Ruth Kempson

Natural-language syntax as procedures for interpretation: the dynamics of ellipsis construal

In this paper we set out the preliminaries needed for a formal theory of context, relative to a linguistic framework in which naturallanguage syntax is defined as procedures for context-dependent interpretation. Dynamic Syntax provides a formalism where both representations of content and context are defined dynamically and structurally, with time-linear monotonic growth across sequences of partial trees as the core structure-inducing notion. The primary data involve elliptical fragments, as these provide less familiar evidence of the requisite concept of context than anaphora, but equally central. As part of our sketch of the framework, we show how apparent anomalies for a time-linear basis for interpretation can be straightforwardly characterised once we adopt a new perspective on syntax as the dynamics of transitions between parse-states. We then take this as the basis for providing an integrated account of ellipsis construal. And, as a bonus, we will show how this intrinsically dynamic perspective extends in a seamless way to dialogue exchanges with free shifting of role between speaking and hearing (split-utterances). We shall argue that what is required to explain such dialogue phenomena is for contexts, as representations of content, to include not merely partial structures but also the sequence of actions that led to such structures.

Incrementality, Speaker-Hearer Switching and the Disambiguation Challenge

Taking so-called split utterances as our point of departure, we argue that a new perspective on the major challenge of disambiguation becomes available, given a framework in which both parsing and generation incrementally involve the same mechanisms for constructing trees reflecting interpretation (Dynamic Syntax: (Cann et al., 2005; Kempson et al., 2001)). With all dependencies, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic, defined in terms of incremental progressive tree growth, the phenomenon of speaker/hearer role-switch emerges as an immediate consequence, with the potential for clarification, acknowledgement, correction, all available incrementally at any sub-sentential point in the interpretation process. Accordingly, at all intermediate points where interpretation of an utterance subpart is not fully determined for the hearer in context, uncertainty can be resolved immediately by suitable clarification/correction/repair/extension as an exchange between interlocutors. The result is a major check on the combinatorial explosion of alternative structures and interpretations at each choice point, and the basis for a model of how interpretation in context can be established without either party having to make assumptions about what information they and their interlocutor share in resolving ambiguities.

Representationalism and Linguistic Knowledge

1 Positing representations In the analysis of natural language phenomena, linguistic theories typically have recourse to representations of one form or another. Different types of representation are often posited as a means of generalising over aspects of form or interpretation as displayed in natural language constructions, and these are frequently invested with considerable theoretical significance. There are proposed representations of structure at all levels of linguistic systems: sounds, words, sentence strings, as well as representations of the meanings of words, sentences in the abstract and uttered sentences, and even representations of other people’s intentions. Such a representationalist stance was firmly set in place by Chomsky (1965) as part of, indeed the central core of, cognitive science, with language defined as a system of principles for correlating phonological representations (on some abstraction from phonetics) with some representation of interpretation (on some abstraction from denotational contents), via mappings from a central syntactic system. In such an approach, more than one level of representation may be posited as interacting in different ways with other types of representation, for example deep structure and surface structure levels of syntax of Chomsky (1965) were taken to interact in different ways with other types of representation, in particular semantics and phonology. Chomsky’s move towards the explicit representation of linguistic properties as part of human cognition came to be assumed almost universally within theoretical linguistic frameworks, whether formally characterised or This chapter in part reports work to which many people have contributed. We thank in particular, Eleni Gregoromichelaki, Wilfried Meyer-Viol, Matthew Purver for essential input to these developments. We also thank Andrew Gargett, Stergios Chatzikyriakidis, Peter Sutton, Graham White and many others for comments both over the years and in the preparation of this chapter. Research for this paper includes support from the Leverhulme Trust to the first author (XXX), and from the ESRC to the second author (YYY).

Standard Modern and Pontic Greek Person Restrictions: A Feature-Free Dynamic Account

In this paper, using new evidence from Pontic Greek (PG) in addition to Standard Modern Greek, we argue that the Person Case Constraint (PCC), generally presumed to be an irreducible morphosyntactic constraint on clitic pronoun combinations and argued by several to provide evidence of feature-driven syntactic operations, is a direct consequence of processing considerations, these new data being inexplicable under any of the current feature-driven analyses (Anagnostopoulou 2003, 2005; Bejar & Rezac 2003; Bianchi 2006; Adger & Harbour 2007; Nevins 2007; Pescarini 2010 among others). Adopting the Dynamic Syntax (DS) perspective of Cann et al. (2005), in which syntax is defined as the monotonic incremental growth of semantic structure, with structural underspecification and update as the core syntactic notion, we argue that the PCC is wholly due to restrictions on tree-growth imposed by the logic of finite trees: that these should underpin observed gaps in possible clitic combinations is due to clitics being calcified reflexes of previously available tree-growth update-sequences whose variability is the source of word order variation. More specifically, we argue that PCC effects, including the problematic PG data, are the consequence of a tree-logic restriction that only one unfixed node can be present in a tree at any stage in the tree growth process. PG, a dialect in which no 3rd person clitic clusters are allowed, provides strong evidence for such a feature-free account. Contrary to current feature-based analyses, which would preclude such data, the analysis presented here is shown to directly predict the Pontic Greek data, thus pointing towards a feature-free account of the PCC.

Language as mechanisms for interaction

Abstract Language use is full of subsentential shifts of context, a phenomenon dramatically illustrated in conversation where non-sentential utterances displaying seamless shifts between speaker/hearer roles appear regularly. The hurdle this poses for standard assumptions is that every local linguistic dependency can be distributed across speakers, with the content of what they are saying and the significance of each conversational move emerging incrementally. Accordingly, we argue that the modelling of a psychologically-realistic grammar necessitates recasting the notion of natural language in terms of our ability for interaction with others and the environment, abandoning the competence-performance dichotomy as standardly envisaged. We sketch Dynamic Syntax, a model in which underspecification and incremental time-relative update is central, showing how interactive effects of conversation follow directly. Finally, we note the changing cognitive-science horizons to be explored once a language-as-action view is adopted.

Joint Utterances and the (Split-)Turn Taking Puzzle

This chapter argues that the occurrence of jointly constructed utterances (split utterances) in conversation has wide implications for current linguistic theories. Firstly, we show that standard formal syntactic and semantic/pragmatic theories are unable to cope with such conversational data due to the widely assumed competence/performance distinction. We then present some recent developments in the domain of formal models of dialogue in order to assess whether they meet the design features that a general analysis of dialogue, and of the split-utterance phenomenon in particular demand. We argue that what is crucial for such an account is incorporating both the physical and social situatedness of language use, combined with modelling the incrementality of linguistic processing, within the grammar formalism employed. In previous work, we have argued that the grammatical framework of Dynamic Syntax (DS) augmented with the flexible semantic representations made available by Type Theory with Records (TTR) meets these requirements. Accordingly, through the phenomenon of split utterances, we illustrate how the grammar itself needs to be seen as a holistic, action-based model of language use incorporating incremental interaction with context and flexible mechanisms of processing. These requirements are needed in order to deal not only with what have been traditionally thought of as indexicals but also with the representation of fine-grained sub-sentential utterance events, speech-act information, roles assigned to participants, etc. This stepwise interaction is necessary for a general account of how a speaker-change in mid-utterance affects the form and interpretation of linguistic elements. As a result, the incremental stance allows a natural characterisation of split utterances as continuations/interruptions, whereas, without it, the only recourse is the assumption of widespread ellipsis, mind-reading and multiple ambiguity of sub-sentential fragments. We then take a wider view of the data characterised as the Turn Taking Puzzle (Ginzburg 2012) by combining the phenomenon of split utterances with an account of the function of why? fragments ((Split-)Turn-Taking Puzzle, STTP). On the basis of the STTP data, we argue that it is crucial for syntactic specifications and interpretation to interact with the modelling of the sub-sentential dynamics of the discourse-situation updates. From these interactions, we draw conclusions as to the significance of the STTP data for the design of grammar formalisms and dialogue models, as well as for the general conception of linguistic knowledge.

Grammars as Processes for Interactive Language Use: Incrementality and the Emergence of Joint Intentionality

Recent research in the formal modelling of dialogue has led to the conclusion that bifurcations like language use versus language structure, competence versus performance, grammatical versus psycholinguistic/pragmatic modes of explanation are all based on an arbitrary and ultimately mistaken dichotomy, one that obscures the unitary nature of the phenomena because it insists on a view of grammar that ignores essential features of natural language (NL) processing. The subsequent radical shift towards a conception of NL grammars as procedures for enabling interaction in context (Kempson et al. 2009a, b) now raises a host of psychological and philosophical issues: The ability of dialogue participants to take on or hand over utterances mid-sentence raises doubts as to the constitutive status of Gricean intention-recognition as a fundamental mechanism in communication. Instead, the view that emerges, rather than relying on mind-reading and cognitive state metarepresentational capacities, entails a reconsideration of the notion of communication and a non-individualistic view on meaning. Coordination/alignment/intersubjectivity among dialogue participants is now seen as relying on low-level mechanisms like the grammar (appropriately conceived).

Reporting, Dialogue, and the Role of Grammar

There is a lot of debate in the literature as to whether metalinguistic, echoing or metarepresentational phenomena require semantic or pragmatic explanations or, perhaps the widest consensus, a mixture of the two. Recently some attention has been paid on whether grammatical models, i.e., models that define syntactic-semantic mappings (see e.g. Potts 2007; Ginzburg and Cooper 2014; Maier 2014), can offer a more substantial contribution in answering this question. In this chapter, we argue that they can, but not under standard assumptions as to what kind of mechanism “syntax” is and what the differentiation is between grammatical and pragmatic processes. Like Ginzburg and Cooper (2014) we take natural languages (NLs) to be primarily means of social engagement and on this basis we believe that various mechanisms that have been employed in the analysis of conversation can be extended to account for metarepresentational phenomena, which, as stressed in the Bakhtinian literature, demonstrate how dialogic interaction can be embedded within a single clause. However, we take such phenomena as a case study to show that a model adequate for accounting for the whole range of metalinguistic data, as well as for their interaction with other dialogue phenomena, has to depart from some standard assumptions in grammatical theorising: (a) we have to abandon the view of syntax as a separate representational level for strings of words, and (b) we need to incorporate in the grammar formalism various aspects of psycholinguistic accounts of NL-processing, like the intrinsic incrementality-predictivity of parsing/production, and a realistic modelling of the context as information states that record or invoke utterance events and their modal and spatiotemporal coordinates.

Incremental parsing, or incremental grammar?

Standard grammar formalisms are defined without reflection of the incremental and serial nature of language processing, and incrementality must therefore be reflected by independently defined parsing and/or generation techniques. We argue that this leads to a poor setup for modelling dialogue, with its rich speaker-hearer interaction, and instead propose context-based parsing and generation models defined in terms of an inherently incremental grammar formalism (Dynamic Syntax), which allow a straight-forward model of otherwise problematic dialogue phenomena such as shared utterances, ellipsis and alignment.

Grammars with Parsing Dynamics: a New Perspective on Alignment

This commentary argues that dialogue alignment can be explained if parsing-directed grammar formalisms are adopted. With syntax defined as monotonic growth of semantic representations as each word is parsed, alignment between interlocutors is shown to be expected. Hence, grammars can be evaluated according to relative success in characterizing dialogue phenomena.