Online research in philosophy

(1) a. Satoshi sent Thilo the Schw¨abische W¨orterbuch. b. Satoshi sent the Schw¨abische W¨orterbuch to Thilo. Many have entertained the notion that there is a rule that relates sentences such as these. This is suggested by the fact that it is possible to learn that a newly coined verb licenses one of them and automatically know that it licenses the other. Marantz (1984) argues for the existence of such a rule in this way, noting that once one has learned of the new verb shin by exposure to (2a), the grammaticality of (2b) is also learned. (2) a. Thilo shinned the ball to Satoshi. b. Thilo shinned Satoshi the ball. This is explained if there is a rule that ties the double object frame together with the NP+PP frame, making it sufficient to know that a verb licenses one if it licenses the other. Frequently, the rule involved has been taken to be syntactic in nature. See, among many others, Fillmore (1965), Oehrle (1976), Baker (1988), and Larson (1988). The leading idea under this view is that the two frames are simply different surface manifestations of the same underlying structure. Typically, this approach posits that the NP+PP frame represents that underlying structure from which the double object frame is transformationally derived. There is evidence, however, that the two frames instead have different underlying structures, and are not related by transformation. This evidence, then.

tic structure. Determining the semantic roles of a verb’s dependents is an important step in natural..

I want to do two things here today. First, I want to describe and comment on some materials in and on Western Abenaki. Second, I want to make some additions to the various lists of Western Abenaki verb forms that have been available from published sources. This will be strictly a report on work in progress. Let me make acknowledgments right off to two colleagues: Roger Higgins, who has been working on Wampanoag (Massachusett) for some years, and Roy Wright, with whom I have been collaborating on some of the WA materials, as I will report in a minute. And I want to give special thanks to Cécile Wawanolett, who first introduced me to her language. I put my email address on the handout. I would appreciate any comments that you might care to send to me on what I present here today.

Although there is empirical evidence of neural filling-in, this does not necessarily entail “isomorphic” theory. Most cortical neurons do not respond to a uniform surface and are instead sensitive to surface size and quality. I propose that a population of such neurons encodes the presence of a surface. This scheme is different from either the “cognitive” or “isomorphic” theories.

Bloom's theory of word learning has difficulty accounting for children's verb acquisition. There is no predominant preverbal event concept, akin to the preverbal object concept, to direct children's early event-verb mappings. Children may take advantage of grammatical and linguistic information in verb acquisition earlier than Bloom allows. A distinction between lexical and grammatical learning is difficult to maintain for verb acquisition.

Consider the following two sentences:

(1) I see a dark discoloration in the back of my hand.
(2) I feel a jabbing pain in the back of my hand.

They seem to have the same surface grammar, and thus prima facie invite the same kind of semantic treatment. Even though a reading of ‘see’ in (1) where the verb is not treated as a success verb is not out of the question, it is not the ordinary and natural reading. Note that if I am hallucinating a dark discoloration in the back of my hand, then (1) is simply false. For (1) to be true, therefore, I have to stand in the seeing relation to a dark discoloration in the back of my hand, i.e., to a certain surface region in the back of my hand marked by a darker shade of the usual color of my skin, a certain region that can be seen by others possibly in the same way in which I see it. Also note that although the truth of (1) doesn’t require the possession of any concept by me expressed by the words making up the sentence, my uttering of (1) to make a report typically does — if we take such utterances as expressions of one’s thoughts. So my seeing would typically induce me to identify something in the back of my hand as a dark discoloration. This is a typical case of categorization of something under a concept induced by perception. Of course, my uttering of (1) does more than attributing a physical property to a bodily region, it also reports that I am seeing it.

Since in Modernism inner meaning is doubted or believed lost, the question arises of what an interpretation ignoring the established dialectics of outside and inside and limiting itself to an exclusive surface would look like. Henri Matisse’s decorations’ raise questions about the differences between figure and background, appearance and essence, inside and outside. Instead of reference to depth under the surface, it is density and expansion, concentration and contraction, which determine the occurrence of meaning on the surface. Matisse presents himself as a flâneur of the surface, as if he wanted to show us, in the words of Gilles Deleuze, that ‘[i]t is by following the border, by skirting the surface, that one passes from bodies to the corporeal’.

Aspectual typing (a.k.a. Aktionsart) \E1 1-atom event (a.k.a. ‘resultative action verb’) \E n-atom event (a.k.a. ‘other action verb’) \S1 1-degree state (a.k.a. ‘quality verb’) \S n-degree state (a.k.a. ‘other stative verb’).

Kant said that existence is not a predicate and Russell agreed, arguing that a sentence such as ‘The king of France exists’, which seems to attribute existence to the king of France, really has a logical form that is not reflected in the surface structure of the sentence at all. While the surface form of the sentence consists of a subject (the noun phrase ‘the king of France’) and a predicate (the verb phrase ‘exists’), the underlying logical form, according to Russell, is the formula given in (1). This formula obviously has no subjectpredicate form and in fact has no single constituent that corresponds to the verb phrase ‘exists’ in the surface sentence. (1) ∃x∀y(Ky ↔ x = y) The importance of Russell’s analysis becomes clear when we consider ‘The king of France does not exist’. If this sentence would attribute non-existence to the king it should entail that there is someone who does not exist, just as ‘Mary doesn’t like bananas’ entails that there is someone who doesn’t like bananas. Thus the idea that all sentences have subject-predicate form has led some philosophers (e.g. Meinong) to the view that there are objects that lack existence. This embarrassing position can be avoided once Russell’s analysis is accepted: if ‘The king of France does not exist’ is formalised as the negation of formula (1), no unwanted consequences follow.