008), Javanese (Sato 2008), Turkish (Bliss 2003), Brazilian Portuguese (Schmitt & Munn 1999)
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How to go about testing scope?
> A first attempt
Every boy read a book.
a. There is a book that every boy read.
b. Every boy is such that he read a book.
Why is this not a good format for test items?
wide
narrow
Because every situation that makes a. true will also make b. true.
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How to go about testing scope?
> A better attempt
John didn’t read a (single) book.
a. There is a book that John didn’t read.
b. John read no book.
Why is this a better format for test items?
wide
narrow
Because a. can be true in situations in which b. is not true.
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A small classroom experimentDeze diagnose heeft ons doen inzien waarom hij sommige dwangideeën heeft, zoals altijd de eerste willen zijn (op de trap, in bad, aan tafel...) of woedebuien (omdat hij dingen niet begrijpt) of irrationele angsten (zoals steeds denken dat er bijen rond zoemen, terwijl het soms maar een grasmaaier is). Hoe ouder hij wordt, hij is nu bijna acht jaar, hoe duidelijker het autisme wordt.
Ik vind het absoluut niet leuk dat hij moet huilen vanwege mij. En dat is wel een aantal keren op een dag, omdat hij dingen niet mag of dat hij juist iets moet (naar bed gaan bijvoorbeeld). Ik weet dat het er bij hoort, maar leuk is anders. Nu kan ik er weer even tegen.
omdat hij dingen niet begrijpt
because he things not understand
omdat hij dingen niet mag
because he things not may
Does this necessarily mean that he doesn’t understand anything?
Does this necessarily mean that he’s not allowed to do anything?
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Setting-up the bare nominal test items
A.B.
A.B.
This last sentence is truth-conditionally only compatible with a wide scope reading of colleagues.
Task: judge the naturalness of the last utterance with respect to the rest of the dialogue on a scale from 0 to 5.
Rationale: subjects should not accept a continuation in which Flynn contradicts himself.
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Further design of the experiment
An experiment that would only look at the acceptability of bare nominal items would be meaningless.
Why?Because we wouldn’t know what the numbers meant.
Our baseline
Given that we were testing whether bare nominals could scope above negation, we needed an item that could not.
> Negative Polarity Items
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Further design of the experiment
Experiments also need control items and fillers.
Why?
Control items are used to check whether people are actually sensitive to the phenomenon one is testing.
Our control items > Singular indefinites
Filler items are used to try to distract subjects in such a way that they don’t discover what the experiment is really about.
Our fillers > See example
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Further design of the experiment
> Overview of the number of items:
2 NPI items2 Singular indefinite items3 Bare plural items5 Fillers
> Participants and procedure:
Questionnaire was put online. Included a number of questions that would allow us to weed out non-native speakers. Total number of relevant questionnaires: 63.
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Results: statistics
There’s a (significant) difference between the NPI items and the BP items.
There’s a (significant) difference between the BP items and the SI items.
There’s a (significant) difference between BP1 and BP2. /
Paired t-tests
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Do bare nouns take wide scope?
There is ground to assume that bare nouns can take wide scope.
> This means that the general narrow scope behaviour cannot be derived solely by forcing covert type-shifting to apply locally.
> Covert type-shifting turns out to be less constrained than might seem at first sight.
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An alternative clever way of testing
> Ionin 2010
There is a reviewer that is such that every teenager watched every movie he recommended.Every teenager is such that he watched every movie that was recommended by a reviewer.
> Remaining problem: Which item could serve as a baseline?
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Boskovic (2005)
He saw expensive cars.
*Expensive he saw cars. (English)
Expensive he saw cars. (Serbo-Croatian)
Some preliminary facts
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Boskovic (2005)
You like friends of Peter.
[Who] do you like friends of. (Eng)
[Who] do you like friends of. (SC)
Some preliminary facts
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Boskovic (2005)
Serbo-Croatian doesn’t have covert Ds whereas English does.
How does this explain the facts?
Why is this relevant for us?
the generalization
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Boskovic (2005)
PIC
Phase Impenetrability Condition:
“only the Spec of a phase is accessible for movement outside the phase”
explaining the facts
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Boskovic (2005)
XP
Spec X’
X XP
Spec X’
X XP
Spec X’
X Comp
DP
XP
Spec X’
X NP
Spec X’
X
Spec X’
X Comp
DP
XP
explaining the facts
NP
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Boskovic (2005)
Anti-Locality hypothesis
“movement shouldn’t be too short, it should at least cross a full phrasal boundary”
explaining the facts
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Boskovic (2005)
Serbo-Croatian doesn’t have covert Ds whereas English does.
explaining the facts
DP
Spec D’
NP
expensive NP
cars Compl
expensive NP
cars Compl
En
gli
sh
Ser
bo
-Cro
atia
n
NP
DP
Expensive he saw cars.
1. PIC
2. Anti-Loc
1. PIC
2. Anti-LocXP
NP
( )
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Boskovic (2005)
Serbo-Croatian doesn’t have covert Ds whereas English does.
explaining the facts
Spec D’
friends of John friends of John
En
gli
sh
Ser
bo
-Cro
atia
nNP
DP
Who do you like friends of.
1. PIC
2. Anti-Loc
1. PIC
2. Anti-LocXP
NP
( )
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Boskovic (2005)
If Boskovic is right there is no a priori reason for arguments to have a D projection.
This goes against Longobardi who assumes argumenthood requires the presence of a (covert or overt) D.
More in line with a type-shifting approach that does more in the semantics and less in the syntax.
relevance
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Boskovic (2005)
If you’re interested in exploring this line further, you can visit Boskovic’s website (download section). He extends the ideas developed above to a great number of languages and a great deal of different constructions.
http://web2.uconn.edu/boskovic/
remark
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Borer (2005)
Wants to pursue an alternative to type-shifting.
(i) I bought cookies.(ii) John bought ?(a) cookie.
both –s and a are countability markers; without them cookie would get a mass reading
(iii) Wo mai le quqi (Mandarin) I buy LE cookie(iv) Wo mai le yi ge quqi (Mandarin) I buy LE one CL cookie
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Borer (2005)
syntax of a (count) indefinite on its existential reading:
[DPe [#Pa e [CLa e [NPgirl]]]]
Indefinites like a in English do double duty: they function as classifiers and counters.
They don’t necessarily do triple duty though: the existential force associated with them on their existential reading comes from existential closure over the variables in the C-command domain of the verb.
No need for type-shifting!
the enterprise