Linguistics 110 Zhang/Öztürk/Quinn

Class 24 (12/18/02)

Semantics II

(1) Bureaucracies:
• Reading: Fromkin Chapter 7.
• Exercises: p.377—7.1, p.387—7.2, p.388—7.3, p.394—7.4, p.395—7.5, 7.6
You do not need to turn them in. But make sure you know how to do them!
• Final:
➥ Jan 13 (Monday), 2:15pm-5:15pm, Sever 103.
➥ Closed-book, closed notes.
➥ Cumulative. More morphology, syntax, semantics, but you still need to know how to do
phonemic analysis and solve alternation problems in phonology. Will not test you on
phonetic equipment. You will be given IPA chart and feature chart.
➥ Similar format to midterm, with a mix of multiple-choice, short-answer, and problem-
solving questions (including trees), but longer.
• Review sessions by Balkiz, Conor, and me TBA, Jan 8-12. Will send email.

(2) Review of last class:

• Meaning is compositional: the meaning of an expression is calculated on the basis of the
meanings of its parts + the meaning contributed by the combinatory rules.

• Entailment: Sentence S1 entails sentence S2 if and only if whenever S1 is true in a

situation, S2 is also true in that situation.

S1 S2 S1 entails S2?
T T Yes
T F No
F T Yes
F F Yes

• Presupposition and assertion:

➥ Presupposition: what the speaker assumes to be true, as ‘background’ to the sentence.
➥ Assertion: what the speaker is claiming to be true or false by uttering the sentence.
➥ Both the presupposition and the assertion are entailed by the sentence.
(In fact, a sentence asserts whatever it entails minus whatever it presupposes.)
➥ Negation cancels the assertion, but not the presupposition.

• Intersective modifiers:
➥ If AP is intersective, then the constituent
[NP AP NP ] is interpreted as [[AP]] ∩ [[NP]]
➥ Not all modifiers are intersective.
Scaler adjectives: big, small, wide, narrow, tall, short…
Negative adjectives: bogus, fake, phony, false…
Conjectural adjectives: ostensible, alleged, possible, apparent, likely…

1
 • Extension and intension:
➥ Extension: the set of entities/events/etc. in the world to which an expression refers (its
referents, denotation)
➥ Intension: the ‘inherent sense’ conveyed by an expression.
➥ Two expressions may have the same extension, but different intensions. Extensional
semantics is not all there is to our semantic knowledge.

(3) More extensional semantics: modeling the semantics of determiners

• Determiners: Articles and demonstratives: the, this, that, these, those
Quantifiers: some, most, every, each, all, few, two, a dozen…

• What do determiners contribute to the semantics of an expression?

Lois is happy [[ Lois ]] ⊆ [[ happy ]]
How about:
Every student is happy.
Some students are happy.
No student is happy.
Two students are happy.
Fewer than five students are happy.
Most students are happy.

• Determiners specify relations between sets (of individuals) and sets (of properties)

• Can any possible relation between sets be encoded by a determiner?

Let’s invent a hypothetical determiner: nevery

Nevery NP VP = Everything which is not in [[ NP ]] is in [[ VP ]]

Nevery triangle has stripes.

Nevery student in this room wear glasses.

(4) Observation: No language has determiners like nevery

• Conservativity: A determiner is conservative if its meaning can be figured out just on the
basis of the extension of the NP and the intersection of the extension of the NP and the VP.

➥ A test: The quantifier Q is conservative iff “Q NP VP” can be paraphrased as “Q NP

is a NP which VP”

Every student is happy can be paraphrased as

Every student is a student who is happy

No student is a happy can be paraphrased as

No student is a student who is happy

Nevery triangle has stripes cannot be paraphrased as

Nevery triangle is a triangle which has stripes

2
 • The conservativity of determiners appears to be a universal semantic property of human
languages. Even though we could imagine what a non-conservative determiner might be
like, no human language actually has such determiners. Why?

(5) Negative polarity items and decreasing determiners:

• Distribution of words like ever, anyone, anything
No student ever laughs. *Every student ever laughs.
No student likes anyone. *A student likes anyone.
No student saw anything. *A student saw anything.

➥ Words like ever, anyone, anything are called negative polarity items. It looks like
they require a negative determiner.
But…

Less than 3 students ever laugh. *Some students ever laugh.

At most 30 students ever laugh. *30 students ever laugh.

➥ What determiners license a negative polarity item in a sentence?

• Decreasing determiners: a determiner is decreasing if whenever we have two verb

phrases VP1 and VP2 where [[VP1]] is always a subset of [[VP2]], then [D N VP2] entails
[D N VP1]. In these cases we say that [D N] forms a decreasing NP.

E.g., VP1 = sings and dances, VP2 = sings.

[[VP1]] ⊆ [[VP2]]
No student sings entails
No student sings and dances
∴ ‘No’ is a decreasing determiner. ‘No student’ is a decreasing NP.
E.g., Every student sings does not entail
Every student sings and dances
∴ ‘Every’ is not a decreasing determiner. ‘Every student’ is not a decreasing NP.

How about less than 3, at most 30, fewer than 6, no more than 2?

• Negative polarity items can occur in a sentence with a decreasing determiner.

In fact, the real NPI licensing rule is more complicated…
E.g., *No student told me that every student ever sings.
Every student told me that no student ever sings.
*Every student ever sings the song that no student likes.
No student ever sings the song the every student hates.

• More complications:
He denies he ever laughs. *He claims he ever laughs.
He doubts she ever laughs. *He believes she ever laughs.
It is false that she ever laughs. *It is true that she ever laughs.
He failed to ever reach a conclusion. *He succeeded in ever reaching a conclusion.
➥ It seems likely that the notion of ‘decreasing’ can be extended to get all of these cases.
But this goes beyond what we can cover here…

——————————————————FINIS——————————————————