The grammar of indefinites

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Chiara Gianollo
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Referent ◽  
Distributional Constraints ◽  
Classical Language ◽  
Semantic Properties

This chapter discusses the two indefinites that have been treated as specific indefinites in scholarship on Classical Latin: quidam ‘a certain’ and aliquis ‘some (or other)’. While with quidam the referent is introduced as known to the speaker, aliquis expresses ignorance on the part of the speaker with respect to the exact identity of the discourse referent. As concerns quidam, the pragmatic conditions it obeys in Classical and Late Latin are examined, and possible causes for the fact that it is not continued in Romance are discussed. In the case of aliquis, it is argued that a better description of its semantic properties can be reached by treating it as an epistemic indefinite. In Late Latin some of the distributional constraints to which it was subject in the Classical language disappear: aliquis extends into polarity contexts, preluding the behavior of its Romance continuations.

Semantic Properties Questionnaire

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley B. Klein ◽  
Leda Cosmides ◽  
Kristi A. Costabile ◽  
Lisa Mei
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Properties

Nerdalicious scientainment: A network analysis of English libfixes

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muriel Norde ◽  
Sarah Sippach
Keyword(s):  
Network Analysis ◽  
Network Model ◽  
Phonological Similarity ◽  
High Type ◽  
Type Frequency ◽  
Semantic Properties

Libfixes are parts of words that share properties with both blends, compounds and affixes. They are deliberate formations, often with a jocular character, e.g. nerdalicious ‘delicious for nerds’, or scientainment ‘scientific entertainment’. These are not one-off formations – some libfixes have become very productive, as evidenced by high type frequency in a single corpus. Libfix constructions are particularly interesting for a network analysis for three reasons: they do not always have discrete morpheme boundaries, they feature a wide variety of bases (including phrases, as in give-me-a-break-o-meter), and they may be the source of back formations such as infotain. In this paper, we present a corpus-based analysis of eight English libfixes (cracy, fection, flation, gasm, licious, (o-)meter, tainment, and tastic), detailing their formal and semantic properties, as well as their differences and similarities. We argue that libfixes are most fruitfully analysed in a Bybeean network model, in which nodes are connected on the basis of phonological similarity, which allows for both fully compositional and non-compositional constructions to be linked without an exhaustive analysis into morphemes.

Inference

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Sainsbury
Keyword(s):  
Common Basis ◽  
Plausible Reasoning ◽  
Potential Sources ◽  
Semantic Properties

Display theory predicts that no inferential relations among attitude attributions are based on the logical or semantic properties of the expressions in attribution complements. This chapter shows various ways in which there may be an illusion that such relations obtain. One common basis for the illusion is that we implicitly appeal to psychological facts. Since there is no reason to think these are necessary, the inferences are not truth preserving of necessity, even if they generally have true conclusions when they have true premises. They are examples of “plausible reasoning”. Wanting and fearing are discussed in detail as potential sources of the apparently inferential phenomena.

Shifting Concepts

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Central Area ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Linguistic Communication ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Semantic Properties ◽  
Conceptual Variation

Concepts stand at the centre of human cognition. We use concepts in categorizing objects and events in the world, in reasoning and action, and in social interaction. It is therefore not surprising that the study of concepts constitutes a central area of research in philosophy and psychology. Since the 1970s, psychologists have carried out intriguing experiments testing the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning, and have found a great deal of variation in categorization behaviour across individuals and cultures. During the same period, philosophers of language and mind did important work on the semantic properties of concepts, and on how concepts are related to linguistic meaning and linguistic communication. An important motivation behind this was the idea that concepts must be shared, across individuals and cultures. However, there was little interaction between these two research programs until recently. With the dawn of experimental philosophy, the proposal that the experimental data from psychology lacks relevance to semantics is increasingly difficult to defend. Moreover, in the last decade, philosophers have approached questions about the tension between conceptual variation and shared concepts in communication from a new perspective: that of ameliorating concepts for theoretical or for social and political purposes. The volume brings together leading psychologists and philosophers working on concepts who come from these different research traditions.

How Content Explains

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Shea
Keyword(s):  
Research Programme ◽  
Causal Efficacy ◽  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Content Determination ◽  
Explanatory Relevance ◽  
Tight Connection ◽  
Personal Level ◽  
Naturalistic Account ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Semantic Properties

The varitel accounts of content allow us to see how the practice of representational explanation works and why content has an explanatory role to play. They establish the causal-explanatory relevance of semantic properties and are neutral about causal efficacy. Exploitable relations give the accounts an advantage over views based only on outputs. Content does valuable explanatory work in areas beyond psychology, but it need not be explanatorily valuable in every case. The varitel accounts illuminate why there should be a tight connection between content and the circumstances in which a representation develops. The accounts have some epistemological consequences. Representations at the personal level are different in a variety of ways that are relevant to content determination. Naturalizing personal-level content thus becomes a tractable research programme. Most importantly, varitel semantics offers a naturalistic account of the content of representations in the brain and other subpersonal representational systems.

scholarly journals Evolução do auxiliar verbal tempo-aspectual ta- da língua clássica à moderna

1969 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 97-110
Author(s):  
Shirlei Lica Ichisato Hashimoto
Keyword(s):  
Language Evolution ◽  
Evolution Process ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Perfective Aspect ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Classical Language

In the classical Japanese language there were six tense-aspectual verbal auxiliaries: Ki and Keri (past tense verbal auxiliaries) and Tsu, Nu, Tari and Ri (perfective aspect verbal auxiliaries). In the classical Japanese language evolution process to the modem language, these two distinct groups of verbal auxiliaries were reduced to only one verbal auxiliary Ta, originated from the classical languages perfective verbal auxiliary Tari. This study aims to study the Tari’s evolution since the classical language until the modem, demonstraining the variation of points of view during this evolution.

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