CAS LX 502 Semantics

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CAS LX 502Semantics

• 4b. Events and modification
• 4.1-4.4

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Adverbs

• How might we describe the meaning of an adverb?
  Say, loudly.
• The hooligan shouted loudly.
• Well, it seems a bit like this
• There was a shouting event.
• The hooligan was the Agent of that event.
• It was a loud event.
• Adverbs seem to modify events

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Adverb(-like thing)s as event modifiers

• The hooligan shouted loudly on Saturday atop the
  bench by the tree in the rain.
• This asserts the existence of an event that
• Is a shouting
• Has the hooligan as Agent
• Is loud
• Is on Saturday
• Is atop the bench
• Is by the tree
• Is in the rain
• Great for manner and temporal adverbs.

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Manner, location, and temporal adverb(ial)s

• Manner
• Pat ate the sandwich quickly
• Chris answered the question brilliantly
• Lynn entered the intersection cautiously
• Location
• Pat drove home in the rain
• Chris slipped on Comm Ave
• Temporal
• Lynn won the lottery yesterday
• Tracy paid the damage deposit in August

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Subject-oriented adverbs

• Zinédine intentionally hit Marco.
• Marco was intentionally hit by Zinédine.
• Its not the whole event that is intentional, it
  is somehow related to one of the participants.
  The subject? Well, yes. The Agent? Maybe.
• That second one seems a bit ambiguous

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Speaker-oriented adverbs

• Annoyingly, Pat was late.
• Predictably, Pat (stupidly) answered the
  questions (brilliantly)

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Modification

• Pat awoke
• Pat awoke suddenly
• Pat awoke suddenly this morning
• This is a yellow pencil
• This is yellow
• This is a pencil

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Modification

• Adjectives modify nouns by adding additional
  conditions. Yellow is an intersective adjective.

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Vague adjectives

• Sam is a tall cockroach.
• Hydrogen is a big atom.
• Menkaures is a small Pyramid.
• Stampy is atall elephant.

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Stampy is a tall elephant

• It seems that all Stampy is a tall elephant can
  mean is Stampy is tall for an elephant.
• This is different from yellow.
• To get the meaning of tall right seems to require
  taking into account the meaning of the noun

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Stampy is a tall elephant

• To describe the meaning of yellow, we might
  simply say something like
• ?xx is yellow
• But tall seems to be of a higher order (more
  complex type)
• ?P?xx is tall compared to members of yP(y)

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Modification

• Given that you can use yellow pencil wherever you
  use pencil, we can suppose that the syntax of
  adjectives would be something like this.
• N ? Adj N
• Adj ? yellow
• N ? pencil
• What does this predict already? (Given a more
  elaborate lexicon, at least)

N
Adj
N
yellow
pencil
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Modification

• And the semantics would be as youd expect
• yellowM ?xx is yellow in M
• pencilM ?xx is a pencil in M
• Both type lte,tgt
• Note Im taking the same shortcut (or, being
  equally sloppy) here as in the F2 definitions,
  skipping the F(yellow) step.

N
Adj
N
yellow
pencil
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Modification

• Trying to find the semantic value of the whole
  thing leads to a problem, of a sort
• We need a new way to combine things
• Predicate modification? ?M ?x?(x) ? ?(x)

N
Adj
N
yellow
pencil
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Modification

• Thus the whole thing winds up with a semantic
  value of
• ?zyellowM(z) ? pencilM(z)
• ?z?xx is yellow in M(z)? ?xx is a pencil
  in M(z)
• ?zz is yellow in M ? z is a pencil in M
• Predicate modification? ?M ?z?(z) ? ?(z)
• Alphabetic variants ?zP(z) ?xP(x)

N
Adj
N
yellow
pencil
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Predicate Modification

• So, it turns out we need a third rule of
  interpretation (for where functional application
  cannot apply)
• Functional applicationg a b M bM ( aM
  ) or aM ( bM ) whichever is defined
• Pass-Upb aM aM
• Predicate modification? ?M ?z?(z) ? ?(z)

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Stampy is a tall elephant

• For tall, as we already saw, this wont work
  because tall is a bit more complex.
• What we need is not to intersect the two, but
  rather to have tall take elephant as an argument.
• Assume
• elephantM ?xx is an elephant in M
• Type lte,tgt

N
Adj
N
tall
elephant
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Stampy is a tall elephant

• tallM ?P?xx is tall compared to members of
  yP(y)
• The idea tall takes elephant (call it P) and
  gives back the (lte,tgt) property
• ?xx is tall compared to members of
  yelephantM(y)
• ?xx is tall compared to the set of elephants in
  M
• What type is tall then?
• Takes lte,tgt, returns lte,tgt.

N
Adj
N
tall
elephant
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Different mechanisms?

• Revisiting yellowdoes the better theory have two
  different ways of combining adjectives and nouns?
• Could we not treat yellow the same way as we
  treat tall?
• yellowM ?P?xx is yellow ? P(x)
• We could. It works just as well. However, we will
  need PM elsewhere too
• Stampy is an elephant (that) Bart won.

N
Adj
N
tall
elephant
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Even harder cases

• Consider an adjective like fake
• Fake gun
• How might we describe the semantics of fake?
• Is it intersective?
• Can we model it the same way we modeled tall?

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The effect of is a

• So far weve really only dealt with tall
  elephant, but what about the context of a full
  sentence like Stampy is a tall elephant?
• We seem to get the right meaning if we simply
  ignore is and a.
• Then it comes out just like Stampy swims.
• This might make a little bit more sense out of
  the way we treated is boring.
• We could get away with that because is actually
  doesnt contribute anything. We might say it is
  there simply because the syntax of English (not
  the semantics) requires it.

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What kind of thing is a(n)?

• A noun phrase (a noun with extra stufflike an
  article or an adjective something that can be
  the subject of a sentence) with a(n) is called
  indefinite.
• Intuitively, we might class a(n) together with
  the or every (articles, or determiners)but their
  effect on the meaning seems to be different.
• Specifically, it doesnt seem like a(n) adds
  anything either (like is didnt).

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Cf. the

• The article the, on the other hand, does seem to
  have a contribution to the meaning.
• The tall elephant is hungry.
• Bond is hungry.
• Wed worked out tall elephant to be a property.
  But The tall elephant seems to refer to an
  individual.
• The seems to convert a property into an
  individual. How?

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The, definite article

• What the seems to do is pick some individual that
  has the property.
• Which one?
• Well, if you use the, you seem to assume that
  there is some salient individual with the
  property that you can pick.
• Specifically, the presupposes that there is a
  unique and salient individual.

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The elephant

• So, how could we model the?
• First, we need to get it to be generated by the
  syntax.
• Considerations
• The (tall) (yellow) elephant
• The an elephant
• Tall the elephant
• Adjectives can be iterated, but
  articles/determiners cannot.
• Combining a N and Adj produces another N (with
  which an Adj can be combined)
• Combining a Det and a N produces something
  different.

DP
Det
N
the
elephant
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The elephant

• Thus
• Det ? the, a(n)
• DP ? Det N
• And to resolve this with the rest of the grammar
• DP ? N
• DP ? Bond, Loren,
• (replacing N ? Bond, Loren, )
• S ? DP VP
• (replacing S ? N VP)
• VP ? Vt DP
• (replacing S ? N VP)

DP
N
Det
Adj
N
the
yellow
elephant
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The elephant

• Now, (yellow) elephant was a property, lte,tgt,
  true/false of individuals.
• And the (yellow) elephant is an individual (some
  salient, unique individual with the property
  (yellow) elephant).
• So, the takes a property (lte,tgt) and returns an
  individual (ltegt).
• ltlte,tgt,egt

DP
N
Det
Adj
N
the
yellow
elephant
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The elephant

• So, the
• theM ?Px such that P(x)
• Presupposes there is a unique x to choose, that
  is familiar.
• There are additional complexities, but this will
  do for the moment.

DP
N
Det
Adj
N
the
yellow
elephant
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Revisiting indefinites

• Actually, a(n) can serve this function as well
• A tall elephant is hungry.
• Here too, we seem to be talking about an
  individual.
• In this case, there need not be a unique and
  salient onewhat it seems to assert is that among
  the individuals with the property tall elephant,
  one can be found that (also) has the property is
  hungry.

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Three kinds of indefinites

• In fact, there seem to be at least three kinds of
  indefinite noun phrase.
• An elephant is hungry
• I can tell from the noise. (nonspecific)
• Guess which one (specific)
• and lives in hot climates (generic/kind)
• And maybe a fourth, though this might be also
  simply a version of the first one.
• Stampy is an elephant
• Well get into this further at the same time as
  we talk about Every elephant.

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Modification by relative clauses

• The elephant that I saw
• that I saw acts here like an adjective.
• Its true of things that I saw, and combines
  intersectively with elephant.
• Restrictive relative
• The elephant, who is boring, is hungry.
• Not quite the same thing as The boring elephant
  is hungry. Its essentially expressing a second
  proposition The elephant is boring.
• Non-restrictive relative

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Relative clauses

• The form of a relative clause is
• that/which/who/Ø S
• Where S is missing something.
• The dog (who/that) I saw _
• The dog which/that _ bit me
• The interpretation is basically The property of
  being able to be filled in the blank truthfully
• ?xx such that x bit me
• ?xx such that I saw x
• More on how we can arrive at this compositionally
  later

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?

• ? ?
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• ? ?
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