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David Beaver [13]Donald Beaver [11]David I. Beaver [7]Donald deB Beaver [6]
Donald deB Beaver [1]D. Beaver [1]
  1.  10
    What Comes First in Dynamic Semantics: A Critical Review of Linguistic Theories of Presupposition and a Dynamic Alternative.David Beaver - 2001 - Center for the Study of Language and Information Publications.
    Russell and Strawson sparked a well known debate on the subject of Linguistic Presupposition inspiring many linguists and philosophers to follow suit, including Frege, whose work initiated the modern study in this area. Beaver begins with the most comprehensive overview and critical discussion of this burgeoning field published to date. He then goes on to motivate and develop his own account based on a Dynamic Semantics. This account is a recent line of theoretical work in which the Tarskian emphasis on (...)
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  2.  21
    Sense and sensitivity: how focus determines meaning.David I. Beaver - 2008 - Malden, MA: Blackwell. Edited by Brady Z. Clark.
    Sense and Sensitivity explores the semantics and pragmatics of focus in natural language discourse, advancing a new account of focus sensitivity which posits a three-way distinction between different effects of focus. Makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing research in the field of focus sensitivity Discusses the features of QFC, an original theory of focus implying a new typology of focus-sensitive expressions Presents novel cross-linguistic data on focus and focus sensitivity Concludes with a case study of exclusives (like “only”), arguing (...)
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  3. Presupposition.David I. Beaver - 1997 - In J. F. A. K. Van Benthem, Johan van Benthem & Alice G. B. Ter Meulen (eds.), Handbook of Logic and Language. Elsevier.
    We discuss presupposition, the phenomenon whereby speakers mark linguistically the information that is presupposed or taken for granted, rather than being part of the main propositional content of a speech act. Expressions and constructions carrying presuppositions are called “presupposition triggers”, forming a large class including definites and factive verbs. The article first introduces the range of triggers, the basic properties of presuppositions such as projection and cancellability, and the diagnostic tests used to identify them. The reader is then introducedto major (...)
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  4. What projects and why.Mandy Simons, David Beaver, Judith Tonhauser & Craige Roberts - 2010 - Semantics and Linguistic Theory 20:309-327.
    The empirical phenomenon at the center of this paper is projection, which we define (uncontroversially) as follows: (1) Definition of projection An implication projects if and only if it survives as an utterance implication when the expression that triggers the implication occurs under the syntactic scope of an entailment-cancelling operator. Projection is observed, for example, with utterances containing aspectual verbs like stop, as shown in (2) and (3) with examples from English and Paraguayan Guaraní (Paraguay, Tupí-Guaraní).1 The Guaraní example in (...)
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  5.  91
    Toward a Taxonomy of Projective Content.Judith Tonhauser, David Beaver, Craige Roberts & Mandy Simons - 2013 - Language 89 (1):66-109.
    Projective contents, which include presuppositional inferences and Potts's conventional implicatures, are contents that may project when a construction is embedded, as standardly identified by the FAMILY-OF-SENTENCES diagnostic. This article establishes distinctions among projective contents on the basis of a series of diagnostics, including a variant of the family-of-sentences diagnostic, that can be applied with linguistically untrained consultants in the field and the laboratory. These diagnostics are intended to serve as part of a toolkit for exploring projective contents across languages, thus (...)
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  6. Toward a Non-Ideal Philosophy of Language.David Beaver & Jason Stanley - 2019 - Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 39 (2):503-547.
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  7. A partial account of presupposition projection.David Beaver & Emiel Krahmer - 2001 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 10 (2):147-182.
    In this paper it is shown how a partial semantics for presuppositions can be given which is empirically more satisfactory than its predecessors, and how this semantics can be integrated with a technically sound, compositional grammar in the Montagovian fashion. Additionally, it is argued that the classical objection to partial accounts of presupposition projection, namely that they lack “flexibility,” is based on a misconception. Partial logics can give rise to flexible predictions without postulating any ad hoc ambiguities. Finally, it is (...)
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  8.  59
    The Politics of Language.David Beaver & Jason Stanley - 2023 - Princeton University Press.
    A provocative case for the inherently political nature of language In The Politics of Language, David Beaver and Jason Stanley present a radical new approach to the theory of meaning, offering an account of communication in which political and social identity, affect, and shared practices play as important a role as information. This new view of language, they argue, has dramatic consequences for free speech, democracy, and a range of other areas in which speech plays a central role. Drawing on (...)
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  9. Definiteness and determinacy.Elizabeth Coppock & David Beaver - 2015 - Linguistics and Philosophy 38 (5):377-435.
    This paper distinguishes between definiteness and determinacy. Definiteness is seen as a morphological category which, in English, marks a uniqueness presupposition, while determinacy consists in denoting an individual. Definite descriptions are argued to be fundamentally predicative, presupposing uniqueness but not existence, and to acquire existential import through general type-shifting operations that apply not only to definites, but also indefinites and possessives. Through these shifts, argumental definite descriptions may become either determinate or indeterminate. The latter option is observed in examples like (...)
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  10. Neutrality.David Beaver & Jason Stanley - 2021 - Philosophical Topics 49 (1):165-185.
    Neutrality functions as an ideal in deliberation—we are supposed to have a neutral standpoint in debate, speak without bias or taking sides. We argue against the ideal of neutrality. We sketch how a theory of meaning could avoid commitment even to the coherence of a neutral space of discourse for exchanging reasons. In a model that accepts the ideal of neutrality, what makes propaganda exceptional is its non-neutrality. However, a critique of propaganda cannot take the form of “clearing out” the (...)
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  11.  49
    Principles of the Exclusive Muddle.Elizabeth Coppock & David I. Beaver - 2014 - Journal of Semantics 31 (3):fft007.
    Next SectionThis paper provides a lexical entry schema for exclusives covering the adverbs only, just, exclusively, merely, purely, solely, simply, and the adjectives only, sole, pure, exclusive and alone. We argue, on the basis of inter-paraphrasability relations among these exclusives and entailments involving at least and at most, that all of these items make an at-issue contribution of an upper bound on the viable answers to the current question under discussion (expressible with at most), and signal that a lower bound (...)
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  12.  99
    The optimization of discourse anaphora.David I. Beaver - 2004 - Linguistics and Philosophy 27 (1):3-56.
    In this paper the Centering model of anaphoraresolution and discourse coherence(Grosz et al. 1983, 1995)is reformulated in terms of Optimality Theory (OT)(Prince and Smolensky 1993). One version of the reformulated modelis proven to be descriptively equivalent to an earlier algorithmicstatement of Centering due to Brennan, Friedman and Pollard(1987). However, the new model is stated declaratively, and makesclearer the status of the various constraints used in the theory. Inthe second part of the paper, the model is extended, demonstratingthe advantages of the (...)
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  13. On the logic of verbal modification.David Beaver & Cleo Condoravdi - 2007 - In Dekker Aloni (ed.), Proceedings of the Sixteenth Amsterdam Colloquium.
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  14. Presuppositions, Conventional Implicature, and Beyond: A unified account of projection.Mandy Simons, Craige Roberts, Judith Tonhauser & David I. Beaver - 2009 - In Nathan Klinedist & Daniel Rothschild (eds.), Proceedings of Workshop on New Directions in the Theory of Presuppositions. Essli 2009.
    We define a notion of projective meaning which encompasses both classical presuppositions and phenomena which are usually regarded as non-presuppositional but which also display projection behavior—Horn’s assertorically inert entailments, conventional implicatures (both Grice’s and Potts’) and some conversational implicatures. We argue that the central feature of all projective meanings is that they are not-at-issue, defined as a relation to the question under discussion. Other properties differentiate various sub-classes of projective meanings, one of them the class of presuppositions according to Stalnaker. (...)
     
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  15.  30
    It's Not What You Expected! The Surprising Nature of Cleft Alternatives in French and English.Emilie Destruel, David I. Beaver & Elizabeth Coppock - 2019 - Frontiers in Psychology 10.
  16.  13
    On the failure to detect previously published research.Donald deB Beaver - 1982 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 5 (2):199-200.
  17. Semantics.David Beaver & Joey Frazee - forthcoming - The Oxford Handbook of Computational Linguistics 2nd Edition.
    Formal semantics is the study of linguistic meaning using precise mathematical characterizations; this chapter introduces formal semantics to scholars and students of natural-language processing. We give simple logical representations of English sentences, and show how meanings are composed in a grammar. We then consider two more advanced issues that arise in processing texts, anaphora and temporality, using Discourse Representation Theory. Finally we discuss the relationship between deep logic-based methods for semantic analysis and shallower distributional methods that have been used in (...)
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  18.  27
    (1 other version)Index of Authors of Volume 10.M. Aiello, D. Beaver, M. de Rijke, M. Egg, T. Fernando, C. Gardent, K. Hartmann, H. Hendriks, J. Hintikka & W. Hodges - 2001 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 10 (525):525.
  19.  10
    Words, Proofs, and Diagrams.David Barker-Plummer, David I. Beaver, Johan van Benthem & Patrick Scotto di Luzio (eds.) - 2002 - Center for the Study of Language and Inf.
    The past twenty years have witnessed extensive collaborative research between computer scientists, logicians, linguists, philosophers, and psychologists. These interdisciplinary studies stem from the realization that researchers drawn from all fields are studying the same problem. Specifically, a common concern amongst researchers today is how logic sheds light on the nature of information. Ancient questions concerning how humans communicate, reason and decide, and modern questions about how computers should communicate, reason and decide are of prime interest to researchers in various disciplines. (...)
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  20.  29
    The communicative significance of primary and secondary accents.David Beaver & Dan Velleman - 2011 - Lingua.
    Many formal linguists hold that English pitch accent has a single function: marking focus. On the other hand, there is evidence from corpus work and from psycholinguistics that pitch accent is attracted to expressions which are unpredictable. We present a two-factor pragmatic account in which both focus and predictability contribute to the placement of accent in an English intonational phrase. On examples of so-called “second occurrence focus” and related phenomena, our account gives superior results to the one-factor accounts of Rooth (...)
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  21.  8
    (1 other version)Technological Literacy, Old and New.Donald Deb Beaver - 1986 - Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society 6 (2):229-234.
    As one of the Sloan Foundation's original New Liberal Arts grantees, Williams College has developed a variety of approaches to improve quantitative reasoning and technological literacy, including creating interdisciplinary courses, computer and mathematical workshops, and an STS program. Further development, however, depends critically on what technological literacy may mean in a liberal arts context. Attempts to promote technological literacy, whether in liberal arts settings or not, are likely to founder unless they take account of the complexity and context dependent nature (...)
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  22.  4
    The Secrets of Science Unlock'd: Scientific Instruments as Keys to Artificial Revelation.Donald deB Beaver - 1988 - Science, Technology, and Human Values 13 (3-4):373-384.
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  23.  8
    Question-based Models of Information Structure.Leah Velleman & David Beaver - 2016 - In Caroline Féry & Shinichiro Ishihara (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure. Oxford University Press UK.
    We present approaches to the semantics and pragmatics of information structure which centre on Questions Under Discussion. Questions, explicit or implicit, are seen as structuring discourse, and information structural marking is seen as reflecting that underlying discourse structure. Our presentation of the model is largely cast in terms of extensions of Roberts’s analysis, which is itself related to Rooth’s Alternative Semantics and Hamblin’s approach to the semantics of questions. We present the model in terms of a range of constraints that (...)
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  24. Always and Only: Why Not All Focus-Sensitive Operators Are Alike. [REVIEW]David Beaver & Brady Clark - 2003 - Natural Language Semantics 11 (4):323-362.
    We discuss focus sensitivity in English, the phenomenon whereby interpretation of some expressions is affected by placement of intonational focus. We concentrate in particular on the interpretation of always and only, both of which are interpreted as universal quantifiers, and both of which are focus sensitive. Using both naturally occurring and constructed data we explore the interaction of these operators with negative polarity items, with presupposition, with prosodically reduced elements, and with syntactic extraction. On the basis of this data we (...)
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  25.  26
    (1 other version)Donald MacKenzie;, Judy Wajcman . The Social Shaping of Technology. xviii + 462 pp., illus., bibl., index. 1985. Buckingham, U.K./Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999. $27.95. [REVIEW]Donald deB Beaver - 2002 - Isis 93 (3):476-477.
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  26.  13
    Book Review:Creation by Natural Law: Laplace's Nebular Hypothesis in American Thought Ronald L. Numbers. [REVIEW]Donald deB Beaver - 1979 - Philosophy of Science 46 (1):167-.
  27.  12
    (1 other version)American Science Leaders. [REVIEW]Donald Beaver - 2002 - Isis 93:365-365.
    This compilation of biographical sketches of 400 “leaders” of American “science” could become a favorite resource for students at the secondary school level. Easy to navigate, with useful and quick summary information, it should appeal to those accustomed to instant feedback in a variety of predigested forms. Included in the list are 380 men and 20 women, not more than a quarter of whom started their careers before 1900. The earliest is Benjamin Banneker; the latest, Jason Lanier. Various features make (...)
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