A central aim of Construction Grammar is to model links within the construct-i-con. This paper investigates three constructions that share one property: an atypical element in the object slot. The constructions are therefore not prototypically transitive. Structural priming (implemented with an automatic maze variant of self-paced reading) is used to test hypotheses on the relation among the Reaction Objoid (She smiled her thanks), the Cognate Objoid (She smiled a sweet smile or He told a sly tale), and (...) the Superlative Objoid (She smiled her sweetest) Construction, and between two variants of the latter (They worked (at) their hardest). Results support transitivity as gradient: intransitive COCs prime the ROC and the SOC, whereas COCs with transitives only prime the ROC. For variants of the SOC, we find evidence of asymmetric priming with the bare SOC priming the at-SOC. Within-construction priming effects in the SOC are of greater magnitude than those with the at-SOC and the latter are weaker than those of the COC and of a rather different nature than those from the ROC. This suggests that speakers, rather than creating a constructeme between the bare and the at-SOC, store distinct but closely related constructions on a cline of transitivity. (shrink)

Superlative adjectives accompanied by certain modal adjectives like possible (e.g. John bought the largest possible present) are ambiguous between a reading where possible is a regular noun modifier and a reading paraphrasable as ‘as Adj as possible’, called ‘modal superlative reading’. Three interesting restrictions have been observed in the literature. First, possible and some other adjectives ending in -able, but not potential and probable, support the latter reading. Second, when the modal adjective appears postnominally, only the modal (...) class='Hi'>superlative reading is available. Third, prenominal possible needs to be in a local configuration to -est in order for the modal superlative reading to arise. Using LF structures independently motivated for degree constructions, the present paper develops a compositional semantic analysis of the modal superlative reading, makes correct new predictions concerning this reading, and—by reconciling previous, opposed syntactic analyses—allows us to derive the three empirical restrictions above. The key innovations are: (i) the previously proposed constituent [possible ▲ellipsis] is interpreted as an amount relative clause, and (ii) this constituent is treated as overtly expressing the comparison class argument of -est. (shrink)

Superlative sentences with modal modifiers like possible give rise to the so-called 'modal superlative reading' . The present paper uses this reading to investigate an open issue in degree constructions: whereas two different lexical entries have been argued to exist for the comparative morpheme -er , it is not clear whether two entries are needed for the superlative morpheme -est. The paper argues that, with 3-place –est, otherwise unmotivated syntactic material would to have to be postulated and (...) that, even with this material, not all modal superlative examples would be assigned correct truth conditions. In contrast, 2-place -est can generate the modal superlative reading in all the cases, as shown in Romero . Modal superlative sentences, thus, provide evidence that 2-place –est is needed in the grammar. (shrink)

In the study of natural language quantification, much recent attention has been devoted to the investigation of verification procedures associated with the proportional quantifier most. The aim of these studies is to go beyond the traditional characterization of the semantics of most, which is confined to explicating its truth-functional and presuppositional content as well as its combinatorial properties, as these aspects underdetermine the correct analysis of most. The present paper contributes to this effort by presenting new experimental evidence in support (...) of a decompositional analysis of most according to which it is a superlative construction built from a gradable predicate many or much and the superlative operator -est. Our evidence comes in the form of verification profiles for sentences like Most of the dots are blue which, we argue, reflect the existence of a superlative reading of most. This notably contrasts with Lidz et al.’s results. To reconcile the two sets of data, we argue, it is necessary to take important differences in task demands into account, which impose limits on the conclusions that can be drawn from these studies. (shrink)

It has long been observed that the superlative construction, exemplified by John climbed the highest mountain, has two readings. On the absolute reading, the heights of the relevant mountains in a relevant context are compared; on the comparative reading, relevant climbers’ achievements of mountain climbing are compared (Szabolcsi, Comparative superlatives, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 1986). Two theories have been proposed regarding this ambiguity. One theory holds that it results from movement of the superlative morpheme -est (movement (...) theory) (Heim, Association with focus, Doctoral Dissertation, 1985, Notes on superlatives, 1999; Szabolcsi 1986).The other theory holds that the ambiguity is derived by assignment of different values to the context variable C, keeping a single LF structure where -est stays in situ (in-situ theory) (Farkas and Kiss, Nat Lang Linguist Theory 18:417–455, 2000; Sharvit and Stateva, Linguist Philos 25:453–504, 2002). As is pointed out by Heim (1999), a choice between these theories is hard to make based solely on English. Through an investigation of Japanese superlative constructions, this paper argues that, in Japanese at least, a movement theory is required. (shrink)

Widely showered with superlatives when it was first published in 1996, and now commonly regarded as a masterpiece, Richard Hays's The Moral Vision of the New Testament (1996) constructs a pacifist reading of the New Testament. To date, Hays's reading has provoked no systematic refutation from proponents of the doctrine of just war. This essay hopes to offer such a refutation. Its argument has three main planks. First, that Hays's reading of the New Testament stories about god-fearing soldiers, who persist (...) in their profession, is not compelling; second, that he fails to specify sufficiently the meaning of Jesus' teaching and conduct in terms of Jesus' own context (particularly the option of armed violence in the service of religiously inspired nationalism); and third, that Hays's normative moral concepts are often too crude, suffering from a failure to employ valid moral distinctions. The essay concludes by arguing that the doctrine of just war is better able than pacifism to make adequate sense of all the relevant New Testament data. (shrink)

This paper argues that if epistemological contextualism is correct, then not only have knowledge-ascribing sentences context-sensitive truth conditions, certain comparative and superlative constructions involving ‘know’ have context-sensitive truth conditions as well. But not only is there no evidence for the truth of the latter consequence, the evidence seems to indicate that it is false.The position I aim to criticize has been defended by, most notably, Stewart Cohen, Keith DeRose, and David Lewis. While the contextualist theories offered by these authors (...) differ in their details, the problem to be presented seems to arise irrespective of these details. And though in most of the illustrations below I rely on Lewis's account, I could have made essentially the same points in terms of any of the other accounts. (shrink)

The semantic literature takes degree operators like the comparative, but also measure phrases, the equative, the superlative and so on, to be quantifiers over degrees. This is well motivated by their semantic contribution, but leads one to expect far more scope interaction than is actually observed. This paper proposes an alternative-semantic analysis of certain degree constructions, in particular constructions with little and other negative antonyms. Restrictions on scope can then be explained as intervention effects.

In this paper, the “self” is understood in broad terms as one’s character and personality, based on Christopher Gill’s notion of the self in Hellenistic and imperial philosophy. Moreover, my use of “self-fashioning” —that is, one’s creation of an image of oneself—in ancient Christianity, is built on the work of Carol Newsom and Eve-Marie Becker. The latter focusses on Paul, who is Origen’s hero and may even have inspired Origen’s own strategies of self-fashioning as an inspired preacher of Christ, an (...) apostle, unjustly humiliated (and supporter of apokatastasis or universal restoration): all characteristics that Origen shared and emphasized in his self-fashioning, as will be clarified below. I draw attention to a neglected aspect of Origen’s self-fashioning, namely, its intricate connection to polemical self-positioning within society. In other words, Origen seems to define himself by reference to other Christian groups rather than positing an inner Self that is independent from society. I explore the reciprocal relationship between his polemics against others and the construction of his Self-image, suggesting that one emerged from the other. To highlight the social construction of Origen’s ‘self,’ I conclude by examining briefly how his self-fashioning influenced his subsequent readers. In his lifetime, Origen was ‘the leading intellectual of the age,’ ‘the greatest scholar and theologian of the ancient church,’ and the founder ‘of philosophical theology.’ Additionally, no Christian thinker ‘is so invisibly all-present as Origen’ in later Christian thought and exegesis. Origen’s footprint in Platonism, as well, is likely more salient than often assumed, for example with respect to the notion of hypostasis as individual substance, first bodies, and apokatastasis. Thus, a reassessment of his thought permits us to revisit patristic philosophical theology and exegesis, as well as ancient philosophy. Yet, Origen seems to have spoken very little of himself; he was more typically spoken of—frequently in superlatives at both extremes. Most importantly, his presence is palpable in subsequent exegesis, theology, philosophical theology, and even ‘pagan’ philosophy. Unlike Augustine, Origen did not leave us an autobiography. This confessional reticence, which emerges time and again, might be taken as a sign of his humility—but mostly only seemingly. As we shall see, it is possible to identify many, mostly indirect, references to himself and his work in his extant oeuvre. -/- . (shrink)

Abstract -/- Quantifier domain restriction (QDR) and two versions of nominal restriction (NR) are implemented as restrictions that depend on a previously introduced interpreter and interpretation time in a two-dimensional semantic framework on the basis of simple type theory and categorial grammar. Against Stanley (2002) it is argued that a suitable version of QDR can deal with superlatives like tallest. However, it is shown that NR is needed to account for utterances when the speaker intends to convey different restrictions for (...) multiple uses of the same quantifying determiner. We argue that NR generally fares better with such examples but also observe that examples like Every sailor waves at every sailor might be pragmatically anomalous. An account of contextual domain restriction is proposed that (i) excludes these anomalous readings (but it is shown how they could be included), (ii) makes it possible to express different contextual domain restrictions as long-range dependencies on an interpreter and an interpretation time, and (iii) additionally models restrictions based on locative constructions as general mereological constraints introduced by shifting the index. (shrink)

The paper attempts to present a diachronic view of some syntactic constructions with the Arabic elative. The point of departure is its early stage in Classical Arabic. Since then, it has undergone substantial development, resulting in modern syntactic uses unknown to traditional Arabic grammarians. Of special interest are the historical trajectories of and semantic relations between the three constructions conveying the meaning of the superlative that are in current use in Modern Written Arabic: elative + indefinite singular noun in (...) the genitive, elative + definite plural noun in the genitive, and elative used as an attribute of a definite noun – all of them translatable as ‘the largest city’, but different from each other in certain respects. A tendency to create symmetry can be observed in the system of the syntax of the elative used in adjectival attribution on the one hand and the manner of expressing a gradation comparative-superlative by means of the same syntactic construction differing only in definiteness, on the other hand. In addition, a construction only marginally attested in CA, viz. elatives following the pattern C1uC2C3ā + definite plural noun in the genitive, turns out to be used widely in MWA. Its plural counterpart, C1uC2C3āayāt, is an innovation whose expansive usage, especially in the journalistic style, can be attributed to the tendency of disambiguation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The article presents an attempt to analyze the strategic perspective of discourse, applying Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) concepts and Crisis Communication analytical tools. The study aims to reveal key strategies employed by a political actor to form public perception while communicating a crisis, based on Donald Trump’s discourse on the COVID-19 pandemic. Results suggest four groups of strategies: (1) legitimization (through emotions, altruism, a hypothetical future, voices of expertise, rationality, defeasibility, simple denial and bolstering), (2) delegitimization (through negative evaluations, (...) accusations, sarcasm, nicknaming, attacking the accuser, shifting the blame), (3) mitigation (transcendence and differentiation) and (4) intensification (through the use of repetitions, metaphors, superlatives, intensifiers). The research concludes that the macro goal underlying the described strategies is to present the Trump administration’s efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic as hard and effective. The study illustrates the use of language to model public perception and construct meaning in the context of a crisis. The research findings contribute to prior scientific inquiry into discursive strategies through suggesting a more comprehensive typology and extending CDA classifications by Crisis Communication categories. (shrink)

Nietzsche called his sister “llama,” a nickname which, according to her, derived from a description in a children’s biology book. Such a book in the Nietzsche-Archiv declares that “the llama, as a means of defense, squirts its spittle and half-digested fodder at its opponent.”1 Thus we see Nietzsche, as he does frequently in his writings, drawing on the semantic resources made available by the investigation of animal nature and using them to illuminate human character. The editors of A Nietzschean Bestiary (...) had the superlative idea to advance the progression from zoology to anthropology one step further: starting from Nietzsche’s myriad trope of animality, to construct a philosophical bestiary that illuminates not only the status of human animality but also that of our metaphorical resources in general. The result comprises twenty-five essays from twentythree contributors, most of which are organized around a single creature (albeit no llama). These essays’ execution of the original idea is, on the whole, excellent. I do not think that they establish the two main conceits of the volume. But the volume nevertheless provides a vivid and diverse display of Nietzsche’s animal tropes that engages with broader philosophical concerns. Although it needs no defense, the volume presents a twofold apology. One declared aim of the volume is to show that Nietzsche’s pervasive use of animal imagery.. (shrink)

This study deals both with the gnoseological system of the byzantine theologian George Pachymeres, which is constructed on the methods of the affirmative, negative and superlative theology and the inductive method that he follows at his Paraphrase of De divinus nominibus of Dionysius the Areopagite, in order general conclusions on causality to be expressed. In the context of a consistent ontological monism, G. Pachymeres, without violating the epistemological approach of the Supreme Principle as Unknown, categorizes the sensible facts according (...) to the similarities and the differences between them, so as to present God as the only cause of the produced world. (shrink)

There is little danger of praising this book too highly: not because it is the last word on the subject but hopefully because it is, in a very real sense, the first. For as convincingly as seems possible in a work of this scope, and in the face of a long and monolithic tradition to the contrary, Danto shows Nietzsche to have produced a profound philosophical system which is highly pertinent to current work in philosophy and in many respects in (...) clear anticipation of it. The exposition of this system so consistently and brilliantly illuminates its formerly obscure recesses that one can scarcely question whether Danto is on the right track. He argues cogently that Nietzsche's theory of truth is fictionalistic, perspectivistic, and pragmatic ; and upon this interpretation of the theory Danto constructs analytical accounts of Nietzsche's doctrines on psychology, morality, values, and religion, and on the widely misunderstood principle of the Will-to-Power. In the light of the volumes of commentary written on these topics, and in their own right, these accounts are superlatively clear and penetrating. Of whatever persuasion or purpose, future work on Nietzsche must take account of this book.—C. T. W. (shrink)

means of defense, squirts its spittle and half-digested fodder at its opponent.”1 Thus we see Nietzsche, as he does frequently in his writings, drawing on the semantic resources made available by the investigation of animal nature and using them to illuminate human character. The editors of . Nietzschean Bestiary had the superlative idea to advance the progression from zoology to anthropology one step further: starting from Nietzsche’s myriad trope of animality, to construct a philosophical bestiary that illuminates not only (...) the status of human animality but also that of our metaphorical resources in general. The result comprises twenty-five essays from twenty-three contributors, most of which are organized around a single creature (albeit no llama). These essays’ execution of the original idea is, on the whole, excellent. I do not think that they establish the two main conceits of the volume. But the volume nevertheless provides a vivid and diverse display of Nietzsche’s animal tropes that engages with broader philosophical concerns. (shrink)

Jesse Prinz argues that recent work in philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology supports two radical hypotheses about the nature of morality: moral values are based on emotional responses, and these emotional responses are inculcated by culture, not hard-wired through natural selection. In the first half of the book, Jesse Prinz defends the hypothesis that morality has an emotional foundation. Evidence from brain imaging, social psychology, and psychopathology suggest that, when we judge something to be right or wrong, we are merely expressing (...) our emotions. Prinz argues that these emotions do not track objective features of reality; rather, the rightness and wrongness of an act consists in the fact that people are disposed to have certain emotions towards it. In the second half of the book, he turns to a defense of moral relativism. Moral facts depend on emotional responses, and emotional responses vary from culture to culture. Prinz surveys the anthropological record to establish moral variation, and he draws on cultural history to show how attitudes toward practices such as cannibalism and marriage change over time. He also criticizes evidence from animal behavior and child development that has been taken to support the claim that moral attitudes are hard-wired by natural selection. Prinz concludes that there is no single true morality, but he also argues that some moral values are better than others; moral progress is possible. Throughout the book, Prinz relates his views to contemporary and historical work in philosophical ethics. His views echo themes in the writings of David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche, but Prinz supports, extends, and revises these classic theories using the resources of cutting-edge cognitive science. The Emotional Construction of Morals will stimulate and challenge anyone who is curious about the nature and origin of moral values. (shrink)

In this collection of previously published essays, Sally Haslanger draws on insights from feminist and critical race theory and on the resources of contemporary analytic philosophy to develop the idea that gender and race are positions ...

Our conception of logical space is the set of distinctions we use to navigate the world. Agustn Rayo argues that this is shaped by acceptance or rejection of 'just is'-statements: e.g. 'to be composed of water just is to be composed of H2O'. He offers a novel conception of metaphysical possibility, and a new trivialist philosophy of mathematics.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The paper discusses the concept of the cognitive niche and distinguishes the latter from the metabolic niche. By using these posits I unpack certain ideas that are crucial for the enactivist movement, especially for its original formulation proposed by Varela, Thompson and Rosh. Drawing on the ontology of location, boundaries, and parthood, I argue that enacting the world can be seen as the process of cognitive niche construction. Moreover, it turns out that enactivism—as seen through the lens of the (...) conceptual framework proposed in the paper—considers cognition as a kind of connection between the subject and the world. This post is pointed to as the key idea laid down in enactivism. (shrink)

Niche construction is the process whereby organisms, through their activities and choices, modify their own and each other’s niches. By transforming natural-selection pressures, niche construction generates feedback in evolution at various different levels. Niche-constructing species play important ecological roles by creating habitats and resources used by other species and thereby affecting the flow of energy and matter through ecosystems—a process often referred to as “ecosystem engineering.” An important emphasis of niche construction theory (NCT) is that acquired characters (...) play an evolutionary role through transforming selective environments. This is particularly relevant to human evolution, where our species has engaged in extensive environmental modification through cultural practices. Humans can construct developmental environments that feed back to affect how individuals learn and develop and the diseases to which they are exposed. Here we provide an introduction to NCT and illustrate some of its more important implications for the human sciences. (shrink)

This volume presents cutting-edge theory and research on emotions as constructed events rather than fixed, essential entities. It provides a thorough introduction to the assumptions, hypotheses, and scientific methods that embody psychological constructionist approaches. Leading scholars examine the neurobiological, cognitive/perceptual, and social processes that give rise to the experiences Western cultures call sadness, anger, fear, and so on. The book explores such compelling questions as how the brain creates emotional experiences, whether the "ingredients" of emotions also give rise to other (...) mental states, and how to define what is or is not an emotion. Introductory and concluding chapters by the editors identify key themes and controversies and compare psychological construction to other theories of emotion. (shrink)

There has been little serious work to integrate the constructionist approach and the cognitive approach in the domain of race, although many researchers have paid lip service to this project. We believe that any satisfactory account of human beings’ racialist cognition has to integrate both approaches. In this paper, we propose a step toward this integration. We present an evolutionary theory that rests on a distinction between various kinds of groups (kin-based groups, small-scale coalitions and ethnies). Following Gil-White (1999, 2001a, (...) b), we propose that ethnies have raised specific evolutionary challenges that were solved by a specific evolved cognitive system. We suggest that the concept of race is a by-product of that mechanism. To integrate the social constructionists’ and the cognitive theorists’ insights, we rely on the psychology that underlies Boyd and Richerson’s theory of cultural evolution (Boyd and Richerson 1985, forthcoming). (shrink)

A variety of relations widely invoked by philosophers—composition, constitution, realization, micro-basing, emergence, and many others—are species of what I call ‘building relations’. I argue that they are conceptually intertwined, articulate what it takes for a relation to count as a building relation, and argue that—contra appearances—it is an open possibility that these relations are all determinates of a common determinable, or even that there is really only one building relation.

Niche construction theory concerns how organisms can change selection pressures by altering the feature–factor relationship between themselves and their environment. These alterations are standardly understood to be brought about through two kinds of organism–environment interaction: perturbative and relocational niche construction. We argue that a reconceptualization is needed on the grounds that if a niche is understood as the feature–factor relationship, then there are three fundamental ways in which organisms can engage in niche construction: constitutive, relational, and external (...) niche construction. We further motivate our reconceptualization by showing some examples of organismic activities that fall outside of the current categorization of niche construction, but nonetheless should be included. We end by discussing two objections to niche construction and show how our reconceptualization helps to undercut these objections. 1Introduction2Niche Construction Theory 2.1The standard account of niche construction2.2Two problems with the standard account of niche construction3Three Kinds of Niche Construction 3.1Constitutive niche construction3.2Relational niche construction3.3External niche construction4Conceptual Improvement on Niche Construction Theory 4.1Constitutive niche construction4.2Relational niche construction4.3External niche construction5The Status of Niche Construction Theory within Evolutionary Theory 5.1Is niche construction a helpful addition to evolutionary theory?5.2Is niche construction an evolutionary process?6Conclusion. (shrink)

In evolutionary biology, niche construction is sometimes described as a genuine evolutionary process whereby organisms, through their activities and regulatory mechanisms, modify their environment such as to steer their own evolutionary trajectory, and that of other species. There is ongoing debate, however, on the extent to which niche construction ought to be considered a bona fide evolutionary force, on a par with natural selection. Recent formulations of the variational free-energy principle as applied to the life sciences describe the (...) properties of living systems, and their selection in evolution, in terms of variational inference. We argue that niche construction can be described using a variational approach. We propose new arguments to support the niche construction perspective, and to extend the variational approach to niche construction to current perspectives in various scientific fields. (shrink)

Social evolution theory conventionally takes an externalist explanatory stance, treating observed cooperation as explanandum and the positive assortment of cooperative behaviour as explanans. We ask how the circumstances bringing about this positive assortment arose in the first place. Rather than merely push the explanatory problem back a step, we move from an externalist to an interactionist explanatory stance, in the spirit of Lewontin and the Niche Construction theorists. We develop a theory of ‘social niche construction’ in which we (...) consider biological entities to be both the subject and object of their own social evolution. Some important cases of the evolution of cooperation have the side-effect of causing changes in the hierarchical level at which the evolutionary process acts. This is because the traits that act to align the fitness interests of particles in a collective can also act to diminish the extent to which those particles are bearers of heritable fitness variance, while augmenting the extent to which collectives of such particles are bearers of heritable fitness variance. In this way, we can explain upward transitions in the hierarchical level at which the Darwinian machine operates in terms of particle-level selection, even though the outcome of the process is a collective-level selection regime. Our theory avoids the logical and metaphysical paradoxes faced by other attempts to explain evolutionary transitions. (shrink)

Social construction theorists face a certain challenge to the effect that they confuse the epistemic and the metaphysical: surely our conceptions of something are influenced by social practices, but that doesn't show that the nature of the thing in question is so influenced. In this paper I take up this challenge and offer a general framework to support the claim that a human kind is socially constructed, when this is understood as a metaphysical claim and as a part of (...) a social constructionist debunking project. I give reasons for thinking that a conferralist framework is better equipped to capture the social constructionist intuition than rival accounts of social properties, such as a constitution account and a response-dependence account, and that this framework helps to diagnose what is at stake in the debate between the social constructionists and their opponents. The conferralist framework offered here should be welcomed by social constructionists looking for firm foundations for their claims, and for anyone else interested in the debate over the social construction of human kinds. (shrink)

This paper aims to solve a puzzle for instrumental conceptions of epistemic normativity. The puzzle is this: if the usefulness of epistemic norms explains their normative grip on us, why does it seem improper to violate these norms even when doing so would benefit us? To solve this puzzle, we argue that epistemic instrumentalists must adopt a more social approach to normativity. In particular, they should not account for the nature of epistemic normativity by appealing to the goals of individual (...) agents. Rather, they should appeal to norms or rules of inquiry that serve our collective goals. We argue that epistemic normativity grows out of our need to promote a deep kind of coordination in our basic epistemic practices. By subscribing to an appropriate system of norms, we can coordinate epistemic rule-following across the community. This makes testimony more trustworthy and reliable. This account not only solves a puzzle about epistemic instrumentalism but also sheds new light on the foundations of normativity and emphasizes the need for a truly social epistemology. (shrink)

Papers presented at a conference held at the University of Notre Dame in April 1986.

Niche construction theory (NCT) can be applied to examine the influence of culturally constructed learning environments on the acquisition and retention of beliefs, values, role expectations, and skills. Thus, NCT provides a quantitative framework to account for cultural-historical contingency affecting development and cultural evolution. Learning in a culturally constructed environment is of central concern to many sociologists, cognitive scientists, and sociocultural anthropologists, albeit often from different perspectives. This article summarizes four pertinent theories from these fields—situated learning, activity theory, practice (...) theory, and distributed cognition. As a basis for interdisciplinary investigation, the article considers how these theories may be addressed using a cultural niche-construction framework, including the utility of an embedded model that explicitly accounts for effects of the constructed learning environment on within-individual learning dynamics in an evolutionary framework. (shrink)