36 found
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  1. Choice functions and the scopal semantics of indefinites.Yoad Winter - 1997 - Linguistics and Philosophy 20 (4):399-467.
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  2. Distributivity and Dependency.Yoad Winter - 2000 - Natural Language Semantics 8 (1):27-69.
    Sentences with multiple occurrences of plural definites give rise to certain effects suggesting that distributivity should be modeled by polyadic operations. Yet in this paper it is argued that the simpler treatment of distributivity using unary universal quantification should be retained. Seemingly polyadic effects are claimed to be restricted to definite NPs. This fact is accounted for by the special anaphoric (dependent) use of definites. Further evidence concerning various plurals, island constraints, and cumulative quantification is shown to support this claim. (...)
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  3.  7
    Elements of formal semantics: an introduction to the mathematical theory of meaning in natural language.Yoad Winter - 2016 - Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
    In formal semantics, structure is treated as the essential ingredient in the creation of sentence meaning from individual word meaning. This book introduces some of the foundational concepts, principles and techniques in the formal semantics of natural language and outlines the mathematical principles that underlie linguistics meaning. Using English examples, Yoad Winter presents the most useful tools and concepts of formal semantics in an accessible style and includes a variety of practical exercises so that readers can learn to utilize these (...)
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  4. Flexible boolean semantics. Coordination, plurality and scope in natural language.Yoad Winter & Roger Schwarzschild - unknown
    This dissertation is based on the compositional model theoretic approach to natural language semantics that was initiated by Montague (1970) and developed by subsequent work. In this general approach, coordination and negation are treated following Keenan & Faltz (1978, 1985) using boolean algebras. As in Barwise & Cooper (1981) noun phrases uniformly denote objects in the boolean domain of generalized quanti®ers. These foundational assumptions, although elegant and minimalistic, are challenged by various phenomena of coordination, plurality and scope. The dissertation solves (...)
     
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  5.  89
    Plural Predication and the Strongest Meaning Hypothesis.Yoad Winter - 2001 - Journal of Semantics 18 (4):333-365.
    The Strongest Meaning Hypothesis of Dalrymple et al (1994,1998), which was originally proposed as a principle for the interpretation of reciprocals, is extended in this paper into a general principle of plural predication. This principle applies to complex predicates that are composed of lexical predicates that hold of atomic entities, and determines the pluralities in the extension of the predicate. The meaning of such a complex predicate is claimed to be the truth-conditionally strongest meaning that does not contradict lexical properties (...)
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  6.  60
    A unified semantic treatment of singular NP coordination.Yoad Winter - 1996 - Linguistics and Philosophy 19 (4):337 - 391.
  7.  45
    Order-Based Inference in Natural Logic.Yaroslav Fyodorov, Yoad Winter & Nissim Francez - 2003 - Logic Journal of the IGPL 11 (4):385-416.
    This paper develops a version of Natural Logic – an inference system that works directly on natural language syntactic representations, with no intermediate translation to logical formulae. Following work by Sánchez, we develop a small fragment that computes semantic order relations between derivation trees in Categorial Grammar. The proposed system has the following new characteristics: It uses orderings between derivation trees as purely syntactic units, derivable by a formal calculus. The system is extended for conjunctive phenomena like coordination and relative (...)
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  8.  74
    Monotonicity and collective quantification.Gilad Ben-avi & Yoad Winter - 2003 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 12 (2):127-151.
    This article studies the monotonicity behavior of plural determinersthat quantify over collections. Following previous work, we describe thecollective interpretation of determiners such as all, some andmost using generalized quantifiers of a higher type that areobtained systematically by applying a type shifting operator to thestandard meanings of determiners in Generalized Quantifier Theory. Twoprocesses of counting and existential quantification thatappear with plural quantifiers are unified into a single determinerfitting operator, which, unlike previous proposals, both capturesexistential quantification with plural determiners and respects theirmonotonicity (...)
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  9.  93
    A 'natural logic' inference system using the Lambek calculus.Anna Zamansky, Nissim Francez & Yoad Winter - 2006 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 15 (3):273-295.
    This paper develops an inference system for natural language within the ‘Natural Logic’ paradigm as advocated by van Benthem, Sánchez and others. The system that we propose is based on the Lambek calculus and works directly on the Curry-Howard counterparts for syntactic representations of natural language, with no intermediate translation to logical formulae. The Lambek -based system we propose extends the system by Fyodorov et~al., which is based on the Ajdukiewicz/Bar-Hillel calculus Bar Hillel,. This enables the system to deal with (...)
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  10. Contrast and Implication in Natural Language.Yoad Winter - 1994 - Journal of Semantics 11 (4):365-406.
    In this paper we introduce a theoretical framework and a logical application for analysing the semantics and pragmatics of contrastive conjunctions in natural language. It is shown how expressions like although, nevertheless, yet, and but are semantically definable as connectives using an operator for implication in natural language and how similar pragmatic principles affect the behaviour of both contrastive conjunctions and indicative conditionals. Following previous proposals, conditions on contrast in a conjunction are analysed as presuppositions of die conjunction. Further linguistic (...)
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  11.  85
    Scope dominance with upward monotone quantifiers.Alon Altman, Ya'Acov Peterzil & Yoad Winter - 2005 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 14 (4):445-455.
    We give a complete characterization of the class of upward monotone generalized quantifiers Q1 and Q2 over countable domains that satisfy the scheme Q1 x Q2 y φ → Q2 y Q1 x φ. This generalizes the characterization of such quantifiers over finite domains, according to which the scheme holds iff Q1 is ∃ or Q2 is ∀ (excluding trivial cases). Our result shows that in infinite domains, there are more general types of quantifiers that support these entailments.
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  12. Cross-categorial restrictions on measure phrase modification.Yoad Winter - 2004 - Linguistics and Philosophy 28 (2):233 - 267.
  13. Binding without identity: Towards a unified semantics for bound and exempt anaphors.Yoad Winter & Eric Reuland - unknown
    Expressions such as English himself are interpreted as locally bound anaphors in certain syntactic environments and are exempt from the binding conditions in others. This article provides a unified semantics for himself in both of these uses. Their difference is reduced to the interaction with the syntactic environment. The semantics is based on an extension of the treatment of pronominals in variable-free semantics. The adoption of variable free semantics is inspired by the existence of proxy-readings, which motivate an analysis based (...)
     
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  14.  76
    Relational domains and the interpretation of reciprocals.Sivan Sabato & Yoad Winter - 2012 - Linguistics and Philosophy 35 (3):191-241.
    We argue that a comprehensive theory of reciprocals must rely on a general taxonomy of restrictions on the interpretation of relational expressions. Developing such a taxonomy, we propose a new principle for interpreting reciprocals that relies on the interpretation of the relation in their scope. This principle, the Maximal Interpretation Hypothesis (MIH), analyzes reciprocals as partial polyadic quantifiers. According to the MIH, the partial quantifier denoted by a reciprocal requires the relational expression REL in its scope to denote a maximal (...)
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  15.  12
    Compositionality and Concepts in Linguistics and Psychology.James A. Hampton & Yoad Winter (eds.) - 2017 - Cham: Imprint: Springer.
    By highlighting relations between experimental and theoretical work, this volume explores new ways of addressing one of the central challenges in the study of language and cognition. The articles bring together work by leading scholars and younger researchers in psychology, linguistics and philosophy. An introductory chapter lays out the background on concept composition, a problem that is stimulating much new research in cognitive science. Researchers in this interdisciplinary domain aim to explain how meanings of complex expressions are derived from simple (...)
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  16.  68
    Scope dominance with monotone quantifiers over finite domains.Gilad Ben-Avi & Yoad Winter - 2004 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 13 (4):385-402.
    We characterize pairs of monotone generalized quantifiers Q1 and Q2 over finite domains that give rise to an entailment relation between their two relative scope construals. This relation between quantifiers, which is referred to as scope dominance, is used for identifying entailment relations between the two scopal interpretations of simple sentences of the form NP1–V–NP2. Simple numerical or set-theoretical considerations that follow from our main result are used for characterizing such relations. The variety of examples in which they hold are (...)
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  17.  48
    Type shifting with semantic features: A unified perspective.Yoad Winter - 2007 - In Chris Barker & Pauline I. Jacobson (eds.), Direct compositionality. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 164.
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  18.  43
    Far from obvious: the semantics of locative indefinites.Sela Mador-Haim & Yoad Winter - 2015 - Linguistics and Philosophy 38 (5):437-476.
    Simple locative sentences show a variety of pseudo-quantificational interpretations. Some locatives give the impression of universal quantification over parts of objects, others involve existential quantification, and yet others cannot be characterized by either of these quantificational terms. This behavior is explained by virtually all semantic theories of locatives. What has not been previously observed is that similar quantificational variability is also exhibited by locative sentences containing indefinites with the ‘a’ article. This phenomenon is especially problematic for traditional existential treatments of (...)
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  19. Total Adjectives vs. Partial Adjectives: Scale Structure and Higher-Order Modifiers. [REVIEW]Carmen Rotstein & Yoad Winter - 2004 - Natural Language Semantics 12 (3):259-288.
    This paper studies a distinction that was proposed in previous works between total and partial adjectives. In pairs of adjectives such as safe–dangerous, clean–dirty and healthy–sick, the first (“total”) adjective describes lack of danger, dirt, malady, etc., while the second (“partial”) adjective describes the existence of such properties. It is shown that the semantics of adjective phrases with modifiers such as almost, slightly, and completely is sensitive to whether the adjective is total or partial. The interpretation of such modified constructions (...)
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  20.  49
    Philadelphia, PA, USA May 18–20, 2011.Anjolina G. de Oliveira, Ruy de Queiroz, Rajeev Alur, Max Kanovich, John Mitchell, Vladimir Voevodsky, Yoad Winter & Michael Zakharyaschev - 2012 - Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 18 (1).
  21. Abstract of "contrast and implication in natural language".Yoad Winter - manuscript
    In this paper we introduce a theoretical framework and a logical application for analyzing the semantics and pragmatics of contrastive conjunctions in natural language. It is shown how expressions like "although", "nevertheless", "yet" and "but" are semantically definable as connectives using an operator for implication in natural language, and how similar pragmatic principles affect the behaviour of both contrastive conjunctions and indicative conditionals. Following previous proposals, conditions on contrast in a conjunction are analyzed as presuppositions of the conjunction. Further linguistic (...)
     
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  22. Abstract of "DP structure and flexible semantics".Yoad Winter - manuscript
    DP hypothesis of Abney (1987), the syntactic unit that had formerly been known as noun phrase should in fact be analyzed as a phrase headed by a determiner, hence the label DP. Quite independently of this syntactic development, Partee (1987) proposed a type shifting paradigm for the semantic analysis of nominals (now called DPs). In Partee's proposal DPs are ambiguous between a referential reading of type e, a predicative reading of type et and a quantificational reading of type (et)t. DP (...)
     
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  23. Abstract of "on some scopal asymmetries of coordination".Yoad Winter - manuscript
    The distinction between syntactic and semantic techniques in linguistic theory is by now sufficiently clear. What is often debated is the extent to which syntactic and semantic considerations should be used in analyzing a given phenomenon. An empirical domain where the division of labour between syntax and semantics is especially problematic is the case of ``non-overt'' scope, or what I prefer to call the..
     
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  24. Abstract of "part-of-speech tagging of modern hebrew texts".Yoad Winter - unknown
    Words in Semitic texts often consist of a concatenation of word segments, each corresponding to a Part-of-Speech (POS) category. Semitic words may be ambiguous with regard to their segmentation as well as to the POS tags assigned to each segment. When designing POS taggers for Semitic languages, a major architectural decision concerns the choice of the atomic input tokens (terminal symbols). If the tokenization is at the word level the output tags must be complex, and represent both the segmentation of (...)
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  25. Abstract of "type shifting with semantic features: A unified perspective".Yoad Winter - manuscript
    Since their introduction by Partee and Rooth (1983) into linguistic theory, type shifting principles have been extensively employed in various linguistic domains, including nominal predicates (Partee 1987), kind denoting NPs (Chierchia 1998), interrogatives (Groenendijk and Stokhof 1989), scrambled definites (De Hoop and Van der Does 1998) and plurals (Winter 2001,2002). Most of the accounts that use type shifting principles employ them as ``last resort'' mechanisms, which apply only when other compositional mechanisms fail. This failure is often sloppily referred to as (...)
     
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  26. Abstract of "what makes choice natural?".Yoad Winter - manuscript
    The idea to use choice functions in the semantic analysis of indefinites has recently gained increasing attention among linguists and logicians. A central linguistic motivation for the revived interest in this logical perspective, which can be traced back to the epsilon calculus of Hilbert and Bernays (1939), is the observation by Reinhart (1992,1997) that choice functions can account for the problematic scopal behaviour of indefinites and interrogatives. On-going research continues to explore this general thesis, which I henceforth adopt. In this (...)
     
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  27. Against partitioned Readings of reciprocals.Yoad Winter - manuscript
    In this paper we examine partitioned interpretations of sentences with reciprocal expressions. We study the availability of partitioned readings with definite subjects and proper name conjunctions, and show new evidence that partitioned interpretations of simple reciprocal sentences are independent of the semantics of the reciprocal expression, and are exclusively determined by the interpretation of the subject.
     
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  28. Bare nominals and reference to capacities.Yoad Winter - manuscript
    This paper concentrates on the syntax and semantics of bare nominals in Germanic and Romance languages. These languages do not normally allow nominals to occur without an article. However, some syntactic configurations, including predicative constructions, supplementives and some prepositional phrases, allow bareness of certain nominals. We argue that bare nominals in these constructions refer to capacities: professions, religions, nationalities or other roles in society. Capacities are analyzed as entities of type e, sortally distinct from regular individuals as well as kinds. (...)
     
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  29. Course description: The course will give a concise introduction to compositional modeltheoretic semantics in the Montague tradition, with ample discussion and motivation coming..Yoad Winter - manuscript
    The course will give a concise introduction to compositional modeltheoretic semantics in the Montague tradition, with ample discussion and motivation coming from recent research. Concentrating on the underlying methodological principles, I will aim to attract students' attention to the beauty and scientific value of the description of intricate semantic phenomena using elegant and rigorously-defined mathematical techniques. The course is intended for students who don't necessarily have any prior knowledge in logic or linguistics, but have some basic mathematical or general scientific (...)
     
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  30. Multiple coordination: Meaning composition vs. the syntax-semantics interface.Yoad Winter - manuscript
    This paper argues that multiple coordinations like tall, thin and happy are interpreted in a “flat” iterative process, but using “nested” recursive application of binary coordination operators in the compositional meaning derivation. Ample motivation for flat interpretation is shown by contrasting such coordinations with nested, syntactically ambiguous, coordinate structures like tall and thin and happy. However, new evidence coming from type shifting and predicate distribution with verb phrases show motivation for an independent hierarchical ingredient in the compositional semantics of multiple (...)
     
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  31. Plurals.Yoad Winter & Remko Scha - 1996 - In Shalom Lappin (ed.), The handbook of contemporary semantic theory. Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell Reference.
     
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  32. Plural type quantification.Yoad Winter - manuscript
    This paper introduces some of the main components of a novel type theoretical semantics for quantifi- cation with plural noun phrases. This theory, unlike previous ones, sticks to the standard generalized quantifier treatment of singular noun phrases and uses only one lifting operator per semantic category (predicate, quantifier and determiner) for quantification with plurals. Following Bennett (1974), plural individuals are treated as functions of type ¢¡ . Plural nouns and other plural predicates accordingly denote £ ¢¡¥¤¦¡ functions. Such predicates do (...)
     
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  33.  15
    What makes choice natural?Yoad Winter - 2000 - In Klaus von Heusinger & Urs Egli (eds.), Reference and Anaphoric Relations. Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 229--245.
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  34. Vector space semantics: A model-theoretic analysis of locative prepositions. [REVIEW]Joost Zwarts & Yoad Winter - 2000 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 9 (2):169-211.
    This paper introduces a compositional semantics of locativeprepositional phrases which is based on a vector space ontology.Model-theoretic properties of prepositions like monotonicity andconservativity are defined in this system in a straightforward way.These notions are shown to describe central inferences with spatialexpressions and to account for the grammaticality of prepositionmodification. Model-theoretic constraints on the set of possibleprepositions in natural language are specified, similar to the semanticuniversals of Generalized Quantifier Theory.
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  35. Monotonicity and collective quantification.Gilad B. Avi & Yoad Winter - 2003 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 12 (2):127--151.
  36. Jacques Jayez and Lucia M. tovena/free choiceness and non-individuation 1–71 Michael McCord and Arendse bernth/a metalogical theory of natural language semantics 73–116 Nathan salmon/are general terms rigid? 117–134. [REVIEW]Stefan Kaufmann, Conditional Predications, Yoad Winter & Cross-Categorial Restrictions On Measure - 2005 - Linguistics and Philosophy 28:791-792.
     
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