Item Details

The interpretation of plural definites in discourse: the case of spatial adpositions

Issue: Vol 9 No. 2 (2013)

Journal: Linguistics and the Human Sciences

Subject Areas: Writing and Composition Linguistics

DOI: 10.1558/lhs.v9i2.201

Abstract:

In this paper we offer a study on the interpretation of plural definites in discourse (‘the tank engines’) and their interaction with spatial adpositions (‘to’ and ‘at’). The novel empirical findings in the paper support the following assumptions on the contribution of spatial adpositions to the interpretation of plural definites. First, the interpretation of plural definites can be influenced by the lexical aspect type of adpositions. While ‘to’ as ‘telic’ predicate can license both a ‘collective’ and a ‘distributive’ reading for plural definites, ‘at’ as an ‘atelic’ predicate only licenses a ‘collective’ reading. Second, the precise lexical content of adpositions determines which interpretation is accessed. It is claimed that ‘at’ denotes a ‘general location’ relation between locatum and landmark object, and thus licenses a collective reading for plural definites.

Author: Francesco-Alessio Ursini, Nobuagi Akagi

View Original Web Page

References :

Abbott, B. (1999) Support for a unique theory of definite descriptions. In T. Matthews and D. Strolovitch, (eds.), Proceedings from Semantics and Linguistic Theory IX, 1–15. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.
Abbott, B. (2010) Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Abbott, B. (2011) Reference: Foundational issues. In C. Maienborn, P. Portner, and K. von Heusinger (eds), Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning, 49–74. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Asher, N. and Lascarides, A. (1998) Bridging. Journal of Semantics, 15 (1): 83–113. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jos/15.1.83
Beck, S. and Sauerland, U. (2000) Cumulation is needed: A reply to Winter (2000). Natural Language Semantics 8 (4): 349–371. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1011240827230
Brasovenau, A. (2008) Structured Nominal and Modal Reference. Newark, NJ: Rutgers University PH.D, dissertation.
Brisson, C. (1998) Distributivity, Nonmaximality, and Floating Quantifiers. Newark, NJ: Rutgers University Ph.D. dissertation.
Brisson, C. (2003) Plurals, all, and the non-uniformity of collective predication. Linguistics and Philosophy 26 (1): 129–184. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1022771705575
Chierchia, G. (1995) Dynamics of Meaning: Presuppositions, Anaphora and the Theory of Meaning. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226104515.001.0001
Chierchia, G. (1998) Reference to kinds across languages. Natural Language Semantics 6 (4): 339–405. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1008324218506
Christophersen, P. (1939) The Articles: A Study of their Theory and use in English. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
Crain, S, and Thornton, R. (1999) Investigations in Universal Grammar: A Guide to Experiments in the Acquisition of Syntax and Semantics. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Coventry, K. R. and Garrod, S. (2004) Saying, Seeing and Acting: The Psychological Semantics of Spatial Prepositions. Hove: Psychology Press.
Feist, M. I. (2006) Where it’s At. Paper presented at the 7th Conference of the High Desert Linguistics Society, Albuquerque, NM.
Fintel, K. von (1994) Restrictions on Quantifier Domains. Amherst, MA: University of Massachussetts Ph.D. Dissertation.
Fong, V. (1997) The Order of Things: What Directional Locatives Denote. Stanford, CA: Stanford Ph.D. dissertation.
Fong, V. (2001) ‘Into doing Something’: Where is the Path in Event Predicates?. Paper presented at the Paths and Telicity in Event Structure (ESSLLI Workshop), Manchester.
Fraurud, K. (1990) Definiteness and the processing of noun phrases in natural discourse. Journal of Semantics 7 (4): 395–433. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jos/7.4.395
Frazier, L., Payton, J. and Rayner, K. (1999) Taking on semantic commitments, II: Collective versus distributive readings. Cognition 70 (1): 87–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00002-5
Frisson S. and Frazier L. (2005) Carving up word meaning: Portioning and grinding. Journal of Memory and Language, 53 (2): 277–291. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2005.03.004
Grosz, B., Yoshi, A. K. and Weinstein, S. (1995) Centering: a framework for modelling the local coherence of discourse. Computational Linguistics 21(2): 203–225.
Heim, I. (1982) The Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases. Amherst, MA: University of Massachussetts Ph.D. Dissertation.
Herskovits, A. (1986) Language and Spatial Cognition: An Interdisciplinary Study of the Prepositions in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heusinger, K. von (2003) The double dynamics of definite descriptions. In J. Peregrin (ed.) Meaning in the Dynamic Turn, 150–168. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Kamp, H., van Genabith, J. and Reyle, U. (2005) Discourse representation theory. In D. Gabbay and F. Guenther (eds), Handbook of Philosophical Logic, 750–1000. Amsterdam: North Holland.
Kartunnen, L. (1976) Discourse referents. In J. D. McCawley (ed.), Syntax and Semantics 7: Notes from the Linguistic Underground, 363–385, New York: Academic Press.
Kratzer, A. (2003) The Event Argument and the Semantics of Verbs. To appear, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Krifka, M. (1990) Four thousand ships passed through the lock: Object-induced measure functions on events. Linguistics and Philosophy 13 (5): 487–520. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00627291
Krifka, M. (1992) Thematic relations as links between nominal reference and temporal constitution. In I. Sag and A. Szabolcsi (eds), Lexical Matters, 29--53. Chicago, IL: CSLI Publications, Chicago University Press.
Krifka, M. (1996) Parametrized sum individuals for plural reference and partitive quantification. Linguistics and Philosophy 19: 555–598. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00632708
Krifka, M. (1998) The origins of telicity. In S. Rothstein (ed.) Events and Grammar, 197–235. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Le Bruyn, B. (2007) Partitivity in natural language. In V. V. Nurmi and D. Sustretov (eds) Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2007, Student Session, 35–47, FoLLI Publications.
Le Bruyn, B. (2008) Bare predication and generic generalizations. In K. Balogh (ed.) Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2008 Student Session, 37–47. FoLLI Publications.
Landman, F. (1991) Structures for Semantics. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3212-1
Landman, F. (1997) Plurality. In S. Lappin (ed.) The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory, 425–470. Maldon, MA: Blackwell.
Landman, F. (2000) Events and Plurality. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4359-2
Landman, F. (2004) Indefinites and the Type of Sets. London: Blackwell Studies in Semantics. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470759318
Link, G. (1983) The logical analysis of plurals and mass terms: A lattice-theoretical approach. In: R. Bauerle, C. Schwarze, and A. Von Stechow (eds) Meaning, Use, and Interpretation of Language, 302–323. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Link, G. (1998) Algebraic Semantics in Language and Philosophy. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Löbner, S. (1985) Definites. Journal of Semantics 4 (2): 279–326. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jos/4.4.279
Löbner. S. (1998) Definite Associative Anaphora. In Simon Botley (ed.), Approaches to Discourse Anaphora. Proceedings of DAARC96 – Discourse Anaphora and Resolution Colloquium. Lancaster University, 17–18 July. Lancaster.
Kracht, M. (2002) On the semantics of locatives. Linguistics and Philosophy 25 (1): 57–132.
Meroni, L., A. Gualmini and Crain, S. (2006) Everybody knows. In V. van Geenhoven (eds) Semantics in Acquisition, 89–114. New York: Springer.
Nam, S. (1995) The Semantics of Locative Prepositional Phrases in English, Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Ph.D. Dissertation.
Nouwen, R. (2003) Plural Pronominal Anaphora in Context. Utrecht: Utrecht University Ph.D. Dissertation.
Parsons, T. (1990) Events in the Semantics of English. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Poesio, M. (2003) Incrementality and Underspecification in Semantic Processing. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Poesio, M. and Vieira, R. (1998) A corpus-based investigation of definite descriptions use. Computational Linguistics 24 (2): 183–216.
Poesio, M., Cheng, H., Henschel, R. Hitzeman, J. Kibble, R. and Stevenson, R. (2000) Specifying the parameters of centering theory: A corpus-based evaluation using text from application-oriented domains, In Proceedings of the 38th ACL, Hong Kong.
Poesio, M., Stevenson, R., Di Eugenio, B. and Hitzeman, J. (2004). Centering: A parametric theory and its instantiations. Computational Linguistics 30 (3): 309–363. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/0891201041850911
Pylkkänen, L. and McElree, B. (2006) The syntax-semantic interface: On-line composition of sentence meaning. In M. Traxler and M. A. Gernsbacher (eds), Handbook of Pyscholinguistics, 2nd edition, 537–577. New York: Elsevier. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-012369374-7/50015-8
Rothstein, S. (2004) Structuring Events: A Study in the Semantics of Lexical Aspect. Oxford: Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470759127
Russell, B. (1905) On Denoting. Mind 14 (4): 479–493. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mind/XIV.4.479
Scha, R. (1981) Distributive, collective and cumulative quantification. In J. Groenendijk, T. Janssen, and M. Stokhof (eds.), Formal Methods in the Study of Language Part 2, 483–512. Mathematical Centre Tracts 136, University of Amsterdam.
Schwarz, F. (2009) Two Types of Definites in Natural Languages, Ph.D. thesis. University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Schwarzschild, R. (1996) Pluralities. Dordrecht: Kluwer. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2704-4
Schwarzschild, R. (2009) Stubborn distributivity, multiparticipant nouns and the count/mass distinction. In S. Lima, K. Mullin and B. Smith (eds), Proceedings of NELS 39, 1–18.
Talmy, L. (1978) Figure and ground in complex sentences. In J. E. Greenberg (ed.) Universals of Human Language, vol. 4: Syntax, 625–49. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Talmy, L. (2000) Towards a cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ursini, F.-A. (2013) On the syntax and semantics of Spanish spatial prepositions. Borealis: An International Journal of Spanish Linguistics 2 (1): 117–166.
Ursini, F.-A. and Akagi, N. (2013a) The interpretation of spatial ‘At’: An experimental study. Journal of Cognitive Science 14 (1): 47–76.
Ursini, F.-A. and Akagi, N. (2013b) On the distributed morphology and semantics of spatial Ps. In Il-Jae Lee and Uujinbai Dolgormaa (eds.), Proceedings of the 15th Seoul International Conference on Generative Grammar (SICOGG 15), 447–468. Seoul: Hankuk University Press.
Ursini, F.-A. and Akagi, N (2013c) The logical acquisition of spatial Ps in English children: the case of entailment relations. In J. Henderson, M.-E. Ritz and C. R. Louro (eds), Proceedings of the 2012 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society, 1–19. Canberra: ALS press.
Ursini, F-A. and Akagi. N. (2013d) Another look at modification in Spatial Prepositions. Iberia 5 (3): 38–84.
Verkuyl, H. (1993) A Theory of Aspectuality. The Interaction between Temporal and Atemporal Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511597848
Verkuyl, H. (2008) Binary Tense. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Vieira, R. and Poesio, M. (2000) An empirically-based system for processing definite descriptions. Computational Linguistics 26 (4): 539–593. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/089120100750105948
Winter, Y. (2001) Flexibility Principles in Boolean Semantics. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Winter, Y. (2002) Atoms and sets: A characterization of semantic number. Linguistic Inquiry, 33 (4): 493–505. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/002438902760168581
Zwarts, J. (2005) Prepositional aspect and the algebra of paths. Linguistic and Philosophy 28 (6): 699–740. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10988-005-2466-y
Zwarts, J. (2008) Aspects of a typology of direction. In Susan Rothstein (ed.) Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspects, 79–106. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Zwarts, J. and Winter, Y. (2000) Vector space semantics: A model-theoretic analysis of locative prepositions. Journal of Logic, Language and Information 9 (2): 169–211. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1008384416604