Implicit Arguments in Ugandan English

In standard British/American English, some transitive verbs, which are ontologically specified for objects, may be used with the objects not overtly expressed (for example, leave), while other transitive verbs do not permit this syntactic behavior (for example, vacate). The former have been referred to as verbs that allow implicit arguments. This study shows that while verbs such as vacate do not ideally allow implicit arguments in standard British/American English, this is permitted in Ugandan English (a non-native variety), thereby highlighting structural asymmetries between British/American English and Ugandan English, owing mainly to substrate influence and analogization. The current study highlights those structural asymmetries and ultimately uncovers some characteristic features in the structural nativization process of English in Uganda, thereby contributing to the growing larger discourse meant to fill the gaps that had characterized World Englishes scholarship, where thorough delineations of Ugandan English have been virtually absent.

Local versus long-distance bound implicit arguments of inalienable relational nouns in Chinese

This paper argues that inalienable relational nouns in Mandarin Chinese, specifically kinship nouns (KNs, e.g. father, sister) and body-part nouns (BPNs, e.g. head, face), have an implicit reflexive argument. Based on a syntactic comparison between KNs, BPNs, locally and long-distance bound reflexives, we argue that the implicit reflexive arguments of BPNs must be locally bound, whereas that of KNs can either be locally or long-distance bound. We conclude that these two types of implicit arguments in Mandarin Chinese correspond to locally and long-distance bound reflexives, respectively. We analyze this difference in connection with binding theory and a theory of logophoricity. We argue that the implicit argument of BPNs is a locally bound anaphor and cannot be used as a logophor, whereas that of KNs can, supporting a proposal that the logophoric property leads to long-distance binding, as argued by Huang & Liu’s (2001) for reflexives in Mandarin Chinese.

Where are thematic roles?

In ‘Where are thematic roles? Building the micro-syntax of implicit arguments in nominalizations’, Roeper attempts an approach to capture implicit arguments in a fashion that is closely linked to the projection of verbs. Roeper argues for clitic-like projections that accompany the verb, particularly evident in nominalizations: These separate the lexical Argument-theta projections of the verb from the conditions for projecting Maximal Projections which enter into syntactic operations, while the larger pattern of subject, object, and control behavior remains consistent across the syntax and the lexicon. Roeper argues that bare nominalizations (e.g. a look, a glance, a comment) all carry argument structure capable of motivating syntactic binding. Moreover, argument projections into the Possessive of nominalizations show predictable sensitivity to passive morphemes (-ed, -able) buried inside nominalizations. They allow only an object projection in nominalized Possessives precisely as they do in verbal structures. The theory of Theta-role projection must allow projection of an AGENT to Subject in little v, Subject in TP, and Subject in Possessives, and if acquisition is efficient, it should all follow automatically from UG. Roeper then argues that impersonal passives that appear in a subset of languages call for both special syntax and a special vision of possible integration into discourse structure. <206>

Implicit Arguments in English and Rutooro

The present study is a contrastive analysis of the syntactic behavior of verbs that are ontologically specified for objects but these objects may be left out without rendering sentences ungrammatical. The study unveils asymmetries between English and Rutooro (a Bantu language spoken in Uganda) in the (non-)omissibility of postverbal arguments, stemming from lexico-semantic and morphological factors as well as syntactic and discoursal factors. In light of the asymmetries arising from syntactic and discoursal factors, the study adopts a typology of indefinite implicit arguments that categorizes them into two: general indefinite implicit arguments and discourse-bound indefinite implicit arguments. Denotational nuances between synonyms as well as morphological specifications are also crucial linguistic ingredients that trigger variability in the syntactic behavior of synonymous verbs intralinguistically and cross-linguistically. In order to formalize the syntactic behavior of the verbs involved, the study employs the analytical tools provided by Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG). While Asudeh/Giorgolio (2012) use a combination of LFG and Glue Semantics in order to account for the occurrence of implicit arguments, this study proposes an alternative approach, by using only the LFG functional specifications in the lexical entries of the verbs under consideration without having recourse to an auxiliary framework. Using Bresnan (1978) as a point of departure and informed by proposals advanced by Nordlinger/Sadler (2007), the study posits a non-ambiguous bistructural analysis, with the postverbal argument instantiating the specification ± higher structure – a feature that caters for the (non-)omissibility of the postverbal argument.

Implicit Argument Prediction as Reading Comprehension

Implicit arguments, which cannot be detected solely through syntactic cues, make it harder to extract predicate-argument tuples. We present a new model for implicit argument prediction that draws on reading comprehension, casting the predicate-argument tuple with the missing argument as a query. We also draw on pointer networks and multi-hop computation. Our model shows good performance on an argument cloze task as well as on a nominal implicit argument prediction task.

A framework for improving error messages in dependently-typed languages

Dependently-typed programming languages provide a powerful tool for establishing code correctness. However, it can be hard for newcomers to learn how to employ the advanced type system of such languages effectively. For simply-typed languages, several techniques have been devised to generate helpful error messages and suggestions for the programmer. We adapt these techniques to dependently-typed languages, to facilitate their more widespread adoption. In particular, we modify a higher-order unification algorithm that is used to resolve and type-check implicit arguments. We augment this algorithm with replay graphs, allowing for a global heuristic analysis of a unification problem-set, error-tolerant typing, which allows type-checking to continue after errors are found, and counter-factual unification, which makes error messages less affected by the order in which types are checked. A formalization of our algorithm is presented with an outline of its correctness. We implement replay graphs, and compare the generated error messages to those from existing languages, highlighting the improvements we achieved.

A dialectical approach to presupposition

This paper advances an approach to presupposition rooted in the concept of commitment, a dialectical notion weaker than truth and belief. It investigates ancient medieval dialectical theories and develops the insights thereof for analyzing how presuppositions are evaluated and why a proposition is presupposed. In particular, at a pragmatic level, presuppositions are reconstructed as the conclusions of implicit arguments from presumptive reasoning, grounded on presumptions of different type and nature. A false (or rather unaccepted) presupposition can be thus represented as the outcome of a conflict of presumptions – the ones used by the speaker and the ones commonly accepted or backed by evidence. From an interpretative perspective, this defaulted presumptive reasoning can be explained by comparing the available presumptions and repaired by replacing the weaker and unacceptable ones.