<div dir="ltr">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.<br><div><br>I think this kind of situation can also happen with habituals, without introducing an extra predicate:<br><br></div><div>"I didn't used to brush my teeth for long enough, but for the past year, I've been brushing for two minutes"<br><br></div><div>In terms of the denotation, we have many brushing events lasting two minutes, and a habitual state lasting a year. A more minimal example:<br><br>"Kim brushed for two minutes for a year"<br><br>Some word orders seem weird (but maybe okay with the right intonation):<br><br></div><div>?"Kim brushed for a year for two minutes"<br></div><div>"For a year, Kim brushed for two minutes"<br></div><div>?"For two minutes, Kim brushed for a year"<br><br></div><div>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.<br><br><br></div><div>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).<br><br></div><div>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>>.)<br><br>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.<br></div><div><br>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.<br><br></div><div>This would make negation and modals look formally very similar, even though the modal states look very different from the embedded verb events.<br><br></div><div>So maybe these events aren't so problematic after all? And I'm sure there's a literature on this that I should read.<br></div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">2017-05-19 1:45 GMT-07:00 Ann Copestake <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:aac10@cl.cam.ac.uk" target="_blank">aac10@cl.cam.ac.uk</a>></span>:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> <div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> <p>my intuition is that events (eventualities) with modals make some sense in an object language: <br> </p> <p>Kim can close the window.</p> <p>can(e,k,close(e',k,w))<br> </p> e refers to the state of Kim having the ability, much as in<br> <br> Kim believes Sandy slept.<br> <br> believe(e,k,sleep(e',s))<br> <br> we can talk about the state of Kim having the belief.<br> <br> Kim could close the window for an hour.<br> <br> 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.<br> <br> 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.<br> <br> 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.,<br> <br> (13) Mary came in an hour for an hour.<br> <br> 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) <a class="m_-8837310576754914894moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/research/linguistics/publications/wpl/96papers/evans" target="_blank">https://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/<wbr>research/linguistics/<wbr>publications/wpl/96papers/<wbr>evans</a><br> <br> So the idea that one can say that there's a preparatory state of not talking in:<span class=""><br> <br> (2a) Kim didn't speak for a long time. <br> <br></span> is perhaps sort of plausible. i.e., one could claim that the single event allows an underspecification of the two readings.<br> But then <br><span class=""> <br> <div>(2b) For a long time, Kim didn't speak. ;;; Kim was silent for a long time</div> <div><br> </div></span> is problematic in that it only has the one reading. One could stipulate that, of course, but it's not pretty.<br> <br> 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. <br> <br> Cheers,<br> <br> Ann<div><div class="h5"><br> <br> <br> <div class="m_-8837310576754914894moz-cite-prefix">On 19/05/2017 04:17, Emily M. Bender wrote:<br> </div> <blockquote type="cite"> <div dir="ltr">Right---I'm trying to understand why it is that we give different representations <div>for not v. other modal operators wrt which event variable is exposed, with the</div> <div>longer range goal of getting to tests that could in principle be applied in other languages</div> <div>too, so we could find out if the representation we pick for sentential negation</div> <div>works across languages. </div> <div><br> </div> <div>Collecting the data that has come up so far in this thread:</div> <div><br> </div> <div>(1a) <span style="font-size:12.8px">We could unexpectedly close the window. ;;; could(unexpectedly(close)) / unexpectedly(could(close))</span></div> <div><span style="font-size:12.8px">(1b) </span><span style="font-size:12.8px">We did not unexpectedly close the window. ;;; not(unexpectedly(close))</span></div> <div><span style="font-size:12.8px">(1c) </span><span style="font-size:12.8px">Unexpectedly we did not close the window. ;;; unexpectedly(not(close))</span></div> <div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><br> </span></div> <div><span style="font-size:12.8px">[Aside: The reason I was asking about extraction is that we do have a construction that</span></div> <div><span style="font-size:12.8px">allows an adverb to attach low in the semantics but appear at the left edge of the clause.</span></div> <div><span style="font-size:12.8px">That would predict not(unexpectedly(close)) for (1c), which I think isn't available.]</span></div> <div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><br> </span></div> <div>(2a) Kim didn't speak for a long time. ;;; Kim spoke for only a short time / Kim was silent for a long time<br> </div> <div>(2b) For a long time, Kim didn't speak. ;;; Kim was silent for a long time</div> <div><br> </div> <div>If (1a) is really ambiguous, is that meant to be an argument that 'could' has its</div> <div>own event that can be modified? Why is it less problematic for a modal operator like</div> <div>'could' to introduce an event (in terms of the underlying semantics) than something</div> <div>like 'probably' or 'not'? Do the readings of (1b) and (1c) correspond to the two readings of (1a)? </div> <div><br> </div> <div>Just now it seems to me that the two readings of (1a) and the pair (1b)/(1c) aren't really</div> <div>relevant to the question of which INDEX is propagated, because in any case the ARG1 of</div> <div>unexpectedly or not is handle-valued. But, we'd consider 'for a long time' to be a non-scopal </div> <div>modifier in (2), right? So what do we want 'for' to take as its ARG in (2b)/the second</div> <div>reading of (2a)?</div> <div><br> </div> <div>Emily</div> <div><br> </div> <div><br> </div> <div><br> </div> <span style="font-size:12.8px"></span></div> <div class="gmail_extra"><br> <div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, May 18, 2017 at 6:55 PM, Guy Emerson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:gete2@cam.ac.uk" target="_blank">gete2@cam.ac.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> <div dir="ltr">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.<br> <br> <br> </div> <div class="m_-8837310576754914894HOEnZb"> <div class="m_-8837310576754914894h5"> <div class="gmail_extra"><br> <div class="gmail_quote">2017-05-18 8:01 GMT-07:00 Ann Copestake <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:aac10@cl.cam.ac.uk" target="_blank">aac10@cl.cam.ac.uk</a>></span>:<br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> <div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> <p>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.<br> </p> <p>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. <br> </p> <p>All best,</p> <p>Ann<br> </p> <div> <div class="m_-8837310576754914894m_-8265124334523577790h5"> <br> <div class="m_-8837310576754914894m_-8265124334523577790m_-6591178192211473240moz-cite-prefix">On 17/05/17 21:14, Guy Emerson wrote:<br> </div> <blockquote type="cite"> <div dir="ltr"> <div>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:<br> <br> </div> 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.<br> <br> 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.<br> <br> <div>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).<br> <br> </div> <div>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.<br> </div> <div><br> <br> <br> </div> <div>That's the main thing I wanted to say - but Re: Robin Hood:<br> </div> <div><br> </div> <div>I've found Ivan Sag's discussion of the jailing Robin Hood examples (<a href="https://www.academia.edu/2798317/Adjunct_scope" target="_blank">https://www.academia.edu/2798<wbr>317/Adjunct_scope</a>), 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":<br> <br> The Sheriff of Nottingham jailed Robin Hood for three years.<br> *The Sheriff of Nottingham jailed Robin Hood to three years.<br> The Sheriff of Nottingham sentenced Robin Hood for three years. (repeated jailing reading)<br> The Sheriff of Nottingham sentenced Robin Hood to three years. (single jailing reading)<br> <br> </div> <div>In any case, we can get different readings for verbs without an obvious lexical decomposition:<br> <br> </div> <div>I ate meat for a year (but then became vegetarian)<br> </div> <div>I ate meat for an hour (and then I was very full)<br> <br> </div> <div>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.<br> </div> <div><br> </div> <div>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.<br> </div> <div><br> </div> </div> <div class="gmail_extra"><br> <div class="gmail_quote">2017-05-17 3:57 GMT-07:00 Ann Copestake <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:aac10@cl.cam.ac.uk" target="_blank">aac10@cl.cam.ac.uk</a>></span>:<br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> <div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> <p>I get those readings but note:<br> </p> <p>3. For a long time, Kim didn't speak.<br> </p> only has your reading 2.<br> <br> 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.<br> <br> for negation there's an extensive literature - I'd recommend Horn's book.<br> <br> 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.<br> <br> Incidentally, Ivan Sag (somewhere) had a discussion of examples like:<br> <br> The Sheriff of Nottingham jailed Robin Hood for three years.<br> <br> which may be relevant - I honestly can't remember.<br> <br> 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.<br> <br> All best,<br> <br> Ann <div> <div class="m_-8837310576754914894m_-8265124334523577790m_-6591178192211473240h5"><br> <br> <div class="m_-8837310576754914894m_-8265124334523577790m_-6591178192211473240m_-8944700136553354417moz-cite-prefix">On 17/05/17 02:08, Guy Emerson wrote:<br> </div> <blockquote type="cite"> <div dir="ltr"> <div> <div> <div> <div>So, if I've understood correctly:<br> <br> - using a scopal modifier for negation only leaves one variable for non-scopal modifiers<br> </div> - using a modal for negation would allow non-scopal modifiers to take either the main verb's variable, or the modal's variable<br> <br> </div> But then, what about "Kim didn't speak for a long time", which I think can have two readings:<br> <br> </div> 1. Kim spoke for only a short time<br> </div> <div>2. Kim was silent for a long time<br> <br> </div> <div>It looks like the ERG just gets the first reading.<br> </div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div><br> <br> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="gmail_extra"><br> <div class="gmail_quote">2017-05-11 13:55 GMT-07:00 Ann Copestake <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:aac10@cl.cam.ac.uk" target="_blank">aac10@cl.cam.ac.uk</a>></span>:<br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> <div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> <p>I think <i>unexpectedly</i> is scopal in at least some circumstances. Specifically I would say the semantics of <i>unexpectedly</i> 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.<br> </p> <p> Under this interpretation:<br> </p> <p> unexpected(not(win(Kim))) <br> </p> <p>means that at time t I thought not(win(Kim)) had 1% chance, but at t' not(win(Kim)) has come to pass</p> <p>this isn't the same as:<br> </p> <p> not(unexpected(win(Kim)))<br> </p> 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<span><br> <br> <blockquote type="cite">Also, in (3), unexpectedly could be a sentence-initial discourse <div>adverb (scopal?) or an adverb extracted from lower in the clause...</div> </blockquote> <br> </span> 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. <br> <br> All best,<br> <br> Ann <div> <div class="m_-8837310576754914894m_-8265124334523577790m_-6591178192211473240m_-8944700136553354417m_-310726251724269823h5"><br> <br> <div class="m_-8837310576754914894m_-8265124334523577790m_-6591178192211473240m_-8944700136553354417m_-310726251724269823m_-1602240225619716942moz-cite-prefix">On 11/05/2017 21:13, Emily M. Bender wrote:<br> </div> <blockquote type="cite"> <div dir="ltr">Thanks, Ann, for the quick reply! This connects to other things I've been <div>curious about recently, including how we decide if something like "unexpectedly"</div> <div>is scopal or not. Also, in (3), unexpectedly could be a sentence-initial discourse</div> <div>adverb (scopal?) or an adverb extracted from lower in the clause...</div> <div><br> </div> <div>Emily</div> </div> <div class="gmail_extra"><br> <div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 2:11 AM, Ann Copestake <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:aac10@cl.cam.ac.uk" target="_blank">aac10@cl.cam.ac.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> <div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> <p>I think the idea is to represent the contrast between:<br> </p> <p>1 We could unexpectedly close the window.</p> <p>either ability to close or actual closure is unexpected<br> </p> <p>2 We did not unexpectedly close the window.</p> <p>only the closure (if it had happened) would be unexpected.</p> <p>I don't think this is actually the best analysis. For instance, for me,<br> </p> <p>3 Unexpectedly we did not close the window.</p> 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.<br> <br> 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.<br> <br> All best,<br> <br> Ann <div> <div class="m_-8837310576754914894m_-8265124334523577790m_-6591178192211473240m_-8944700136553354417m_-310726251724269823m_-1602240225619716942h5"><br> <br> <br> <div class="m_-8837310576754914894m_-8265124334523577790m_-6591178192211473240m_-8944700136553354417m_-310726251724269823m_-1602240225619716942m_6920975839983985265moz-cite-prefix">On 10/05/2017 01:13, Emily M. Bender wrote:<br> </div> <blockquote type="cite"> <div dir="ltr">Dear all, <div><br> </div> <div>I'm curious about the different in analysis between neg_rel and (other) scopal adverbial </div> <div>modifiers on the one hand and modals on the other in the treatment of the INDEX:</div> <div><br> </div> <div>In (1) and (2), the INDEX of the whole MRS points to the ARG0 of _sleep_v_rel:</div> <div><br> </div> <div>(1) Kim doesn't sleep.</div> <div>(2) Kim probably sleeps.</div> <div><br> </div> <div>... where in (3) and (4) it points to the ARG0 of _can_v_rel and _would_v_rel respectively:</div> <div><br> </div> <div>(3) Kim can sleep.</div> <div>(4) Kim would sleep.</div> <div><br> </div> <div>I'm wondering what difference we intend to model here. (This question comes up now</div> <div>because we're looking at negation in my grammar engineering class, and the out-of-the-box</div> <div>analysis for languages which express negation with an auxiliary has neg_rel falling</div> <div>in the latter class.)</div> <div><br> </div> <div>Thanks,</div> <div>Emily</div> <div><br clear="all"> <div><br> </div> -- <br> <div class="m_-8837310576754914894m_-8265124334523577790m_-6591178192211473240m_-8944700136553354417m_-310726251724269823m_-1602240225619716942m_6920975839983985265gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"> <div dir="ltr"> <div> <div dir="ltr"> <div> <div dir="ltr">Emily M. Bender<br> Professor, <span style="font-size:12.8px">Department of Linguistics</span></div> <div dir="ltr">Check out CLMS on facebook! <a href="http://www.facebook.com/uwclma" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/uwclma</a><br> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </blockquote> <br> </div> </div> </div> </blockquote> </div> <br> <br clear="all"> <div><br> </div> -- <br> <div class="m_-8837310576754914894m_-8265124334523577790m_-6591178192211473240m_-8944700136553354417m_-310726251724269823m_-1602240225619716942gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"> <div dir="ltr"> <div> <div dir="ltr"> <div> <div dir="ltr">Emily M. Bender<br> Professor, <span style="font-size:12.8px">Department of Linguistics</span></div> <div dir="ltr">Check out CLMS on facebook! <a href="http://www.facebook.com/uwclma" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/uwclma</a><br> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </blockquote> <br> </div> </div> </div> </blockquote> </div> <br> </div> </div> </blockquote> <br> </div> </div> </div> </blockquote> </div> <br> </div> </blockquote> <br> </div> </div> </div> </blockquote> </div> <br> </div> </div> </div> </blockquote> </div> <br> <br clear="all"> <div><br> </div> -- <br> <div class="m_-8837310576754914894gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"> <div dir="ltr"> <div> <div dir="ltr"> <div> <div dir="ltr">Emily M. Bender<br> Professor, <span style="font-size:12.8px">Department of Linguistics</span></div> <div dir="ltr">Check out CLMS on facebook! <a href="http://www.facebook.com/uwclma" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/uwclma</a><br> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </blockquote> <br> </div></div></div> </blockquote></div><br></div>