Cuantificador todo en tiempos del Covid

The sudden onset of the Coronavirus pandemic created the need for contemporary societies to adjust quickly to new rules that frequently limit our civil rights. Governments are obliged to take decisions and inform society of such. On the other hand, imposing unpopular rules on potential voters can result in a loss in popularity that can be devastating for a politician. This is true even in the face of a force majeure. Therefore, from the point of view of the pragmatics of political discourse it is imperative to choose those linguistic devices that would allow communicative goals to be achieved while not compromising the speaker. In the official speeches of the Spanish Prime Minister that took place between January and June 2020 and which coincided with the most dramatic period of the pandemic, the frequency of the use of quantitative expressions, especially of the collective universal quantifier todo, is significant. In this paper we will analyse various uses of this linguistic expression that arise from the discursive pragmatic strategies employed by the speaker.

Generalized Realizability and Basic Logic

Let V be a set of number-theoretical functions. We define a notion of absolute V -realizability for predicate formulas and sequents in such a way that the indices of functions in V are used for interpreting the implication and the universal quantifier. In this article, we prove that Basic Predicate Calculus is sound with respect to the semantics of absolute V -realizability if V satisfies some natural conditions.

Concept of universality within the framework of the second order cybernetics

Ideological essence of the second-order cybernetics is generally understood as a “view from within”. This requires certain conceptual revision of most fundamental notions. Particularly, an interpretation of a ‘universal law’ is subject to such a revision. Formally speaking, any universal law may be coded in the form АхР(х), where Ax is the universal quantifier. However, its meaning changes significantly, for it could be shown that it must be treated probabilistically. The reason for this is in that the standard phrase ‘for any x’, which discloses the meaning of the formula Ax, must be seen here as an arbitrariness of choice, while ‘the choice arbitrariness’ must be seen as a constructive procedure within the second-order cybernetics. Otherwise, basic presumption of the second-order cybernetics will not hold. Indeed, classical science assumes that when one says ‘Let us pick up an arbitrary x from the model M’ then the very procedure of ‘picking up an arbitrary x’ is not assumed to be a part of model M. Classical scientists think of this act as of some agent’s act who is completely external to model M. Second order scientists take it differently. All agent’s acts — observations, measurements, picks, experiment organizations, etc — must be seen as a part of an appropriate model. This is the core of the ‘view from within’: theoretical agents, their acts as well as their theories must be considered as internal events, or properties, of the intended models. Going back to formula Ax, it is easier to see now that an intention ‘to pick up an arbitrary x’ must be treated as a real process within an appropriate model M. The only way to do it is to assume that such models have (truly) random events generators G as a necessary part of their structure. All above implies that an interpretation of AxP(x) within the framework of the second-order cybernetics must be the following: P(x) is universally true on M iff there exists G in M such that at any time t G may randomly choose any element from M with probability р(х)≠0, and P(x) will appear to be true. As a result of this, we may claim that the very idea of justifiable universality is inconsistent with deterministic ontologies (in the second-order science framework). Indeed, deterministic ontologies do not assume that at any time t it is possible to pick up an arbitrary x from the model M, for, by definition, they are limited only to certain choices through time, which are pre-determined by deterministic schedule of choices.

Three Models of the Undetermined Future

This chapter articulates three models of the undetermined future. Assuming that there are multiple future histories consistent with the past and the laws, we can maintain that (I) there is a unique actual future history, and it is determinate which history that is; (II) there is a unique actual future history, but it is indeterminate which history that is; (III) there is no such thing as the “unique actual future history”. Models (I) and (II) are united in terms of there being a unique actual course of history; models (II) and (III) are united in terms of there being no privileged history in the model. The author defends model (III). He further argues that will is a universal quantifier over all the causally possible histories consistent with the future directed facts. The author shows how this view combined with model (III) generates the view that future contingents are all false.

The negation of cualquier NP

Even though the interpretation of Free Choice Items such as any has been on debate for more than 50 years (Vendler, 1974, Dayal, 1998, Horn, 2000, etc.), it is relatively more recent in Spanish (Menéndez-Benito, 2005, Giannakidou and Quer, 2013, among others). Some have analyzed it as a universal quantifier, neither taking its free choiceness into account nor contexts which seem to be problematic for the universal account (see, for instance, Etxepare and Uribe-Etxebarria, 2011). In this article, we defend that cualquier is a universal indeterminate pronoun which involves freedom of choice (as in the original proposal by Vendler, 1974). We will take into account data (taken from https://www.corpusdelespanol.org/web-dial) which has not been properly considered. We will analyze the interaction of negation and cualquier in Rioplantese Spanish in the subject position of negative generic statements, in the object position in negative episodic statements, and in a non argumental position. We will combine an alternative semantics approach to the analysis of the FCI cualquier, inspired in Menéndez-Benito (2010) and Aloni (2019), with a syntactic approach to negation inspired in Etxepare and Uribe-Etxebarria (2011).

The trouble with the second quantifier

We survey optimization problems that allow natural simple formulations with one existential and one universal quantifier. We summarize the theoretical background from computational complexity theory, and we present a multitude of illustrating examples. We discuss the connections to robust optimization and to bilevel optimization, and we explain the reasons why the operational research community should be interested in the theoretical aspects of this area.

The nature of the semantic stimulus: the acquisition of every as a case study

We evaluate the richness of the child’s input in semantics and its relation to the hypothesis space available to the child. Our case study is the acquisition of the universal quantifier every. We report two main findings regarding the acquisition of every on the basis of a corpus study of child-directed and child-ambient speech. Our first finding is that the input in semantics (as opposed to the input in syntax or phonology) is rich enough to systematically eliminate instances of the subset problem of language acquisition: overly general hypotheses about the meaning of every can violate pragmatic constraints, making such hypotheses incompatible with the child’s input. Our second finding is that the semantic input is too poor to eliminate instances of what we refer to as the superset problem, the mirror image of the subset problem. We argue that at least some overly specific hypotheses about the meaning of every are compatible with the child’s input, suggesting either that those hypotheses are not made available by UG or that non-trivial inductive biases are involved in children’s acquisition of every.

All good and well

The Dutch expression goed en wel ‘good and well’ is polysemous. In one of its uses, goed en wel combines with a universal quantifier alles or allemaal ‘all’ and the conjunction maar ‘but’. The resulting construction is typically used to introduce a contrary reaction to an earlier utterance or suggestion. The combination is shown to fit into a larger class of pragmatic operators, which are argued to be instances of lexicalized pragmatics.

Intonational effects on English scopally-ambiguous sentences

This paper examines the effect of intonation contour on two types of scopally ambiguous constructions in English: configurations with a universal quantifier in subject position and sentential negation (e.g., Every horse didn’t jump) and configurations with quantifiers in both subject and object positions (e.g., A girl saw every boy). There is much prior literature on the relationship between the fall-rise intonation and availability of inverse scope with quantifier-negation configurations. The present study has two objectives: (1) to examine whether the role of intonation in facilitating inverse scope is restricted to this configuration, or whether it extends to double-quantifier configurations as well; and (2) to examine whether fall-rise intonation fully disambiguates the sentence, or only facilitates inverse scope. These questions were investigated experimentally, via an auditory acceptability judgment task, in which native English speakers rated the acceptability of auditorily presented sentences in contexts matching surface-scope vs. inverse-scope readings. The results provide evidence that fall-rise intonation facilitates the inverse-scope readings of English quantifier-negation configurations (supporting findings from prior literature), but not those of double-quantifier configurations.

Negative Polarity in ‮כל‬‎ Constructions in Qumran Hebrew

The Hebrew quantifier ‮כל‬‎ is used both as a universal quantifier (equivalent to English all) and as a distributive quantifier (equivalent to English each, every). In Qumran Hebrew, as in Biblical Hebrew, the quantifier ‮כל‬‎ occurs in four syntactic constructions depending upon the type of noun phrase that follows it in order to indicate nuances of individuation and specificity in addition to universal and distributive quantification. In contexts in which these constructions occur within the scope of negation, the quantifier assumes negative polarity (none, nothing, any in English). In this article, we identify the syntactic contexts and constructions in which negative polarity is licensed and we describe and analyze the constructions of ‮כל‬‎ with negative polarity. We also compare the negative polarity licensing exhibited in Qumran Hebrew with Biblical Hebrew and demonstrate that some of the features of negative polarity in Qumran Hebrew differ from those in Biblical Hebrew.