scholarly journals Negative concord as a marker of empty discourse referents

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 341
Author(s):  
Jeremy David Kuhn
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Semantics ◽  
Dynamic Semantics ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Discourse Referent ◽  
Fragment Answers

Negative concord items are restricted to a narrow set of negative environments: roughly, those that are anti-additive or anti-veridical. These environments share the property that they prevent discourse referents from being introduced.Here, I propose that this is the explanatory property of NC items. NC items are indefinites that flag the fact (in their lexical semantics) that they will fail to introduce a discourse referent. After spelling this out using dynamic semantics, I show that it has number of advantages: (i) It correctly predicts that NC items must appear under a local anti-veridical operator. (ii) If the presupposition that the DR set is empty is made at-issue, we predict negative uses of NC items: exactly what's attested in fragment answers and non-strict concord languages. (iii) It perfectly unites negative concord with recent analyses of other concord phenomena.

scholarly journals Fragment answers and double negation in strict negative concord languages

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anamaria Fălăuș ◽  
Andreea Nicolae
Keyword(s):  
Negative Concord ◽  
Double Negation ◽  
Polarity Item ◽  
Polarity Sensitivity ◽  
Fragment Answers ◽  
Explanatory Account ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Two Parameters ◽  
Polarity Sensitive ◽  
Shed Light

This paper revisits the phenomenon of negative concord (NC) as an instance of polarity sensitivity. We shed light on a new set of data regarding n-words as fragment answers to negative questions and show that we find unexpected double negation (DN) readings for fragment n-words in view of their behavior in non-elliptical constructions. To account for this pattern, we offer an updated version of the hypothesis that n-words are strong NPIs, making use of an alternative and exhaustification approach. We argue that the difference between n-words and other NPIs should be seen as the result of two parameters: (i) whether reconstruction of the polarity item is allowed, and (ii) whether the polarity item has the ability to license a covert negation operator. The result is an explanatory account of NC and DN readings in both non-elliptical and elliptical environments, which allows for an easier integration of n-words in the broader typology of polarity sensitive items. 

scholarly journals Ambiguity and Anaphora with Plurals in Discourse

2015 ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Nicholas Asher ◽  
Linton Wang
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Semantics ◽  
Predicate Logic ◽  
Dynamic Semantics ◽  
Dynamic Predicate Logic ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Dynamic Transitions ◽  
Inputs And Outputs

We provide examples of plurals related to ambiguity and anaphora that pose problems or are counterexamples for current approaches to plurals. We then propose a dynamic semantics based on an extension of dynamic predicate logic (DPL<sup>+</sup>) to handle these examples. On our theory, different readings of sentences or discourses containing plu­rals don't arise from a postulated ambiguity of plural terms or predicates applying to plural DPs, but follow rather from different types of dynamic transitions that manip­ulate inputs and outputs from formulas or discourse constituents. Many aspects of meaning can affect the type dynamic transitions : the lexical semantics of predicates to the left and right of a transition, and number features of DPs and discourse constraints like parallelism.

scholarly journals Negative Concord in Russian

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacopo Garzonio
Keyword(s):  
Negative Concord ◽  
General Properties ◽  
Standard Position ◽  
Sentential Negation ◽  
Fragment Answers ◽  
Negative Indefinites

In this article I will describe the general properties of Negative Concord in Russian, which is a strict Negative Concord language, where all negative indefinites must co-occur with sentential negation. However, there are several cases where the negation marker can be absent (like in fragment answers) or can appear in a non-standard position (like at the left of an embedded infinitival). I will take into consideration all these specific cases described by the literature on the negation system of Russian and analyse them according to current approaches to Negative Concord.

scholarly journals Ambiguity and Anaphora with Plurals in Discourse

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Asher ◽  
Linton Wang
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Semantics ◽  
Predicate Logic ◽  
Dynamic Semantics ◽  
Dynamic Predicate Logic ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Dynamic Transitions ◽  
Inputs And Outputs

We provide examples of plurals related to ambiguity and anaphora that pose problems or are counterexamples for current approaches to plurals. We then propose a dynamic semantics based on an extension of dynamic predicate logic (DPL<sup>+</sup>) to handle these examples. On our theory, different readings of sentences or discourses containing plu­rals don't arise from a postulated ambiguity of plural terms or predicates applying to plural DPs, but follow rather from different types of dynamic transitions that manip­ulate inputs and outputs from formulas or discourse constituents. Many aspects of meaning can affect the type dynamic transitions : the lexical semantics of predicates to the left and right of a transition, and number features of DPs and discourse constraints like parallelism.

scholarly journals Disjunctive discourse referents in French Sign Language

2022 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
Jeremy David Kuhn
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Dynamic Semantics ◽  
Morphological Features ◽  
Discourse Referent ◽  
Discourse Anaphora

Disjoined noun phrases, like indefinites, may introduce indeterminate discourse referents. Disjunction provides more flexibility in some respects than indefinites, though, as the two disjuncts may bear different morphological features, and a disjunctive discourse referent may have a split antecedent. Sign language, too, has been shown to bear on arguments pertaining to discourse anaphora. Notably, discourse referents may be established at locations in the signing space (loci), closely paralleling the use of variables in dynamic semantics. Here, we compare several theories of disjunctive anaphora and of space in sign language with new data from French Sign Language (LSF). We argue that loci must be mediated by a featural layer that iconically preserves mereological properties.

scholarly journals Negative Fragment Answers

2020 ◽  
pp. 440-457
Author(s):  
Andrew Weir
Keyword(s):  
Negative Concord ◽  
Double Negation ◽  
Fragment Answers

This chapter discusses the interaction of negation with fragment answers. The ability to use negative concord items as fragment answers has been taken as evidence of their having an inherent negative force; this chapter considers positions for and against this view, and what kind of assumptions (for the licensing of NCIs and/or for the interpretation of elliptical structure in fragments) would be required on each view, as well as considering the implications of double-negation readings for NCI fragments, and the availability of NPI fragments. The chapter also investigates the cooccurrence of a negator with a fragment answer (as in Who ate the cake?—Not John, anyway), exploring what ramifications such structures have for the syntax of fragments, and in particular for the choice between sententialist (elliptical) and non-sententialist analyses of fragments.

Cross-speaker anaphora in dynamic semantics

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-129
Author(s):  
Jae-Il Yeom
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Semantics

Lexical Semantics of Russian Verbs and Their Function of Action Fixation Using Perfect Forms

2019 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-87
Author(s):  
Sergei A. Karpukhin
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Semantics ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Lexical Semantic ◽  
Objective Time ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
The Russian Language

This article describes the connection between perfect verb forms and the typical lexical meanings of generating imperfectives using the example of a prefix model in the Russian language. The research is based on a fundamentally new approach, i.e. the means of “fixing” action in the objective time. The relevance of combining the action and the situational background to the lexical-semantic groups of verbs is established. In the course of the research, the materials of the Bolshoi Akademichescky Slovar (Big Academic Dictionary) were used.

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