Multimodal Modeling: Bridging Biosemiotics and Social Semiotics

This paper explores a semiotic notion of body as starting point for bridging biosemiotic with social semiotic theory. The cornerstone of the argument is that the social semiotic criticism of the classic view of meaning as double articulation can support the criticism of language-centrism that lies at the foundation of biosemiotics. Besides the pragmatic epistemological advantages implicit in a theoretical synthesis, I argue that this brings a semiotic contribution to philosophy of mind broadly. Also, it contributes to overcoming the polemic in linguistics between, loosely put, cognitive universalism and cultural relativism. This possibility is revealed by the recent convergence of various semiotic theories towards a criticism of the classic notion of meaning as double articulation. In biosemiotics, the interest to explicate meaning as multiply articulated stems from the construal of Umwelt as relying on the variety of sense perception channels and semiotic systems that a species has at its disposal. Recently, social semiotics developed an unexplored interest for embodiment by starting from the other end, namely the consideration of the modal heterogeneity of meaning. To bridge these notions, I employ the cognitive semantic notion of embodiment and Mittelberg’s cognitive semiotic notion of exbodiment. In light of these, I explore the possible intricacies between the biosemiotic notion of primary modeling system and concepts referring to preconceptual structures for knowledge organization stemming from cognitive linguistics. Further, Mittelberg’s concept of exbodiment allows for a construal of meaning articulation as mediation between the exbodying and embodying directions of mind.

On generalized algebraic theories and categories with families

We give a syntax independent formulation of finitely presented generalized algebraic theories as initial objects in categories of categories with families (cwfs) with extra structure. To this end, we simultaneously define the notion of a presentation Σ of a generalized algebraic theory and the associated category CwFΣ of small cwfs with a Σ-structure and cwf-morphisms that preserve Σ-structure on the nose. Our definition refers to the purely semantic notion of uniform family of contexts, types, and terms in CwFΣ. Furthermore, we show how to syntactically construct an initial cwf with a Σ-structure. This result can be viewed as a generalization of Birkhoff’s completeness theorem for equational logic. It is obtained by extending Castellan, Clairambault, and Dybjer’s construction of an initial cwf. We provide examples of generalized algebraic theories for monoids, categories, categories with families, and categories with families with extra structure for some type formers of Martin-Löf type theory. The models of these are internal monoids, internal categories, and internal categories with families (with extra structure) in a small category with families. Finally, we show how to extend our definition to some generalized algebraic theories that are not finitely presented, such as the theory of contextual cwfs.

The Semantics of Chinese Noun Phrases

Chinese nominal phrases are typologically distinct from their English counterparts in many aspects. Most strikingly, Chinese is featured with a general classifier system, which not only helps to categorize nouns but also has to do with the issue of quantification. Moreover, it has neither noncontroversial plural markers nor (in)definite markers. Its bare nouns are allowed in various argument positions. As a consequence, Chinese is sometimes characterized as a classifier language, as an argumental language, or as an article-less language. One of the questions arising is whether these apparently different but related properties underscore a single issue: that it is the semantics of nouns that is responsible for all these peculiarities of Mandarin nominal phrases. It has been claimed that Chinese nouns are born as kind terms, from which the object-level readings can be derived, being either existential or definite. Nevertheless, the existence of classifiers in Chinese is claimed to be independent of the kind denotation of its bare nouns. Within the general area of noun semantics, a number of other semantic issues have generated much interest. One is concerned with the availability of the mass/count distinction in Mandarin nominal phrases. Another issue has to do with the semantics of classifiers. Are classifiers required by the noun semantics or the numeral semantics, when occurring in the syntactic context of Numeral/Quantifier-Classifier-Noun? Finally, how is the semantic notion of definiteness understood in article-less languages like Mandarin Chinese? Should its denotation be characterized with uniqueness or familiarity?

Licensing Negative Polarity Items

This chapter concerns the role that syntax plays in licensing NPIs (negative polarity items). Scholars have argued for a semantic approach to characterizing the unifying properties of the wide range of licensors, such as negation, disjunction, interrogation, and subjunctives, licensors that all share the semantic notion of nonveridicality. The author extends this approach to Arabic NPIs in this chapter but also argues that syntax is heavily involved in licensing these items. In particular, the role of the categorial status, syntactic configurations, and syntactic processes such as movement in licensing NPIs are discussed. The author argues for a unified analysis with a minimal set of basic syntactic operations such as Merge and Move, and licensing configurations of c-command and Spec-Head (specifier-head). The analysis captures the true nature of perceived mutual exclusivity between NPIs and the enclitic negative marker as an epiphenomenon of the availability of multiple loci for negation.

Grammar Matters

This chapter explores a number of grammatical properties that conditionals display, with one of its main goals being to show that grammatical form matters: different syntactic expressions of conditionality come with a different range of possible meanings. It also argues that we should not identify the semantic notion ‘conditionals’ with the syntactic expression if p, q. The syntactic construction if p, q is merely one of several syntactic paths that lead to a conditional semantics. The grammatical expression of conditionality determines the range of meanings possible. Overly narrowing conditional semantics to only one syntactic construction makes it harder to identify where each of the elements of meaning originates.

THE ISSUE OF INTELLECTUAL INTUITION IN METAPHYSICS

The article presents problems of intellectual intuition in metaphysics from a semiotic point of view. There are various types of intuition in philosophy: rational intuition, irrational intuition, and sensual intuition. All of them are immediate ways of cognition. Classical metaphysics uses intellectual intuition as its main method to find out and justify its statements. The main problem of intellectual intuition is an intersubjective approach to the object of metaphysics. The main aim of this paper is the objectivization and rationalization of intellectual intuition in language. The semantic notion of meaning and the pragmatic notion of understanding are the fundamental tools which are used to translate the issue of intuition from the subject-ma$er level into the language level. This operation allows to look at intuition in a non-psychological manner. It enables the objectivization of the method of intellectual intuition in the light of the understanding of meanings.

Negative Polarity Items

This chapter investigates the phenomenon of negative polarity sensitivity. The term negative polarity items (NPIs) has been introduced in the literature to refer to forms whose distribution was observed to polarize in negative contexts. NPIs can vary from indefinites that take a special form when they occur in the scope of negation, e.g. any in English, to DPs functioning as minimizers, e.g. a drop, verbal idiomatic expressions such as lift a finger, and more. NPIs are often characterized indirectly by analyzing their distribution in terms of licensing contexts. Sentential negation is a typical licensor that is required to c-command an NPI. A weaker but more inclusive semantic notion of negativity shared by many licensing environments is provided by downward monotonicity. Distributional patterns also led to distinguishing between weak NPIs and stronger NPIs, the latter being restricted to a subset of contexts from the broad selection of licensing environments.

SOME MODEL-THEORETIC RESULTS ON THE 3-VALUED PARACONSISTENT FIRST-ORDER LOGIC QCIORE

The 3-valued paraconsistent logic Ciore was developed by Carnielli, Marcos and de Amo under the name LFI2, in the study of inconsistent databases from the point of view of logics of formal inconsistency (LFIs). They also considered a first-order version of Ciore called LFI2*. The logic Ciore enjoys extreme features concerning propagation and retropropagation of the consistency operator: a formula is consistent if and only if some of its subformulas is consistent. In addition, Ciore is algebraizable in the sense of Blok and Pigozzi. On the other hand, the logic LFI2* satisfies a somewhat counter-intuitive property: the universal and the existential quantifier are inter-definable by means of the paraconsistent negation, as it happens in classical first-order logic with respect to the classical negation. This feature seems to be unnatural, given that both quantifiers have the classical meaning in LFI2*, and that this logic does not satisfy the De Morgan laws with respect to its paraconsistent negation. The first goal of the present article is to introduce a first-order version of Ciore (which we call QCiore) preserving the spirit of Ciore, that is, without introducing unexpected relationships between the quantifiers. The second goal of the article is to adapt to QCiore the partial structures semantics for the first-order paraconsistent logic LPT1 introduced by Coniglio and Silvestrini, which generalizes the semantic notion of quasi-truth considered by Mikeberg, da Costa and Chuaqui. Finally, some important results of classical Model Theory are obtained for this logic, such as Robinson’s joint consistency theorem, amalgamation and interpolation. Although we focus on QCiore, this framework can be adapted to other 3-valued first-order LFIs.

Relaxing non-interference requirements in parallel plans

The aim of being able to reason about quantities, time or space has been the main objective of the many efforts on the integration of propositional planning with extensions to handle different theories. Planning modulo theories (PMTs) are an approximation inspired by satisfiability modulo theories (SMTs) that generalize the integration of arbitrary theories with propositional planning. Parallel plans are crucial to reduce plan lengths and hence the time needed to reach a feasible plan in many approaches. Parallelization of actions relies on the notion of (non-)interference, which is usually determined syntactically at compile time. In this paper we define a semantic notion of interference between actions in PMT. Apart from being strictly stronger than any syntactic notion of interference, we show how semantic interference can be easily and efficiently checked by calling an off-the-shelf SMT solver at compile time, constituting a technique orthogonal to the solving method.

Quantitative Derivation in Morphology

In linguistics, the study of quantity is concerned with the behavior of expressions that refer to amounts in terms of the internal structure of objects and events, their spatial or temporal extension (as duration and boundedness), their qualifying properties, as well as how these aspects interact with each other and other linguistic phenomena. Quantity is primarily manifest in language for the lexical categories of noun, verb, and adjective/ adverb. For instance, the distinction between mass and count nouns is essentially quantitative: it indicates how nominal denotation is quantized—as substance (e.g., water, sand) or as an atomic individual (e.g., book, boy). Similarly, the aspectual classes of verbs, such as states (know), activities (run), accomplishments (drown), achievements (notice), and semelfactives (knock) represent quantitatively different types of events. Adjectives and adverbs may lexically express quantities in relation to individuals, respectively, events (e.g., little, enough, much, often), and one might argue that numerals (two, twenty) are intrinsic quantitative expressions. Quantitative derivation refers to the use of derivational affixes to encode quantity in language. For instance, the English suffix -ful attaches to a noun N1 to derive another noun N2, such that N2 denotes the quantity that fits in the container denoted by N1. N2 also employs a special use in quantitative constructions: see hand—a handful of berries. The challenge for the linguistic description of quantity is that it often combines with other linguistic notions such as evaluation, intensification, quality, and it does not have a specific unitary realization—it is usually auxiliary on other more established notions. Quantitative affixes either have limited productivity or their primary use is for other semantic notions. For instance, the German suffix ‑schaft typically forms abstract nouns as in Vaterschaft ‘fatherhood’, but has a (quantity-related) collective meaning in Lehrerschaft ‘lecturer staff’; compare English -hood in childhood and the collective neighborhood. This diversity makes quantity difficult to capture systematically, in spite of its pervasiveness as a semantic notion.