I present and defend an account of indexicals that treats indexicals as presuppositional expressions. I argue that the distinction between presupposed and asserted content can replace the more restrictive distinction between character and content that is characteristic of Kaplanian, two-dimensional views. My account, "Presuppositional Indexicals" (PI), is simpler than a two-dimensional account because it does not posit a special layer of meaning for indexicals that cannot interact with truth-conditional content. PI also has broader scope than two-dimensional theories. It opens the door to a general theory of definite noun phrases according to which all definites have two components to their meaning: an asserted component, which contributes new information to a discourse, and a presuppositional component, which determines where asserted information will be attached in a discourse. PI does not stipulate rigidity or referentiality for indexicals as many other theories do. Indexicals do receive a special semantic treatment in PI, but their special semantics are captured entirely in terms of a strategy that indexicals exhibit for the resolution of their presuppositions. / text

The dissertation investigates syntactic and semantic aspects of the indefinite pronoun system in Modern Hebrew and consists of an experimental part and a theoretical part. The experimental part presents the grammaticality judgment task conducted to test three theoretical questions: (1) the relation between negation and the licensing of AF `any' and KOL `any'; (2) the contrast between EYZE `some' and EYZESEHU `some' in terms of specificity; and (3) the correlation between syntactic position and free choice readings. Three main theoretical findings are contributed by this work. First, it is shown that from a typological viewpoint, Hebrew, a Semitic language, patterns with Romance and Germanic languages, rather than Japanese-type languages, in having indefinite pronouns specialized for particular operators available in the discourse. Second, the thesis proposes a novel unified syntax-semantics for KOL which accounts for its interpretational variability. Working with the Kratzer and Shimoyama (2002) framework where indefinite pronouns generate sets of individual alternatives, the semantics of a KOL--modified noun phrase is formalized as a variable and containing a restriction. When this restriction ranges over kinds, KOL receives a generic reading; when the restriction is over a contextually specified set of entities, KOL has an episodic reading. In these cases, the KOL--phrase moves to the argument position of a universal quantifier which binds the individual alternatives generated by the KOL--phrase. If KOL stays in situ, the individual alternatives are allowed to expand into propositional alternatives, resulting in the free choice reading. Third, I discuss the DP-internal structure of [eyze(N)se-hu (N)] and [(N) kol(N)se-hu], treating 'se-hu' as a CP. I propose that there is a correlation between the postnominal position and the free choice readings of these pronouns, suggesting that domain restrictions, usually derived in the semantics-pragmatics, may also be encoded in the syntax. If this hypothesis is on the right track, it could provide us with a better understanding of how and when in the process of language acquisition domain restrictions found with indefinite pronouns are acquired.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Göteborg, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 219-238).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1964. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-110).

Orientador: Bento Carlos Dias da Silva / Banca: Clotilde de Almeida Azevedo Murakawa / Banca: Patrícia Tosqui Lucks / Resumo: A cidade de Ibitinga destaca-se nacionalmente no ramo dos bordados, com sua economia voltada quase que exclusivamente à produção dessas peças. Tendo esse contexto como pano de fundo, esta dissertação discute todo o processo linguístico e linguístico-computacional de construção de ontoléxicos - constructos formais cuja natureza léxico-conceitual possibilita o desenvolvimento de investigações teóricas (estudos lexicogramaticais) e aplicadas (construção de recursos lexicográficos e para o processamento computacional de informação textual disponível na Web). Em particular, constrói um ontoléxico exploratório que entrelaça conceitos e itens lexicais do domínio léxico-conceitual da Indústria do Bordado de Ibitinga. O embasamento teórico-metodológico assenta-se nos estudos de semântica lexical (wordnets) e de frames (framenets), pura e computacional, de processamento automático de língua natural e de ontologias. / Abstract: Ibitinga, which is a Brazilian town nationally known for its outstanding position in the embroidery business, has its economy almost totally based on the production of a broad selection of embroideries. With this embroidery industry in the backdrop, this master thesis describes the whole linguistic and computational-linguistic process of construction of ontolexicons - formal constructs whose lexical-conceptual nature allows for both theoretical (lexical-grammar construction) and applied (lexicographical and ontolexical resource construction) research. In particular, the study focuses on the design and implementation of a toy ontolexicon for the Ibitinga Embroydery Industry lexical-conceptual domain. Its theoretical foundations have drawn heavily on lexical semantics (wordnets), frame semantics (framenets), natural language processing, and ontologies. / Mestre

Semantics is the study of meaning and here we explore it through three major representations: brain, image and text. Researchers in the past have performed various studies to understand the similarities between semantic features across all the three representations. Distributional Semantic (DS) models or word vectors that are trained on text corpora have been widely used to study the convergence of semantic information in the human brain. Moreover, they have been incorporated into various NLP applications such as document categorization, speech to text and machine translation. Due to their widespread adoption by researchers and industry alike, it becomes imperative to test and evaluate the performance of di erent word vectors models. In this thesis, we publish the second iteration of BrainBench: a system designed to evaluate and benchmark word vectors using brain data by incorporating two new Italian brain datasets collected using fMRI and EEG technology. In the second half of the thesis, we explore semantics in Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). CNN is a computational model that is the state of the art technology for object recognition from images. However, these networks are currently considered a black-box and there is an apparent lack of understanding on why various CNN architectures perform better than the other. In this thesis, we also propose a novel method to understand CNNs by studying the semantic representation through its hierarchical layers. The convergence of semantic information in these networks is studied with the help of DS models following similar methodologies used to study semantics in the human brain. Our results provide substantial evidence that Convolutional Neural Networks do learn semantics from the images, and the features learned by the CNNs correlate to the semantics of the object in the image. Our methodology and results could potentially pave the way for improved design and debugging of CNNs. / Graduate

The bei construction has often been identified as a passive construction. This thesis uses Davis's (1983) semantic framework and Hsueh's (1989) descriptive corollaries to account for the various characteristics of the bei construction and proposes that the bei construction is not a passive construction but a more general Focus device.

The dissertation investigates syntactic and semantic aspects of the indefinite pronoun system in Modern Hebrew and consists of an experimental part and a theoretical part. The experimental part presents the grammaticality judgment task conducted to test three theoretical questions: (1) the relation between negation and the licensing of AF `any' and KOL `any'; (2) the contrast between EYZE `some' and EYZESEHU `some' in terms of specificity; and (3) the correlation between syntactic position and free choice readings. Three main theoretical findings are contributed by this work. First, it is shown that from a typological viewpoint, Hebrew, a Semitic language, patterns with Romance and Germanic languages, rather than Japanese-type languages, in having indefinite pronouns specialized for particular operators available in the discourse. Second, the thesis proposes a novel unified syntax-semantics for KOL which accounts for its interpretational variability. Working with the Kratzer and Shimoyama (2002) framework where indefinite pronouns generate sets of individual alternatives, the semantics of a KOL--modified noun phrase is formalized as a variable and containing a restriction. When this restriction ranges over kinds, KOL receives a generic reading; when the restriction is over a contextually specified set of entities, KOL has an episodic reading. In these cases, the KOL--phrase moves to the argument position of a universal quantifier which binds the individual alternatives generated by the KOL--phrase. If KOL stays in situ, the individual alternatives are allowed to expand into propositional alternatives, resulting in the free choice reading. Third, I discuss the DP-internal structure of [eyze(N)se-hu (N)] and [(N) kol(N)se-hu], treating 'se-hu' as a CP. I propose that there is a correlation between the postnominal position and the free choice readings of these pronouns, suggesting that domain restrictions, usually derived in the semantics-pragmatics, may also be encoded in the syntax. If this hypothesis is on the right track, it could provide us with a better understanding of how and when in the process of language acquisition domain restrictions found with indefinite pronouns are acquired.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1966 M158 / Master of Science

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 18-21, 2004 / Town & Country Resort, San Diego, California / CCT is conducting research to provide a cross platform software capability that enables a common semantic for control and monitor of highly distributed systems-of-systems C^2 architectures by auto-generating semantic processing services from standardized metadata specifications. This new capability is significant because it will reduce development, operations, and support costs for legacy and future systems that are part of ground and space based distributed command and control systems. It will also establish a space systems information exchange model that can support future highly interoperable and mobile software systems.