This book takes concepts developed by researchers in theoretical computer science and adapts and applies them to the study of natural language meaning. Summarizing over a decade of research, Chris Barker and Chung-chieh Shan put forward the Continuation Hypothesis: that the meaning of a natural language expression can depend on its own continuation.

This book examines the hypothesis of "direct compositionality", which requires that semantic interpretation proceed in tandem with syntactic combination. Although associated with the dominant view in formal semantics of the 1970s and 1980s, the feasibility of direct compositionality remained unsettled, and more recently the discussion as to whether or not this view can be maintained has receded. The syntax-semantics interaction is now often seen as a process in which the syntax builds representations which, at the abstract level of logical form, (...) are sent for interpretation to the semantics component of the language faculty. In the first extended discussion of the hypothesis of direct compositionality for twenty years, this book considers whether its abandonment might have been premature and whether in fact direct compositionality is not after all a simpler and more effective conception of the grammar than the conventional account of the syntax-semantics interface in generative grammar. It contains contributions from both sides of the debate, locates the debate in the setting of a variety of formal theories, and draws on examples from a range of languages and a range of empirical phenomena. (shrink)

Physics has been thought to truly represent reality since at least Galileo, and the foundations of physics are always established using philosophical ideas. In particular, the elegant naming of physical entities is usually very influential in the acceptance of physical theories. We here demonstrate (using current developments in thermodynamics as an example) that both the epistemology and the ontology of physics ultimately rest on poetic language. What we understand depends essentially on the language we use. We wish to establish our (...) knowledge securely, but strictly speaking this is impossible using only analytic language. Knowledge of the meanings of things must use a natural language designed to express meaning, that is, poetic language. Although the world is really there, and although we can indeed know it truly, this knowledge is never either complete or certain but ultimately must rest on intuition. Reading a recently discovered artefact with a palaeo-Hebrew inscription as from the first century, we demonstrate from it that this ontological understanding long predates the Hellenic period. Poetic language is primary, both logically and temporally. (shrink)

Most studies of the so-called proportion problem seek to understand how lexical and structural properties of sentences containing adverbial quantifiers give rise to various proportional readings. This paper explores a related but distinct problem: given a use of a particular sentence in context, why do only some of the expected proportional readings seem to be available? That is, why do some sentences allow an asymmetric reading when other, structurally similar sentences seem to require a symmetric reading? Potential factors suggested in (...) the literature include the distribution of donkey pronouns, certain uniqueness implications, and focus structures. I argue here that the use of an adverbial quantifier presupposes HOMOGENEITY: all individual situations that get lumped into a single case for the purposes of evaluating the quantification must agree on whether they satisfy the nuclear scope. For instance, in order for a token of Usually, if a farmer owns a donkey, he beats it to be felicitous when construed under a farmer-dominant asymmetric reading, the context must be consistent with the proposition that each farmer either beats all or none of his donkeys. Thus proportional sentences are indeed systematically ambiguous, but only some readings will be felicitous in a given context. (shrink)

I propose the first strictly compositional semantic account of same. New data, including especially NP-internal uses such as two men with the same name, suggests that same in its basic use is a quantificational element taking scope over nominals. Given type-lifting as a generally available mechanism, I show that this follows naturally from the fact that same is an adjective. Independently-motivated assumptions extend the analysis to standard examples such as Anna and Bill read the same book via a mechanism I (...) call PARASITIC SCOPE, in which the scope of same depends on the scope of some other scopetaking element in the sentence. Although I will initially discuss the analysis in terms of a familiar Quantifier Raising framework, I go on to implement the analysis within an innovative continuation-based Type-Logical Grammar. The empirical payoff for dealing in continuations is that a simple generalization of the basic analysis gives the first ever formal account of cases in which same distributes over objects other than NP denotations, as in the relevant interpretation of John hit and killed the same man. (shrink)

Using a vague predicate can make commitments about the appropriate use of that predicate in the remaining part of the discourse. For instance, if I assert that some particular pig is fat, I am committed to judging any fatter pig to be fat as well. We can model this update effect by recognizing that truth depends both on the state of the world and on the state of the discourse: the truth conditions of ‘This pig is fat’ rule out evaluation (...) points for which the pig in question in world w is thinner than the cutoff for fatness in the discourse d. Then disagreements about taste are disagreements about the discourse. Unlike disagreements about the world, disagreements about the discourse can be faultless, given that none of the discourse participants has privileged authority to make pronouncements about conventions for appropriate use of a predicate. Thus on the dynamic view developed here, whether or not a dispute about taste turns out to be faultless depends in part on predictable features of the previous discourse. On this account, faultless disagreement involving predicates of personal taste does not force relativizing truth to a judge or assessor. (shrink)

This paper proposes that the meanings of some natural language expressions should be thought of as functions on their own continuations. Continuations are a well-established analytic tool in the theory of programming language semantics; in brief, a continuation is the entire default future of a computation. I show how a continuation-based grammar can unify several aspects of natural language quantification in a new way: merely stating the truth conditions for quantificational expressions in terms of continuations automatically accounts for scope displacement (...) and scope ambiguity. To prove this claim, I exhibit a simple finite context-free grammar with a strictly compositional semantics in which quantificational NPs are interpreted in situ but take semantic scope over larger constituents. There is no Quantifier Raising (nor any use of a level of Logical Form distinct from overt syntax), no Cooper Storage (or similar mechanisms used in many recent HPSG, Categorial, or Type-logical treatments), and no need for type-shifting (as in Hendriks' Flexible Types account). Continuations also provide a natural account of generalized coordination that does not require either type-shifting or type polymorphism. Compositionality issues are discussed in some detail. (shrink)

Why ever assert clarity? If It is clear that p is true, then saying so should be at best superfluous. Barker and Taranto (2003) and Taranto (2006) suggest that asserting clarity reveals information about the beliefs of the discourse participants, specifically, that they both believe that p . However, mutual belief is not sufficient to guarantee clarity ( It is clear that God exists ). I propose instead that It is clear that p means instead (roughly) 'the publicly available (...) evidence justifies concluding that p '. Then what asserting clarity reveals is information concerning the prevailing epistemic standard that determines whether a body of evidence is sufficient to justify a claim. If so, the semantics of clarity constitutes a grammatical window into the discourse dynamics of inference and skepticism. (shrink)

What is the communicative value of negative polarity? That is, why do so many languages maintain a stock of special indefinites that occur only in a proper subset of the contexts in which ordinary indefinites can appear? Previous answers include: marking the validity of downward inferences; marking the invalidity of veridical inferences; or triggering strengthening implications. My starting point for exploring a new answer is the fact that an NPI must always take narrow scope with respect to its licensing context. (...) In contrast, ordinary indefinites are notorious for taking wide scope. So whatever other functions NPIs may have, they at least serve as an utterly reliable signal that an indefinite is taking narrow scope. As also proposed in recent work of Kusumoto and Tancredi, I will show that NPIs are only licensed in contexts in which the wide scope construal of an indefinite fails to entail the narrow scope. In other words, weak NPIs occur only in contexts in which taking narrow scope matters for interpretation. Thus one part of the explanation for the ubiquity and robust stability of negative polarity is that it signals scope relations. (shrink)

This paper analyzes sluicing as anaphora to an anti-constituent (a continuation), that is, to the semantic remnant of a clause from which a subconstituent has been removed. For instance, in Mary said that [John saw someone yesterday], but she didn’t say who, the antecedent clause is John saw someone yesterday, the subconstituent targeted for removal is someone, and the ellipsis site following who is anaphoric to the scope remnant John saw ___ yesterday. I provide a compositional syntax and semantics on (...) which the relationship between the targeted subconstituent and the rest of the antecedent clause is one of scopability, not movement or binding. This correctly predicts that sluicing should be sensitive to scope islands, but not to syntactic islands. Unlike the currently dominant approaches to sluicing, there is no need to posit syntactic structure internal to the ellipsis site, nor is there any need for a semantic mutual-entailment requirement. Nevertheless, the fragment handles phenomena usually taken to suggest a close syntactic correspondence between the antecedent and the sluice, including case matching, voice matching, and verbal argument structure matching. In addition, the analysis handles phenomena exhibiting antecedent/sluice mismatches, including examples such as John remembers meeting someone, but he doesn’t remember who, , and especially so-called sprouting examples such as John left, but I don’t know when, in which there is no overt subconstituent to target for removal. In Sect. 5, I show how the analysis accounts for Andrews Amalgams such as Sally ate [I don’t know what] today, in which the antecedent surrounds the sluiced clause. Finally, in Sect. 6, I propose a new semantic constraint on sluicing: the Answer Ban, which says that the antecedent clause must not resolve, or even partially resolve, the issue raised by the sluiced interrogative. (shrink)

Let us suppose that thematic roles, or something very much like them, are needed to describe lexical and semantic patterns in the behavior of verbal predicates. But what about nouns? Is there evidence independent of verbal constructions motivating a system of nominal thematic relations? We suggest that the general problem of argument selection does in fact motivate a set of quintessentially nominal thematic proto-roles which we call Proto- Part and Proto-Whole. These nominal proto-roles are parallel to but distinct from the (...) verbal proto-roles of Proto-Agent and Proto-Patient proposed by Dowty (1991) to account for argument selection in verbal predicates. The resulting theory of nominal argument selection is properly semantic, that is, it distinguishes between argument positions purely on the basis of the semantic entailments of the predicates involved. Furthermore, it is non-dynamic, that is, it describes static patterns of lexicalization without hypothesizing any productive grammatical process that maps semantic arguments to syntactic arguments during the derivation of a sentence. (shrink)

This article pays close attention to Michel Foucault's theory that political regimes are enlightened through courageous free speech. A Foucaultian enlightenment occurs not when philosophical reason completely replaces superstition and enthusiasm in the public sphere, but instead when the parrhesiast partially organizes competing claims to know and to speak the truth. While much of the recent scholarly literature on Foucault’s later lectures emphasizes the political importance of the parrhesiast, less attention has been paid to the overlap and/or incompatibility between parrhesia (...) and the other modes of truth-telling. Below, I explain Foucault’s analysis of the basic modes of philosophical truth-telling: prophesy, philosophy, teaching, and parrhesia. I provide examples of speakers working within these modes in the ancient and modern world. I explain the overlap and tension between these modes, and I analyze Foucault’s partial organization of them through the image of the parrhesiast. I briefly compare Foucault’s position to the agonistic democratic theory of Chantal Mouffe and distinguish Foucault’s view from consensus-based views of public reason. Finally, I provide practical and theoretical examples of parrhesiastic activity in the contemporary world. (shrink)

In his later lectures, Foucault analyzes confession as a key exercise of the Christian pastoral power. The pastoral power’s creation of a lifelong obligation to speak the truth of oneself is a ‘prelude’ to modern practices of government, and a key facet of modernity. There has been some confusion regarding the scope of Foucault’s study. Is it medieval Christian confessional practices or Christian obedience itself that is his theme? In this article, I revisit all of the later lectures touching on (...) confession and avowal in order to clarify Foucault’s ambivalence about Christian proto-governmentality. Foucault exposes two regimes of truth, belief and confession, and offer a practice-based, confession-centred history of the pre-modern self. Connecting his lectures to his method of anarchaeology clarifies how the force of truth (the ‘you have to’) is, for Foucault, a fundamental if ambivalent historical-cultural problem of government. (shrink)

Aristocracy of sex -- Industrial aristocracy -- Expertocracy -- Mass and elite politics -- Democratic religion.

SUMMARYThis paper examines the formal filters of the public's political will defended by JS Mill as consistent with the best form of representative government. Holding that institutions must adjust to democratic society, and that democratic society must be improved to achieve wise rule, Mill rejects secret ballots and electoral pledges, and advocates a constitutional council and graduated enfranchisement. He also recommends but does not require the indirect election of the President and a unicameral legislature. Mill's historically sensitive approach puts pressure (...) on interpreters to be sensitive to their own political and social context when applying Mill's ideas. In particular, obviously undemocratic measures such as plural voting should be adjusted to reflect Mill's view that the ratio between legitimacy and competence is constantly changing. The continual readjustment between the powers of masses and elites is the way that Mill's Considerations on Representative Government manage to avoid the now-traditional charge of expertocracy. (shrink)

Hanna Pitkin explains that Arendt’s defense of collective political action tends to reify and mystify an opposing concept Arendt calls ‘the Social’. Was Arendt actually right about the rise of ‘the Social’? Does the deep-set global mass entertainment culture tend to sap action even when it purportedly celebrates it? And what can viewing publics and counter-publics tell us about the meaning and reception of ‘the Social’, especially in this massively online era? This article surveys different ways of thinking about the (...) basic problem presented by American popular action cinema, and especially big-budget Hollywood action films, through an Arendtian lens. In presenting this overview, the article looks to reorient traditional philosophical concerns about screen violence and its censorship, and to offer a holistic reappraisal of ‘the Social’ and ‘action’ by placing democratic theory in closer dialogue with film studies. (shrink)

J. S. Mill is typically thought of as a liberal utilitarian disciple of Jeremy Bentham, and in other readings as a modern Socratic or even a modern Epicurean. Mill and the Epicureans are alike in several respects: they theorize personal freedom and active character versus determinism and passivity, they oppose excessive love and praise friendship, and they are critical of traditional religiosity. In spite of these similarities, Mill and the Epicureans have a different conception of active character and citizenship, stemming (...) from a difference in first principles. Mill's philosopher does not share the Epicurean aim of untroubledness (ataraxia), and Mill accepts the demanding task of educating and regenerating a mass democratic society. Below, I assess Mill's troubled hedonism, that is, his acceptance of often intense and long-term mental perturbations, justified by a decidedly non-Epicurean social reform project. (shrink)

Lambek elegantly characterized part of natural language. As is well-known, his substructural logic L, and its non-associative version NL, handle basic function/argument composition well, but not scope taking and syntactic displacement—at least, not in their full generality. In previous work, I propose $$\text {NL}_\lambda $$, which is NL supplemented with a single structural inference rule (“abstraction”). Abstraction closely resembles the traditional linguistic rule of quantifier raising, and characterizes both semantic scope taking and syntactic displacement. Due to the unconventional form of (...) the abstraction inference, there has been some doubt that $$\text {NL}_\lambda $$ should count at a legitimate substructural logic. This paper argues that $$\text {NL}_\lambda $$ is perfectly well-behaved. In particular, it enjoys cut elimination and an interpolation result. In addition, perhaps surprisingly, it is decidable. Finally, I prove that it is sound and complete with respect to the usual class of relational frames. (shrink)

Lambek elegantly characterized part of natural language. As is well-known, his substructural logic L, and its non-associative version NL, handle basic function/argument composition well, but not scope taking and syntactic displacement—at least, not in their full generality. In previous work, I propose \, which is NL supplemented with a single structural inference rule.ion closely resembles the traditional linguistic rule of quantifier raising, and characterizes both semantic scope taking and syntactic displacement. Due to the unconventional form of the abstraction inference, there (...) has been some doubt that \ should count at a legitimate substructural logic. This paper argues that \ is perfectly well-behaved. In particular, it enjoys cut elimination and an interpolation result. In addition, perhaps surprisingly, it is decidable. Finally, I prove that it is sound and complete with respect to the usual class of relational frames. (shrink)

We present a general theory of scope and binding in which both crossover and superiority violations are ruled out by one key assumption: that natural language expressions are normally evaluated (processed) from left to right. Our theory is an extension of Shan’s (2002) account of multiple-wh questions, combining continuations (Barker, 2002) and dynamic type-shifting. Like other continuation-based analyses, but unlike most other treatments of crossover or superiority, our analysis is directly compositional (in the sense of, e.g., Jacobson, 1999). In (...) particular, it does not postulate a level of Logical Form or any other representation distinct from surface syntax. One advantage of using continuations is that they are the standard tool for modeling order-of-evaluation in programming languages. This provides us with a natural and independently motivated characterization of what it means to evaluate expressions from left to right. We give a combinatory categorial grammar that models the syntax and the semantics of quantifier scope and wh-question formation. It allows quantificational binding but not crossover, in-situ wh but not superiority violations. In addition, the analysis automatically accounts for a variety of sentence types involving binding in the presence of pied piping, including reconstruction cases such as Whose criticism of hisi mother did each personi resent? (shrink)

Using the programming-language concept of continuations, we propose a new, multimodal analysis of quantification in Type Logical Grammar. Our approach provides a geometric view of in-situ quantification in terms of graphs, and motivates the limited use of empty antecedents in derivations. Just as continuations are the tool of choice for reasoning about evaluation order and side effects in programming languages, our system provides a principled, type-logical way to model evaluation order and side effects in natural language. We illustrate with an (...) improved account of quantificational binding, weak crossover, wh-questions, superiority, and polarity licensing. (shrink)

Brasoveanu (Linguist Philos 34:93–168, 2011) argues that “different” exhibits what he calls association with distributivity: a distributive operator such as “each” creates a two-part context that propagates through the compositional semantics in a way that can be accessed by a subordinate “different”. We show that Brasoveanu’s analysis systematically undergenerates, failing to provide interpretations of sentences such as “Every1 boy claimed every girl read a different1 poem”, in which “different” can associate with a non-local distributive operator. We provide a generalized version (...) of association with distributivity, implemented using de Groote’s (in: Proceedings of semantics and linguistic theory XVI, 2006) continuation-based dynamic semantics. We compare our analysis with the one in Brasoveanu (2011), drawing conclusions about computational tractability, scope of indefinites, and whether it is possible or even desirable to arrive at a unified analysis of internal and external readings of “different”. (shrink)

Séminaire de linguistique Responsable : Anne Carlier. Programme 20 octobre 2017 : linguistique anglaise Chris Barker : Vagueness, indeterminacy, and update Thomas Herbst : Restricting the rights of linguists 17 novembre 2017 : analyse de discours Paul Sambre : Multimodal socio-cognition and corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis Giuditta Caliendo : Longitudinal changes in the EU’s discursive practices: a corpus-assisted critical dis...

Philosophers have long been fascinated by the connection between cause and effect: are 'causes' things we can experience, or are they concepts provided by our minds? The study of causation goes back to Aristotle, but resurged with David Hume and Immanuel Kant, and is now one of the most important topics in metaphysics. Most of the recent work done in this area has attempted to place causation in a deterministic, scientific, worldview. But what about the unpredictable and chancey world we (...) actually live in: can one theory of causation cover all instances of cause and effect? _Cause and Chance: Causation in an Indeterministic World _is a collection of specially written papers by world-class metaphysicians. Its focus is the problem facing the 'reductionist' approach to causation: the attempt to cover all types of causation, deterministic and indeterministic, with one basic theory. Contributors: Stephen Barker, Helen Beebee, Phil Dowe, Dorothy Edgington, Doug Ehring, Chris Hitchcock, Igal Kwart, Paul Noordhof, Murali Ramachandran and Michael Tooley. (shrink)

Users of psychedelic drugs often report that their sense of being a self or ‘I’ distinct from the rest of the world has diminished or altogether dissolved. Neuroscientific study of such ‘ego dissolution’ experiences offers a window onto the nature of self-awareness. We argue that ego dissolution is best explained by an account that explains self-awareness as resulting from the integrated functioning of hierarchical predictive models which posit the existence of a stable and unchanging entity to which representations are bound. (...) Combining recent work on the ‘integrative self' and the phenomenon of self-binding with predictive processing principles yields an explanation of ego dissolution according to which self-representation is a useful Cartesian fiction: an ultimately false representation of a simple and enduring substance to which attributes are bound which serves to integrate and unify cognitive processing across levels and domains. The self-model is not a mere narrative posit, as some have suggested; it has a more robust and ubiquitous cognitive function than that. But this does not mean, as others have claimed, that the self-model has the right attributes to qualify as a self. It performs some of the right kinds of functions, but it is not the right kind of entity. Ego dissolution experiences reveal that the self-model plays an important binding function in cognitive processing, but the self does not exist. (shrink)

The past 50 years have seen an accumulation of evidence suggesting that associative learning depends on high-level cognitive processes that give rise to propositional knowledge. Yet, many learning theorists maintain a belief in a learning mechanism in which links between mental representations are formed automatically. We characterize and highlight the differences between the propositional and link approaches, and review the relevant empirical evidence. We conclude that learning is the consequence of propositional reasoning processes that cooperate with the unconscious processes involved (...) in memory retrieval and perception. We argue that this new conceptual framework allows many of the important recent advances in associative learning research to be retained, but recast in a model that provides a firmer foundation for both immediate application and future research. (shrink)

Individuals are a prominent part of the biological world. Although biologists and philosophers of biology draw freely on the concept of an individual in articulating both widely accepted and more controversial claims, there has been little explicit work devoted to the biological notion of an individual itself. How should we think about biological individuals? What are the roles that biological individuals play in processes such as natural selection (are genes and groups also units of selection?), speciation (are species individuals?), and (...) organismic development (do genomes code for organisms)? Much of our discussion here will focus on organisms as a central kind of biological individual, and that discussion will raise broader questions about the nature of the biological world, for example, about its complexity, its organization, and its relation to human thought. (shrink)

This entry considers the philosophical subject called 'metaphysics'. There have been many conceptions of metaphysics, and metaphysics has faced severe criticism throughout the history of philosophy and continues to do so. Besides discussing some major trends in analytic metaphysics - understood as 'metaphysics done by analytic philosophers' - we consider some of the criticisms and possible responses.

The United Kingdom’s Coalition government has introduced an education policy that is focused on increasing the opportunities to promote and advance social mobility for all children within state education. Raising young people’s aspirations through school-based initiatives is a prominent theme within recent policy texts, which are focused on improving educational outcomes and thus advancing social mobility. This article draws on qualitative data from paired interviews with 32 students in two academies to first investigate if our participants’ aspirations indicate a desire (...) for intragenerational social mobility and second, to explore our participants’ perceptions of the influences of their family background on their aspirations for the future. Analysis of our data highlights the mismatch between our participants’ aspirations for the future and the government’s constructions of what they should aspire to, as articulated in policy texts. By investigating aspirations, as part of a wider project to understand social mobility qualitatively, our data shows the important role of family in shaping our participants’ varied and diverse aspirations that are frequently at variance with government policy. (shrink)

Choice architecture is heralded as a policy approach that does not coercively reduce freedom of choice. Still we might worry that this approach fails to respect individual choice because it subversively manipulates individuals, thus contravening their personal autonomy. In this article I address two arguments to this effect. First, I deny that choice architecture is necessarily heteronomous. I explain the reasons we have for avoiding heteronomous policy-making and offer a set of four conditions for non-heteronomy. I then provide examples of (...) nudges that meet these conditions. I argue that these policies are capable of respecting and promoting personal autonomy, and show this claim to be true across contrasting conceptions of autonomy. Second, I deny that choice architecture is disrespectful because it is epistemically paternalistic. This critique appears to loom large even against non-heteronomous nudges. However, I argue that while some of these policies may exhibit epistemically paternalistic tendencies, these tendencies do not necessarily undermine personal autonomy. Thus, if we are to find such policies objectionable, we cannot do so on the grounds of respect for autonomy. (shrink)

Philosophers often treat racist and sexist slurs as a special sort of puzzle. What is the difference between a slur and its correlates? In attempting to answer this question, a second distinction has been overlooked: that between slurs and insults. What makes a term count as a slur? This is not an unnecessary taxonomical question as long as ableist terms such as ‘moron’ are dismissed as mere insults. Attempts to resolve the insult/slur distinction by considering the communicative content of slurs (...) are not promising. A better solution is offered by speech act theory, and this paper develops a novel way to describe ordinary slurring utterances as oppressive speech acts. This can both explain the difference between slurs and insults, and challenge the dismissal of ableist terms. (shrink)