Introduction to Linguistics II Ling 2-121C, group b Lecture 8 Eleni Miltsakaki AUTH Spring 2006

Review: Verb meaning How do verb constrain the semantic properties of the subject and the object(s)? Give examples. What are thematic roles? What is the theta criterion? Discuss thematic roles crosslinguistically.

Identify the thematic role of each NP in the following sentences: The boy took the books from the cupboard with a handcart Mary found a ball in the house The children ran from the playground to the wading pool One of the men unlocked all the doors with a paper clip John melted the ice with a blowtorch Thematic roles: agent, theme, location, instrument, source, goal, experiencer, causative

Review: Sentential meaning What is the ‘sense’ and ‘extension’ of sentential meaning? What does it mean to know the truth conditions of a sentence? Is it possible for a sentence to be true when parts of it are false? How can we tell if two sentences are paraphrases? Give examples. Are active-passive pairs paraphrases?

Review: Sentential meaning What is entailment? What is contradiction? Why is the distinction between events and states useful in linguistic description?

Which of the following sentences are contradictory? Why? My aunt is a man Witches are wicked My brother is an only child Babies are adults Babies can lift a ton Puppies are human My bachelor friends are all married My bachelor friends are all lonely

Review: Coreference Sentence structure affects the interpretation of pronouns and reflexives. Elaborate with examples.

Anomaly Anomaly occurs in many ways Contradictory semantic properties Nonsense words Violation of semantic rules… The fact that we are able to understand anomalous sentences and identify them as such is evidence of our knowledge of the semantic system of a language

Anomaly Sometimes breaking semantic rules is done intentionally to create special effects, as in poetry …children building this rainman out of snow (e.e. cummings) … a grief ago (Dylan Thomas)

Metaphor A metaphor is an expression that ordinarily designates one concept, used for another The fall of the empire Walls have ears Dr. Jekyll is a butcher Time is money To understand metaphors we need to understand both the literal meaning and facts about the world Metaphor can have a strong cultural component My car is a lemon

Idioms The principle of compositionality is sometimes superseded by expressions that seem decomposable Idioms are similar in structure to ordinary phrases but have frozen meaning Bite your tongue Kick the bucket Give a piece of your mind Paraphrases often do not retain the idiomatic meaning but there are exceptions The FBI kept tabs on radicals Tabs were kept on radical by the FBI

Theories of meaning Denotational theory of meaning The meaning of each expression is the (actual) object it denotes Mentalist theories of meaning The meaning of each expression is an idea (or ideas) associated with that expression in the mind of the speakers The use theory of meaning The meaning of an expression is determined by its use in the language community

Pragmatics Pragmatics is concerned with the interpretation of linguistic meaning in context. Linguistic context: prior discourse Situational context: Knowledge of the world Amazingly, he already loves her John met Mary yesterday. Amazingly, he already loves her.

What is discourse? Knowing a language permits combining sentences to express complex thoughts and ideas There larger linguistic units are called discourse The study of discourse is concerned with how speakers combine sentences into bigger speech units

Discourse The study of discourse involves questions of Style Appropriateness Cohesiveness Rhetorical force Topic structure Genre differences

Pronouns Pronouns may be used in place of noun phrases or to entity known to the discourse participants John invited Mary to join us for lunch so she’s coming. (Looking at a guy passing by). He’s Mary’s husband Pronominalization occurs both in sentences and across the sentences of the discourse. John met Mary. He liked her.

Pronouns Prior linguistic context plays a primary role in the interpretation of pronouns. It seems that the man loves the woman. Many people think he loves her.

Pronouns Syntactically, pronouns occur in the same positions where nouns occur Semantically, coreference is constrained by a complex system of semantic rules At minimum, corefering expression must agree in number and gender

Pronouns When semantic rules and contextual interpretation determine that a pronoun is coreferential with a noun phrase, the pronoun is bound. When a pronoun refers to an object not explicitly mentioned in the discourse, it is free or unbound The reference of a free pronoun must be determined by the situational context

Other pro-forms Emily hugged Cassidy and Zachary did too (pro-verb phrase) I am sick, which depresses me. (pro-sentence)

Gapping and sluicing Gapping Sluicing (omitted material after a wh-) Jil washed the grapes and Bill the cherries Sluicing (omitted material after a wh-) Your ex-husband is dancing with someone, but I don’t know who. My cat ate something, and I wish I knew what. She said she was coming over, bust she didn’t say when

The articles Discourse rules determine the use of the articles the and a. The article the is used to indicate that the referent of a noun phrase is known to the speaker and the listener I saw the boy This constraint does not hold for the case of the indefinite article I saw a boy

Discourse “rules” -- I saw a boy and a girl holding hands and kissing. -- Oh, it sounds lovely. -- Yes, the boy was quite tall and handsome, and he seemed to like the girl a lot. Often discourses begin with indefinite articles and then when the referents are established the definite articles may be used It would be weird to have the following as the last sentence of this discourse Yes, a boy was quite tall and handsome and he seemed to like a girl a lot. Speakers make acceptability/felicity judgments for discourse, often denoted by # in sentences. (Compare with grammaticality judgments)