8. Event semantics

2019 ◽  
pp. 232-266
Author(s):  
Claudia Maienborn
Keyword(s):  
2001 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW WHELPTON

In this paper, I consider the semantics of a modifier infinitive in English, related to the more widely discussed Rationale Clause (see especially Faraci 1974, Jones 1991). I argue that the semantics of this infinitive (a Telic Clause) derives from the properties of the predicate which heads it (TELOS). I characterize TELOS, within a Davidsonian event semantics, as a pure relation between events and argue against the view that the word only, which often prefaces the Telic Clause, is in fact the head of the construction. I explore the conditions on reference which apply to TELOS. As well as offering an account of a little-discussed construction, therefore, this paper is intended as a contribution to our understanding of the place of argument structure in event semantics.


2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-73
Author(s):  
E. Umamaheswari ◽  
T.V. Geetha

AbstractTraditional document clustering algorithms consider text-based features such as unique word count, concept count, etc. to cluster documents. Meanwhile, event mining is the extraction of specific events, their related sub-events, and the associated semantic relations from documents. This work discusses an approach to event mining through clustering. The Universal Networking Language (UNL)-based subgraph, a semantic representation of the document, is used as the input for clustering. Our research focuses on exploring the use of three different feature sets for event clustering and comparing the approaches used for specific event mining. In our previous work, the clustering algorithm used UNL-based event semantics to represent event context for clustering. However, this approach resulted in different events with similar semantics being clustered together. Hence, instead of considering only UNL event semantics, we considered assigning additional weights to similarity between event contexts with event-related attributes such as time, place, and persons. Although we get specific events in a single cluster, sub-events related to the specific events are not necessarily in a single cluster. Therefore, to improve our cluster efficiency, connective terms between two sentences and their representation as UNL subgraphs were also considered for similarity determination. By combining UNL semantics, event-specific arguments similarity, and connective term concepts between sentences, we were able to obtain clusters for specific events and their sub-events. We have used 112 000 Tamil documents from the Forum for Information Retrieval Evaluation data corpus and achieved good results. We have also compared our approach with the previous state-of-the-art approach for Router-RCV1 corpus and achieved 30% improvements in precision.


2001 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sei-Rang Oh
Keyword(s):  

No abstract.


2006 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-124
Author(s):  
Wilhelm Geuder

In a recent contribution to a long-standing discussion in semantics as to whether the neo-Davidsonian analysis should be extended to stative predicates or not, Maienborn (2004, 2005) proposes to distinguish two types of statives; one of them is said to have a referential argument of the Davidsonian type, the other not. As one of her arguments for making such a distinction, Maienborn observes that manner modification seems to be supported only by certain statives but to be excluded by others (thus linking the issue to the use of manner modification as one major argument in favour of event semantics, cf. Parsons 1990). In this paper, it is argued that the absence of manner modification with Maienborn's second group of statives is actually due to a failure of conceptual construal: modification of a predicate is ruled out whenever its internal conceptual structure is too poor to provide a construal for the modifier; hence, the effects observed by Maienborn reduce to the fact that eventive predicates have a more complex conceptual substructure than stative ones. Hence, the issue of manner modification with statives is shown to be orthogonal to questions of logical form and event semantics. The explanatory power of the conceptual approach is demonstrated with a case study on predicates of light emission, adapting the representation format of Barsalou's (1992) frame model.  


2018 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 39-53
Author(s):  
Sascha Alexeyenko

The goal of this paper is to evaluate two approaches to quantification in event semantics,namely the analysis of quantificational DPs in terms of generalized quantifiers andthe analysis proposed in Schein (1993) according to which quantifiers over individuals containan existential quantifier over sub-events in their scope. Both analyses capture the fact that theevent quantifier always takes scope under quantifiers over individuals (the Event Type Principlein Landman (2000)), but the sub-events analysis has also been argued to be able to accountfor some further data, namely for adverbs qualifying ‘ensemble’ events and for mixed cumulative/distributive readings. This paper shows that the sub-events analysis also provides a betteraccount of the Event Type Principle if a broader range of data is considered, including caseswith non-existential quantifiers over events: unlike the generalized quantifiers analysis, it cansuccessfully account for the interpretation of indefinites in bare habituals and sentences thatcontain overt adverbs of quantification.Keywords: quantification, event semantics, generic quantifier, habituals, Q-adverbs.


Author(s):  
Ian Roberts

The chapter begins with a very brief excursus into Davidsonian event semantics, explaining the basic motivation for positing event variables, as well as ‘separation’ of θ‎-roles from predicates. It then develops the TP-Denotation Hypothesis, i.e. the idea that events are denoted through the Tense feature. This naturally leads to a tripartite typology of Tense vs No-Tense languages, and Weak-Tense vs Strong-Tense languages. Strong-Tense (Romance), Weak-Tense (mainly English), and No-Tense (Chinese) languages are illustrated. The chapter then turns to other examples of cross-linguistic variation in verb-movement: V-initial languages and Germanic verb-second, where a novel labelling-based proposal for certain core properties is developed. The proposals regarding the changes affecting the ‘inversion’ system through the history of English made by Biberauer & Roberts are then summarized. The chapter concludes with a parameter hierarchy for Tense.


2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Naumann

Author(s):  
Barry Schein

With events as dense as time, negation threatens to be trivial, unless ‘not’ is noughtly, an adverb of quantification. So revised, classical puzzles of negation in natural language are revisited, in which deviation from the logical connective, violating Excluded Middle, appears to prompt a special condition or special meaning. The language of events also contains negative event descriptions—After the flood, it not drying out ruined the basement and one could smell it not drying out—and these appear to founder on the logic of the constructions in which they occur and on reference to suspect negative events, events of not drying out. A language for event semantics with ‘not’ as noughtly resolves the puzzles surveyed—within classical logic, without ambiguity or special conditions on the meaning of ‘not’, and without a metaphysics of negative events.


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