Syntax

The logicality of language is the hypothesis that the language system has access to a ‘natural’ logic that can identify and filter out as unacceptable expressions that have trivial meanings—that is, that are true/false in all possible worlds or situations in which they are defined. This hypothesis helps explain otherwise puzzling patterns concerning the distribution of various functional terms and phrases. Despite its promise, logicality vastly over-generates unacceptability assignments. Most solutions to this problem rest on specific stipulations about the properties (...) of logical form—roughly, the level of linguistic representation which feeds into the interpretation procedures—and have substantial implications for traditional philosophical disputes about the nature of language. Specifically, contextualism and semantic minimalism, construed as competing hypotheses about the nature and degree of context-sensitivity at the level of logical form, suggest different approaches to the over-generation problem. In this paper, I explore the implications of pairing logicality with various forms of contextualism and semantic minimalism. I argue that to adequately solve the over-generation problem, logicality should be implemented in a constrained contextualist framework. (shrink)

María José Rincón González nació en Sevilla (España) y reside en República Dominicana desde 1992. Es miembro de número de la Academia Dominicana de la Lengua (ADL) desde el 2011 y directora del Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía. Asimismo, es miembro correspondiente de la Real Academia Española (RAE) y miembro del consejo asesor de Fundéu Guzmán Ariza. Con respecto a su formación superior, es doctora en Filología por la Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) y máster en Lexicografía por (...) la Universidad de Sevilla y la UNED. Ha participado en congresos internacionales y ha contribuido en las ediciones de diccionarios del idioma español. Entre sus publicaciones de artículos, se encuentran las que pertenecen al Diario Libre y el Boletín de la Academia Dominicana de la Lengua, entre otros textos, tales como “La antroponimia femenina dominicana (1945-1995)” (2002), “El Diccionario de la lengua” (2013), “Presentación del Diccionario de americanismos de la ASALE” (2013), “Variantes dialectales del léxico dominicano en el Diccionario de americanismos” (2016), “La lematización de variantes gráficas en el Diccionario del español dominicano” (2017) y “El Diccionario de criollismos, primer diccionario dominicano” (2020). De igual modo, ha publicado en libros y capítulos de libros. Entre ellos se encuentran el Diccionario del español dominicano (2013), “El nacimiento de un nuevo diccionario: el Diccionario del español dominicano” (2017) y De la eñe a la zeta (2019). (shrink)

Recent discoveries of semantic compositionality in Japanese tits have enlivened the discussions on the presence of this phenomenon in wild animal communication. Data on semantic compositionality in wild apes are lacking, even though language experiments with captive apes have demonstrated they are capable of semantic compositionality. In this paper, I revisit the study by Boesch (Hum. Evol. 6:81–89, 1991) who investigated drumming sequences by an alpha male in a chimpanzee (_Pan troglodytes_) community in the Taï National Park, Côte d’Ivoire. A (...) reanalysis of the data reveals that the alpha male produced semantically compositional combined messages of travel direction change and resting period initiation. Unlike the Japanese tits, the elements of the compositional expression were not simply juxtaposed but displayed structural reduction, while one of the two elements in the expression coded the meanings of both elements. These processes show relative resemblance to blending and fusion in human languages. Also unlike the tits, the elements of the compositional expression did not have a fixed order, although there was a fixed distribution of drumming events across the trees used for drumming. Because the elements of the expression appear to carry verb-like meanings, the compositional expression also resembles simple verb-verb constructions and short paratactic combinations of two clauses found across languages. In conclusion, the reanalysis suggests that semantic compositionality and phenomena resembling paratactic combinations of two clauses might have been present in the communication of the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans, not necessarily in the vocal modality. (shrink)

A *qualation* does not contain merely references to qualia, but contains actual qualia. There are many differences to equations. Qualations are irreducibly 1st-person and are required for the statement of a hard problem.

This paper focuses on several morphosyntactic properties connected to qualitative binominal constructions (QBCs, complex noun phrases of the type a jewelNP1 of a villageNP2) from a Southern Italo-Romance language spoken in the Apulian town of San Marco in Lamis (Foggia). Here, QBCs appear in two ways: prepositionally (with də, allowing definites, indefinites, and demonstratives), and non-prepositionally, (only allowing definite nouns with definite articles, and hence not proper names). We will suggest that in the latter type N1 and N2 are related (...) by a categorial match in their determiner layer, ‘match D’. N1, a property-denoting element, is embedded as a noun, which allows 1) the recursive DP strategy found in non-prepositional genitives; 2) the generalization of this mechanism to qualitative phrases, where N1 has an adjective-like function. This derives the impossibility of syntactic operations such as extraction (which we connect to the notion of phase). With non-denominal N1s, N1’s article will be treated as head-agreeing adjectival linkers, which form a constituent with the modifier but agree with the head. We will suggest that a phrase is interpreted as a qualitative binominal if N1 and N2 share the same number features and if the features of N1 do not allow for it to be interpreted as the head/possessum of N2. A few words will be spent on external agreement with either noun of the construction, and we will see that the data confirm the relevance of [+HUMAN] features with regard to agreement relations. (paper under review at IJL). (shrink)

There are two dominant approaches to quantification: the Fregean and the Tarskian. While the Tarskian approach is standard and familiar, deep conceptual objections have been pressed against its employment of variables as genuine syntactic and semantic units. Because they do not explicitly rely on variables, Fregean approaches are held to avoid these worries. The apparent result is that the Fregean can deliver something that the Tarskian is unable to, namely a compositional semantic treatment of quantification centered on truth and reference. (...) We argue that the Fregean approach faces the same choice: abandon compositionality or abandon the centrality of truth and reference to semantic theory. Indeed, we argue that developing a fully compositional semantics in the tradition of Frege leads to a typographic variant of the most radical of Tarskian views: variabilism, the view that names should be modeled as Tarskian variables. We conclude with the consequences of this result for Frege's distinction between sense and reference. (shrink)

English is spoken all around the world as it is chosen as the second language to speak within most of the countries. However, from the ancient history of the British to come into this South Asian region, the entrance of English as a speaking language happened. Though, after some centuries, the British went out of the mainland of India, it remains the second-largest spoken language there. Here comes another fact; many words in Standard English changed its form. So, this made (...) the dialects as much as changed that many ones refer to English in India as Indian English. In this present time, though, there are hundreds of languages chosen to speak Indian English that differ in many ways. The characters playing English roles also have a dialect changing of English in somewhat ways. Though the grammars and principal terms of English are still the same for Indian English, deviations came across the spoken language in many attributes. This paper identifies the entrance of English in India, the deviation of dialect change in Indian English with examples of characters still making way to English (Both British and Hollywood) movies with the dialects of Indian English many ways. The paper studies those ways and deviations of words in English in India that they use and call it Indian English. (shrink)

Eine Untersuchung der Präpositionen bei Leibniz kann aufgrund ihrer synkatego-rematischen Natur zeigen, in welchem Sinne die Sprache - als strukturiertes, bedeutendes Zeichensystem – das logische Verhältnis unter den Notionen ausdrü-cken kann, und damit der Zusammenhang zwischen Grammatik und Semantik einerseits, und Logik anderseits, erhellen. Meiner Ansicht nach bekommt auch Leibniz' Versuch des Aufbaus einer characteristica universalis dank dieser Per-spektive ein neues Forschungsinteresse. Um das Interesse für diese Redeteile zu wecken, werde ich zuvor in einem kurzen Exkurs die vorgängige Tradition dar-stellen. (...) Das Ziel ist, zu zeigen, was die Unterscheidung zwischen Kategoremen und Synkategoremen innerhalb der Tradition der sogenannten Mentalsprache im-pliziert; welche Fragen ihre Analyse erhoben hat und was diese Unterscheidung bei einem für Leibniz wichtigen Denker, wie Joachim Jungius, bedeutet. Beson-ders zeige ich, wie die Unterscheidung Kategoreme – Synkategoreme der zwi-schen Begriff und modi des Begreifens entspricht. Danach analysiere ich die viel-fältige Betrachtung dieser Redeteile bei Leibniz in Bezug auf seine Zurückfüh-rung der Präpositionen auf eine räumliche Grundbedeutung. Zum Schluss versu-che ich zu zeigen, warum diese Redeteile als cogitationes caecae bei Leibniz interpretiert werden können und welche Schlüsse man aus dieser Bestimmung im Rahmen von Leibniz‟ Sprachphilosophie ziehen darf. (shrink)

El propósito de este artículo es caracterizar la fuente de Sucesos en una de las ciudades más peligrosas del mundo. Para ello, se aplicará una metodología de análisis y de sistematización gramatical crítico-descriptivo de la redacción, a la luz de la gramática, de las normas ortográficas y de criterios de lingüistas clásicos, contemporáneos y de periodistas- lingüistas. Estas subcategorías pueden emplearse en otra fuente periodística de cualquier otro medio de comunicación hispanoparlante y también arrojarán un diagnóstico lingüístico sobre la redacción. (...) Aunque se recurre a la lingüística aplicada, el enfoque será periodístico y gramatical. El corpus está compuesto por 149 notas de Sucesos, de las cuales se tomaron en cuenta títulos y cuerpos de las notas. Esta investigación reflejará las implicaciones éticas de, por ejemplo, el uso de la voz pasiva y del gerundio o de la omisión de las comillas. (shrink)

View more Abstract If logical truth is necessitated by sheer syntax, mathematics is categorially unlike logic even if all mathematics derives from definitions and logical principles. This contrast gets obscured by the plausibility of the Synonym Substitution Principle implicit in conceptions of analyticity: synonym substitution cannot alter sentence sense. The Principle obviously fails with intercepting: nonuniform term substitution in logical sentences. ‘Televisions are televisions’ and ‘TVs are televisions’ neither sound alike nor are used interchangeably. Interception synonymy gets assumed because logical (...) sentences and their synomic interceptions have identical factual content, which seems to exhaust semantic content. However, intercepting alters syntax by eliminating term recurrence, the sole strictly syntactic means of ensuring necessary term coextension, and thereby syntactically securing necessary truth. Interceptional necessity is lexical, a notational artifact. The denial of interception nonsynonymy and the disregard of term recurrence in logic link with many misconceptions about propositions, logical form, conventions, and metalanguages. Mathematics is distinct from logic: its truth is not syntactic; it is transmitted by synonym substitution; term recurrence has no essential role. The ‘=’ of mathematics is an objectual relation between numbers; the ‘=’ of logic marks a syntactic relation of coreferring terms. -/- . (shrink)

Are why-interrogatives just like other wh-interrogatives, syntactically speaking? Are they filler-gap constructions? This essay presents the case for thinking that they are. It brings together the standard arguments for thinking that they are and presents a new argument for thinking so. It then critically examines the justly influential arguments of Sylvain Bromberger for thinking that why-interrogatives are not syntactically just like other wh-interrogatives and argues that they do not establish their conclusion.

With reference to Polish logical-philosophical tradition two formal theories of language syntax have been sketched and then compared with each other. The first theory is based on the assumption that the basic linguistic stratum is constituted by object-tokens (concrete objects perceived through the senses) and that the types of such objects (ideal objects) are derivative constructs. The other is founded on an opposite philosophical orientation. The two theories are equivalent. The main conclusion is that in syntactic researches it is redundant (...) to postulate the existence of abstract linguistic entities. Earlier, in a slightly different form, the idea was presented in paper "Logiczne podstawy ontologii składni języka" (1988). (shrink)

Významnou součástí novopozitivistické filosofie byl Carnapův projekt eliminace metafyziky logickou analýzou jazyka, ohlášený ve stejnojmenném článku. Tento projekt směřoval mj. k vytvoření tzv. logické syntaxe jazyka, která by umožňovala odhalit metafyzické věty jako nesmyslné a eliminovat je z vědeckého diskurzu. V tomto textu se nejprve věnujeme Carnapovu vymezení logické syntaxe v historickém kontextu. Následně analyzujeme Carnapovy neúspěšné pokusy logickou syntaxi jazyka zkonstruovat, přičemž ukazujeme, že jeho obtíže při hledání logické syntaxe nejsou nahodilé, ale mají systémovou povahu a souvisí se způsobem, (...) jakým Carnap problém vymezil. Na závěr formulujeme důsledky Carnapova selhání pro jeho filosofický projekt eliminace metafyziky a pro novopozitivismus jako celek. (shrink)

Higginbotham argued that certain linguistic items of English, when used in indirect discourse, necessarily trigger first-personal interpretations. They are: the emphatic reflexive pronoun and the controlled understood subject, represented as PRO. PRO is special, in this respect, due to its imposing obligatory control effects between the main clause and its subordinates ). Folescu & Higginbotham, in addition, argued that in Romanian, a language whose grammar doesn’t assign a prominent role to PRO, de se triggers are correlated with the subjunctive mood (...) of certain verbs. That paper, however, didn’t account for the grammatical diversity of the reports that display immunity to error through misidentification in Romanian: some of these reports are expressed by using de se triggers; others are not. Their IEM, moreover, is not systematically lexically controlled by the verbs, via their theta-roles; it is, rather, determined by the meaning of the verbs in question. Given the data from Romanian, I will argue, the phenomenon of IEM cannot be fully explained starting either from the syntactical or the lexical structure of a language. (shrink)

The subject of this paper is Charles Morris’ semiotic theory that has as one of its major projects the unification of all sciences of signs. However, since the above project has proven to be unsuccessful, we will try to examine here the reasons that led to this. Accordingly, we will argue that to transcend the particularities of individual disciplines that he wanted to unify, Morris had to make certain ontological assumptions, instead of theoretical and methodological ones, that they could share. (...) However, because the 'sign' as an ontological category could in our view only be established if we follow the principles of the pragmatic philosophical tradition, we will try to show that the reasons for this failure should be primarily sought in different effects that consistent application of the pragmatic principles has in each of them (primarily in linguistics and the philosophy of language). On the other hand, this should enable us to draw several important conclusions regarding Morris’ project: namely, that his failure does not have to mean giving up semiotics as a potentially key discipline in approaching some fundamental philosophical problems, but also that it would demand return to the original semiotics developed in Peirce’s works. (shrink)

This is a teaching guide companion to the main article published in Philosophy Compass. It offers insights into how one might go about designing a course in the philosophy of linguistics at advanced undergrad/graduate level. Readings and possible core questions are included.

I present a novel, collaborative, methodology for linguistics: what I call the ‘explanatory economy’. According to this picture, multiple models/theories are evaluated based on the extent to which they complement one another with respect to data coverage. I show how this model can resolve a long-standing worry about the methodology of generative linguistics: that by creating too much distance between data and theory, the empirical credentials of this research program are tarnished. I provide justifications of such methodologically central distinctions as (...) the competence/performance and core/periphery distinction, and then show how we can understand the push for simplicity in the history of generative grammar in this light. (shrink)

How did social communication evolve in primates? In this volume, primatologists, linguists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists and philosophers of science systematically analyze how their specific disciplines demarcate the research questions and methodologies involved in the study of the evolutionary origins of social communication in primates in general, and in humans in particular. In the first part of the book, historians and philosophers of science address how the epistemological frameworks associated with primate communication and language evolution studies have changed over time, and (...) how these conceptual changes affect our current studies on the subject matter. In the second part, scholars provide cutting-edge insights into the various means through which primates communicate socially in both natural and experimental settings. They examine the behavioral building blocks by which primates communicate, and they analyze what the cognitive requirements are for displaying communicative acts. Chapters highlight cross-fostering and language experiments with primates, primate mother-infant communication, the display of emotions and expressions, manual gestures and vocal signals, joint attention, intentionality and theory of mind. The primary focus of the third part is on how these various types of communicative behavior possibly evolved, and how they can be understood as evolutionary precursors to human language. Leading scholars analyze how both manual and vocal gestures gave way to mimetic and imitational protolanguage, and how the latter possibly transitioned into human language. In the final part, we turn to the hominin lineage, and anthropologists, archeologists and linguists investigate what the necessary neurocognitive, anatomical and behavioral features are in order for human language to evolve, and how language differs from other forms of primate communication. (shrink)

Целью данного исследования является описание нового метода изучения доречевого языка. Предлагаемый подход позволяет соотнести эпистемологию лингвистики с общефилософскими мировоззренческими традициями других научных дисциплин. Метод построен на соответствии трёх лингвистических категорий – существительных, глаголов и междометий, по своим моторным и выразительным качествам, трём основным видам искусства – графике (изобразительному искусству), движению (танцу) и звукам (музыке), и рассматривает подобное соотношение как обусловленное природой рецепторной системы человека. Объясняя фундаментальное единство семиотической природы языка и феноменов искусства и эстетики, метод позволяет провести хронологизацию важных культурных (...) процессов. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWords form a fundamental basis for our understanding of linguistic practice. However, the precise ontology of words has eluded many philosophers and linguists. A persistent difficulty for most accounts of words is the type-token distinction [Bromberger, S. 1989. “Types and Tokens in Linguistics.” In Reflections on Chomsky, edited by A. George, 58–90. Basil Blackwell; Kaplan, D. 1990. “Words.” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume LXIV: 93–119]. In this paper, I present a novel account of words which differs from the atomistic and platonistic (...) conceptions of previous accounts which I argue fall prey to this problem. Specifically, I proffer a structuralist account of linguistic items, along the lines of structuralism in the philosophy of mathematics [Shapiro, S. 1997. Philosophy of Mathematics: Structure and Ontology. Oxford University Press], in which words are defined in part as positions in larger linguistic structures. I then follow Szabò [1999. “Expressions and Their Representations.” The Philosophical Quarterly 49 : 145–163] and Parsons [1990. “The Structuralist View of Mathematical Objects.” Synthese 84: 303–346] in further defining words as quasi-concrete objects according to a representation relation. This view aims for general correspondence with contemporary generative linguistic approaches to the study of language. (shrink)

This is a review of Jean Curthoys and Victor H. Dudman, VICTOR DUDMAN'S GRAMMAR AND SEMANTICS (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

Many variants of categorial grammar assume an underlying logic which is associative and linear. In relation to left extraction, the former property is challenged by island domains, which involve nonassociativity, and the latter property is challenged by parasitic gaps, which involve nonlinearity. We present a version of type logical grammar including ‘structural inhibition’ for nonassociativity and ‘structural facilitation’ for nonlinearity and we give an account of relativisation including islands and parasitic gaps and their interaction.

Current research on the syntax-semantics interface demonstrates the dramatic extent to which syntactic structures constitute transparent reflections of well-defined semantic regularities. As this paper shows, the empirical results accumulated within this framework strongly suggest that a theoretical distinction should be made between two distinct levels of meaning representation: A level of conceptual meaning on the one hand, and a uniquely linguistic level of meaning — Linguistic Semantics — on the other. The semantic notions and regularities which turn out to determine (...) major syntactic phenomena are best interpreted as belonging to the level of Linguistic Semantics, rather than to the level of conceptual meaning. This view helps characterize language as a unique and functional system — a cognitive system whose function is defined at the level of Linguistic Semantics. It explains the fact, most recently highlighted by Levinson, that the expressive power of language, as a tool for the communication of meanings, is constrained in non-trivial ways. (shrink)

Although Ordinary Language Philosophy is widely believed to have disappeared leaving scarcely a trace in this era of formal semantics, it is very much the formal semantics of ordinary language that dominates the scene. More common ground than one might have supposed proves thus to be available for the unreconstructed ordinary language philosopher, in the present volume, to enter into the thick of current discussion. The prevailing tone of the work is certainly much more formal than anything one recalls from (...) the heyday of ordinary language philosophy, and in its episodic fashion the central topics—e.g., reference, opacity, identity, propositions—are standard enough, though by the end an effort has been made to reinstate synonymy, analyticity, and even verificationism. On the specific side of grammar the nominalization of sentences receives extended attention, and it is in that connection that Bede Rundle queries the postulation of propositions as metaphysical objects for the so-called propositional attitudes. The deepest, most pervasive theme of the book turns out to be that of ontological commitment. In an uncharacteristic, refreshing moment of testiness Rundle confides that serious controversy as to whether there are or are not events "just cannot get going unless our ordinary language is supplanted... by the grandiose but ill-defined jargon of ‘ontology'." The focus of the work tends to be blurred owing to a tacit assimilation of Quine to the formal semanticists of ordinary language. If the Quinean framework of ontological commitment would seem to be almost ubiquitous today, the semantic emphasis on the ontological commitments of ordinary language renders the current fashion almost as alien to Quine as to the later Wittgenstein. Rundle is thus faced with a shifting target. His excellent anti-Fregean, quasi-nominalistic discussion of number brings out some of the difficulty. Sensitive to the difference between the nonreferential and referential uses of number words in ordinary language, Rundle argues that one can only go so far with the former. Accordingly, he will allow that "by ordinary standards there quite clearly are numbers", a thesis that neither Wittgenstein nor Quine—for very different reasons—would accept. At the outset of his book Rundle writes as follows, "We could look more favorably upon the pragmatic approach if there were room for a choice, if the analysis of the meaning of, say, sentences seemingly alluding to certain abstractions, left the question of existence undecided. There are reasons for thinking that this cannot be so, and the arguments to come will, I hope, bear out the general objection in particular cases." The discussion of number fails to connect with Quine who readily concedes ordinary language to the nominalist. It is only when one consults such items as sets, which Quine takes to have scarcely any footing in ordinary language, that his pragmatism comes properly into its own. Are the axioms of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory analytic or synthetic? Are they perhaps synthetic a priori? Shall we indeed accept them as true? It can hardly be supposed that pre-Quinean approaches, whether empiricist or rationalist, have proved very fruitful here. And what guidance can linguistic analysis provide? (shrink)

" It is the connected presentation of Jespersen's views of the general principles of grammar based on years of studying various languages through both direct ...

In this paper, a formal theory is presented that describes syntactic and semantic mechanisms of philosophical discourses. They are treated as peculiar language systems possessing deep derivational structures called architectonic forms of philosophical systems, encoded in philosophical mind. Architectonic forms are constituents of more complex structures called architectonic spaces of philosophy. They are understood as formal and algorithmic representations of various philosophical traditions. The formal derivational machinery of a given space determines its class of all possible architectonic forms. Some of (...) them stand under factual historical philosophical systems and they organize processes of doing philosophy within these systems. Many architectonic forms have never been realized in the history of philosophy. The presented theory may be interpreted as falling under Hegel’s paradigm of comprehending cultural texts. This paradigm is enriched and inspired with Propp’s formal, morphological view on texts. The peculiarity of this modification of the Hegel-Propp paradigm consists of the use of algebraic and algorithmic tools of modeling processes of cultural development. To speak metaphorically, the theory is an attempt at the mathematical and logical history of philosophy inspired by the Internet metaphor. And that is why it belongs to the tradition of doing metaphilosophy in The Lvov-Warsaw School, which is continued today mainly by Woleński, Pelc, Perzanowski, and Jadacki. (shrink)

The expression ‘Like’ has a wide variety of uses among English and American speakers. It may describe preference, as in (1) She likes mint chip ice cream. It may be used as a vehicle of comparison, as in (2) Trieste is like Minsk on steroids.

G. H. Mead's model of language and mind, while perhaps understandable at the time it was written, now seems inadequate. First, the research evidence strongly suggests that mental operations exist prior to language onset, conversation of gestures, or social interaction. Second, language is not just significant symbols; it requires syntax. Third, syntax seems to be part of our bioinheritance, that is, part of our presocial mind/brain-what Noam Chomsky has called our language faculty. Fourth, this means syntax probably is not learned (...) nor a social construction that is internalized as a cultural template. Fifth, this suggests a basic reversal of the prevailing model of symbolic interaction, mind, language, and perhaps the self as well, although there has not been the time or space to engage that topic here. Therefore, symbolic interaction may turn out to be a more Chomskyan than Meadian process. Given the bioinheritance of our mind/brain we are able to engage in symbolic interaction; it does not appear that symbolic interaction creates our mind or the basic computational algorithms of language. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky is one of the leading intellectual figures of modern times. He has had a major influence on linguistics, psychology and philosophy, and a significant effect on many other disciplines, from anthropology to mathematics, education to literary criticism. In this rigorous yet accessible account of Chomsky's work and influence, Neil Smith analyses Chomsky's key contributions to the study of language and the study of mind. He gives a detailed exposition of Chomsky's linguistic theorizing, discusses the psychological and philosophical implications (...) of Chomsky's work, and argues that he has fundamentally changed the way we think of ourselves, gaining a position in the history of ideas on a par with that of Darwin or Descartes. This second edition has been thoroughly updated to account for Chomsky's most recent work, including his continued contributions to linguistics, his further discussion on evolution, and his extensive work on the events of September 11th, 2001. (shrink)

Categorial grammar is well-known for its elegant analysis of coordination enabled by the flexible notion of constituency it entertains. However, to date, no systematic study exists that examines whether this analysis has any obvious empirical advantage over alternative analyses of nonconstituent coordination available in phrase structure-based theories of syntax. This paper attempts precisely such a comparison. We compare the direct constituent coordination analysis of non-canonical coordinations in categorial grammar with an ellipsis-based analysis of the same phenomena in the recent HPSG (...) literature. We provide a set of empirical evidence, consisting of cases in which non-canonical coordinations interact with scopal operators of various sorts, which systematically falsifies the predictions of the latter, ‘linearization-based’ ellipsis approach to coordination. We propose an alternative analysis in a variant of categorial grammar called Hybrid Type-Logical Categorial Grammar. The proposed framework builds on both the Lambek-inspired variants of categorial grammar and a more recent line of work modelling word order via a lambda calculus for the prosodic component. The flexible syntax–semantics interface of this framework straightforwardly captures the interactions between non-canonical coordinations and scopal expressions, demonstrating the broader empirical payoff of the direct constituent coordination analysis of non-canonical coordinations pioneered by Steedman :523–568, 1985; Linguist Philos 13:207–263, 1990) and Dowty hitherto not explicitly recognized in the literature. (shrink)

Concordance of the poetic works of Giorgos Seferis which presents all the principal “words” of the texts in an alphabetical list, stating how often each word occurs, giving a precise location and a relevant piece of text for each occurrence. We found ca. 9500 different Greek words in 39000 different occurrences, so our concordance has 50.000 lines of text. The technical procedure required four main steps: text entry and tagging, production of the concordance, correction of the contexts, formatting for print.

Corcoran, J. 2007. Syntactics, American Philosophy: an Encyclopedia. 2007. Eds. John Lachs and Robert Talisse. New York: Routledge. pp.745-6. -/- Syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics are the three levels of investigation into semiotics, or the comprehensive study of systems of communication, as described in 1938 by the American philosopher Charles Morris (1903-1979). Syntactics studies signs themselves and their interrelations in abstraction from their meanings and from their uses and users. Semantics studies signs in relation to their meanings, but still in abstraction (...) from their uses and users. Pragmatics studies signs as meaningful entities used in various ways by humans. Taking current written English as the system of communication under investigation, it is a matter of syntactics that the two four-character strings ‘tact’ and ‘tics’ both occur in the ten-character string ‘syntactics’. It is a matter of semantics that the ten-character string ‘syntactics’ has only one sense and, in that sense, it denotes a branch of semiotics. It is a matter of pragmatics that the ten-character string ‘syntactics’ was not used as an English word before 1937 and that it is sometimes confused with the much older six-character string ‘syntax’. Syntactics is the simplest and most abstract branch of semiotics. At the same time, it is the most basic. Pragmatics presupposes semantics and syntactics; semantics presupposes syntactics. The basic terms of syntactics include the following: ‘character’ as alphabetic letters, numeric digits, and punctuation marks; ‘string’ as sign composed of a concatenation of characters; ‘occur’ as ‘t’ and ‘c’ both occur twice in ‘syntactics’. However, perhaps the most basic terms of syntactics are ‘type’ and ‘token’ in the senses introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), America’s greatest logician, who could be considered the grandfather of syntactics, if not the father. These are explained below. (shrink)

This book is the first systematic account of the syntax and semantics of names. Drawing on work in onomastics, philosophy, and linguistics the author examines the distribution and subcategorization of names within a framework of syntactic categories and considers how the morphosyntactic behaviour of names connects to their semantic roles in a range of languages.

We propose an account of dynamic predicates which draws on the notion of force, eliminating reference to events in the linguistic semantics. We treat dynamic predicates as predicates of forces, represented as functions from an initial situation to a final situation that occurs ceteris paribus, that is, if nothing external intervenes. The possibility that opposing forces might intervene to prevent the transition to a given final situation leads us to a novel analysis of non-culminating accomplishment predicates in a variety of (...) languages, including the English progressive. We then apply the force-theoretic framework to the composition of basic Vendlerian eventuality types within a lexical-decomposition syntax. The difference between predicates of forces and predicates of situations is argued to underlie the dynamic/stative contrast, and also to allow for a formal treatment of the difference between be and stay. Consequences for the relationship between language and cognition are discussed. (shrink)

The paper concentrates on the problem of adequate reflection of fragments of reality via expressions of language and inter-subjective knowledge about these fragments, called here, in brief, language adequacy. This problem is formulated in several aspects, the most being: the compatibility of language syntax with its bi-level semantics: intensional and extensional. In this paper, various aspects of language adequacy find their logical explication on the ground of the formal-logical theory T of any categorial language L generated by the so-called classical (...) categorial grammar, and also on the ground of its extension to the bi-level, intensional and extensional semantic-pragmatic theory ST for L. In T, according to the token-type distinction of Ch.S. Peirce, L is characterized first as a language of well-formed expression-tokens (wfe-tokens) - material, concrete objects - and then as a language of wfe-types - abstract objects, classes of wfe-tokens. In ST the semantic-pragmatic notions of meaning and interpretation for wfe-types of L of intensional semantics and the notion of denotation of extensional semanics for wfe-types and constituents of knowledge are formalized. These notions allow formulating a postulate (an axiom of categorial adequacy) from which follow all the most important conditions of the language adequacy, including the above, and a structural one connected with three principles of compositionality. (shrink)