Syntactic Categories

Two positions of Bolinger, about synonymy and meaningfulness of words, point to significance of controlling the referentiality of word forms, from representing them in grammar to their projection onto surface structure, i.e. configurationality. In particular, it becomes critical to control the range of surface substitution for surface syntactic categories of words to maintain referential properties of idiosyncrasy. Categorial grammars as reference systems suggest ways to keep the two aspects in grammar. The first dividend of adopting a categorial perspective is systematically (...) distinguishing metaphorical sense extensions from idioms. The second dividend is procedural. Some tokens can be seen to be types themselves, with distinct referential import. Furthermore, some idiomatic meanings which require a unique phonological word for specific reference to events and participants can be types too. Together they can be thought of as the idiotype. The idiotype as idiosyncrasy’s foot through the door of grammar reveals controllable range of possibilities for referentiality and configurationality of idiosyncrasy. Phrasal and idiomatic meanings can then be treated compositionally, given the proposed added role of paracompositionality arising from event versus predicate distinction at the level of predicate-argument structure, in multiword expression cum idiom and phrasal verb treatment, which we show for English, Mandarin Chinese and Turkish. (shrink)

Proper names are generally taken to be count nouns. This paper argues that this is mistaken and that at least in some languages, for example German, names divide into mass and count. Making use of Kayne's (2005, 2010) theory of light nouns, this paper argues that light nouns are part of (simple) names and that a mass-count distinction among light nouns explains the behavior of certain types of names in German as mass rather than count. The paper elaborates the role (...) of light nouns with new generalizations regarding their linguistic behavior in quantificational and pronominal NPs, their selection of relative pronouns in German, and a general difference in the support of plural anaphora between English and German. (shrink)

I reconstruct the notion of significance [_Sinnhaftigkeit_] in the later Husserl, with attention to his conceptions of judgment and transcendental logic. My analysis is motivated by the idea that an account of significance can help to connect analytic, Anglo-American conceptions of meaning as a precise, law-governed phenomenon investigated via linguistic analysis and Continental European conceptions of meaning in a broader “existential” sense. I argue that Husserl’s later work points to a transcendental-logical conception of a founding level of _significance_ [_Sinnhaftigkeit_] prior (...) to language, and that this conception meets characteristically analytic demands for precision and governance by logical constraints. At the same time, since it is based in descriptions of perceptual intentionality at the level of essential possibility, it leaves room for an account of meaning as a partially undetermined phenomenon of lived experience, and not just of our language and concepts, and thereby meets the characteristically Continental demand to take at face value meaning’s vagueness and indeterminacy in everyday human life. (shrink)

Proof-theoretic models of grammar are based on the view that an explicit characterization of a language comes in the form of the recursive enumeration of strings in that language. That recur-sive enumeration is carried out by a procedure which strongly generates a set of structural de-scriptions Σ and weakly generates a set of strings S; a grammar is thus a function that pairs an element of Σ with elements of S. Structural descriptions are obtained by means of Context-Free phrase structure (...) rules or via recursive combinatorics and structure is assumed to be uniform: binary branching trees all the way down. In this work we will analyse natural language constructions for which such a rigid conception of phrase structure is descriptively inadequate, and pro-pose a solution for the problem of phrase structure grammars assigning too much or too little structure to natural language strings: we propose that the grammar can oscillate between levels of computational complexity in local domains, which correspond to elementary trees in a lexicalised Tree Adjoining Grammar. (shrink)

It is known that Turkish, like all languages, has changed and is in a process of change. The direction of the change in question is both from verbal language to written language and from written language to verbal language. Changes are studied in linguistics by two different types of research approaches, namely diachronic and synchronic. This qualitative study using the quantitative data collection tool focused on the phenomenon of synchronic change. The aim of this descriptive study is to reveal to (...) what extend the reductions in verbal Turkish has reflected on written language. For this purpose, four words with adverbial functions (daha, beri, kadar ve kere), whose use in daily speech is gradually decreasing, from everyday language in standard Turkish of Turkey have been chosen, a " grammatical judgement test " has been prepared and applied to sample group that consists of 24 undergraduate students studying in Turkish Language and Literature department. As a result of the research, is has been determined that the functions of these words dropped in daily language use are provided with suffixes. It was observed that a significant part of the participants tended to accept the sentences whose words with adverbial were omitted. (shrink)

One well known problem regarding quantifiers, in particular the 1storder quantifiers, is connected with their syntactic categories and denotations. The unsatisfactory efforts to establish the syntactic and ontological categories of quantifiers in formalized first-order languages can be solved by means of the so called principle of categorial compatibility formulated by Roman Suszko, referring to some innovative ideas of Gottlob Frege and visible in syntactic and semantic compatibility of language expressions. In the paper the principle is introduced for categorial languages generated (...) by the Ajdukiewicz’s classical categorial grammar. The 1st-order quantifiers are typically ambiguous. Every 1st-order quantifier of the type k > 0 is treated as a two-argument functorfunction defined on the variable standing at this quantifier and its scope (the sentential function with exactly k free variables, including the variable bound by this quantifier); a binary function defined on denotations of its two arguments is its denotation. Denotations of sentential functions, and hence also quantifiers, are defined separately in Fregean and in situational semantics. They belong to the ontological categories that correspond to the syntactic categories of these sentential functions and the considered quantifiers. The main result of the paper is a solution of the problem of categories of the 1st-order quantifiers based on the principle of categorial compatibility. (shrink)

In the paper, original formal-logical conception of syntactic and semantic: intensional and extensional senses of expressions of any language L is outlined. Syntax and bi-level intensional and extensional semantics of language L are characterized categorically: in the spirit of some Husserl’s ideas of pure grammar, Leśniewski-Ajukiewicz’s theory syntactic/semantic categories and in accordance with Frege’s ontological canons, Bocheński’s famous motto—syntax mirrors ontology and some ideas of Suszko: language should be a linguistic scheme of ontological reality and simultaneously a tool of its (...) cognition. In the logical conception of language L, its expressions should satisfy some general conditions of language adequacy. The adequacy ensures their unambiguous syntactic and semantic senses and mutual, syntactic, and semantic compatibility, correspondence guaranteed by the acceptance of a postulate of categorial compatibility syntactic and semantic categories of expressions of L. From this postulate, three principles of compositionality follow: one syntactic and two semantic already known to Frege. They are treated as conditions of homomorphism partial algebra of L into algebraic models of L: syntactic, intensional, and extensional. In the paper, they are applied to some expressions with quantifiers. Language adequacy connected with the logical senses described in the logical conception of language L is, of course, an idealization, but only expressions with high degrees of precision of their senses, after due justification, may become theorems of science. (shrink)

This paper argues that the theory of phrase structure a certain linguistic approach assumes implies taking a stance on the formal nature of the computational procedures that generate that phrase structure. We will proceed by critically evaluating theories of phrase structure and labeling -which implies taking a structure as a unit for the purposes of further computations-, and building on and opposing to the proposals we review, we will claim that syntactic objects are not computationally uniform, and therefore the computational (...) system in charge of establishing dependencies between symbolic objects within the mind is not uniform as well. We argue in favor of a linguistic-cognitive model which dynamically chooses different grammars based on the complexity of the input, and is capable of assigning a mixed phrase marker to an object that presents more than one computational pattern. Empirical evidence is provided in favor of our approach to phrase structure building, and further implications for a theory of labeling and predication are discussed as prolegomena to further research. (shrink)

In this paper we will analyze the conceptual and computational motivations of the property of displacement in natural languages from a revisited perspective. We will account for displacement phenomena proposing our own version of displacement-as-external token Merge, as opposed to the traditional displacement-as-literal movement or, more recently, displacement-as-copy and Merge (Chomsky 1995; Kitahara 1997; Nunes 2004). As far as empirical data is concerned, we will provide a brief analysis of parasitic gaps and their derivation, comparing our proposal with previous accounts (...) making particular stress on the idea that operations are not feature-driven in a highly constrained syntactic component, but interface-driven, syntax being free and unbounded. (shrink)

The principal question addressed is whether there is a division among common nouns which is similar to a familiar division among noun phrases that designate particular-level individuals: the one which is captured in the relevant literature as the difference between de jure rigid and not de jure rigid singular terms. In relation with the previous philosophical literature relevant to noun rigidity it is argued that the extant positions on the matter are not defended on the basis of well-founded syntactic categories (...) and proper semantic arguments. Proper ways to argue for rigidity ascriptions to nouns are described. Then, such arguments are sought for the case of rigid/non-rigid division among count common nouns. It is shown that there are plausible, albeit inconclusive, reasons to hold that among common nouns (N-bar expressions) only simple common nouns are kind designators, and that if that is the case these simple common nouns will have to be reckoned as de jure rigid designators. (shrink)

The paper argues that philosophers commonly misidentify the substitutivity principle involved in Russell’s puzzle about substitutivity in “On Denoting”. This matters because when that principle is properly identified the puzzle becomes considerably sharper and more interesting than it is often taken to be. This article describes both the puzzle itself and Russell's solution to it, which involves resources beyond the theory of descriptions. It then explores the epistemological and metaphysical consequences of that solution. One such consequence, it argues, is that (...) Russell must abandon his commitment to propositions. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to present and describe a new method for studying pre-speech language. The suggested approach allows correlate epistemology of linguistics to the ideological tradition of other scientific disciplines. Method is based on three linguistic categories – nouns, verbs, and interjections in their motor and expressive qualities – and their relation to the three basic forms of art – graphics (visual art), movement (dance), and sound (music). The study considers this correlation as caused by the nature (...) of the human receptor system. This method explains the nature of art and the phenomenon of aesthetics and allows for the chronological arrangement of important cultural processes; it identifies the fundamental unanimity of the semiotic nature of language and art. (shrink)

Philosophers of mathematics agree that the only interpretation of arithmetic that takes that discourse at 'face value' is one on which the expressions 'N', '0', '1', '+', and 'x' are treated as proper names. I argue that the interpretation on which these expressions are treated as akin to free variables has an equal claim to be the default interpretation of arithmetic. I show that no purely syntactic test can distinguish proper names from free variables, and I observe that any semantic (...) test that can must beg the question. I draw the same conclusion concerning areas of mathematics beyond arithmetic. This paper is a greatly extended version of my response to Stewart Shapiro's paper in the conference 'Structuralism in physics and mathematics' held in Bristol on 2–3 December, 2006. (shrink)

This article summarizes the main ideas for formalizing categorial languages genrated by classical categorial grammar originated by K. Ajdukiewicz [1935,1960].This formalization is presented in detail in the author's monographs in Polish "Teorie Języków Syntaktycznie Kategorialnych" ("Theories of Syntactically Categorical Languages"), PWN, Warszawa-Wrocław 1985 and in English "Theory of Language Syntax, Categorial Approach", Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston-London-Dordrecht 1991.

The paper develops Lambda Grammars, a form of categorial grammar that, unlike other categorial formalisms, is non-directional. Linguistic signs are represented as sequences of lambda terms and are combined with the help of linear combinators.

Like '&', '=' is no term; it represents no extrasentential property. It marks an atomic, nonpredicative, declarative structure, sentences true solely by codesignation. Identity (its necessity and total reflexivity, its substitution rule, its metaphysical vacuity) is the objectual face of codesignation. The syntax demands pure reference, without predicative import for the asserted fact. 'Twain is Clemens' is about Twain, but nothing is predicated of him. Its informational value is in its 'metailed' semantic content: the fact of codesignation (that 'Twain' names (...) Clemens) that explains what fact it asserts and why it is necessary. Critiques of concepts of rigidity and elimination of singular terms result. (shrink)

The identity "relation" is misconceived since the syntax of "=" is misconceived as a relative term. Actually, "=" is syncategorematic; it forms (true) sentences with a nonpredicative syntax from pairs of (coreferring) flanking names, much as "&" forms (true) conjunctive sentences from pairs of (true) flanking sentences. In the conaming structure, nothing is predicated of the subject, other than, implicitly, its being so conamed. An identity sentence has both an objectual reading as a necessity about what is named, and also (...) a metalinguistic reading as a contingency about the names. Either way the claim about the subject referent has no extralinguistic content. The necessity of alteridentity (non-self-identity) statements is "lexical", due to contingencies of the names' reference, much like the necessity of analytic statements, due to contingencies of the predicates' sense, and unlike the necessity of logical truths (e.g., self-identities) whose truth is secured by syntax alone. Both alter-identity and analytic sentences are readable as objectual necessities and metalinguistic contingencies. Epistemically, alter-identity statements are not essentially unlike analyticities. "Greece is Hellas"/"g=h" and "Greeks are Hellenes"/"(x)(Gx<=>Hx)" are equally (un)informative; so too for "Azure is cobalt"/"a=c" and "Everything azure is cobalt"/"(x)(Ax<=>Cx)". The real epistemic contrast is between proper names (terms without predicative sense) and terms with a predicative sense (names and predicates of properties). Proper names refer to concrete objects, property names refer to abstract objects. That contrast is metaphysical and thus epistemic. (shrink)

This chapter makes the following main claims about Hungarian: A. There is a detailed parallelism between the structures of noun phrases (DPs) and clauses (CPs), involving inflection, possessor extraction, and articles as complementizers. B. "HAVE sentences" are existential sentences involving possessor extraction. C. The argument frame of complex event nominals is identical to that of the underlying verb. D. The deverbal affix in nominals may have either a plain verb or a complex verb in its scope.

We argue that there exist two kinds of passive structures, a) one generated in the base b) the other transformationally derived by the structure preserving-rule of move-NP. Assuming a Case theory along the lmines of Chomsky (1978), we want to argue a) that some oblique Cases are assigned in the base b) that NP movement can move an oblique Case assigned in the base c) that movement should not be defined in terms of Case but in terms of Government.