Formal Semantics/Pragmatics

This paper examines counterfactual (CF) structures in Makkan Arabic, a dialect spoken in the Western region of Saudi Arabia. It expands the study of CF structures beyond English. It also presents novel data highlighting the presence of a CF complementizer law that is lexically specified to invoke counterfactuality. The CF law interacts with past tense and perfect aspect in embedded propositions, contributing to ongoing debates in semantics about whether the past tense in such contexts is "fake" or "real." Within the framework of possible worlds semantics, the CF complementizer law enters the computation with a universal operator (∀) that quantifies over all CF worlds. The past tense morphology within the embedded proposition, headed by law, triggers a process called "back-shifting." This process ensures that the events in the CF worlds share the same past as the event in the actual world. The universal operator (∀) not only quantifies over all CF worlds but also over time, indicating that the CF worlds are historically similar to the actual world up to the moment of the utterance. Thus, this study highlights the intricate interaction between the complementizer law, tense, and aspect in Makkan Arabic, contributing new insights to cross-linguistic discussions on counterfactuality.

The aim of our talk is to discuss a hitherto underresearched and at first glance puzzling non-maximal use of the definite article documented in several – but not all – Romance varieties. As noted by Cardinaletti/Giusti (2018), among others, many varieties of Italian allow definite articles with indefinite (i.e. non-maximal) interpretations ([1a], available also with plural count nouns), in variation with socalled partitive articles and bare nominals (1b). A similar situation holds true, e.g., of Francoprovençal (with the exception of bare nouns being banned in this variety; cf. Stark & Gerards 2021). In French, on the contrary – just as in (Modern) Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian – the morphological equivalent of Italian (1a) can only yield a strongly definite reading, i.e., refer to a maximal sum of wine portions (2a). The triggering of an indefinite reading in French, in turn, crucially hinges upon the presence of the partitive article (2b):

The temporal adverbial 'then' is cross-linguistically incompatible with the present tense, not only in matrix but also in embedded clauses. In languages such as Modern Greek, Russian, Modern Hebrew, and Japanese, where the present tense can shift referring to the ‘now’ of the attitude holder rather than the time of the utterance, then remains incompatible with the present, even though the latter denotes a time in the past or future (Ogihara & Sharvit 2012, Sharvit 2018, Vostrikova 2018, Tsilia 2021). Additionally, in Modern Greek, 'then' is at the same time compatible with a deleted past (Abusch 1997), which is interpreted as a present from the point of view of the attitude holder (Tsilia 2022). Thus, 'then' is incompatible with the shifted present, but compatible with the deleted past in the same language, suggesting that the two are not semantically equivalent. We introduce a new interpretation parameter, which we call ‘temporal perspective’. The interpretation of tenses and of 'then' is sensitive to the temporal perspective. Tense shift is a result of the shift of the perspective, and the incompatibility between 'then' and the present is derived as a shift together effect (Anand & Nevins 2004, Sudo 2012, Deal 2020). On the other hand, the deleted past is assumed to be stripped of its perspective sensitivity, and therefore does not clash with 'then'. We also provide empirical support for distinguishing the perspective from the context and the evaluation index.

In this paper we propose to investigate the mutual relations among Brandom's three dimensions of semantic inferential articulation, namely, incompatibility en-tailment, committive, and permissive consequences. Brandom (Unpub.) argues (1) that ...

In both philosophy and science, standard logics struggle to model a key insight of Existential Realism (ER): that existence is a strictly present, empirical notion, whereas reality spans beyond the present. Classical first-order logic and even temporal modal logics tend to conflate being real with existing simpliciter, making it difficult to formally distinguish something that exists now from something that is real but not present. This paper introduces a formal two-tier logical framework tailored to ER’s ontology. We motivate this framework by showing how orthodox systems—from classical predicate logic to temporal modal logic—fail to capture ER’s core distinction between present existence and temporally extended reality. We then develop a layered logic with explicit operators or quantifiers for “existence-now” versus “reality-over-time,” including formal axioms that preserve ER’s asymmetries: only present entities exist (in the fullest sense), yet past and future entities can be real (ontologically significant) without existing. The logic adopts a modal-style treatment of time to model the collapse of potential into actual (present-becoming), and explicitly encodes causal asymmetry — where the past influences the present, but not the reverse. We illustrate the framework with symbolic representations, including an iconic “ER equation” capturing the relationship between reality and existence. To demonstrate its versatility, we apply the logic to examples from quantum physics (e.g. wavefunction collapse and delayed-choice experiments), cognitive neuroscience (memory traces and anticipatory processing), ethics (moral duties to future persons and the reality of future outcomes), and AI (agents modeling counterfactual or temporally extended scenarios). Finally, we show how the formalism sheds new light on classic metaphysical debates such as the truthmaker problem for past truths, persistence and identity over time, and the ontology of merely possible or future entities. Throughout, our presentation maintains a rigorous yet accessible tone, consistent with prior ER works, with technical clarity and footnoted references. The result is a self-contained preprint that extends T.C. Trepp’s Existential Realism into a formal logical system, demonstrating its broad applicability across science, philosophy, and practical reasoning.

Argues for a 3-valued logic of vagueness. In distinction to other 3-valued approaches this logic is an extension of classical logic, due to the use of both a Boolean and a predicate negation. The approch is justified by semantic considerations. Critical issues like Sorites reasoning, higher order vagueness, and 'penumbral truth' are discussed from this perspective.

In this paper we offer a study on the interpretation of plural definites in discourse (‘the tank engines’) and their interaction with spatial adpositions (‘to’ and ‘at’). The novel empirical findings in the paper support the following assumptions on the contribution of spatial adpositions to the interpretation of plural definites. First, the interpretation of plural definites can be influenced by the lexical aspect type of adpositions. While ‘to’ as ‘telic’ predicate can license both a ‘collective’ and a ‘distributive’ reading for plural definites, ‘at’ as an ‘atelic’ predicate only licenses a ‘collective’ reading. Second, the precise lexical content of adpositions determines which interpretation is accessed. It is claimed that ‘at’ denotes a ‘general location’ relation between locatum and landmark object, and thus licenses a collective reading for plural definites.

That plural marking cannot appear on mass nouns is a widely accepted generalization. In fact, the (in)ability of being pluralized is one of the diagnostics use for deciding whether a noun is mass or count. In English and similar languages, (1) is indeed ungrammatical. This sentence can only be salvaged when the mass term is coerced or reinterpreted as types of or standardized quantity of (see Chierchia 1998, 2010 among many others).

In this article, we argue that a set of unexpected contrasts in the interpretation of clitic-left-dislocated indefinites in Greek and Italian derive from structural variation in the nominal syntax of the two languages. Greek resists nonreferential indefinites in clitic left-dislocation, resorting to the topicalization of an often bare noun for nonreferential topics. By contrast, clitic left-dislocation is employed in Italian for topics regardless of their definite/indefinite interpretation. We argue that this contrast is directly linked to the wide availability of bare nouns in Greek, which stems from a structural difference in the nominal syntax of the two languages. In particular, we hypothesize that Greek nominal arguments lack a D layer. Rather, they are Number Phrases. We situate this analysis in the context of Chierchia’s (1998) typology of nominals. We argue that, on a par with Italian nouns, Greek nouns are [−arg, +pred]. However, they do not employ a syntactic head (D) for ...

When we are disturbed by the Sorites paradox, we are tempted to ask, "which statements with vague terms are true?" And "What is the logic of vague predicates?" Not finding satisfying answers, we are frustrated. But I would like to suggest different questions. "How do we learn about vague terms?" And "what role do they play in communication?" Asking these different questions gives us better answers and allows us to be less frustrated.

This paper offers a contrastive analysis of English and Romanian generic sentences, arguing that generics originate from a simple conceptual structure. We argue that the comprehension and production of generics require no functional structure, but rather merely the comprehension of lexical aspect in its simplest form, namely states. While English distinguishes generics from episodics via the progressive, Romanian's imperfective lacks this distinction. Additionally, cross-linguistic variation is evident in the semantics of definite articles. English definite articles encode familiarity and maximality, aligning with constraints on kind reference, while Romanian articles, marked with phi-features, encode maximality and treat familiarity as an optional pragmatic feature. The paper also argues that there are good grounds to give up the covert Gen(eric) operator.

This paper discusses the modal construction ‘vai que’ from Brazilian Portuguese. Our goal is to analyze its syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects. This construction is used when the speaker wants to convey that something  is  possible,  thus,  it  is  a  modal  construction.  Our  analysis  follows  proposals  from  cartographic  syntax  (Cinque,  1999;  Tsai,  2015;  Rizzi;  Bocci,  2017),  formal  semantics  (Kratzer,  1991;  von  Fintel,  2006;  Hacquard,  2006,  2010,  2011)  and  formal  pragmatics  (Stalnaker,  1999;  Portner,  2004).  Previous  analyses  of  ‘vai que’ have argued that it is: (i) weak; (ii) epistemic; (iii) conditional like; (iv) counterfactual; (v) high in the hierarchy; and (vi) a directive speech act (see Andrade, 2012, 2014, 2019; Dearmas, 2022, 2024; Ely and Cezário, 2023a, 2023b). We agree that it is a weak epistemic modal based on paraphrasis and contradiction tests (von Fintel; Heim, 2011), but we argue that ‘vai que’ is not part of a conditional structure, it does not convey counterfactuality, it is not higher than the epistemic modal head in the functional hierarchy, and it is also not a directive speech act. In our analysis, ‘vai que’ accesses the speaker’s beliefs through the speech event, following Hacquard (2006, 2010), and it presupposes another proposition in the common ground working as a justification for it.

En este trabajo se examinan las concepciones de Oswaldo Chateaubriand acerca de la naturaleza del lenguaje, así como las relaciones de éste con la lógica y la ontología. En primer lugar, se aborda la tematización del lenguaje como actividad humana. A continuación, se analiza la elucidación que propone Chateaubriand acerca del significado en términos de uso o condiciones sociales de identidad. En tercer lugar, se indaga la fundamentación del lenguaje y del significado en propiedades ontológicas. Finalmente, se plantean observaciones acerca de algunas tesis de Chateaubriand, tales como la distinción entre significado y sentido o el carácter innato de algunos conceptos.

This paper proposes a new treatment of quantifiers under the theoretical framework of Inquisitive Semantics (IS). After discussing the difficulty in treating quantifiers under the existing IS framework, I propose a new treatment of quantifiers that combines features of IS and the Generalized Quantifier Theory (GQT). My proposal comprises two main points: (i) assuming that the outputs of all quantifiers given non-inquisitive inputs are non-inquisitive; and (ii) deriving a predicate X * of type s→(e n →t) corresponding to each predicate X of type e n →T. By using X * , we can then restore the traditional treatment of GQT under the IS framework. I next point out that to properly handle the pair list reading of some questions with ''every'', we have to revert to the old treatment of every. I also introduce (and prove) a theorem that shows that the new treatment of every is just a special case of the old treatment, and conclude that the new treatment of all quantifiers other than every plus the old treatment of every is sufficient for the general purpose of treating quantified statements and questions.

Die vorliegende Arbeit stellt den Versuch dar, aus der detaillierten und systematischen Beschreibung der syntaktischen, semantischen und pragmatischen Eigenschaften von Satzen mit Verbzweitstellung (V2) , die alternativ zu durch „weil“ eingeleiteten Kausalsatzen, Relativsatzen und dass-Komplementen auftreten, eine These zur ubergreifenden Funktion dieser Verbstellung abzuleiten. Der Vergleich der Charakteristika mundet in der Identifizierung eines gemeinsamen funktionalen Kerns, namlich der assertiven Funktion von V2 in [-w]-Kontexten. Diese assertive Operation, die in Anlehnung an Stalnaker (1978/1999) als eine Reduzierung der Welten einer Kontextmenge definiert wird, findet je nach syntaktischem Status des V2-Satzes Anwendung auf unterschiedliche Kontexte. Dabei fuhrt eine syntaktische Desintegration zu einer Anwendung auf die Kontextmenge CS, dem ‚context set‘. Syntaktische Integration, wenn auch in geringerem Grade, beschrankt diese Operation auf Subkontexte der CS, so z.B. auf ...

Minimal sufficiency readings of exclusive modifiers (Just the thought of food makes me hungry) have resisted a comprehensive semantic analysis that accurately predicts their distribution. In this paper we show that the distribution of minimal sufficiency readings is directly correlated with the interpretation of plural arguments and that the distributional facts reflect the connection between plural predication and scalarity: sufficiency readings are licensed precisely in contexts where ordering relations over alternatives are reversed. We develop a semantics for exclusives that is capable of generating either exclusive or sufficiency readings depending on the direction of scalarity.

This paper discusses the semantic role of demonstrations in deictic uses of demonstrative descriptions. The main question is: are they essential or non-essential to the semantics of demonstratives? In some theories (such as Kaplan 1989a; Roberts 2002 and King 2001), demonstrations are treated as "essential" in the sense that they correspond to a particular logical element in their formalization. In Wolter (2006)"s approach, demonstrations are not essential by themselves, but they do determine, pragmatically, an element essential for the interpretation of demonstratives-the index they must be interpreted relative to, which Wolter calls a "non-default situation". Here we compare these two views; we conclude that Wolter"s approach is on the right track. Our main argument is that demonstrations can be replaced by other elements (such as salience or additional descriptive content) depending on the context. Thus, demonstrations are not essential to demonstrat...

This work explores the application of econometric techniques for quantitative analysis in linguistic research. For the empirical evidence, it used the primary data comprising 297 samples surveyed from Kasaragod District, Kerala. The data aims to study linguistic competence in Malayalam through 10 linguistic competence indicators among native and non-native students at different levels of school education. Based on the mother tongue of the students, they are grouped into i) Dravidian native (Malayalam), ii) Dravidian non-native (Tamil. Tulu, Kannada, and Kudiya), and iii) non-Dravidian non-native (Hindi, Marathi). To quantify their linguistic competence in Malayalam, the Multi-variate Linear Discriminant Function is applied for the analysis. The estimated values show that most of the linguistic competence indicators positively differentiate the Dravidian native (Malayalam) student from other groups. This study confirms the potential of econometric techniques to quantify linguistic phenomena through appropriate techniques.

It has been pointed out that the precise use of a word can be critical in scientific papers. The epistemic use of modal verbs, such as must, may and might, can be important for scientists in this sense. The author has conducted a study to identify how much certainty scientists attribute to these modals used in scientific papers. Natural Scientists who spoke English as a native language were asked to indicate how much certainty they attributed to a concluding sentence containing modal and non-modal verbs in brief chemistry reports. Statistical analysis of the results showed that there was no significant difference between the certainties the scientists had attributed to might and may, although many English grammar books for non-native speakers mention that might is used to express less certainty compared to may. The results suggest that ESL/EFL teachers should be aware of such sociopragmatic functions of the modal verbs.

This article explores negation in Chinese on the basis of written and spoken corpora of Mandarin Chinese. The use of corpus data not only reveals central tendencies in language based on quantitative data, it also provides typical examples attested in authentic contexts. In this study we will first discuss negation variants in general terms, on the basis of which the focus will be shifted to the semantic and genre distinctions between two major negators, bu and mei (including meiyou). Following this is an exploration of the interaction between negation and aspect marking. We will then move on to discuss scope and focus of negation, transferred negation, and finally double negation and redundant negation.

A compositional analysis of optative sentences is challenging for at least two reasons: they encode desirability without having any overt marker, and they are if -clauses with or without consequents, raising the question of whether they are actually conditionals. In this paper I argue that optatives are conditionals even when they do not have overt consequents. With respect to desirability, I argue that in optatives modality is pragmatically derived. The investigation of optatives sheds light on the interaction between syntax, pragmatics and discourse. * I would like to thank Rajesh Bhatt, Lyn Frazier and Chris Potts for comments and help. Also thanks to the audience of Sinn und Bedeutung 15, especially

The purpose of this study is to clarify the process of categorization in mind when Japanese speakers use the terms relating to a family or family members. This paper presents Japanese expressions composed of two parts: Hontoh-no (real / true) and family terms, Kazoku (family), Haha-oya (mother), Chichi-oya (father), Kodomo (child), Musume (daughter), and Musuko (son), and examines these expressions in the contexts in which they appear. Japanese Hontoh-no means that the topic is a real or true member of the category classified by the following word, and we can say categorization is happening here. The source of the data is the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese (BCCWJ), which was developed by the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, and contains more than one hundred million words of contemporary written Japanese. Close examination of the examples of Hontoh-no and family terms in their contexts show that the term Hontoh-no represents two kinds of fo...

Faculté des Lettres, des Arts et des Sciences Humaines, Univ Hassan 1er. Filière Etudes Françaises Cours de Morphosyntaxe 4ème semestre / 2023-2024 Pr. KEMBOUCHE Hajar Cours n° 4 : La typologie des propositions subordonnées relatives : Explicative, déterminative, attributive.

Child’s use of (1) is an example of what we shall call a situated utterance. Situated utterances are used by speakers to comment on what’s happening in a specific place and time, and to report on a specific perspective or body of information. In particular, to understand Child’s use of (1), we need to track the fact that she’s describing the events presented in the accompanying video; we need to recognize that the newly-firm egg mixture we see is what Child means by ‘your omelet’ and that the shaking skillet we see is what Child means by ‘the pan’.

In this paper we provide a formalization of a set of default rules that we claim are required for the transfer of information such as causation, event rate and duration in the interpretation of metaphor. Such rules are domain-independent and are identified as invariant adjuncts to any conceptual metaphor. We also show a way of embedding the invariant mappings in a semantic framework.

ОN THE (NON-)SEQUENCE OF TENSES 

In this paper, we start from the fact that natural languages vary, among other things, in the ability to use the past tense in the embedded indicative complement clause to express simultaneity with the higher past tense in the matrix clause. Thus, languages can be divided into two groups: SOT (Sequence of Tense) languages and non-SOT languages. Serbian, which is a non-SOT language, uses the present tense in the complement to express simultaneity with a matrix past tense. In this paper, we examine cases in which Serbian apparently behaves like an SOT language, given that with certain matrix verbs, the past tense can be used to express the simultaneity of two past actions. A corpus study allowed us to identify several types of these verbs, such as perception verbs, factive verbs, and certain modal verbs. Most of them have not been studied in the linguistic research on Serbian concerning the expression of temporal relations between the action of the matrix clause and that of the complement clause.

"கால அடிப்படையில் வினையடிகள்  துணைவினைகளாக மாறுதல்" என்ற இந்த கட்டுரை  இராசேந்திரனின்  (2008) தமிழ் வினையடிகளின் வரலாற்று மொழியியல் ஆய்வு என்ற ஆய்வின் ஒரு சிறு பகுதியாக அமைகிறது. துணைவினைகள் முதன்மை வினையின் வினையாற்றுவகையையோ (aspect) வினைநோக்கையோ (modes) காட்டும். அவை தமது சொல்சார் சிறப்பை இழந்து காலம், வினைநோக்கு, வினையாற்றுவகை என்பனவற்றை வெளிப்படுத்தும் துணைவினைகளாக மாறும். துணைவினைகளுக்கிடையில் எதையும் இடைச்சொருக இயலாத காரணத்தால் அவைத் தொடரியல் அடிப்படையில் கண்டுண்டவையாகும். துணைவினைகள் ஆழ்மட்டத்தில் முதன்மை வினைகளாக இருப்பதன் காரணமாகவும் ஆனால் அவை சில இலக்கண பொருண்மையைக் காட்டப் பயன்படுத்தப்படுவதன் காரணமாகவும் அவற்றைப் பகுதி இலக்கணவாக்கமுற்றவைகளாகக் கருதவியலும். துணைவினைகள் தமிழில் வினையாற்றுவகை, வினைநோக்கு, வினைப்பாடு என்பனவற்றைக் காட்டுவதற்குப் பயன்படுத்தப்படுகின்றன.

Cette suggestion sera reprise et mise en oeuvre en 1966 par Allen et Béatrice Gardner qui enseignent l'A.S.L. (American Sign Language, langage des signes américain) à un singe. Avant eux, en 1964 déjà, David et Ann Premack avaient commencé à enseigner une langue des signes de leur création. Les Gardner et les Premack ne sont pas les seuls chercheurs à avoir réussi à enseigner le langage à des primates mais d'une part ils sont les premiers à l'avoir fait, et d'autre part, presque tous les chercheurs dans ce domaine ont été formés par leurs groupes respectifs. Nous nous appesantirons donc principalement sur leurs travaux mais terminerons en évoquant l'apport plus récent d'autres chercheurs du domaine comme Sue Savage-Rumbaugh et Michael Tomasello. A la base du travail des Gardner, il y a l'objectif d'étudier non pas la complexité de la cognition des chimpanzés mais « de voir jusqu'à quel point un chimpanzé serait capable d'acquérir une forme de langage humain. » 3. Pour mener à bien cet objectif, il leur fallait donc un vrai langage humain pour lequel l'animal n'aurait pas de limitation physiologique. La langue des signes est parfaitement 7

Neste  artigo  discutimos  características  semânticas  e  aspectos  pragmáticos do item lexical ‘já’ e, assim, procuramos entender o(s) seu(s) significado(s). Nosso objetivo é explorar alguns dos aspectos linguísticos de ‘já’, pois esse item é pouco discutido nas gramáticas tradicionais. As bases teóricas utilizadas são Gritti (2013), Lopes (2003) e Morais (2004), que abordam aspectos da semântica do item,  e  algumas  considerações  gerais  de  gramáticas  descritivas  (Perini, 2008; Neves, 2011). A partir da revisão bibliográfica, verificamos que ‘já’ pode ter valor temporal (localizando eventos na linha do tempo), aspectual (modificando o aspecto do evento) e conjuntivo (ligando orações) e concluímos que o item apresenta aspectos pragmáticos relevantes que o caracterizam e que não foram  analisados  na  literatura  consultada,  tais  como  leituras  de contraexpectativa e de promessa. A presença dessas leituras e a natureza das inferências que as geram foram investigadas neste artigo em sentenças no modo indicativo (presente, passado e  futuro)  e  imperativo,  estando  as  leituras  de  contraexpectativa  e de promessa ausentes do último. Após testes de acarretamento e pressuposição e de cancelamento de implicatura, as leituras de  contraexpectativa  e  de  promessa  revelaram-se  implicaturas  conversacionais, sendo, assim, inferências de natureza pragmática.Palavras-chave: semântica; pragmática; já; contraexpectativa; promessa; implicaturas.

We present an empirical study on exhaustivity inferences in German es-clefts compared to definite descriptions (pseudoclefts with an identity statement), exclusives, and focus constructions. Our study uses a novel mouse-driven picture-verification task in which the incremental updating of the context allows one to determine at which point participants take exhaustivity into consideration. Our results are compatible with a parallel analysis of clefts and definite pseudoclefts (see Percus 1997; Büring and Križ 2013; cf. DeVeaugh-Geiss et al. 2015), in so far as both structures are indeed interpreted on a par. In striking contrast to these analyses, however, we found that clefts do not systematically receive exhaustive interpretations, nor do definite pseudoclefts. We conclude that exhaustivity is not conventionally coded in either clefts nor definite pseudoclefts but rather arises through the anaphoric existence presupposition in both constructions together with a number-based implicature.

In this paper, I considered the meaning and usage of the Japanese word "Sasuga". The following conclusions were obtained. When "Sasuga" modifies a noun predicate in a simple sentence, or modifies an adjective predicate that represents a positive meaning in a simple sentence, or be concurrent with "Dakeni" "Dakeatte" which is in a reason clause in the complex sentence, it means that "with this thing or person, ~ is as expected." It represents a positive evaluation on the thing or the person. When "Sasuga" modifies a verb predicate in a simple sentence or modifies an adjective predicate that represents a negative meaning, it means that "In this situation, ~ is as expected." It represents a negative evaluation on the situation. When "Sasuga" modifies the subject in a simple sentence, there are two types: "Sasugano" and "Sasugani + First personal pronoun + Demo". It means that "Even that person, ~ is as expected." It represents an evaluation on the person. When "Sasuga" is used in a zero conditional of the resultative conditional sentence, or be used in a time clause that represents "at the same time" in a complex sentence, it means that "In this situation, it will finally ~ as expected." It represents an indirect evaluation on the situation. When "Sasuga" is used in a complex sentence which has a coordinate clause, or modifies an adjective predicate that represents a neutral meaning in a simple sentence, it means that "though ~, ~ is as expected." It represents an indirect evaluation on the subject of the sentence which "Sasuga" modified.

In this paper, I considered the meaning and usage of the "Hao(Bu)Rong Yi + VP" in Chinese. The following conclusions were obtained. When "Hao (Bu) Rong Yi + VP" is used in a simple sentence, or used in a coherent complex sentence, or it functions as a noun modification clause, "Hao(Bu)RongYi" is a \u27\u27Manner Adverb", and "Hao (Bu) Rong Yi + VP" means that "it was realized after hardship". When it is used in a simple sentence, or used in a coherent complex sentence, and the subject is the first person, it is necessary to co-occur with the adverb "cai". When "Hao (Bu) Rong Yi + VP" is used in the subordinate clause of an adversative complex sentence, "Hao(Bu)RongYV" is an "Evaluation Adverb", and "Hao (Bu) Rong Yi + VP" means that "Even though it was realized, it became incomplete". It represents the evaluation of "a meaningful event" on the VP. When "H...

Este Tratado sobre dêixis se encontra na forma de um compêndio subdividido em aspectos (capítulos) que incitam a natureza da “dêixis”, linguística ou não. Por se tratar este Tratado da dêixis, mesmo hoje, ainda infelizmente é um tema na filosofia da linguagem muito pouco discutido ou mesmo conhecido. Este estudo ora apresentado sobre a dêixis é bem aprofundado, relacionando-se não somente com a linguística, como também com a semiótica da percepção e até com a filosofia e fenomenologia da percepção. O leitor poderá encontrar neste estudo, na forma de Tratado inédito no Brasil, as principais características da dêixis, dentre elas, estão a sua epistemologia e o caractere de ostensão (indexicalidade), a dêixis de memória, a dêixis imaginária, a dêixis am phanstasma, a dêixis fenomenológica e até uma possível metafísica para a dêixis. Por fim, o autor dedica este novo tratado moderno sobre a dêixis aos “homens dêiticos”, ou seja, àqueles que conhecem-na e vivem deiticamente…

Das Ziel dieses Beitrags ist eine möglichst informelle semantische Analyse der Plural-Mehrdeutigkeiten. Sütze, in denen pluralische Nominalphrasen (im folgenden PNP) auftreten, können bekanntlich mehrdeutig (ambig) sein, d.h. gleichzeitig mehrere Propositionen ausdrücken. Unter den verschiedenen Interpretationsmöglichkeiten, den sog. Lesarten dieser Sütze, findet man die auch distributive Lesart. Wie sie entsteht and was sie von anderen Lesarten unterscheidet, möchte ich bier nher untersuchen. In diesem Zusammenhang stellt sich auch die Frage nach den Gründen der Mehrdeutigkeit. Ich werde dafür argumentieren, dass die Quellen der Mehrdeutigkeit in der Semantik der Nominalphrase zu suchen sind. Daher sollen die referenziellen Eigenschaften der NP etwas detaillierter analysiert werden. In Punkt 1 untersuche ich zwei hinsichtlich der Problematik relevante PNP-Charakteristika: ihre Kombinierbarkeit mit kollektiven Prüdikaten and ihre möglichen Skopusrelationen. In Punkt 2 werden die PNP im Rahmen der algebraischen Semantik interpretiert. Der nüchste Punkt widmet sich der Definition der Distributivitüt and leitet die verschiedenen Lesarten der Sütze ohne Skopus-Ambiguitten ab. In Punkt 4 gebe ich schlieBlich die möglichen Lesarten der S tze mit Skopus-Ambiguit ten an. Es lüsst sich zeigen, dass die Mehrdeutigkeiten von Stzen mit oder ohne Skopusrelationen auf gemeinsame Prinzipien zurückgefiihrt werden können.

This paper aims to demonstrate that inferentialism can serve as an alternative to the current truth-conditional framework in the context-dependence debate. In this regard, I argue that inferentialism offers a flexible basis for understanding the interplay between sentence meaning and utterance content, thereby opening new avenues for the theoretical development of the context-dependence debate. To achieve its goal, the paper addresses the inferentialist perspective on context-dependence in two ways. First, it refutes the Limited Accommodation Argument, which questions inferentialism's capacity to accommodate the contextualist position. Second, it demonstrates that inferentialism captures the fundamental characteristics of the main participants in this debate, such as indexicalism, occasionalism, and relativism. The paper will thus provide strong support for the claim that inferentialism, by examining specific changes in inferential patterns across contexts, provides a novel framework for articulating and comparing different
positions in the context-dependence debate, opening the possibility for a more fine-grained analysis of how context influences content.

本研究は、前田(2009)で提案されている日本語の条件文の分類をインド・アーリア語派に属するマラーティー語に適用し、日本語とマラーティー語の条件表現の類似点及び相違点を考察する。従来のマラーティー語文法において、条件節は主に相関構文の jәr-tәr(if…then)で表現され、irrealis を示す仮定的用法に限定されてきた。一方、日本語の条件接続辞の用法の立場からマラーティー語の条件表現を考察したところ、「～のあと」を示す後置詞の -vәr や従属接続詞の ki によっても条件的用法を示すことができることが明らかになった。また、本来仮定的条件を示す相関詞 -tәr が非条件的用法を示すことも指摘された。

The history of indefinite quantifiers in Romance languages is basically the history of the development of new distributional patterns in the case of some Latin adjectives (Company 1991, 1997; Batllori 1998). This new distribution will contribute to the construction of the new subclass of Romance determiners we call Quantifiers. As explained by Zamparelli (2000), the growing structural complexity of the left margin of DetP entails the specialization of old word classes for those new positions. A Quantifier position creates thus the Quantifier word class. This is a longterm process, the effects of which are clearly seen in medieval Romance for words derived from adjectives, such as MULTUS and PAUCUS, but also in later Romance adjectives such as Catalan bastant or even in Contemporary Catalan with the word suficient, which has a similar meaning (