[developers] Difference between neg_rel/modifiers and modals
Ann Copestake
aac10 at cl.cam.ac.uk
Sat May 20 14:06:02 CEST 2017
Sorry I don't have time to properly engage with this.
I just wanted to say that, at a DMRS level, the problem is just about
making sure that the compositionality rules can give you the right
readings without over-constraining. What the DMRS post-slash
constraints give you is information about the scopal relationships - you
can interpret /= with events, as we usually do in ERS, but you can also
interpret it with no events at all, as in non-Davidsonian accounts.
so:
not ---------> talk <----------- for-three-hours
ARG1/H ARG1/=
just guarantees that `talk' and `for three hours' are under the scope of
`not' and you could interpret the = in different ways depending on
whether or not you're using events. In this view
for-three-hours ---------> not ----------------> talk
ARG1/= ARG1/H
is a perfectly good DMRS as long as one isn't using an event-based
representation to show what the = means, because that forces one into
having `not events'.
Conventional notation is not very helpful here, because it forces one to
write something that looks like there's a scopal relationship if one
doesn't use events, but that's actually a notational issue, not a
genuine semantic one. For instance, I can perfectly well express what
the two alternatives mean with a temporal logic without events.
Anyway, this is just a brief indication of what the situation is from my
own current perspective. I can try and help work things out from an
event-based point of view, but I can't say my heart is in it!
All best,
Ann
On 19/05/2017 21:16, Guy Emerson wrote:
> So with the modals and attitude, we're saying that there's a state,
> which bears some relation to the embedded event, and both the state
> and embedded event can be modified.
>
> I think this kind of situation can also happen with habituals, without
> introducing an extra predicate:
>
> "I didn't used to brush my teeth for long enough, but for the past
> year, I've been brushing for two minutes"
>
> In terms of the denotation, we have many brushing events lasting two
> minutes, and a habitual state lasting a year. A more minimal example:
>
> "Kim brushed for two minutes for a year"
>
> Some word orders seem weird (but maybe okay with the right intonation):
>
> ?"Kim brushed for a year for two minutes"
> "For a year, Kim brushed for two minutes"
> ?"For two minutes, Kim brushed for a year"
>
> So if want to introduce an extra event variable for modals, it seems
> to me that we might want do the same for habituals, too, even though
> they can be unmarked in English.
>
>
> For (2a) and (2b), I think we can capture the difference without
> necessarily referring to the neg "event", by using label sharing to
> control whether the adverbial scopes above or below negation (my
> "option 2" below). So for (2b), the claim would be that fronted
> adverbials have to take high scope, i.e. share a label with the LTOP
> rather than the INDEX. In MRS, this would be immediate, since the
> INDEX's label is no longer available. In DMRS, it would have to be a
> syntactic constraint (you know, maybe this reading is fine in Turkish).
>
> In this analysis, the negation has to act on an expression with a free
> variable (the event), rather than a proposition, so that the event is
> still available for the adverbial when it takes high scope. Negation
> is still easy to define, but rather than inverting truth values, it's
> inverting truth-conditional functions. (In type-theoretic terms, it's
> of the form <<e,t>,<e,t>>.)
>
> That is, rather than not(speak(e)), we have not(speak)(e), so that we
> can write not(speak)(e)&for-a-long-time(e), which would contrast with
> the other reading not(speak&for-a-long-time)(e). But then I don't
> think it really matters whether "not" or "speak" is introducing this
> "e". If we say that "not" is introducing an event, it's effectively
> just wrapping the event from "speak", anyway.
>
> If we're happy to do that, then we could perhaps extend this approach
> to modals - can(close) takes a truth-conditional function that's true
> of closing events, and returns a truth-conditional function that's
> true of able-to-close states. The embedded verb's event never gets
> quantified, which is perhaps reasonable - "Kim can close the window"
> can be true even if Kim never closes the window.
>
> This would make negation and modals look formally very similar, even
> though the modal states look very different from the embedded verb events.
>
> So maybe these events aren't so problematic after all? And I'm sure
> there's a literature on this that I should read.
>
>
> 2017-05-19 1:45 GMT-07:00 Ann Copestake <aac10 at cl.cam.ac.uk
> <mailto:aac10 at cl.cam.ac.uk>>:
>
> my intuition is that events (eventualities) with modals make some
> sense in an object language:
>
> Kim can close the window.
>
> can(e,k,close(e',k,w))
>
> e refers to the state of Kim having the ability, much as in
>
> Kim believes Sandy slept.
>
> believe(e,k,sleep(e',s))
>
> we can talk about the state of Kim having the belief.
>
> Kim could close the window for an hour.
>
> has a reading where it's Kim's ability that lasts for an hour
> (e.g., follow up with "and then was too weak") - that seems OK in
> terms of eventuality modification.
>
> Originally event semantics didn't include states and people argued
> both ways, and off the top of my head, I can't remember who ...
> Still, states make a certain amount of sense in terms of a
> collection of properties or potentialities associated with a
> spatio-temporal location, in a way that the not "event" and the
> probably "event" don't. I think one might find discussion of why
> not events don't make sense in some of the situation semantics
> literature.
>
> Decomposed events have been proposed in a number of contexts where
> the adverbial seems to refer to a preparatory state or whatever.
> Higginbotham and various Generative Lexicon people (Pustejovsky et
> al), for instance. e.g.,
>
> (13) Mary came in an hour for an hour.
>
> from a paper that talks about the event decomposition idea (which
> I just found with an extremely cursory search, so don't take it as
> a proper citation)
> https://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/research/linguistics/publications/wpl/96papers/evans
> <https://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/research/linguistics/publications/wpl/96papers/evans>
>
> So the idea that one can say that there's a preparatory state of
> not talking in:
>
> (2a) Kim didn't speak for a long time.
>
> is perhaps sort of plausible. i.e., one could claim that the
> single event allows an underspecification of the two readings.
> But then
>
> (2b) For a long time, Kim didn't speak. ;;; Kim was silent for a
> long time
>
> is problematic in that it only has the one reading. One could
> stipulate that, of course, but it's not pretty.
>
> Maybe I'm wrong to be so worried and someone has seriously
> proposed not events. Ask Alex? What one's looking for (in terms
> of the object language) is a literature where the denotation is
> discussed - not simply an argument from ambiguity / readings.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ann
>
>
>
> On 19/05/2017 04:17, Emily M. Bender wrote:
>> Right---I'm trying to understand why it is that we give different
>> representations
>> for not v. other modal operators wrt which event variable is
>> exposed, with the
>> longer range goal of getting to tests that could in principle be
>> applied in other languages
>> too, so we could find out if the representation we pick for
>> sentential negation
>> works across languages.
>>
>> Collecting the data that has come up so far in this thread:
>>
>> (1a) We could unexpectedly close the window. ;;;
>> could(unexpectedly(close)) / unexpectedly(could(close))
>> (1b) We did not unexpectedly close the window. ;;;
>> not(unexpectedly(close))
>> (1c) Unexpectedly we did not close the window. ;;;
>> unexpectedly(not(close))
>>
>> [Aside: The reason I was asking about extraction is that we do
>> have a construction that
>> allows an adverb to attach low in the semantics but appear at the
>> left edge of the clause.
>> That would predict not(unexpectedly(close)) for (1c), which I
>> think isn't available.]
>>
>> (2a) Kim didn't speak for a long time. ;;; Kim spoke for only a
>> short time / Kim was silent for a long time
>> (2b) For a long time, Kim didn't speak. ;;; Kim was silent for a
>> long time
>>
>> If (1a) is really ambiguous, is that meant to be an argument that
>> 'could' has its
>> own event that can be modified? Why is it less problematic for a
>> modal operator like
>> 'could' to introduce an event (in terms of the underlying
>> semantics) than something
>> like 'probably' or 'not'? Do the readings of (1b) and (1c)
>> correspond to the two readings of (1a)?
>>
>> Just now it seems to me that the two readings of (1a) and the
>> pair (1b)/(1c) aren't really
>> relevant to the question of which INDEX is propagated, because in
>> any case the ARG1 of
>> unexpectedly or not is handle-valued. But, we'd consider 'for a
>> long time' to be a non-scopal
>> modifier in (2), right? So what do we want 'for' to take as its
>> ARG in (2b)/the second
>> reading of (2a)?
>>
>> Emily
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, May 18, 2017 at 6:55 PM, Guy Emerson <gete2 at cam.ac.uk
>> <mailto:gete2 at cam.ac.uk>> wrote:
>>
>> I think Emily's goal was to figure out what representation we
>> should use, and whether we need to have different
>> representations cross-linguistically. (Emily, is that a fair
>> summary?) I can see that a negated event could be
>> problematic, but I was going off the ERG semantics, where
>> neg_rel has two arguments, so it looks like we do have
>> not(e,P). In DMRS, we can avoid saying whether there is an
>> event, but it's there in the MRS.
>>
>>
>>
>> 2017-05-18 8:01 GMT-07:00 Ann Copestake <aac10 at cl.cam.ac.uk
>> <mailto:aac10 at cl.cam.ac.uk>>:
>>
>> I do think it's really important to be clear what the
>> goals are. Are you trying to figure out what the
>> representation should be in terms of the underlying
>> semantics? Because then talking about negation events
>> could well be problematic. There are moves one can make
>> which might work - e.g., situations in Barwise and Perry
>> terms (but then that doesn't necessarily fit with other
>> things we're doing) - but one can't simply write e.g.,
>> not(e,P) and assume it's meaningful. I mean, maybe you
>> want e to refer to the period of time when not(P) holds.
>> But I guess you can see that this is not something that
>> is obviously OK.
>>
>> Alternatively, you're essentially leaving the object
>> language up to someone else and trying to come up with a
>> representation which captures the right things about the
>> syntax/semantics interface. But I still think you have
>> to know something about plausible target object languages.
>>
>> All best,
>>
>> Ann
>>
>>
>> On 17/05/17 21:14, Guy Emerson wrote:
>>> To bring this back to Emily's question, I can think of
>>> two ways that we might represent the "silent for a long
>>> time" reading:
>>>
>>> Option 1. "for a long time" takes the neg_rel's variable
>>> as an argument. This could be constructed
>>> compositionally using the negation-as-a-modal analysis
>>> that Emily mentioned. This would then allow neg_rel to
>>> have a consistent semantics in the Grammar Matrix.
>>>
>>> On the downside, if we push the INDEX up to the neg_rel,
>>> we can't get hold of _speak_v_rel any more - which we
>>> need if we're going to model adverbs attaching after
>>> negation but scoping underneath negation. With DMRS
>>> composition, we can construct it compositionally even if
>>> we stick with the scopal modifier approach (so the INDEX
>>> is still "speak"), and then connect an ARG/EQ link to
>>> the LTOP. This would, however, mean relaxing the
>>> constraints in the proposed DMRS algebra, since we have
>>> an /EQ link selecting the LTOP, not the INDEX.
>>>
>>> Option 2. "for a long time" shares a label with the
>>> neg_rel, but still takes _speak_v_rel as an argument.
>>> So then "for a long time" is outside the scope of
>>> negation. To construct this compositionally, we want
>>> _speak_v_rel to be the INDEX (for both MRS and DMRS
>>> composition).
>>>
>>> If we take this approach, then we can treat modals as
>>> scopal modifiers and still get two readings. So this
>>> doesn't directly answer Emily's question, because now
>>> there are two different ways of getting two readings.
>>> But it would at least suggest that we can treat modals
>>> as scopal modifiers, which would allow a more consistent
>>> semantics of negation in the Grammar Matrix.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> That's the main thing I wanted to say - but Re: Robin Hood:
>>>
>>> I've found Ivan Sag's discussion of the jailing Robin
>>> Hood examples
>>> (https://www.academia.edu/2798317/Adjunct_scope
>>> <https://www.academia.edu/2798317/Adjunct_scope>),
>>> apparently discussed by Dowty (1979). I can see the
>>> relevance, in that "for three years" could refer to the
>>> time in jail, or the time spent putting him in jail. But
>>> I'm not convinced by the argument that we should
>>> decompose this as a causative - otherwise, the verb
>>> "sentence" also seems like it could be decomposed into
>>> something like cause(be-in-jail), but it doesn't pattern
>>> like "jail":
>>>
>>> The Sheriff of Nottingham jailed Robin Hood for three years.
>>> *The Sheriff of Nottingham jailed Robin Hood to three years.
>>> The Sheriff of Nottingham sentenced Robin Hood for three
>>> years. (repeated jailing reading)
>>> The Sheriff of Nottingham sentenced Robin Hood to three
>>> years. (single jailing reading)
>>>
>>> In any case, we can get different readings for verbs
>>> without an obvious lexical decomposition:
>>>
>>> I ate meat for a year (but then became vegetarian)
>>> I ate meat for an hour (and then I was very full)
>>>
>>> Bouma&Malouf&Sag also discuss "open again", but
>>> similarly, "Kim bought X and sold it again" has a
>>> reading where this is the first time Kim sold it. And
>>> explicitly representing that reading by decomposing
>>> "sell" would require something like cause(be-sold).
>>> This seems dubious to me. I'm much more tempted to say
>>> that "again" has a fuzzier meaning than Dowty assumes.
>>>
>>> I couldn't find any examples which convinced me that
>>> there's an interaction with the morphosyntax, so I feel
>>> like this is all something that we can safely leave out
>>> of the MRS.
>>>
>>>
>>> 2017-05-17 3:57 GMT-07:00 Ann Copestake
>>> <aac10 at cl.cam.ac.uk <mailto:aac10 at cl.cam.ac.uk>>:
>>>
>>> I get those readings but note:
>>>
>>> 3. For a long time, Kim didn't speak.
>>>
>>> only has your reading 2.
>>>
>>> so although I'd want to try and give an
>>> underspecified semantics for your sentence, one
>>> would have to do that in a way that recognised this
>>> has a different semantics.
>>>
>>> for negation there's an extensive literature - I'd
>>> recommend Horn's book.
>>>
>>> For some of these type of examples, I've played
>>> around with an account that decomposes the event
>>> variable so that one might claim that the negation
>>> was operating over different parts of a complex
>>> event structure in standard MRS. But that only
>>> allows for 3 in a very stipulative way, if it works
>>> at all. Negated events are complicated.
>>>
>>> Incidentally, Ivan Sag (somewhere) had a discussion
>>> of examples like:
>>>
>>> The Sheriff of Nottingham jailed Robin Hood for
>>> three years.
>>>
>>> which may be relevant - I honestly can't remember.
>>>
>>> Anyway - I was trying to answer a slightly different
>>> type of question, which was what the semantics of
>>> unexpected_rel might be. I was just trying to
>>> convey the modal flavour - not talking about the
>>> different readings the English sentence might have.
>>> It may be that with some sort of account that did
>>> the negation examples, one could also get a
>>> non-scopal `unexpectedly' to give two structurally
>>> different readings, but that's a somewhat different
>>> issue.
>>>
>>> All best,
>>>
>>> Ann
>>>
>>>
>>> On 17/05/17 02:08, Guy Emerson wrote:
>>>> So, if I've understood correctly:
>>>>
>>>> - using a scopal modifier for negation only leaves
>>>> one variable for non-scopal modifiers
>>>> - using a modal for negation would allow non-scopal
>>>> modifiers to take either the main verb's variable,
>>>> or the modal's variable
>>>>
>>>> But then, what about "Kim didn't speak for a long
>>>> time", which I think can have two readings:
>>>>
>>>> 1. Kim spoke for only a short time
>>>> 2. Kim was silent for a long time
>>>>
>>>> It looks like the ERG just gets the first reading.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 2017-05-11 13:55 GMT-07:00 Ann Copestake
>>>> <aac10 at cl.cam.ac.uk <mailto:aac10 at cl.cam.ac.uk>>:
>>>>
>>>> I think /unexpectedly/ is scopal in at least
>>>> some circumstances. Specifically I would say
>>>> the semantics of /unexpectedly/ is modal (in a
>>>> broad sense) - e.g., I could treat it in terms
>>>> of possible worlds that I'm considering at some
>>>> timepoint t - if in only 1% of possible worlds
>>>> does P happen, and P actually happens by t'
>>>> (where t' > t) then unexpected(P). This is very
>>>> crude and incomplete, but all I'm trying to do
>>>> here is convey the modal intuition.
>>>>
>>>> Under this interpretation:
>>>>
>>>> unexpected(not(win(Kim)))
>>>>
>>>> means that at time t I thought not(win(Kim))
>>>> had 1% chance, but at t' not(win(Kim)) has come
>>>> to pass
>>>>
>>>> this isn't the same as:
>>>>
>>>> not(unexpected(win(Kim)))
>>>>
>>>> which means it-is-not-the-case that [ at time t
>>>> I thought win(Kim) had 1% chance and at t'
>>>> win(Kim) has come to pass ] i.e., either I
>>>> expected Kim to win all along or Kim actually
>>>> didn't win
>>>>
>>>>> Also, in (3), unexpectedly could be a
>>>>> sentence-initial discourse
>>>>> adverb (scopal?) or an adverb extracted from
>>>>> lower in the clause...
>>>>
>>>> As I remember it, the discussion about possible
>>>> sentence situation meaning is a semantic one
>>>> rather than depending on whether there's
>>>> extraction or not.
>>>>
>>>> All best,
>>>>
>>>> Ann
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 11/05/2017 21:13, Emily M. Bender wrote:
>>>>> Thanks, Ann, for the quick reply! This
>>>>> connects to other things I've been
>>>>> curious about recently, including how we
>>>>> decide if something like "unexpectedly"
>>>>> is scopal or not. Also, in (3), unexpectedly
>>>>> could be a sentence-initial discourse
>>>>> adverb (scopal?) or an adverb extracted from
>>>>> lower in the clause...
>>>>>
>>>>> Emily
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 2:11 AM, Ann Copestake
>>>>> <aac10 at cl.cam.ac.uk
>>>>> <mailto:aac10 at cl.cam.ac.uk>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I think the idea is to represent the
>>>>> contrast between:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1 We could unexpectedly close the window.
>>>>>
>>>>> either ability to close or actual closure
>>>>> is unexpected
>>>>>
>>>>> 2 We did not unexpectedly close the window.
>>>>>
>>>>> only the closure (if it had happened)
>>>>> would be unexpected.
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't think this is actually the best
>>>>> analysis. For instance, for me,
>>>>>
>>>>> 3 Unexpectedly we did not close the window.
>>>>>
>>>>> has another reading, which we are not
>>>>> capturing in MRS. Claudia Maiernborn
>>>>> would (perhaps) treat this as a sentential
>>>>> situation rather than an event
>>>>> modification and it may be that analysis
>>>>> is also available for 1 instead of the
>>>>> modal modification analysis.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm afraid I don't have time to discuss
>>>>> this properly at the moment, though. I
>>>>> feel such a discussion has taken place,
>>>>> but don't remember the venue.
>>>>>
>>>>> All best,
>>>>>
>>>>> Ann
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 10/05/2017 01:13, Emily M. Bender wrote:
>>>>>> Dear all,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm curious about the different in
>>>>>> analysis between neg_rel and (other)
>>>>>> scopal adverbial
>>>>>> modifiers on the one hand and modals on
>>>>>> the other in the treatment of the INDEX:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In (1) and (2), the INDEX of the whole
>>>>>> MRS points to the ARG0 of _sleep_v_rel:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> (1) Kim doesn't sleep.
>>>>>> (2) Kim probably sleeps.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ... where in (3) and (4) it points to the
>>>>>> ARG0 of _can_v_rel and _would_v_rel
>>>>>> respectively:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> (3) Kim can sleep.
>>>>>> (4) Kim would sleep.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm wondering what difference we intend
>>>>>> to model here. (This question comes up now
>>>>>> because we're looking at negation in my
>>>>>> grammar engineering class, and the
>>>>>> out-of-the-box
>>>>>> analysis for languages which express
>>>>>> negation with an auxiliary has neg_rel
>>>>>> falling
>>>>>> in the latter class.)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>> Emily
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Emily M. Bender
>>>>>> Professor, Department of Linguistics
>>>>>> Check out CLMS on facebook!
>>>>>> http://www.facebook.com/uwclma
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Emily M. Bender
>>>>> Professor, Department of Linguistics
>>>>> Check out CLMS on facebook!
>>>>> http://www.facebook.com/uwclma
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Emily M. Bender
>> Professor, Department of Linguistics
>> Check out CLMS on facebook! http://www.facebook.com/uwclma
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.delph-in.net/archives/developers/attachments/20170520/6fcd062a/attachment-0001.html>
More information about the developers
mailing list