Author: Peter Lasersohn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315533928
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 157
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Book Description
First published in 1990, this dissertation presents an event-based model-theoretic semantics for plural expressions in English. The author defends against counterarguments the hypothesis that distributive predicates are predicates of groups, and not just individuals. By defining the collective/distributive distinction in terms of event structure, he solves formal problems with previous group-level analyses. The author notes that certain adverbials have a systematic ambiguity between a reading indicating collective action, and readings indicating spatial or temporal proximity; the event-based definition of collective action makes possible a parallel treatment of these readings. This book presents a formal proposal on the algebraic structure of groups and events, and a semantically based analysis of number agreement.
Author: Peter Lasersohn
Publisher: Routledge Library Editions: Semantics and Semiology
ISBN: 9781138691797
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 140
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Book Description
First published in 1990, this dissertation presents an event-based model-theoretic semantics for plural expressions in English. The author defends against counterarguments the hypothesis that distributive predicates are predicates of groups, and not just individuals. By defining the collective/distributive distinction in terms of event structure, he solves formal problems with previous group-level analyses. The author notes that certain adverbials have a systematic ambiguity between a reading indicating collective action, and readings indicating spatial or temporal proximity; the event-based definition of collective action makes possible a parallel treatment of these readings. This book presents a formal proposal on the algebraic structure of groups and events, and a semantically based analysis of number agreement.
Author: P. Lasersohn
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401585814
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 319
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Book Description
Plurality, Conjunction and Events presents a novel theory of plural and conjoined phrases, in an event-based semantic framework. It begins by reviewing options for treating the alternation between `collective' and `distributive' readings of sentences containing plural or conjoined noun phrases, including analyses from both the modern and the premodern literature. It is argued that plural and conjoined noun phrases are unambiguously group-denoting, and that the collective/distributive distinction therefore must be located in the predicates with which these noun phrases combine. More specifically, predicates must have a hidden argument place for events; the collective/distributive distinction may then be represented in the part/whole structure of these events. This allows a natural treatment of `collectivizing' adverbial expressions, and of `pluractional' affixes; it also allows a unified semantics for conjunction, in which conjoined sentences and predicates denote groups of events, much like conjoined noun phrases denote groups of individuals.
Author: Angeliek Van Hout
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135670749
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 424
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Book Description
Using both theoretical and language acquisition arguments, this study proposes a new model of the lexicon-syntax interface defined in terms of checking event-semantic features. The research is based on Dutch verbs and their possible verb frames (intransitive, transitive, etc.) and two studies of children's Dutch. The model developed from these cases represents more generally the way in which Universal Grammar organizes the lexicon of a language and the mapping system that associates a verb's lexical features with its syntactic projection.
Author: Paul M. Pietroski
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199244317
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 267
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Book Description
This book explores how grammatical structure is related to meaning. The meaning of a phrase clearly depends on its constituent words and how they are combined. But how does structure contribute to meaning in natural language? Does combining adjectives with nouns (as in 'brown dog') differ semantically from combining verbs with adverbs (as in 'barked loudly')? What is the significance of combining verbs with names and quantificational expressions (as in 'Fido chased every cat')? In addressing such questions, Paul Pietroski develops a novel conception of linguistic meaning according to which the semantic contribution of combining expressions is simple and uniform across constructions. Drawing on work at the heart of contemporary debates in linguistics and philosophy, the author argues that Donald Davidson's treatment of action sentences as event descriptions should be viewed as an instructive special case of a more general semantic theory. The unified theory covers a wide range of examples, including sentences that involve quantification, plurality, descriptions of complex causal processes, and verbs that take sentential complements. Professor Pietroski also provides fresh ways of thinking about much-discussed semantic generalizations that seem to reflect innately determined aspects of human languages. Designed to be accessible to anyone with a basic knowledge of logic, Events and Semantic Architecture will interest advanced students of linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science at graduate level and above.
Author: Johannes Dölling
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110925443
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 556
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Book Description
This volume addresses the problem of how language expresses conceptual information on event structures and how such information can be reconstructed in the interpretation process. The papers present important new insights into recent semantic and syntactic research on the topic. The volume deals with the following problems in detail: event structure and syntactic construction, event structure and modification, event structure and plurality, event structure and temporal relation, event structure and situation aspect, and event structure and language ontology. Importantly, the topic is discussed not only on the basis of English and German but on the basis of other languages including Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, and Igbo as well. This volume thus provides solid evidence towards clarifying the empirical use of event based analyses.
Author: Friederike Moltmann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195344650
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
This book develops a unified account of expressions involving the notions of "part" and "whole " in which principles of the individuation of part structures play a central role. Moltmann presents a range of new empirical generalizations with data from English and a variety of other languages involving plurals, mass nouns, adnominal and adverbial modifiers such as as a whole, together, and alone, nominal and adverbial quanitfiers ranging over parts, and expressions of completion such as completely and partly. She develops a new theory of part structures which differs from traditional mereological theories in that the notion of an integrated whole plays a central role and in that the part structure of an entity is allowed to vary across different situations, perspectives, and dimensions.
Author: Claudia Maienborn
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110913798
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 377
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Book Description
Since entering the stage, Davidsonian event arguments have taken on a central role in linguistic theorizing. Recent years have seen a continuous extension of possible applications for them, not only in semantics but also in syntax. At the same time questions concerning the ontological status of events have received renewed attention. This collection of articles provides new evidence for the virtually ubiquitous presence of event arguments in linguistic structure and sheds new light on their nature. The volume is organized into four sections: Events - states - causation; Event nominals; Events in composition; Measuring events.
Author: R. Green
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401700737
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 237
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Book Description
The genesis of this volume was the participation of the editors in an ACMlSIGIR (Association for Computing Machinery/Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval) workshop entitled "Beyond Word Relations" (Hetzler, 1997). This workshop examined a number of relationship types with significance for information retrieval beyond the conventional topic-matching relationship. From this shared participation came the idea for an edited volume on relationships, with chapters to be solicited from researchers and practitioners throughout the world. Ultimately, one volume became two volumes. The first volume, Relationships in the Organization of Knowledge (Bean & Green, 200 I), examines the role of relationships in knowledge organization theory and practice, with emphasis given to thesaural relationships and integration across systems, languages, cultures, and disciplines. This second volume examines relationships in a broader array of contexts. The two volumes should be seen as companions, each informing the other. As with the companion volume, we are especially grateful to the authors who willingly accepted challenges of space and time to produce chapters that summarize extensive bodies of research. The value of the volume clearly resides in the quality of the individual chapters. In naming this volume The Semantics of Relationships: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, we wanted to highlight the fact that relationships are not just empty connectives. Relationships constitute important conceptual units and make significant contributions to meaning.
Author: Uma Srinivasan
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1591405432
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 423
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Book Description
"This book is aimed at researchers and practitioners involved in designing and managing complex multimedia information systems"--Provided by publisher.
