Chris Barker

Partitives, double genitives and anti-uniqueness

This paper offers an explanation for a little-known but striking phenomenon first discussed by Jackendoff (1968b) that I will call ANTI-UNIQUENESS: partitives are incompatible with the definite determiner (*I met the one of Johns friends), unless the partitive first receives additional modification (I met the [[one of Johns friends] that he traveled with from Mexico]). I argue that an independently needed refinement of the semantic analyses of the partitive of Ladusaw (1982) and Hoeksema (1984) automatically predicts these anti-uniqueness facts. More specifically, I propose that partitivity is always proper partitivity. This will guarantee that any property denoted by a partitive will have at least two entities in its extension, and cannot uniquely identify an individual; thus partitives are anti-unique. In addition, this paper makes a new case for analyzing double genitives as partitives. A number of syntactic and semantic arguments will show that, despite appearances, so-called double genitives (a friend of Johns) have less in common with a superficially quite similar type of simple genitive (a friend of John) than with standard partitives (one of Johns friends). If double genitives are indeed a type of partitive, this explains why they also exhibit anti-uniqueness effects: *I met [the friend of Johns] is bad but I met the [[friend of Johns] that he traveled with from Mexico] is perfectly fine

Episodic-ee in English : A thematic role constraint on new word formation

This paper offers a detailed analysis of the English suffix-ee (employee, escapee, refugee, etc.) based on 1500 naturally-occurring tokens of some 500 word types. The data suggest that formation of nouns in-ee is moderately but genuinely productive, and that analyses based on the syntactic argument structure of the stem verb are unsatisfactory. Instead, formation of-ee nouns systematically adheres to three essentially semantic constraints: first, the referent of an-ee noun must be sentient; second, the denotation of an-ee noun must be episodically linked (as defined below) to the denotation of its stem; and third, a use of an-ee noun entails a relative lack of volitional control on the part of its referent. I argue that these semantic constraints taken together amount to a special-purpose thematic role that actively constrains productive use of derivational morphology.* *I gratefully acknowledge comments and suggestions and help from

Types as Graphs: Continuations in Type Logical Grammar

Using the programming-language concept of continuations, we propose a new, multimodal analysis of quantification in Type Logical Grammar. Our approach provides a geometric view of in-situ quantification in terms of graphs, and motivates the limited use of empty antecedents in derivations. Just as continuations are the tool of choice for reasoning about evaluation order and side effects in programming languages, our system provides a principled, type-logical way to model evaluation order and side effects in natural language. We illustrate with an improved account of quantificational binding, weak crossover, wh-questions, superiority, and polarity licensing.

Quantificational Binding Does Not Require C-Command

Some version of the following claim is almost universally assumed: a quantifier must c-command any pronoun that it binds. Yet as I show, the evidence motivating this claim is not particularly strong. In addition, I gather here a wide variety of systematic counterexamples, some well-known, others new. I conclude that c-command is not relevant for quantificational binding in English (nor is any refinement or extension of c-command).

Presuppositions for proportional quantifiers

Most studies of the so-called proportion problem seek to understand how lexical and structural properties of sentences containing adverbial quantifiers give rise to various proportional readings. This paper explores a related but distinct problem: given a use of a particular sentence in context, why do only some of the expected proportional readings seem to be available? That is, why do some sentences allow an asymmetric reading when other, structurally similar sentences seem to require a symmetric reading? Potential factors suggested in the literature include the distribution of donkey pronouns, certain uniqueness implications, and focus structures. I argue here that the use of an adverbial quantifier presupposes HOMOGENEITY: all individual situations that get lumped into a single case for the purposes of evaluating the quantification must agree on whether they satisfy the nuclear scope. For instance, in order for a token of Usually, if a farmer owns a donkey, he beats it to be felicitous when construed under a farmer-dominant asymmetric reading, the context must be consistent with the proposition that each farmer either beats all or none of his donkeys. Thus proportional sentences are indeed systematically ambiguous, but only some readings will be felicitous in a given context.

Scope as Syntactic Abstraction

What is the logic of scope? By “scope”, I mean scope-taking in natural languages such as English, as illustrated by the sentence Ann saw everyone. In this example, the quantifier denoted by everyone takes scope over the rest of the sentence, that is, it takes the denotation of the rest of the sentence as its semantic argument: \(\mathbf{everyone }(\lambda x . \mathbf{saw } (x)(\mathbf{ann }))\). The answer I will give here will be to provide a substructural logic whose two modes are related by a single structural postulate. This postulate can be interpreted as constituting a kind of lambda-abstraction over structures, where the abstracted structures are interpreted as delimited continuations. I discuss soundness and completeness results, as well as cut elimination. I also compare the logic to a number of alternative approaches, including the standard technique of Quantifier Raising, and mention applications to scope ambiguity and parasitic scope.

Commentary on Wolf and Cohen: Reasoning about Public Evidence

Barker and Taranto (2003) and Taranto (2006) give an account of clarity based on shared belief. On the shared-belief account, It is clear that p will be true just in case both the speaker and the listener mutually believe that p. In Barker (2009), I argue that belief is neither necessary nor sufficient to guarantee clarity. After all, if the evidence is weak, It is clear that God exists is false no matter how strongly or how mutually we believe in God. Likewise, admitting that something is painfully clear does not guarantee that the discourse participants believe it, at least, not as a matter of entailment. Barker (2009) proposes instead a modal account based on justification: a proposition p is clear just in case all sufficiently normal worlds consistent with the common ground (i.e. consistent with publicly available evidence) are p-worlds. Then It is clear that p is true just in case the publicly available evidence justifies concluding that p.