Semantics & Pragmatics Flashcards
TW3V14203 UU
Conversation-internal
Taking into account other speaker’s representation of the conversation.
What two theories does Avrutin take in his article?
Binding Theory from the syntactic side and
File Change Semantics from the discourse side.
For what account of linguistic development and breakdown does Avrutin argue overall?
A modular account.
What two things play a role in restricting the range of possible interpretations of pronominal reference?
C-command and locality
Principle A of the Binding Principles
Reflexives must be locally bound.
Principle B of the Binding Principles
Pronouns must be locally free.
When is a pronoun bound?
If it is coindexed with another element that c-commands it.
Speaker-internal
A reflection of the speakers’ knowledge of language.
Deixis
When general phrases are used to refer to a specific thing, for example ‘tomorrow’, ‘there’, or ‘it’. Literally: ‘pointing’.
intra-sentential antecedent
When the anaphor and the antecedent occur within a single sentence.
Antecedent
The thing that provides the context for the interpretation of the anaphor, for example ‘Mary’ is the antecedent of ‘her’.
When does A c-command B?
A does not dominate B, B does not dominate A and the nearest branching node above A dominates B.
When are two things coindexed?
When they refer to the same referent and thus get the same index.
Where does meaning begin?
At the level of morphology
What two types of semantics do we discuss?
- Lexical semantics
- Compositional semantics
Lexical semantics
The word meaning.
Compositional semantics
The truth condition that arises from the combination of lexical items, the relationship between sets.
Frequency effect
The phenomenon that more frequent words are easier and faster to retrieve.
Presupposition
Something that is assumed to be true (beforehand).
What two properties of a sentence/utterance do we need to disinguish?
- grammaticality
- acceptability
Discourse
A system that is built on what the listeners hear, and influenced by what they know or heard before.
FCM
file change model
What do indefinitie NPs do in the FCM?
They introduce new ‘filecards’.
What do definite NPs do in the FCM?
They update information.
What does it mean for an item to be activated in the FCM?
It is present in working memory, meaning its level of activation is above a certain threshold.
What is the purpose of conversation according to the FCM?
To build a file.
DRT
discourse representation theory
What does priming tell us about the lexicon?
That it incorporates both phonological features and meaning.
Bridging
The ability to transfer knowledge from one system to another, for example between people groups with different common grounds.
Word
combination of sound and meaning
entropy
lack of order or predictability
What three types of demonstratives do we distinguish?
- Proximal
- Medial
- Distal
Proximal demonstrative
Refers to something close to the 1st person.
Medial demonstrative
Refers to something close to the adressee
Distal demonstrative
Refers to something far away from both the speaker and the adressee.
What three mechanisms of introducing NP into discourse does Avrutin mention in part 2?
- Incorporation
- Accomodation
- Deictic use of NP
Lexical knowledge
Knowing the words of the language
Syntactic competence
Being able to combine words into grammatical strings.
Guise
A representation of a person or entity which shares properties with but is not necessarily identical to the person or entity.
Variable anaphor
When the anaphor’s interpretation varies with the value assigned to its antecedent.
Discourse anaphor
When the interpretation relies on the memory, on the context of discourse.
R-expression
Referential expression: a category of noun.
Definite NPs can be either… or …
Names
Pronominals
What is the 1st rule of NP representation in discourse?
Instantiate the variable index of an indefinite NP with a number of a new filecard.
What is the 2nd rule of NP representation in discourse?
Instantiate the variable index of a definite NP with a number of an old file card.
What is the 3rd rule of NP representation in discourse?
Instantiate two identical variable indices with the same number, and two different indices with different numbers.
What is the 4th rule of NP representation in discourse? (proposed in Avrutin part 2)
Instantiate the variable index of a definite NP with a number of a new file card only if this card can be bridged to another one.
Principle P
Two coreferential elements are coindexed unless the context specifies otherwise.
Why is it likely that introduction of new file cards is avoided?
The smaller the file, the easier to maintain.
Immediate situation use
Use without introduction.
Larger situation use
When the first mention is natural, so no introduction is necessary. Depends on some shared knowledge.
Associative anaphoric use
An example of the first mention use of a definite NP. Requires making inferences on the basis of non-linguistic knowledge.
(ex: ‘The sun is shining’)
Incorporation
A procedure of updating information on an already existing file card.
Accomodation
when a new file card is made by bridging.
What file do speakers start a conversation with?
Multiple file cards with their own number. Cards about the world, about community, location etc.
Interface
The place where different systems, different representations, interact with each other.
What are the three types of file cards?
- Individuals
- Events
- Locations
What are the possible operations on the headings of file cards?
- Copy-and-paste
- Cut-and-paste
- Bridging
What prepositions have a discourse representation?
Only lexical prepositions; they can introduce a discourse referent LOCATION.
How is an INDIVIDUAL file card introduced from syntax in conversation?
by a determiner phrase
How is an EVENT file card introduced from syntax into conversation?
By a tense phrase.
How is a LOCATION file card introduced from syntax into conversation?
By a prepositional phrase.
What do we mean with ‘Elements in syntax are variables, not constants’?
When we say ‘dog’, we identify a set of possible dogs, not a specific one. Same for verbs. So it can refer to a set.
How do we deal with syntax elements being variables when we make file cards?
We give them a variable index, ex: i.
What 3 entities from syntax participate in creating discourse referents?
- Functional category
- Lexical category
- (Variable) index
What are the 3 requirements of discourse entities from a psycholinguistic perspective?
- Separated from each other
- Meaningful
- Identifiable
How do we translate syntactic functional category to discourse?
Frame (separator)
How do we translate syntactic lexical category to discourse?
Heading (lexical meaning)
How do we translate syntactic index to discourse?
Number (concrete identity)
What does it mean when
‘a variable has been instantiated with a constant’?
One of the possible values of variables belonging to the set identified by X is x. We can instantiate variable X with a number in the set (x), which is the constant.
What does every conversation presuppose?
Speaker and listener
How are pronouns represented in discourse?
Pronouns are definite expressions (DP) with no specific lexical content. Only the frame, without heading.
What is rule 5 of discourse representation?
No frame without heading.
What is rule 6 of discourse representation?
No heading without frame
What is rule 7 of discourse representation?
No uninterpretable discourse entities (file cards) are allowed in discourse.
When is a file card interpretable?
When it is complete.
When is a file card complete?
when it has a frame, heading and number.
What operation on file cards is used to create a pronoun file card?
Copy-and-paste
Why do we feel that the antecedent name has to be repeated again after referring to it a few times with a pronoun or sth lik ethat?
Some activation is lost when copy-and-paste is carried out, so we feel the antecedent needs to be reactivated.
What operation do we use for creating a reflexive file card?
cut-and-paste
What is the distribution between reflexive types ‘her’ and ‘herself’?
It is typically complementary: you can use either ‘her’, or ‘herself’, but they’re almost never always possible.
Logophoricity
A binding relation where an antecedent outside of the clause is connected to an anaphor within the clause.
Discourse is a system intermediate between … and …
syntax
general cognition
How fast do we access the most frequent/first lexical meaning?
Within 50-100 msec.
How fast do we begin building a syntactic structure?
Withing 100-200 msec, right after we access the first/ most frequent lexical meaning.
What is next after we access the most frequent lexical meaning and build a syntactic structure?
The context, the common ground. Takes about 400 msec more.
D-linking (abbreviation)
Discourse-linked
What is the test for checking if there is a discourse referent?
To use a referentially dependent element: something that require a source of interpretation.
What does the preference for a visual source of reference in children at some stage mean for their file construction?
They may introduce a heading for the empty card not from the text, but from the visual scene.
Deductive reasoning
Concerned with conclusions that follow with certainty from their premises
Inductive reasoning
Concerned with conclusions that probabilistically follow from their premises.
Modus ponens
Rule of inference that given the proposition if A, then B and given that A is true, we can infer B.
Modus tollens
If the proposition A implies B is given and B is false, we can infer that A is fase.
Wason selection task
Participants are shown 4 double-sided cards with symbols and need to verify a rule like ‘even number this side, then vowel other side.’.
Fallacy of affirming the consequent
Turning over the A-part of the premise to check the proposition instead of other stuff. (Wason selection task)
What are the two logical errors that often occur in the Wason selection task?
- Fallacy of affirming the consequent
- Failing to take the modus tollens step.
Permission schema
The interpretation of the conditional statement as a rule about what whould be the case.
Categorical syllogism
A statement containing a quantifier all, some, no and some not.
Atmosphere hypothesis
Says logical terms used in premises of syllogism predispose participants to accept conclusions with the same terms.
Mental model theory
Says that participants judge whether a conclusion is possible by creating a mental model of a world that satisfies the premises and inspecting that model to see if conclusion is satisfied.
Prior probability
The probability that a hypothesis is true before consideration of the evidence.
Conditional probability
The probability that a particular type of evidence is true if a particular hypothesis is true.
Posterior probability
The probability that a hypothesis is true after consideration of the evidence.
Prescriptive model
Specifies the means of evaluating the probability of a hypothesis.
Descriptive model
Specifies what people actually do.
‘People are conservative’
They have a tendency to underestimate the force of evidence
Probability matching
The behaviour of choosing among alternatives in proportion to their success.
Gambler’s fallacy
The belief that, if an event has not occurred for a while, it is more likely to occur in the near future.
Subjective utility
The fact that value of for example money does not increase linearly with the money amount.
Expected utility model
Multiplies utilities and probabilities and does not consider the framing of the alternatives.
Describe the syntactic route for the sentence ‘John visited Paris and Mary did too’.
The VP ‘visited Paris’ is copied to the second conjunct.
Describe the discourse route in the sentence ‘John visited Paris and Mary did too’.
One file card Went (John, Paris) and one with only Mary. ‘Went’ is copied incl location to Mary, so Went (Mary, Paris) now.
When do we get different meanings for the syntactic and the discourse route?
When the first conjunct contains a referentially dependent element.
Strict reading
The outcome of the syntactic route.
Sloppy reading
The outcome of the discourse route.
What happens in Broca’s aphasia with strict-sloppy reading?
The syntactic operations are more difficult for Broca’s aphasics, so they prefer the sloppy reading.
Reasoning
Deriving new knowledge from information that is already known.
Deductive reasoning
Conclusions follow with certainty from the premises.
INductive reasoning
Conclusions follow probabilistically from premises.
Explain the mental model of reasoning:
Reasoning is done by constructing a mental model of sentences and reading conclusions from these.
Modus ponens
If P then Q.
P
so Q
Modus tollens
If P, then Q
not q
so not p
Name two types of logical fallacies
- Denial of the antecedent (DA).
- Affirmation of the consequent (AC)
DA (abbreviation)
Denial of the antecedent
AC (abbreviation)
Affirmation of the consequent
What is the bridge according to Zwarts?
A function in a frame.
What are the two theories about definiteness?
- Definiteness = familiarity
- Definiteness = uniqueness
Describe the familiarity theory of definiteness?
It’s all about referents in discourse. File change semantics.
Describe the uniqueness theory of definiteness:
It’s all about concepts in networks. Frame semantics.
Relation
Assigns a truth-value to a pair of arguments, ex: BROTHER(x,y).
Function
A relation in which an x corresponds to exactly one y (transitive)
Intensional reference
Reference to the function as a whole
Extensional reference
Reference to the value of a function at a particular time.
Extensional meaning
Motion of one individual object
Intensional meaning
Change of an individual concept.
Explicit possessor
x of y
Implicit possessor
….. x…. y
integrated possessor
When general knowledge or context already implies temperature of air for example.
Individual concept
Function from time to entity (person, temperature, values)
Functional concept
Concept that requires a possessor
What 3 categories of functional nouns does Löbner describe?
- Roles
- Parts
- Attributes
Metaphorical mapping
When new words are created by mapping an existing sense of the word from its own source domain to another target domain, based on structural similarities between the two domains.
First mention definites
When a concept is first mentioned as a definite, like in:
‘I went to a wedding. THE BRIDE was wearing a white dress.’
Weak definites
First-mention, non-bridging definites that are neither unique nor familiar (and some other properties).
Leibniz’s fundamental law of predicate logic
If a predication P is true of individual a, and a is identical with b, then P is true of b.
Extension of a noun
The set of its potential referents in a given context.
Frame hypothesis
The claim that frames are the general format of concepts in cognition, they provide the fundamental representation of knowledge in human cognition.
D-frames (abbreviation)
Düsseldorf frames
AVM (abbreviation)
attribute-value-matrix
What are the two classical approaches in syntax?
- Constituent structure
- Dependency structure
Metonymy
The use of an expression for some source to refer to a target, where source and target are related by belonging together in some sense.
Heim-style approach to definiteness
A definite NP use is felicitous when its referent has been previously evoked (associated with existing filecard in model).
Uniqueness (Birner & Ward 1994)
The property of being uniquely identifiable to the hearer.
Identifiable (Birner & Ward 1994)
Distinguishable from all other discourse entities, whether or not it can be iddentified on the basis of other attributes.
When may a definite article be used to refer to an unfamiliar entity? (Birner & Ward 1994)
When that entity is uniquely identifiable.
How is the combination of weak definities with object-level predicates made possible? (A-G & Zwarts 2010)
By a lexical rule that lifts object-level relations to ‘enriched’ kind-level relations.
How can we characterize semantics of definite NPs? (A-G & Zwarts 2010)
In terms of uniqueness
What do we call definites that don’t dislay the uniqueness property? (A-G & Zwarts 2010)
weak definites
Minimal situation strategy
Weak definites refer to ordinary objects that are unique in sufficiently restricted minimal situations.
How does the minimal situation strategy work? (A-G & Zwarts 2010)
A definite NP picks out its uniquely identifiable referent from a minimal situations. If uniqueness is not satisfied in s, then assume there is a situation s’ part of s which contains the unique referent.
What is the problem with the minimal situation strategy? (A-G & Zwarts 2010)
The potential of weak definites to refer to more than one object in the minimal situation described by the sentence.
Abtract referent strategy (A-G & Zwarts 2010)
WEak definites refer to abstract objects that have a context-independent uniqueness.
How are weak definites described in A-G & Zwarts 2010?
As referring to kinds, which can have single or multiple instantiations in a situation.
Definite generics
A class of uses of definites that present a problem for the uniqueness approach, since they occur in sentences that do not predicate about one individual.
Aristotelian notion of concept (Gardenfors 1992)
Concepts are based on necessary and sufficient conditions.
Prototype theory (Gardenfors 1992)
Within a category of objects, certain member are judged to be more representative of the category than others.
Prototypical member (Gardenfors 1992)
THe most representative member of a category.
Geometric model (Gardenfors 1992)
A model of concept formation where a conceptual space consists of a number of quality dimensions.
Quality dimension (Gardenfors 1992)
A property such as color or time, expressed linearly or in more dimensions.
Quality dimension with a discrete structure (Gardenfors 1992)
Quality dimensions that divide objects into classes.
Psychological vs scientific interpretation of quality dimensions (Gardenfors 1992)
Psychological interpretation is our perception of the dimension, the scientific interpretation is the mathematical reality.
Conceptual space in the geometric model (Gardenfors 1992)
A conceptual space S consists of a class D1, …, Dn of quality dimensions. A point in S is represented by a vector <v1, …, vn> with values for each of the D dimensions.
Region of conceptual space in the geometric model (Gardenfors 1992)
A spatial notion determined by the topology and metric of the conceptual space S.
Criterion P (Gardenfors 1992)
A natural property is a convex region of a conceptual space.
Convex region (Gardenfors 1992)
A region characterized by the criterion that for every pair of points v1 and v2 in the region, all points in between v1 and v2 are also in the region.
Voronoi tessellation (Gardenfors 1992)
A 2-dimensional thing where a set of prototypes generates a unique partitioning of the sapce into convex regions.
Generalized Voronoi tessellation (Gardenfors 1992)
A Voronoi tessellation where there is a prototypical area for a concept instead of one point, described by a circle with center (v1, …, vn) and radius cv.
What objects did Gardenfors and Holmquist use to test generalized Voronoi tessellation as a theory of concept formation?
Shells
What do the 3 coordinates of shells describe? (Gardenfors 1992)
- Rate of whorl expansion
- Vertical growth
- Growth of radius of aperture.
How did Gardenfors and Holmquist determine distance in conceptual space between shells in their experiment?
The participant rating of similarity between shells determined the distance in conceptual space.
What 4 models did Gardenfors and Holmquist consider in their shell experiment?
- Voronoi tessellation
- Generalized Voronoi tessellation
- Proximity algorithm
- Average distance model
Proximity algorithm (Gardenfors 1992)
A model of concept formation where an object is classified based on whether it is closer to an object of category A or an object of category B.
Average distance model (Gardenfors 1992)
A model of concept formation where objects are classified based on the smallest average distance to an example object of a category.
What was the conclusion of Gardenfors and Holmquist’s shell experiment?
The generalized Voronoi tessellation and the proximity algorithm make more accurate predictions about concept formation than the other two models.
Between reasoning
X belongs to category C,
Z belongs to category C,
Y is between X and Z.
Y belongs to category C.
What is the between property called in formal semantics?
Continuity
What is the between property called in linguistic typology?
Contiguity
What is the between property called in cognitive science?
Convexity
What do prepositions describe in the conceptual space according to Zwarts?
A vector from the reference object to the located object.
What is the function of ‘behind’ in Zwarts’ preposition=vector idea?
It shows that the vector is pointing backwards.
What is the function of ‘near’ in Zwarts’ preposition=vector idea?
It shows that the vector is short.
What two kinds of between in conceptual space does Zwarts present?
- Linearly between
- Radially between
Linearly between
In conceptual space: The differences in length of vectors.
Radially between
In conceptual space: the difference in direction of vectors.
Name the 9 functions of indefinite pronouns by Haspelmath 2003:
- Specific known
- Specific unknown
- Irrealis non-specific
- Question
- Conditional
- Indirect negation
- Direct negation
- Comparative
- Free choice
Frame (Barsalou)
A concept representation that is recursively composed out of attributes of the object to be represented and the values of these attributes.
Structural invariant
A constitutive relation between (the values of) attributes.
Attribute constraints
Capture global dependencies between the values of attributes.
Irrealis non-specific
‘please try somewhere else’
Indirect negation
‘I don’t think that anybody knows the answer’
Continuity (conceptual space)
Very theory driven. Uses denotations in a formal model, based on single languages and only allows ‘non-natural- exceptions.
Contiguity (conceptual space)
Data-driven, looks for patterns in data and uses multiple languages. No exceptions possible.
Colexification
Meanings that are more often expressed by the same form are closer together in the graph.
Natural property
Most properties expressed by simple words in natural languages. Coordination and modification can create non-natural properties.
By what is color space defined?
HUe, brightness and saturation
What are color terminologies in terms of concept formation theory?
Voronoi tesselations of the color space based on focal colors (prototypes).
