This Thesis addresses issues that lie at the intersection of two broad philosophical projects: inferentialism and contextualism. It discusses and defends an account of the logical concepts based on the following two ideas: 1) that the logical concepts are constituted by our canonical inferential usages of them; 2) that to grasp, or possess, a logical concept is to undertake an inferential commitment to the canonical consequences of the concept when deploying it in a linguistic practice. The account focuses on the concept of universal quantification, with respect to which it also defends the view that linguistic context contributes to an interpretation of instances of the concept by determining the scope of our commitments to the canonical consequences of the quantifier. The model that I offer for the concept of universal quantification relies on, and develops, three main ideas: 1) our understanding of the concept’s inferential role is one according to which the concept expresses full inferential generality; 2) what I refer to as the ‘domain model’ (the view that the universal quantifier always ranges over a domain of quantification, and that the specification of such a domain contributes to determine the proposition expressed by sentences in which the quantifier figures) is subject to a series of crucial difficulties, and should be abandoned; 3) we should regard the undertaking of an inferential commitment to the canonical consequences of the universal quantifier as a stable and objective presupposition of a universally quantified sentence expressing a determinate proposition in context. In the last chapter of the Thesis I sketch a proposal about how contextual quantifier restrictions should be understood, and articulate the main challenges that a commitment-theoretic story about the context-sensitivity of the universal quantifier faces.

published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

The purpose of this study is to propose a lexical analysis of inflection and cliticization in Spanish within the framework of Categorial Grammar, and to show how morphology and syntax interplay with one another in this language. I postulate that inflectional suffixes and clitics are syntactic expressions in their own right; inflectional suffixes are the instantiation of the grammatical relation, subject, whereas certain clitics, i.e. DAT and ACC clitics, are of the object. In this regard, inflection and cliticization can be conceived as functions from one set of syntactic expressions into another. I assume that inflectional suffixes and clitics are stored in the lexicon assigned to categories which specify their syntactic (and semantic) properties. These elements are combined to form complex expressions by two kinds of operations: (1) Function/argument application, and (2) Functional Composition. Three lexical rules are proposed in order to account for the distribution of the morphological properties at issue: (1) Inflection, (2) Cliticization, and (3) Complex Verb Formation. These rules make an explicit statement of what syntactic processes take place as morphologically complex expressions are formed. One consequence of my analysis is the redefinition of nominals commonly referred to as "subject NP" and "object NP" (doubled by a clitic) as elements which mark a referential contrast. This way, the formal variation as to the presence or absence of these nominals in Spanish sentences has a coherent explanation. Two rules of nominal adjunction are proposed in order to account for "clitic doubling" and "subject doubling". These two rules apply under certain conditions. With a lexical treatment of inflection and cliticization proposed, all the word formation processes in the Spanish language are now relegated to one single component, the lexicon. Morphology in Spanish, thus, has a clearly delineated domain of its own as an integral part of the lexicon. Furthermore, inflection and cliticization are morphological processes which, at the same time, construct syntactically complex expressions. This direct interplay between morphology and syntax is what uniquely characterizes the so-called "pro-drop" languages, of which Spanish is one, and distinguishes them from the "non-pro-drop" languages.

The phrasal verb is defined as a two-word idiom consisting of a verb and an adverbial or prepositional particle (such as put off for delay or come across for find or meet by chance). The increased use of such constructions in written and spoken modes of English has been noted by Kennedy 1920, Traugott 1972, Meyer 1975, and others. The categories of verb combinations that fall under the heading of phrasal verb are various. An analysis of the construction within grammars of English, from the seventeenth century Latinate grammars to the twentieth century linguistic treatments, reveals some inconsistencies in terminology and definition, posing a problem for ESL teachers and text writers. Most treatments of the structure concern surface form (such as Fraser 1976), but some recent analyses, particularly Woody 1974 and Lindner 1981, attempt to account for the semantics of the combination; however, these studies limit the category of phrasal verbs analyzed to verb + adverbial particle. Although the phrasal verb is an example of what Rutherford 1977 terms 'lexical grammar', a grammatical structure that must be taught together with a specific lexicon, an examination of the description of phrasal verbs within ESL grammars reveals a concentration on the syntactical patterning of the structure. Extensive listings of phrasal verbs (along with their meanings and appropriate use) are found mainly in dictionaries of idioms and two-word verbs (such as Meyer 1975, Cowie and Mackin 1976, Hall 1982, and Courtney 1983). This study suggests that ESL specialists consider both syntax and semantics when presenting and describing phrasal verbs and include what Rivers 1978 terms 'three levels of meaning': lexical, structural or grammatical, and socio-cultural. Because of the large number of phrasal verbs, a problem arises concerning which phrasal verbs should be presented formally in the ESL class. The study cites Larsen 1974, Dulay and Burt 1977, and Turano-Perkins 1979, who suggest that frequency of use should be a criterion in determining the order of grammatical structures to be taught. The study suggests that more research is needed in the area of frequency studies.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the investigation of the semantics and syntax of Negative Words (N-words) in negative concord languages, with a focus on Spanish. An in-depth look into the syntactic behavior as well as into the meaning of terms such as nadie 'nobody', nada 'nothing', nunca 'never', etc., will provide some insight into the controversial nature of these words in the Romance languages as well as a better understanding of their peculiar pattern of distribution. On a larger picture, a thorough investigation of the semantics and syntax of these items will, in turn, contribute to a better understanding of the nature of negative polarity items in general. Thus, as I just anticipated, my conclusion is that N-words are in fact equivalent to negative polarity items, and that the phenomenon of negative concord, by which, in some languages, various negative items contribute only one semantic negation to a sentence, is a subcase of the crosslinguistic phenomenon of negative polarity licensing. In this respect, my analysis of N-words builds on the analyses of Bosque (1980) and Laka (1990). I base my conclusion that N-words are negative polarity items upon an extensive survey of comparative data coming from different Romance languages as well as from English, and I bring up new data and arguments supporting my view on the issue. In addition to arguing for the negative polarity nature of N-words, I also explore the extent to which syntactic operations are involved in the licensing of N-words, and I provide evidence showing that N-word licensing does not directly involve syntactic movement (contra most standard assumptions). Finally, in my investigation of the nature of N-words, I go beyond simply identifying them as negative polarity items. Specifically, I look deeply into the logicosemantic contribution of N-words, and I present arguments and data showing that N-words do not have either negative or any other kind of quantificational force. Rather, as I argue, they are better characterized as logicosemantic variables (in the sense of Kamp 1981 and Heim 1982.) In this regard, I depart from Bosque's (1980) and Laka's (1990) characterization of N-words. My view is more radical than theirs in that I do not just claim that N-words do not have inherent negative content, but also that they do not have any quantificational force of their own at all.

No description available.

Linguistic research suggests that speakers represent syllable structure by a CV-frame. CVC syllables are more frequent than VCC ones. Further, the presence of VCC syllables in a language asymmetrically implies the presence of CVC syllables. These typological facts may reflect grammatical constraints. Alternatively, people's preferences may be due solely to their sensitivity to the statistical properties of sound combinations in their language. I demonstrate that participants in an auditory lexical decision task reject VCC nonwords faster than CVC nonwords, suggesting that the marked VCC syllables are dispreferred relative to CVC syllables. In a second experiment, I show that people are also sensitive to the distribution of these frames in the experiment. Findings indicate that syllable structure is represented at the phonological level, that individuals have preferences for certain syllables, and that these preferences can not be accounted for by the statistical properties of the stimuli. / by Kayla Causey. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2008. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2008. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Orientador: Cristina Martins Fargetti / Banca: Gladis Massini-Cagliari / Banca: Angélica Terezinha Carmo Rodrigues / Banca: Mônica Veloso Borges / Banca: Angel H. Corbera Mori / Resumo: Esta tese tem por objetivo analisar a língua wauja em seus aspectos fonológicos e morfossintáticos. A língua wauja pertence à família linguística arawak e é falada por aproximadamente 410 pessoas que vivem na aldeia Piyulaga, localizada no Parque Indígena do Xingu, no Estado de Mato Grosso. No presente trabalho, há informações sobre o povo wauja, sua situação linguística, algumas considerações sobre a escola na aldeia e, também, uma explicitação do modelo teórico-metodológico utilizado para a coleta de dados em campo. A revisão bibliográfica aborda as primeiras notícias publicadas sobre os wauja, as listas de palavras, os estudos prévios e a filiação genética da família arawak. Na análise fonológica, foram descritos os segmentos consonantais, vocálicos, aproximantes, padrões silábicos, acento, nasalidade, processos morfofonológicos e, ainda, algumas considerações sobre as convenções ortográficas utilizadas na escola da aldeia. Em relação à morfologia, a tese descreve as seguintes categorias gramaticais: nomes, verbos, adjetivos, advérbios, pronomes, formas interrogativas e quantificadores. Na análise sintática, a tese apresenta os tipos de predicados, as sentenças declarativas, interrogativas, imperativas e as orações complexas, que por sua vez, dividem-se em coordenadas (conjuntivas, adversativas e disjuntivas) e subordinadas (orações complemento, relativas, adverbiais, temporais e causais). Esta tese, portanto, busca contribuir para a documentação, descrição e análise das línguas indígenas brasileiras, em especial, as línguas da família arawak / Abstract: The aim of this thesis is to analyse the phonological and morphosyntathic aspects of Wauja language. Wauja is part of the Arawak linguistic family and is spoken by approximately 410 people living in Piyulaga village, located in the Xingu Indigenous Park, state of Mato Grosso. This work presents information about Wauja people, their linguistic situation, some considerations on the school of the village, and a presentation of the theoreticalmethodological framework applied to the collecting of field data. The bibliographical review contains the first notes published about Wauja, word lists, early studies of the language, and the genetic affiliation of the Arawak family. In the phonological analysis it is described consonantal, vocalic and approximant segments, syllabic patterns, stress, nasality, morphophonological processes, and some considerations on the orthographical conventions used in the school of the village. Concerning the morphology, this thesis describes the following grammatical categories: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, interrogative forms and quantifiers. In the syntactical analysis, this dissertation presents the kinds of predicates, declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences. It also presents complex sentences, which can be coordinate (conjunctive, adversative and disjunctive) and subordinated (complement, relative, adverbial, temporal and causal). This thesis therefore aims to contribute to the documentation, description and analysis of Brazilian indigenous languages, specially the languages of Arawak family / Doutor

Wong, Chin Chung. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-143). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Objectives --- p.3 / Chapter 1.2 --- Thesis Outline --- p.5 / Chapter 2 --- Background in Natural Language Understanding --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1 --- Rule-based Approaches --- p.7 / Chapter 2.2 --- Corpus-based Approaches --- p.8 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Stochastic Approaches --- p.8 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Phrase-spotting Approaches --- p.9 / Chapter 2.3 --- The ATIS Domain --- p.10 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Chinese Corpus Preparation --- p.11 / Chapter 3 --- Semi-automatic Grammar Induction - Baseline Approach --- p.13 / Chapter 3.1 --- Background in Grammar Induction --- p.13 / Chapter 3.1.1 --- Simulated Annealing --- p.14 / Chapter 3.1.2 --- Bayesian Grammar Induction --- p.14 / Chapter 3.1.3 --- Probabilistic Grammar Acquisition --- p.15 / Chapter 3.2 --- Semi-automatic Grammar Induction 一 Baseline Approach --- p.16 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Spatial Clustering --- p.16 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Temporal Clustering --- p.18 / Chapter 3.2.3 --- Post-processing --- p.19 / Chapter 3.2.4 --- Four Aspects for Enhancements --- p.20 / Chapter 3.3 --- Chapter Summary --- p.22 / Chapter 4 --- Semi-automatic Grammar Induction - Enhanced Approach --- p.23 / Chapter 4.1 --- Evaluating Induced Grammars --- p.24 / Chapter 4.2 --- Stopping Criterion --- p.26 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- Cross-checking with Recall Values --- p.29 / Chapter 4.3 --- Improvements on Temporal Clustering --- p.32 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- Evaluation --- p.39 / Chapter 4.4 --- Improvements on Spatial Clustering --- p.46 / Chapter 4.4.1 --- Distance Measures --- p.48 / Chapter 4.4.2 --- Evaluation --- p.57 / Chapter 4.5 --- Enhancements based on Intelligent Selection --- p.62 / Chapter 4.5.1 --- Informed Selection between Spatial Clustering and Tem- poral Clustering --- p.62 / Chapter 4.5.2 --- Selecting the Number of Clusters Per Iteration --- p.64 / Chapter 4.5.3 --- An Example for Intelligent Selection --- p.64 / Chapter 4.5.4 --- Evaluation --- p.68 / Chapter 4.6 --- Chapter Summary --- p.71 / Chapter 5 --- Bidirectional Machine Translation using Induced Grammars ´ؤBaseline Approach --- p.73 / Chapter 5.1 --- Background in Machine Translation --- p.75 / Chapter 5.1.1 --- Rule-based Machine Translation --- p.75 / Chapter 5.1.2 --- Statistical Machine Translation --- p.76 / Chapter 5.1.3 --- Knowledge-based Machine Translation --- p.77 / Chapter 5.1.4 --- Example-based Machine Translation --- p.78 / Chapter 5.1.5 --- Evaluation --- p.79 / Chapter 5.2 --- Baseline Configuration on Bidirectional Machine Translation System --- p.84 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Bilingual Dictionary --- p.84 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Concept Alignments --- p.85 / Chapter 5.2.3 --- Translation Process --- p.89 / Chapter 5.2.4 --- Two Aspects for Enhancements --- p.90 / Chapter 5.3 --- Chapter Summary --- p.91 / Chapter 6 --- Bidirectional Machine Translation ´ؤ Enhanced Approach --- p.92 / Chapter 6.1 --- Concept Alignments --- p.93 / Chapter 6.1.1 --- Enhanced Alignment Scheme --- p.95 / Chapter 6.1.2 --- Experiment --- p.97 / Chapter 6.2 --- Grammar Checker --- p.100 / Chapter 6.2.1 --- Components for Grammar Checking --- p.101 / Chapter 6.3 --- Evaluation --- p.117 / Chapter 6.3.1 --- Bleu Score Performance --- p.118 / Chapter 6.3.2 --- Modified Bleu Score --- p.122 / Chapter 6.4 --- Chapter Summary --- p.130 / Chapter 7 --- Conclusions --- p.131 / Chapter 7.1 --- Summary --- p.131 / Chapter 7.2 --- Contributions --- p.134 / Chapter 7.3 --- Future work --- p.136 / Bibliography --- p.137 / Chapter A --- Original SQL Queries --- p.144 / Chapter B --- Seeded Categories --- p.146 / Chapter C --- 3 Alignment Categories --- p.147 / Chapter D --- Labels of Syntactic Structures in Grammar Checker --- p.148

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1980. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Bibliography: leaves 116-120. / by Robert Cregar Berwick. / M.S.