Truthmaker semantics for natural language: Attitude verbs, modals, and intensional transitive verbs

Moltmann, Friederike

doi:10.1515/tl-2020-0010

Cited by 18 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…If Sit-CPs described content, then Sit-DPs would have to denote entities that have content. A characteristic feature of such entities is their ability to combine with predicates like 'true', 'false', 'mistaken' (Moulton 2009;Elliott 2017;Moltmann 2020). However, Sit-DPs are incompatible with such predicates, as is shown in ( 14).…”

Section: Embedded čTo-clauses Are Modifiersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Embedded clauses that combine with Cont-DPs (henceforth Cont-CPs) have been discussed quite extensively in the literature (Stowell 1981;Moltmann 1989;Kratzer 2006;Moulton 2009;Moltmann 2013Moltmann , 2014Moulton 2015;Kratzer 2016;Elliott 2016Elliott , 2017Moltmann 2020;Roberts 2020;Srinivas & Legendre 2020), often in the process of arguing for semantics like in (1c). Clauses that combine with Sit-DPs (henceforth Sit-CPs) received almost no attention in the literature, with the notable exception of Moltmann (2021) discussing the semantics of constructions with the noun 'case'.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The dual life of embedded CPs: Evidence from Russian čto-clauses

Bondarenko

2022

SALT

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With the data from clauses with the complementizer čto in Russian, I argue that embedded finite clauses with the same morphosyntactic appearance can receive two different denotations depending on the argument that they modify. I show that čto-clauses can combine with both nouns like mysl’ ‘thought’ and nouns like situacija ‘situation’, and that they do not have the same interpretation in these two cases. I propose that when čto-clauses combine with predicates of contentful individuals (like mysl’ ‘thought’), they describe the propositional content that these individuals have (Moltmann 1989, Kratzer 2006, Moulton 2015, a.o.). However when they combine with predicates of situations (like situacija ‘situation’), they provide the proposition that these situations exemplify. I furthermore show that the two meanings of čto-clauses can be detected when they occur with verbs as well, and sketch out a more decompositional view of how the two interpretations arise based on comparison with -(n)un-clauses that modify nouns in Korean.

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Section: Embedded čTo-clauses Are Modifiersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The dual life of embedded CPs: Evidence from Russian čto-clauses

Bondarenko

2022

SALT

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“…In general, object arguments of intensional verbs are understood more in terms of their meaning than of their reference and thus the objects of intensional verbs are potentially non-existent or nonspecific (Forbes, 2020). This understanding poses challenges for conceptions of meaning in which reference plays a central role (Moltmann, 2020;Schwarz, 2020) and has led to arguments that a satisfactory definition of meaning in natural language may depend primarily on the analysis of intensional verbs (D'Ambrosio, 2019). 3 Significance values for coefficients from linear models here and throughout were obtained using the lmerTest package.…”

Section: Open Research Badgesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Iconicity and Conventionalization on Word Order Preferences

et al. 2022

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Of the six possible orderings of the three main constituents of language (subject, verb, and object), two—SOV and SVO—are predominant cross‐linguistically. Previous research using the silent gesture paradigm in which hearing participants produce or respond to gestures without speech has shown that different factors such as reversibility, salience, and animacy can affect the preferences for different orders. Here, we test whether participants’ preferences for orders that are conditioned on the semantics of the event change depending on (i) the iconicity of individual gestural elements and (ii) the prior knowledge of a conventional lexicon. Our findings demonstrate the same preference for semantically conditioned word order found in previous studies, specifically that SOV and SVO are preferred differentially for different types of events. We do not find that iconicity of individual gestures affects participants’ ordering preferences; however, we do find that learning a lexicon leads to a stronger preference for SVO‐like orders overall. Finally, we compare our findings from English speakers, using an SVO‐dominant language, with data from speakers of an SOV‐dominant language, Turkish. We find that, while learning a lexicon leads to an increase in SVO preference for both sets of participants, this effect is mediated by language background and event type, suggesting that an interplay of factors together determines preferences for different ordering patterns. Taken together, our results support a view of word order as a gradient phenomenon responding to multiple biases.

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“…This has as a consequence that the objects of intensional verbs are potentially non-existent or nonspecific (Forbes, 2020), although there are several potential ways to distinguish intensionals from other verbs (Saul, 2002). The class of verbs has caused semanticists to rethink how verbs and their arguments combine, and has challenged conceptions of meaning in which reference plays a central role (Moltmann, 2020;Schwarz, 2020). Some participants from both language backgrounds produced gesture sequences with different orders, conditioned on the semantics of the eventextensional events were produced most frequently with SOV-like order, while intensional events were produced with SVO-like order.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From improvisation to learning: how naturalness and systematicity shape language evolution

Motamedi¹,

Wolters²,

Naegeli³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Silent gesture studies, in which hearing participants from different linguistic backgrounds produce gestures to communicate events, have been used to test hypotheses about the cognitive biases that govern cross-linguistic word order preferences. In particular, the differential use of SOV and SVO order to communicate, respectively, extensional events (where the direct object exists independently of the event; e.g., girl throws ball) and intensional events (where the meaning of the direct object is potentially dependent on the verb; e.g., girl thinks of ball), has been suggested to represent a natural preference, demonstrated in improvisation contexts. However, natural languages tend to prefer systematic word orders, where a single order is used regardless of the event being communicated. We present a series of studies that investigate ordering preferences for SOV and SVO orders using an online forced-choice experiment, where participants select orders for different events i) in the absence of conventions and ii) after learning event-order mappings in different frequencies in a regularisation experiment. Our results show that natural ordering preferences arise in the absence of conventions, replicating previous findings from production experiments. In addition, we show that participants regularise the input they learn in the manual modality in two ways, such that, while the preference for systematic order patterns increases through learning, it exists in competition with the natural ordering preference, that conditions order on the semantics of the event. Using our experimental data in a computational model of cultural transmission, we show that this pattern is expected to persist over generations, suggesting that we should expect to see evidence of semantically-conditioned word order variability in at least some languages.

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Truthmaker semantics for natural language: Attitude verbs, modals, and intensional transitive verbs

Cited by 18 publications

References 58 publications

The dual life of embedded CPs: Evidence from Russian čto-clauses

The dual life of embedded CPs: Evidence from Russian čto-clauses

The Effects of Iconicity and Conventionalization on Word Order Preferences

From improvisation to learning: how naturalness and systematicity shape language evolution

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