Transcript ppt
The scope of bare nominals Do bare nouns take wide scope? The answer... YES! Min Que NO! The rest of the world (or close to it…) English (Carlson), Spanish (Espinal and McNally 2010 and references therein), Hungarian (Farkas and de Swart 2003), Russian (Geist 2010), Albanian (Kalluli 2001), Hebrew (Doron 2003), Hindi (Dayal 2003, 2004), Mandarin Chinese (Yang 2001, Rullmann & You 2006), Indonesian (Chung 2000, Sato 2008), Javanese (Sato 2008), Turkish (Bliss 2003), Brazilian Portuguese (Schmitt & Munn 1999) 2 How to go about testing scope? > A first attempt Every boy read a book. a. There is a book that every boy read. wide b. Every boy is such that he read a book. narrow Why is this not a good format for test items? Because every situation that makes a. true will also make b. true. 3 How to go about testing scope? > A better attempt John didn’t read a (single) book. a. There is a book that John didn’t read. wide b. John read no book. narrow Why is this a better format for test items? Because a. can be true in situations in which b. is not true. 4 A small classroom experiment Deze diagnose heeft ons doen inzien waarom hij sommige dwangideeën heeft, zoals altijd de eerste willen zijn (op de trap, in bad, aan tafel...) of woedebuien (omdat hij dingen niet begrijpt) of irrationele angsten (zoals steeds denken dat er bijen rond zoemen, terwijl het soms maar een grasmaaier is). Hoe ouder hij wordt, hij is nu bijna acht jaar, hoe duidelijker het autisme wordt. Does this necessarily mean because he things not understand that he doesn’t understand anything? omdat hij dingen niet begrijpt Ik vind het absoluut niet leuk dat hij moet huilen vanwege mij. En dat is wel een aantal keren op een dag, omdat hij dingen niet mag of dat hij juist iets moet (naar bed gaan bijvoorbeeld). Ik weet dat het er bij hoort, maar leuk is anders. Nu kan ik er weer even tegen. Does this necessarily mean omdat hij dingen niet mag that he’s not allowed to do because he things not may anything? 5 The set-up of the English experiment Setting-up the bare nominal test items A. B. A. B. This last sentence is truth-conditionally only compatible with a wide scope reading of colleagues. Task: judge the naturalness of the last utterance with respect to the rest of the dialogue on a scale from 0 to 5. Rationale: subjects should not accept a continuation in which Flynn contradicts himself. 7 Further design of the experiment An experiment that would only look at the acceptability of bare nominal items would be meaningless. Why? Because we wouldn’t know what the numbers meant. Our baseline Given that we were testing whether bare nominals could scope above negation, we needed an item that could not. > Negative Polarity Items 8 An example of an NPI test item 9 Further design of the experiment Experiments also need control items and fillers. Why? Control items are used to check whether people are actually sensitive to the phenomenon one is testing. Filler items are used to try to distract subjects in such a way that they don’t discover what the experiment is really about. Our control items > Singular indefinites Our fillers > See example 10 An example of a singular indefinite 11 Examples of filler items 12 Further design of the experiment > Overview of the number of items: 2 NPI items 2 Singular indefinite items 3 Bare plural items 5 Fillers > Participants and procedure: Questionnaire was put online. Included a number of questions that would allow us to weed out non-native speakers. Total number of relevant questionnaires: 63. 13 Results of the English experiment Results: Means and SD 15 Results: Means and SD 16 Results: statistics Paired t-tests There’s a (significant) difference between the NPI items and the BP items. There’s a (significant) difference between the BP items and the SI items. There’s a (significant) difference between BP1 and BP2. / 17 Conclusion of the English experiment Do bare nouns take wide scope? There is ground to assume that bare nouns can take wide scope. 19 Questions/discussion Background Modification 22 Negative polarity items 23 Negative polarity items 24 Belladonna berries 25 De re/de dicto: standard practice John is looking for a unicorn. This sentence is compatible with a reading according to which unicorns exist and John is looking for one. = transparent / de re reading It is however also compatible with a reading according to which unicorns do not exist and John will be looking in vain. = opaque / de dicto reading These interpretations are available because to look for is a verb that doesn't entail the existence of its object. = intensional verb 26 De re/de dicto: Van Geenhoven According to Van Geenhoven we should make a distinction between questions about beliefs (de re / de dicto distinction) and interaction with intensional verbs (transparent / opaque readings). I bought apples. If I believe that apples and pears are the same thing, this sentence is false (de re) if I bought pears but it won't be false according to my beliefs (de dicto). This distinction is independent of the presence of an intensional verb. 27 Back to belladonnas In the example, it's Otto's wish to put belladonna berries in the salad (de re). This is independent of Otto's belief that cherries and belladonna berries are the same thing. Note that belladonna berries on this interpretation doesn't get a transparent reading, i.e. it doesn't take scope over wants, (the reading we get is that it is Otto's wish to put belladonna berries into the salad, not that there are belladonna berries such that it is Otto's wish to put them into the salad). 28 Intensional and modal verbs I'm looking for a unicorn. I want a unicorn. Both looking for and want are verbs that don't entail the existence of their object. They are intensional verbs. Even though looking for is not considered a modal verb, it does pattern with and is closely related to modal verbs like to want. 29 Intensional and modal verbs I'm looking for a unicorn. It should be a white one. I want a unicorn. It should be a white one. Even when we interpret a unicorn in the scope of looking for and want, the pronoun it seems to be able to refer back to it. It's this type of facts that makes it difficult to use anaphoric pick up data as an argument in favour of wide scope. 30 Experimental biases A' 32 Scales and the Dutch 33 Fillers 34 Yixie 35 Our weird Dutch 36 Follow-up research What about acquisition? J. Musolino, 2006, ‘Structure and meaning in the acquisition of scope’, in: V. Van Geenhoven, Semantics in acquisition, New York: Springer, pp. 141-166. A. Gualmini, 2003, ‘Some knowledge children don’t lack’, in: B. Beachley et al., Proceedings of BUCLD 27, Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, pp. 276-287. 38 Scope, children and negation Every horse didn't jump over the fence. The detective didn't find someone. 39 Scope, children and negation 40