Conflicts in Interpretation Henriëtte de Swart UiL-OTS/Utrecht

Polysemy of round The postman ran around the block Prototype of round: circle, circular shape or movement

Less prototypical I He drove round the barrier. He ran round the corner.

Less prototypical II The captain sailed round the lake The tourist drove round the city centre.

Round Interpretation: interaction of lexical semantics (cognitive grammar), model- theoretic semantics (spatial path), and pragmatics (world knowledge). Consequently: cross-modular approach. Conflicting information Differentiated weight

Interpretation as Optimization Optimization in neural network modeling Application to theories of grammar: Prince and Smolensky (1991, 1997). Optimality Theory Phonology Syntax Semantics: Hendriks and de Hoop (2001), de Hoop and de Swart (2000)

OT Semantics Input: form. Output: candidate set of possible interpretations. Parallel evaluation Violable constraints. Ranking determines strength. Optimal interpretation: winner takes all.

Conflicts in Interpretation Cognition Program Research team:Petra Hendriks, Gerlof Bouma (Groningen), Helen de Hoop, Irene Krämer (Nijmegen), Henriëtte de Swart, Joost Zwarts (Utrecht)

Research Themes Cross-modularity (focus, pronoun resolution) Cross-linguistic semantics (bare nominals, lexical semantics, negation) Language Acquisition (acquisition of anaphoric relations, noun phrases). Central concern: role of context.

Interpretation in context Semantics of round: Zwarts (2003). How round is interpreted depends on the context in which it occurs: round the block, round the barrier, round the corner, round the city center, … Polysemy Prototype

Compositionality Context-dependency leads to problems of compositionality Principle of Compositionality of meaning: the meaning of a complex whole is a function of the meaning of its parts and the way they are put together Underspecification? Prototype

Round in vector space semantics Zwarts and Winter 2000, Zwarts 2003 Completeness: a vector pointing in every direction Constancy: all the vectors are of the same length. Uniqueness: do not touch a place more than once.

Violations of prototype Constancy not satisfied: The earth goes around the sun. Uniqueness not satisfied: The mouse keeps running round the computer

Weakening Completeness Inversion: two vectors point in opposite directions (at least half-circle). The burglar drove round the barrier. Orthogonality: two vectors point in perpendicular directions (at least a quarter-circle). He ran round the corner.

Strongest meaning wins Two contraints: Strength: favor stronger interpretations over weaker ones (Blutner 2000, Zeevat 2000) Fit: consistency or avoid contradiction (Hendriks and de Hoop 2001, Zeevat 2000) Fit >> Strength Strong prototype has to be weakened to fit the context in which round occurs.

Possible interpretations Interpretations of round the door

‘round the door’ in OT form round the door meaningFitStrength Completeness *  Inversion * Orthogonality ** Detour ***

Context and Compositionality Local context and general context: He walked round the door. He put his head round the door. Lexical semantics and world knowledge Bi-directional OT: recoverability and compositionality.

Functional compositionality Blutner, Hendriks and de Hoop (2003): functional compositionality arises in a process of bi-directional optimization; role of context is crucial.

Compositionality across languages Negation: not,  Negative quantifier: nobody, nothing,  Assumption: knowledge of first-order logic part of general human cognition. Prediction: negation, negative quantifiers behave alike across languages. Prediction is not borne out by data.

Quanta Costa?

Negative concord Nobody said nothing. (Eng)  x  y Niemand zei niets. (Dutch)  x  y Nadie miraba a nadie. (Spa)  x  y Nessuno ha parlato con nessuno. (Ital)  x  y Personne n’a rien dit. (Fr)ambiguous

Negation in context Double negation versus negative concord negative quantifiers versus n-words. In isolation: same form, same meaning. In a sequence: different forms, different meanings. Bi-directionality

Faithfulness and Markedness Negation is more marked than assertion, both in form and in meaning. *Neg: Avoid negation in the output. MaxNeg: Mark the arguments of a negative chain formally. InterpretNeg: Interpret every expression marked for negation as contributing a semantic negation.

Concord (production) MaxNeg >> *Neg >> InterpretNeg Nessuno ha parlato con nessuno. (Ital) meaning  x  y formMaxNeg*NegIntNeg neg+indef * *  neg+neg **

Concord (interpretation) MaxNeg >> *Neg >> InterpretNeg form neg+neg meaningMaxNeg*NegIntNeg  x  y **   x  y * *

Double Negation (production) InterpretNeg >> *Neg >> MaxNeg Niemand zei iets meaning  x  y formIntNeg*NegMaxNeg  neg+indef * * neg+neg **

Double Negation (interpretation) InterpretNeg >> *Neg >> MaxNeg Nobody said nothing form neg+neg meaningIntNeg*NegMaxNeg  x  y * *   x  y **

Various Rankings InterpretNeg >> *Neg >> MaxNeg Multiple negative expressions  multiple negation (English, Dutch, etc.) MaxNeg >> *Neg >> InterpretNeg Multiple negative expressions  single negation (Spanish, Italian, etc.) Overlapping range of *Neg and InterpretNeg  ambiguities (French).

Form and meaning If you mark arguments of a negative chain formally (MaxNeg >> *Neg in production), make sure they are not interpreted as each contributing negation (*Neg >> InterpretNeg in interpretation) (NC). If you interpret each negative expression as contributing a negation (InterpretNeg >> *Neg in interpretation), make sure they are not marked formally as arguments of a negative chain (*Neg >> MaxNeg in production) (DN).

Variation in form and meaning When meaning is less variable in context, we find variation in form. Ik begrijp er niks van/geen fluit/sikkepit/snars When form is less variable in context, we find variation in meaning. Hij eet een appel. He *eats/is eating an apple. De Hoop, Haverkort en v.d. Noort (2003)

Moving on… Bi-directionality and anaphora resolution: elided meaning needs to be recoverable from context. Work on ellipsis and sluicing by Jennifer Spenader (Groningen) For an automatic system of pronoun resolution in OT, see G. Bouma (2003):

Language Acquisition Irene Krämer: interpretation of quantifier many; interpretation of pronouns and indefinites within a story context

Acquisition and Cognition Relation between learning of language and learning in other cognitive domains. Discourse: children need to learn to use syntactic and discourse information over non-linguistic (contextual) information.

Conflicts in Interpretation OT modeling of interpretation Bi-directionality context-dependency Variation Language and learning Human cognition