{"title":"Coercion by modification — The adaptive capacities of event-sensitive adnominal modifiers","authors":"Sebastian Bücking, C. Maienborn","doi":"10.3765/sp.12.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.12.9","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is about coercive meaning adaptions as triggered by modifiers. It pursues two objectives. First, we argue that coercion by modification is rooted in the linguistic system. More specifically, given a pending type-conflict between a modifier and its target, fine-grained lexical typing information is shown to both license and constrain adaptive options. Notably, such a dynamic lexical semantics integrates conceptual knowledge resources into rigid compositional mechanisms without giving up their principled distinction. Second, we reconcile coercion by modification with the standard conception of modification as a type-preserving operation. However, we also argue that the coercion facts cannot be handled within rule-based approaches to modification. The merits of the proposed dynamic approach to lexical semantics are exemplified by a detailed investigation of the subtly differing coercive potentials of event-sensitive adjectives such as schnell ‘quick’, flink ‘nimble’, and rasch ‘rapid’ in German. It is spelled out in terms of Asher’s (2011) Type Composition Logic. \u0000 \u0000 \u0000EARLY ACCESS","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2019-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48239864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Distributive ignorance inferences with wonder and believe","authors":"Alexandre Cremers, F. Roelofsen, W. Uegaki","doi":"10.3765/sp.12.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.12.5","url":null,"abstract":"A sentence like Mary wonders whether Ann, Bill or Carol broke the vase implies that Mary still consider all disjuncts possible. This inference has been referred to as a distributive ignorance inference (Roelofsen & Uegaki 2016). We present two experiments examining the distributive ignorance inferences triggered by two verbs, wonder and believe , with different types of complements and different types of quantificational subjects. \u0000 \u0000The results of these experiments show that the distributive ignorance inferences triggered by the two verbs pattern very much alike. We argue that the data are best explained by an account that involves a strengthening mechanism which is sensitive to the syntactic structure of the complement of the verbs involved and optionally applies locally, as part of the semantic composition process. \u0000 \u0000EARLY ACCESS","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2019-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41558545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On the grammatical source of adjective ordering preferences","authors":"Gregory Scontras, Judith Degen, Noah D. Goodman","doi":"10.3765/sp.12.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.12.7","url":null,"abstract":"Scontras et al. (2017) present experimental evidence demonstrating that the best predictor of adjective ordering preferences in the English noun phrase is the subjectivity of the property named by any given adjective: less subjective adjectives are preferred linearly closer to the nouns they modify. The current work builds on this empirical finding by proposing that the reason subjectivity predicts adjective ordering preferences has to do with the hierarchical structure of nominal modification. Adjectives that are linearly closer to the modified noun are often structurally closer, composing with the noun before adjectives that are farther away. Pressures from successful reference resolution dictate that less subjective, more useful adjectives contribute their meaning to the resulting nominal earlier, in an attempt to more effectively limit the reference search space. \u0000 \u0000EARLY ACCESS","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2019-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46959126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The meaning of life","authors":"András Kornai","doi":"10.1007/978-3-319-65645-8_9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65645-8_9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2019-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90680656","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}