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LINGUISTIX&LOGIK, Tony Marmo's blog
Thursday, 2 September 2004

Topic: Notes on Pirah?

Note #2



Everett's

Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirah?: Another Look at the Design Features of Human Language

Page 10


However, there are two words, usually occurring in reference to an amount eaten or desired, which by their closest translation equivalents, 'whole' b?aiso and 'part' g?i?i might seem to be quantifiers:
(19) a. t?ob?hai hi b? -a -i -so kohoai-s?og -ab -aga?
child 3 touch -causative -connective -nominalizer 'whole' eat -desiderative -stay -thus
'The child wanted/s to eat the whole thing.'
(lit: 'Child muchness/fullness eat is desiring.')
b. t?ob?hai hi g?i -?i kohoai-s?og-ab -aga?
child 3 that -there eat -desiderative 'part' (in the appropriate context) -stay -thus
'The child wanted/s to eat a piece of the thing.'
(lit: 'Child that there eat is desiring.')

In (19) b?aiso and g?i?i are used as nouns. But they can also appear as
postnominal modifiers:
(20) a. t?ob?hai hi pooga?hia? b?aiso kohoai-s?og -ab -aga?
child 3 banana whole eat- desiderative -stay -thus
'The child wanted/s to eat the whole banana.'
(lit: 'Child banana muchness/fullness eat is desiring.')
b. t?ob?hai hi pooga?hia? g?i?i kohoai-s?og-ab -aga?
child 3 banana piece eat -desiderative -stay -thus
'The child wanted/s to eat part of the banana.'
(lit: 'Child banana piece eat is desiring.')

Whether a pair of items are quantifiers or not depends firstly on the theoretic assumptions made. There is no way to say whether b?aiso and g?i?i are real quantifiers or not just by giving examples in a non-theoretic fashion. In any case, it is not uncommon to find words that appear in different positions both as nouns and nominal modifiers. That is a common fact of languages around the world and not any special or unique feature of Pirah?.

Aside from their literal meanings, there are important reasons for not interpreting these two words as quantifiers. First, their Truth Conditions are not equivalent to those of real quantifiers.


This is tricky. A sentence may be true or false in a given situation/world, but it cannot be assumed that speakers will produce only true sentences in a given context. False sentences, which are completely grammatical, may be and often are produced.

For example, consider the contrast in (21) vs. (22):
Context: Someone has just killed an anaconda. Upon seeing it, (21a) below is uttered. Someone takes a piece of it. After the purchase of the remainder, the content of (21a) is reaffirmed as (21b):
(21) a. 7?o?i hi pa?hoa7a? 7iso? b?aiso 7oaboi -ha?
foreigner 3 anaconda skin 'whole' buy -relative certainty
'The foreigner will likely buy the entire anaconda skin.'
b. 7ai? hi b?aiso 7oaob -?h?; hi 7ogi? 7oaob -?h?
affirmative 3 whole buy -complete certainty 3 bigness buy complete certainty
'Yes, he bought the whole thing.'

Now, compare this with the English equivalent, where the same context is
assumed:
(22) a. STATEMENT: He will likely buy the whole anaconda skin.
b. OCCURRENCE: Piece is removed (in full view of interlocutors).
c. STATEMENT: %He bought the whole anaconda skin.

It simply would be dishonest and a violation of the meaning of 'whole' to utter it
in (22b). But this is not the case in Pirah?, (21b).
Page 11


However in (21b) the term b?aiso is not used alone. 7ogi?, he term for bigness, as Everett calls it, is present as well. This suggests that a literal translation of (21b) would be Yes, he bought a majority of the whole thing, regardless of whether the sentence is true or false in the context where it is uttered. The expression a majority of the whole exists in English and other languages and means a part (the larger part) and not the whole.

Posted by Tony Marmo at 14:29 BST
Updated: Thursday, 2 September 2004 14:31 BST
Wednesday, 1 September 2004

Topic: Notes on Pirah?
As suggested by RdR and others, I shall be writing small notes on Daniel Everett's work, i.e., about the analyses he makes of Pirah? data.

Note #1



Everett's

Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirah?: Another Look at the Design Features of Human Language


page 7


Some examples which show how Pirah? expresses what in other cultures would
be numerical concepts:
(10) a. t? 7?t?i7isi h?i hii 7aba7??gio 7oogabaga?
1 fish small pred. only want
'I only want {one/a couple/a small} fish.'
(NB: This could not be used to express a desire for one fish that was very large, except as a joke.)


Interesting. In Portuguese we may have parallel examples:

(10') a. Eu quero um pouco de peixe.


(10') may be translated as I want some fish or a little bit of fish. Indeed (10') may be interpreted as:

I want a small fish.
I want only one fish.
I want a small quantities of fish.
I want only a piece of a fish.


Of course, (10') cannot be used in the context where the speaker wants one very large fish.


Page 8

Interestingly, in spite of its lack of number and numerals, Pirah? superficially
appears to have a count vs. mass distinction:
(12) a. 7ao?i 7aa?b?i 7ao7aag? 7o? kapi?7io
foreigner many exist jungle other
'There are many foreigners in another jungle.'
b. */? 7ao?i 7apag? 7ao7aag? 7o? kapi?7io
foreigner much exist jungle other
? 'There are much foreigners in another jungle.'
(13) a. 7?ga?si7apag? 7ao7aag? 7o? kapi?7io
manioc meal much exist jungle other
'There is a lot of manioc meal in another jungle.'
b. *7?ga?si 7aa?b?i 7ao7aag? 7o? kapi?7io
manioc mealmany exist jungle other
*'There is many manioc meal in another jungle.'

However, this distinction is more consistently analyzed as the distinction between things that can be individuated and things that cannot, thus independent of the notion of counting.


It is impossible to conclude that some mind has the notion of individuation, but lacks the concept of unity. The sentences about are without any doubt instances of mass versus count nouns. To affirm otherwise is not consistent with the data presented.

Posted by Tony Marmo at 13:30 BST
Updated: Thursday, 2 September 2004 14:33 BST
Monday, 30 August 2004
Hara on Implicature and Attitude Predicates
Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

Implicature Computation and Attitude Predicates


By Yurie Hara

The Handout (Source: The Semantics Archive)

The traditional view of Pragmatics:
Pragmatics is independent of syntax and semantics.
The output of syntactic and semantic computation is passed on to the pragmatic system.
Example: Scalar implicatures
Traditional view:
Implicatures are introduced after the whole computation of syntax and semantics is done.
Chierchia (2001):
Implicatures are generated locally and projected compositionally
Today's talk [see the link to the handout]:
mostly along with Chierchia. However, implicature computation takes place at where a proposition is combined with an attitude predicate.

The Article

Chierchia (2001) has proposed that implicatures are generated locally and projected compositionally. Implicatures induced by Japanese Contrastive Topic provide evidence for the local computation of implicature; however, their properties are not fully compatible with Chierchia's analysis. This paper shows that implicature computation should take place in a larger cycle than Chierchia's, namely at the position where a proposition is combined with an attitude predicate. The analysis mirrors Heim's (1992) theory on presupposition projection.
Japanese Contrastive Topics always induce implicatures. In other words, Contrastive Topic wa (as in (1)) is licensed under the situation where something else is implicated. The same implicature will arise when the sentence is not wa-marked (Nanninka-ga kita. `Some people-Nom came' will also implicates "Not everyone came." as a conversational scalar implicature). The difference between wa-marked and nonwa- marked is clearer in (2). The wa-induced implicature is conventional and hence obligatory (as in (2a)), whereas the non-wa-marked one is conversational and defeasible (as in (2b); see Hara (To appear) for the detailed discussion). Hara (2004) proposes that wa seeks for a stronger scalar alternative. This property is depicted as a presuppositional requirement ((3b); x is an attitude-bearer, B is a background and T is a topical element; see Hara (2004) for the comparison of this analysis with B?uring (1997)). For example, (1) implicates the speaker's uncertainty of the stronger (more informative) alternative, `Everyone came'. (2a) is infelicitous since the asserted proposition `Everyone came' is the strongest among the alternatives (`Some people came', `Most people came' etc.), and thus there is no room to implicate.


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Handout


Posted by Tony Marmo at 01:01 BST
Updated: Monday, 30 August 2004 09:59 BST
Sunday, 29 August 2004

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

The Semantics of Imperatives within a Theory of Clause Types

by Paul Portner


Though individual clause types - especially declaratives, interrogatives, and imperatives - have been studied extensively, there is less work on clause type systems.1 This is so despite the fact that clause type systems have properties which suggest that they will prove revealing concerning the nature of Universal Grammar. For example, we may ask:

(1) a. Why are some clause types (declaratives, interrogatives, and
imperatives) universal?
b. Why are some clause types possible but not universal (e.g.,
exclamatives and promissives)?
c. Why are some intuitively plausible clause types in fact not attested, and perhaps not possible (e.g., "threatatives" and "warnatives")?

The contrast between imperatives and promissives brings out the issue well. These two types are functionally very similar: An imperative places a requirement on the addressee, while a promissive places a requirement on the speaker. Yet imperatives are apparently universal (and at least extremely common), while promissives are extremely rare. It does not seem easy to give a functional explanation for this contrast, and so in is reasonable to inquire into whether an explanation in terms of syntactic or semantic theory is possible. (...)

Source: The Semantics Archive

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Posted by Tony Marmo at 08:30 BST
Updated: Monday, 30 August 2004 01:54 BST
Friday, 27 August 2004

Topic: PARACONSISTENCY
Here is a new website for paraconsistency:

The home page for the philosophy of paraconsistency


Aim of this site


This site results, among others, from discussions between Jean-Yves Beziau and Alessio Moretti, about the philosophical relevance of paraconsistent logic. It's aim is to offer a frame to all searchers interested in exploring the philosophical implications of the many logical systems and approaches going under the general banner "paraconsistency". The analysis is, more or less, the following :
1) paraconsistent logic is by now a quite well established branch of mathematics, exploring mainly the properties of logical "negation". One has to note that the many technical results about paraconsistency are still quite unknown to the non-paraconsistent working mathematician, not to speak about the philosopher not used to mathematical formalisms.
2) Although paraconsistency was, at his beginning, motivated by deep philosophical reasons, it seems, by some kind of paradox, that now that the technical machinery has reached a satisfactory level of maturity, the philosophical interpretations of this new logical landscape are very few and still seem to lack of philosophical depth, at least in the sense of not (yet) reaching the scope of possible applications.
3) This unsatisfactory situation of the philosophical side of the enterprise is not due to some intrinsic reason of the subject, say "paraconsistency is not philosophically interesting". On the contrary, paraconsistency is highly interesting, probably crucial, to the philosopher (i.e. to all kinds of philosophers), and the relative poverty of the reflection thereupon is more a matter of coordination of the researchers and of accessibility, for the professional philosopher, of the technical discoveries, these being most of the time rather unintelligible to that respectable majority of philosophers not that much used to mathematical sophistication.
4) Which gives us the policy to follow for our present project : <...>

Link

Posted by Tony Marmo at 01:01 BST
Updated: Monday, 30 August 2004 02:02 BST
Wednesday, 25 August 2004

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

An Expressive First-Order Logic with Flexible Typing for Natural Language Semantics



by Chris Fox and Shalom Lappin

We present Property Theory with Curry Typing (PTCT), an intensional first-order logic for natural language semantics. PTCT permits fine-grained specifications of meaning. It also supports polymorphic types and separation types. 1We develop an intensional number theory within PTCT in order to represent proportional generalized quantifiers like most . We use the type system and our treatment of generalized quantifiers in natural language to construct a type-theoretic approach to pronominal anaphora that avoids some of the difficulties that undermine previous type-theoretic analyses of this phenomenon.

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Posted by Tony Marmo at 09:07 BST
Updated: Wednesday, 25 August 2004 09:34 BST
Tuesday, 24 August 2004

Topic: GENERAL LOGIC

Hempel's Raven Paradox: A Lacuna in the Standard Bayesian Solution


by Peter B. M. Vranas


According to Hempel's paradox, evidence (E) that an object is a nonblack nonraven confirms the hypothesis (H) that every raven is black. According to the standard Bayesian solution, E does confirm H but only to a minute degree. This solution relies on the almost never explicitly defended assumption that the probability of H should not be affected by evidence that an object is nonblack. I argue that this assumption is implausible, and I propose a way out for Bayesians.

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Posted by Tony Marmo at 03:14 BST
Monday, 23 August 2004
The Fuzzy Logic Debate
Topic: GENERAL LOGIC
Entemann (2002) [1] versus Pelletier(2004)[2]: a debate about what are the misconceptions about Fuzzy Logic.


The Fuzzy Logic Debate [1]

Fuzzy Logic: Misconceptions and Clarifications

by Carl W. Entemann


Some commonly accepted statements concerning the basic fuzzy logic proposed by Lotfi Zadeh in 1965, have led to suggestions that fuzzy logic is not a logic in the same sense as classical bivalent logic. Those considered herein are: fuzzy logic generates results that contradict classical logic, fuzzy logic collapses to classical logic, there can be no proof theory for fuzzy logic, fuzzy logic is inconsistent, fuzzy logic produces results that no human can accept, fuzzy logic is not proof-theoretic complete, fuzzy logic is too complex for practical use, and, finally, fuzzy logic is not needed. It is either proved or argued herein that all of the these statements are false and are, hence, misconceptions. A fuzzy logic with truth values specified as subintervals of the real unit interval [0.0, 1.0] is introduced. Proofs of the correctness, consistency, and proof theoretic completeness of the truth interval fuzzy logic are either summarized or cited. It is concluded that fuzzy logics deserve the accolade of logic to the same degree that the term applies to classical logics.


Keywords:
knowledge management, logic inference, logic processing, theorem proving, uncertainty, uncertainty reasoning
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The Fuzzy Logic Debate [2]

On Some Alleged Misconceptions about Fuzzy Logic

by Francis Jeffry Pelletier


Entemann (2002) defends fuzzy logic by pointing to what he calls `misconceptions' concerning fuzzy logic. However, some of these `misconceptions' are in fact truths, and it is Entemann who has the misconceptions. The present article points to mistakes made by Entemann in three different areas. It closes with a discussion of what sort of general considerations it would take to motivate fuzzy logic.


Keywords:
Fuzzy Logic, Proof Theory, Truth Interval Tableaux
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Posted by Tony Marmo at 05:44 BST
Updated: Monday, 23 August 2004 05:58 BST

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS


Natural Language Semantics' TOP 3


Focus Below the Word Level
by Ron Artstein
The Interpretation of Traces
by Uli Sauerland
Crossover Situations
by Daniel Buring



Posted by Tony Marmo at 05:20 BST
Sunday, 22 August 2004
A MATTER OF NOTATION?
Topic: GENERAL LOGIC



A Poor Concept Script


by Hartley Slater
Source: AJL


The formal structure of Frege's `concept script' has been widely adopted in logic text books since his time, even though its rather elaborate symbols have been abandoned for more convenient ones. But there are major difficulties with its formalisation of pronouns, predicates, and propositions, which infect the whole of the tradition which has followed Frege. It is shown first in this paper that these difficulties are what has led to many of the most notable paradoxes associated with this tradition; the paper then goes on to indicate the lines on which formal logic--and also the lambda calculus and set theory--needs to be restructured, to remove the difficulties.

Throughout the study of what have come to be known as first-, second-, and higher-order languages, what has been primarily overlooked is that these languages are abstractions. Many well known paradoxes, we shall see, arose because of the elementary level of simplification which has been involved in the abstract languages studied. Straightforward resolutions of the paradoxes immediately appear merely through attention to languages of greater sophistication, notably natural language, of course. The basic problem has been exclusive attention to a theory in place of what it is a theory of, leading to a focus on mathematical manipulation, which `brackets off' any natural language reading.

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Posted by Tony Marmo at 01:01 BST
Updated: Sunday, 22 August 2004 01:03 BST
Friday, 20 August 2004

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

Information State Update: Semantics or Pragmatics?


by Raquel Fern?ndez and Matthew Purver (2004)

We argue for an approach which treats the compositional semantic content of an utterance as including its basic dialogue update effects - those which can be derived entirely from its semantic and syntactic properties.

This allows us to capture the distinction between these integral semantic contextual effects and those pragmatic effects which can only be determined from the interaction between features of the utterance and the context itself.


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Posted by Tony Marmo at 18:22 BST
Updated: Friday, 20 August 2004 18:24 BST

Topic: SCIENCE & NEWS

Pragmatics



Kai von Fintel will teach a Course in Pragmatics this fall (spring in the Southern Hemesphere):

The summer is nearing its end. I just finished the first draft syllabus for my pragmatics course this fall. I hope to condense some of the introduction to basic concepts, primarily by reigning in my tendency to get caught up in digressions. This will give me time to cover some interesting topics under current investigation, which I am quite excited about. We'll see how it goes.

This is a dress rehearsal of sorts for the 6 week pragmatics course that I will be teaching during the LSA Summer Linguistics Institute 2005 next summer. I will only have twelve 90 minute sessions, so that version will have to be even more concentrated.


Source: Semantics-etc

Posted by Tony Marmo at 05:45 BST
Updated: Friday, 20 August 2004 05:53 BST
Thursday, 19 August 2004

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

Semantics in Context


by Jason Stanley
Source: lingBuzz/000024


(...)The explanation for our ability to report about the truth and falsity of what is said by an utterance of
Some philosophers are from New York

in various possible situations is as follows. Competent English speakers know the meanings of the words used, and understand how they are combined. Their grasp of the truth-conditions of the utterance of that sentence is due to their ability to combine the meanings of the words, relative to the context of utterance.
With this explanation in mind, consider an utterance of the sentence
Every philosopher is from New York,

made at a small philosophy conference. It is natural to take this utterance to say something that is true if and only if every philosopher at the conference is from New York. If we cleave to the model of understanding just described, we will seek to explain our understanding of the truth-conditions of this utterance by appeal to a process of combining the elements of the sentence "Every philosopher is from New York", using our understanding of the words used in the sentence. But of course, there appears to be no expression in the sentence "Every philosopher is from New York" that corresponds to the understood constituent expressed by "at this conference".
Similarly, suppose, pointing at a 5 foot tall seven year old child, I utter the sentence "He is tall." I am most naturally understood as saying something that is true if and only if the child in question is tall for a seven year old child. Preserving the model of understanding we began with, according to which our intuitions about the truth-conditions of an utterance are due to a process of combining meanings of the parts of the sentence uttered, would require us to find some constituent in the sentence that could be taken to supply the understood property of being a seven year old child. But again, it appears that the sentence "He is tall" contains no such constituent. So, we have a predicament. If we look at certain sentences, there seems to be a clear and elegant explanation of why we have the intuitions we do about the truth conditions of utterances of those sentences. But if we consider utterances of other sentences, the explanation appears to break down. The first response to this predicament is to attempt to preserve the clear and elegant explanation in the face of the apparently recalcitrant data. The second is to abandon the clear and elegant explanation of the source of our truth-conditional intuitions in favor of a different one.
My concern with the second response to the predicament is that the suggestions I am aware of for dealing with the additional complexity essentially end up abandoning the project of giving a systematic explanation of the source of our intuitions. They invariably involve appeal to unconstrained and non-explanatory notions or processes (cf. Stanley (2002a)). I have therefore been inclined to pursue the first of these options (cf. Stanley (2000)). My purpose in this paper is to continue the project of defending the clear and elegant explanation of the source of our intuitions about the truth-conditions of utterances. I will do so by considering some replies to previous arguments in favor of it. I will argue that proponents of abandoning the clear and elegant explanation have not yet made their case.

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Posted by Tony Marmo at 19:31 BST
Tuesday, 17 August 2004

Topic: Cognition & Epistemology

Testing Infallible Hypotheses



It has been said that Always Right statements or theories are useless for Science. This refers to conjunctions like the hypothesis below:

(1) Either Socrates is human or he is not.


The evident problem with (1) is that it cannot be tested. Similarly, one may criticise an Oedipus complex theory that could explain every behaviour, such as:

(2)
a. Subject A killed a police officer because he had Oedipus complex.
b. Subject B did not kill a police officer because he had Oedipus complex too.


Now, I question how far can this sort of critique be a strong argument against some theories that deal with more complex situations. One example is a new theory that aims to propose an old puzzle in the field of Zoology: why are there large mammals in Africa but not in South American forests? Here I quote one important article from the Fapesp Magazine about recent developments:


[A new]Theory proposes that excessive rainfall altered the vegetation and eliminated large mammals in South America, but preserved them in Africa. (Link)


The theory advanced by de Vivo and Carmignotto proposes that the same explanation is valid for completely different cases:

(3)
a. Large mammals were extinct in South America by the excessive humidity factor.
b. Large mammals were preserved in Africa by the excessive humidity factor.


The justification for this is complex:


South America
It rained so excessively that the ancient areas of the savanna-cerrado ( wooded savanna, typical of Brazil) - the excellent habitat for medium and large mammals, generally situated intropical of moderate to low humidity - turned themselves extremely dense and closed, with lots of trees, and practically became extensions of their neighboring tropical rainforests.
(...)the largest animals, concentrated in the central-north portion of South America, did not find a nearby environment compatible with their style of life. There was no savanna for them.


Africa
In Africa, the majority of the mammals of large size, generally herbivores that lived in bands, managed to migrate to new zones of open vegetation, with few trees and some pasture. As a consequence of the climatic change, this type of vegetal formation appeared in areas that are today desserts, situated in the northern and southern extremities of the continent.


I hereby open the floor for anyone who wants to debate the issue.

Posted by Tony Marmo at 08:23 BST

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

The aspectual impact of French locative goal PPs


by Olivier Bonami


This paper presents an attempt to account for the aspectual class alternations induced by locative goal PPs in combination with motion verbs. It is noted that in French, two semantically distinct classes of prepositions (e.g. dans vs. jusqu'a ) give rise to telic eventuality descriptions in combination with basically atelic motion verbs. Moreover, the resulting sentences exhibit differing and peculiar aspectual properties. Thus the conventional analysis, which states that the PP provides a spatio-temporal boundary to the event described by the verb is at least insufficient.

The proposed analysis rests on the idea that goal PPs function as co-predicators (Gawron 1986). Sentences containing goal PPs are composite eventuality descriptions, the verb and the preposition describing different parts of a structured event. The peculiar aspectual properties of sentences containing goal PPs is related to their composite nature. A situation-theoretic formalization is proposed, which allows to view the aspectual impact of the goal PPs as a side effect of co-predication.

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Posted by Tony Marmo at 01:01 BST

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