Barbara Abbott

Everything That Linguists Have Always Wanted to Know about Logic

McCawley supplements his earlier book-which covers such topics as presuppositional logic, the logic of mass terms and nonstandard quantifiers, and fuzzy logic-with new material on the logic of conditional sentences, linguistic applications of type theory, Anil Guptas work on principles of identity, and the generalized quantifier approach to the logical properties of determiners.

Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: An Elementary Exposition

Preface 1. Introductory 2. The Wittgensteinian Paradox 3. The Solution and the Private Language Argument Postscript Wittgenstein and Other Minds Index

Presuppositions as nonassertions

Abstract It is commonly assumed that the assertion/presupposition distinction maps fairly directly onto the distinction between new and old information. This assumption is made doubtful by presupposing constructions that regularly convey new information: uniquely identifying descriptions, ‘informative presupposition’ it -clefts, reverse wh -clefts, announcements embedded under factives, nonrestrictive relatives. The presupposed content conveyed by these constructions can be regarded as part of the common ground only with an unconstrained principle of accommodation. But this reduces the claim that grammatical presuppositions are part of the common ground to vacuity. Presuppositions are a consequence of two factors. One is a tendency to limit assertion to one atomic proposition per rooted sentence. The other is the fact that almost any thought to be expressed will involve many atomic propositions. Depending on medium, genre and other contextual variables, new information will be presupposed if it is not necessary to assert it. The view is confirmed by evidence that written language, which would be expected to contain more new information per utterance than spoken language, contains a higher proportion of text in definite descriptions.

SEMANTICS (2nd ed.)

SEMANTICS (2nd ed.). John I. Saeed . Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Pp. xx + 413.

A pragmatic account of the definiteness effect in existencial sentences

68.95 cloth,

Dynamics, Polarity, and Quantification

32.95 paper. After a long dry spell in which there were few—if any—satisfactory introductory texts in semantics and pragmatics available, the first edition of Saeeds Semantics appeared in 1997. Since then, a number of other texts have appeared: de Swarts Introduction to natural language semantics (1998), Kearns Semantics (2000), Allans Natural language semantics (2001), among others. The primary advantage of the original Saeed text as well as this revised and updated version is its comprehensiveness. It includes descriptive lexical semantics, an introduction to formal semantics, the cognitive approaches of Lakoff and others, and more pragmatics than most of its competitors.

Definite and Indefinite

Abstract It is argued that the restriction on NPs in focus position in existential sentences is a result of the presentational function of such sentences, rather than a constraint to be stated in semantic or syntactic terms. Such an account is consistent with the variety of definite NP types which may occur in existentials, a well as with an additional constraint which occurs with anaphoric definites (the impossibility of an additional predicative phrase following the focus NP). Existing semantic and syntactic analyses are argued not to be able to account for this data, which distinguishes among definite NPs as well as requiring reference to contextual factors.

Definiteness and Existentials.

The topics of the papers in this collection run the gamut from empirical coverage of polarity item systems in a variety of languages to results in metatheoretical reasoning about quantifier reducibility. A recurrent theme throughout is the improvement (or replacement) of notions of quantificational scope in linguistic analysis by formally sophisticated analyses of the properties of quantifiers and their dynamic interpretations. The authors have written to admirable standards of formalisation and clarity of exposition and their results deserve thoughtful consideration and incorporation into linguistic semantics.

A Reply to Szabó’s “Descriptions and Uniqueness”

Noun phrases (NPs) beginning with the or a/an are prototypical definite and indefinite NPs in English. The two main theories about the meaning of definiteness are uniqueness and familiarity. Both properties characterize most occurrences of definite descriptions, although there are examples that defy one or the other or both theories. Existential sentences have become criterial for distinguishing indefinites from definites and have led to broadening of both categories to include a variety of other NP forms. Information status approaches propose a hierarchy of NP types, rather than a simple binary distinction. The expression of definiteness varies from language to language.

Thek/ϕ alternation in Turkish: Some experimental evidence for its productivity

Prince 1992 reanalyzed the information status of NPs into two cross-cutting distinctions, one between NPs denoting entities that are new or old with respect to the discourse and another between NPs denoting entities that, in the speakers estimation, are new or old with respect to the addressee. The category of HEARER-NEW NPs, equivalent to the category brand-new of Prince 1981, contains NPs denoting entities that the speaker assumes to be unknown to the addressee. The hearer-old category contrasts with discourse-old in including discourse-new NPs that denote entities the speaker assumes to be in the addressees long term memory store; in the permanent registry (Kuno 1972), culturally copresent (Clark and Marshall 1981), unused (Prince 1981), are other descriptions of similar ideas cited by Prince (1992: 301-2). Hence discourseold NPs are assumed to be a subset of hearer-old NPs (since hearers are expected to remember what they have been told (Prince 1992: 303)), but a proper subset.* Prince found that (morphologically defined) definiteness in NPs largely correlates with their being hearer-old. This reflects the familiarity aspect of definiteness. Prince noted in passing, however, that not all definites are hearer-old.1 She had already acknowledged the ability of definites to occur in there-sentences, as in l. (1) a. There were the same people at both conferences. [= Prince 1992, ex. Sa] b. There was the usual crowd at the beach. [= Prince 1992, ex. Sb] c. There was the stupidest article on the reading list. f= Prince 1992, ex. 5c]