JOURNAL OF SEMANTICS AN
INTERNATIONAL JoURNAL FOR THE INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF THE SEMANTICS OF NATURAL LANGUAGE MAN...
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JOURNAL OF SEMANTICS AN
INTERNATIONAL JoURNAL FOR THE INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF THE SEMANTICS OF NATURAL LANGUAGE MANAGING EDITOR: PETER BoscH (IBMScientific Centre, Heidelberg and University of Osnabriick) REVIE W EDITOR: TIBO R Kiss (IBMScientific Centre, Heidelberg) EDITORIAL BOARD:
N. AsHER (University of Texas, Austin) R. BARTSCH (University of Amsterdam) J. VAN BENTHEM (University of Amsterdam) M. BIERWISCH (MPG and Humboldt University Berlin) B. BoGURAEV (Apple Compucer Inc) M. BoRILLO (University of Toulouse) G. BROWN (University of Cambridge) 0. DAHL (University ofStockbolm) S. C. GARROD (University of Glasgow) B. GEURTS (University ofOsnabriick) M. HERWEG (IBMScientific Centre, Heidelberg) L. R. HoRN (Yale University) P. N. joHNSON-LAIRD (Princeton University) H. KAMP (University ofSrungarc) S. LEVINSON (MPI Nijmegen) S. WB NER (University of Diisseldorfj
SIR JoHN LYONS (University of Cambridge) A. MANASTER-RAMER (WayneState University) W. MARSLEN-WILSON (MRC, Cambridge) J. McCAWLEY (University of Chicago) M. MoENS (University of Edinburgh) F. J. PELLETIER (University of Alberta) M. PINKAL (University ofSaarbriicken) R. A. VANDER SANDT (University of Nijmegen) T.SANFORD (University of Glasgow) R. ScHA (University of Amsterdam) H.SCHNELLE (University of Bochum) A. V ONSTECHOW (University of Tiibingen) M.STEEDMAN (University of Pennsylvania) W. WAHLS TE R (DFKI,Saarbriicken) B. WEBBER (University ofpennsylvania) H. ZEEVAT (University of Amsterdam) T. E. Zimmermann (University ofSrungarc)
EDITORIAL ADDRESS : Journal ofSemantics, c/o Dr P. Bosch, IBM GermanySciennfic Centre, Vangerowstr. 18, D-6 9115 Heidelberg, Germany. Phone: (4
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sl -s2 s3-s4 Scales implicit in sentence pairs Figure 1 Percent unified readings made in the paper-and-pencil task, as a function of che direction of the scales taken to be implicit in sentences.
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Of 688 responses, a total of five had to be discarded because of a misprint made in one version of one text. In addition, one subject failed to respond to two questions in one text. All remaining responses identified one of the two favored competitors from a narrative by name. Responses were scored as signaling a unified or a disjoint reading. A unified reading here means that the same referent was assigned across the sentences in a test pair, a disjoint reading that different referents were assigned. It was predicted that unified readings would be given when the scales implied in si and s2, or in s3 and s4, were co-directional (both up or both down ), and that disjoint readings would be given when the scales went in opposite directions (one upwards and the other downwards). Figure 1 shows the percentage of unified readings obtained in the various experimental conditions. All readings not shown were disjoint. It can be seen
44 Scalar Inferences
from Figure I that distributions of responses tended to go very strongly towards, or away from, unified readings. In both languages, about 95 per cent of readings were unified in the case of simple topos, when the scales implicit in s I s2 o r in s 3-s4 went i n the same direction (only upward o r only downward). On the other hand, most readings made (75 per cent of those in Danish and 92 per cent in Finnish) were disjoint in the case of complex topos, where the scales implied were not co-directional. In the two conditions, subjects thus interpreted the potentially ambiguous sequences in essentially opposite ways. 2.4
Self-paced reading task Downloaded from jos.oxfordjournals.org by guest on January 1, 2011
Subjects' responses in the above paper-and-pencil task appear to support the activation and use of inference schemes, issuing from scalar adverbs, as proposed in the work of Ducrot and Anscombre. In fact, there seems little doubt that such reasoning schemes were brought into play, since the data are so consistent with their use. On the other hand, the answers given to questions in the above task do not cast much light on our second or our third hypothesis: it is not evident from the results shown in Figure r that up scales are easier to handle than down scales, and only in Danish did a change in the directionality of scales (in a complex topos) seem to lead to any uncertainty in making disjoint readings. Given the limited conclusions that can be drawn from a paper-and-pencil task, and the fact that subjects' answers in the task were also given in circumstances where they had the opportunity to re-read the text before answering, we changed the testing situation somewhat in the second version of the experiment conducted. In this case, we asked subjects to read each narrative one sentence at a time, advancing the text read from a computer screen by pushing the space bar on the keyboard. The time spent reading each sentence was recorded in milliseconds, and used to infer how easy the various sentences were to understand. Passages were shown in the same order and using the same design as previously, except that one narrative was added as a practice item. Subjects were encouraged to try to understand each text as they read it; at the end of each narrative, the text reappeared as a whole, and a yes/no question was asked about the competition's result. The subjects were 36 adult native speakers of Danish and 40 adult native speakers of Finnish from the same general population as before, who had not participated in the previous study. Subjects were tested individually, and were paid the equivalent of about ro dollars each for their time.
Lita Lundquist and Robert J. Jarvella 2.5
45
Results
=
=
DANISH
-;:::-
�"' lu
up up /; up
.. OAT/BEN > ACC > OTHERS. In the case of antitopic constructions (of both types, since they are employed for the (re-)establishment of an issue in the discourse model rather than for the establishment of the referents of their dislocated NPs), the referents are seen as an integral part of the semantic information of the predication and as such they should retain the semantic roles which they are assigned in the anaphoric clause. Thus, the primary function of antitopics does not allow any dif ferentiation between their anaphorically related elements in the value of the case feature, as such a differentiation would result in a pragmatic 'promotion' of the referent of the dislocated NP and we would end up with a single utterance suggesting two discourse topics. Incidentally, Lambrecht ( 1987: 2 5 4) suggests a pragmatically motivated constraint in the form of a pragmatic maxim, namely 'Do not introduce a referent and talk about it at the same time', which can explain why the dislocated NP in antitopic constructions cannot be promoted to an independent discourse topic. Similarly, in the case of re-naming, intensifying, and local topic reinstating constructions, the dislocated element has to retain the same semantic and pragmatic roles of its anaphorically related anaphor, because none of those constructions is used for the establishment of the already active referent of the dislocated expression as the current discourse topic and, furthermore, the dislocated NP has to be an 'enriched variation' of the preceding anaphor for the reasons iihave already explained. In the case of tail constructions, however, things can be very different. A tail construction is employed primarily for the expression of the speaker's subjective evaluation of a discourse referent in a given context. Nevertheless, the speaker may wish to highlight his personal, subjective opinion of a particular entity through the presentation of some piece of information. In such a case, however, the speaker's evaluation (i.e. the tail expression) may end up functioning as the suggested discourse topic and the information conveyed in the anaphoric clause as 'supportive evidence' of that evaluation. Thus, depending on whether or not the speaker wishes to topicalize his evaluation, we can have cases of tail constructions which display non-concord in the case feature values between the preceding anaphor and the tail expression. Let us consider the following example and its alternatives, together with the interpretations that they suggest:
76 Agreement and Greek RDs
fern. ace. case, sg.) ferane(=ve�, a?rist, +3rd ps. pl. su£)s ·Hx tou(=de£ � art, masc., gen. case, sg.) vlaka(-eplthet, masc., gen. case, sg.)x2J s] He's been had, the silly bugger. (1 7b) tou tin FERANE, ton vlaka . The same as in ( 1 7a) except for: [(to) the stupid1]=dislocated expression The same as in ( 1 7a) except for: [x2 ton(=de£ art., masc., ace. case, sg.) vlaka(=epithet, masc., ace. case, sg.)x2]5] ( 1 7c) tou tin FERANE, o vlakas . The same as in ( 1 7) except for: [the stupid1]=dislocated expression. The same as in ( 1 7) except for: [x2 o(=de£ art., masc., nom. case, sg.) vla kas(=epithet, masc., nom. case, sg.)x2] s ] Downloaded from jos.oxfordjournals.org by guest on January 1, 2011
In ( 1 7a), where there is concord in the case feature values between the eli tic Tou and the tail epithet tou vlaka , the referent is characterized as silly only because of the unfortunate incident described in the predication. Moreover, the foolish ness of the particular referent is presented as a matter of course. In (I 7b) and ( I 7c), however, there seems to be some kind of differentiation in the speaker's evaluation in that the foolishness of the person referred to is no longer a matter of course justified only through the information conveyed in the predication, but something which is worth being discussed further. To put it differently, the dislocated epithets in both ( I 7b) and ( I 7c) function as suggested discourse topics, which ask for further elaboration. Nevertheless, (1 7b) and (I 7c) differ not only from (I 7a) but also between themselves as the dislocated epithet in (I 7b) is in the accusative case, whereas in (I 7c) it is in the nominative case. I am not quite certain as to what is intended by such a differentiation but I suggest that in ( I 7b) the speaker simply thinks that the foolishness of the referent is worth becoming the discourse topic, whereas in (I 7c) the speaker strongly believes it is worth being discussed further. I must point out, however, that some Greeks find ( 1 7c) quite unusual, although they would accept it with no reservation if it were a case of left dislocation. Another major difference between ( 1 7a) on the one hand, and ( 1 7b) as well as ( 1 7c) on the other is the obligatory occurrence of a discernible long pause before the utterance of the dislocated epithets in both (I 7b) and ( I 7c). Also in (I 7a) there is a slight pause before the occurrence of the dislocated epithet, but this is because the verb FERANE receives the emphatic primary stress of the utterance. In (I 7b) and (1 7c), however, the pause must be long and, furthermore, the dislocated epithet should be stressed too, in the sense that there is a slight but audible separation of the two syllables of the epithets, i.e. vla-ka and vla-kas. Yet, in all three cases, irrespective of the length of the pause, there is non-final intonarion before the dislocated epithet. Thus, ( 1 7b) and ( 1 7c) might be characterized as blends, i.e. cases which are somewhere in between the right-dislocated constructions we have been discussing so far, and the
Maria Valiouli 77
intentional 'afterthoughts' (or 'second-thoughts'), which were briefly men tioned earlier. If the interpretations I have suggested for ( 1 7b) and ( 1 7c) are correct, and if we accept Chafe's suggestions with respect to the function of the 'comma intonation', then we can say that, with tail constructions, non-concord in the case-marking reflects an increasing scale of the speaker's certainty as to the discourse topicalization of his evaluation, and, as I have already explained, topicalization of the speaker's evaluation is compatible with the primary com municative function of the tail construction.
Let us now move to the question o f non-concord i n the person feature values between the anaphorically related elements in Greek right dislocations. However, we shall discuss only self-reference cases of non-concord as they are the only ones I have been able to find. As we have already seen, in Modern Greek, as soon as reference to a particular entity is established, the speaker is, in theory, free to go on referring to the same entity by making use of anaphors, unless, of course, for pragmatic reasons, he wants to employ reference by full NPs or overtly present independent personal pronouns. Nevertheless, even if there are pragmatic reasons, excessive use of the independent personal pronoun ego (=I) for self reference is often considered to be a sign of egocentricity. Self-reference by the use of full name or tide, on the other hand, does not occur very often, and when it does, it can reflect various intentions on the part of the speaker; i.e. depending on the context, the speaker may want to keep some 'distance' from herself and assign her words generality or objectivity. The current Greek Minister ofEdu cation, Mr Souflias, for instance, quite often refers to himself as 'the Minister' or 'the Minister of Education', either when he wants to assign his point of view some extra status or when he wants to point out that he does not act as an indi vidual. In addition to self-reference by full name or tide, we can have a rather marked way of self-reference when the speaker makes use of a proper name, which is not his real name, and which is always used connotatively or attributively. Let us, for example, consider the following cases whose right dislocated NPs are proper names: 1 8
( 1 8)
ca kan o , i Mary Panayiotara . [Everything them do-I J ] =anaphoric clause [the Mary Panayiocara J ]=dis locaced expression [s [s · ola(=quanti£ pro., neue., ace. case, pl.) ca(=clitic pers. pro., neue., ace. OLA
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N O N - C O N C O R D I N THE PER S O N FEATU RE V A L U E
7X Agreement and Greek RDs
case, pl.) kan-(=verb, present)+[x 1 -o(= 1 St ps. sg. su£)x1 J s .) [x2 i(=de£ art., fern., nom. case, sg.) Mary Panayiotara(=proper names, i.e. first name and surname, fern., nom. case, sg.)x2]s] I do every single job, a real Mary Panayiotara. ( I 9) owus tous peripioume , i Maria . [Everybody them attend-It] [the Maria1] [s [s· olous(=quanti£ pro., masc., ace. case, pl.) tous(=clitic pers. pro., masc., ace. case, pl.) peripi-(=verb, present)+ [x1 -oume(= I st ps. su£)x 1 ] s ·Hx2 i(=de£ art., fern., nom. case, sg.) Maria(=proper name, i.e. first name, fern., nom. case, sg.)x2]s] I attend to them all, a real maid. Downloaded from jos.oxfordjournals.org by guest on January 1, 2011
Although the main verb in both ( I X) and ( I 9) has a first person singular suffix, the right-dislocated NPs make reference not only to the speaker but to two women, called Mary Panayiotara and Maria, respectively. In ( I X), the NP Mary Panayiotara refers both to the speaker, whose name is not Mary Panayiotara, and to Mary Panayiotara, the main character of a famous Greek song, who has become the symbol of the working woman, mother, wife, and housewife who is wildly exploited by all the males in her social circle. Thus, the dislocated NP is deliberately used in a way seemingly referential and connotative/attributive at the same time. Similarly, in ( I 9), even if the speaker is called Maria, the marked way of self-referring employed marks a change in the speaker's referential attitude towards herself Since in Greece Maria is the proverbial female servant, the speaker wants to present herself as a maid. We can, therefore, claim that a difference in the person feature values again reflects a differentiated attitude towards the particular discourse referent on the part of the speaker, which may result in a topicalization of the suggested connotation. The fact, on the other hand, that I have not been able to find any similar examples with the other categories of right dislocations suggests that such an attitudinal and referential differentiation with the help of person non concord may only be possible with tail constructions. This, of course, once more confirms the conclusion that the speaker's 'freedom' to express referential or attitudinal differentiation is a question of functional compatibility. It should be noted, however, that when it comes to blends, which are somewhere in between antitopics and tails, we can also have cases of person non-concord. On the basis of the observed differentiations, we can come to the conclusion that Greek RDs can carry out simultaneously more than one of the pragmatic functions I have suggested, as long as these functions are compatible or applied in a coherent order, i.e. according to our expectations. To put it differently, the speaker can make use of non-concord in any of the feature values discussed as long as he orders his functional priorities in accordance with the primary function of the category of right dislocation used. Actually, apart from
Maria Valiouli 79
Lambrecht's ( 1987: 254) constraint, which I have already mentioned, Chafe ( 1987: 32) speaks of a similar cognitive constraint, namely the 'one new concept at a time' constraint. These two constraints together with the constraint of functional priority or compatibility I have suggested can account for the acceptable non-concord possibilities as far as Greek RDs are concerned.
CONCLUSIONS
Received: 1 1 - I-./ School ofEnxlish Faculty ./Philosophy
Dept. < Theoretical and Applied Linxuistics
A ristotle University
54006 Thessaloniki Greece
N OTES 1 The term empathy is used m Kuno's sense { 1 976: 43 1 ), who defines it as 'the speaker's identification, in varying degrees, with a participant in an event'. 2 The idiomatic use of vaporaki in Greek here implies that the person referred to is not a drug dealer, and ignorant of carrying d rugs. In the particular context, the use of the
4
indefinite article mia (-one) in front of the surname implies 'all women bearing the surname Valiouli', Valiouli herself included, of course. It should be noted, as the authors point our that in order for (s) to be acceptable, the present tense of the verb pino has to be interpreted w.r.t. the future. Ashby ( 1 988: 2 1 s) discusses the case of a
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Greek right dislocations are used for a number of distinct communicative functions. Despite the differences, however, both in terms of the anaphoric relations and concord possibilities that hold between the preceding anaphor and the dislocated expression, and in terms of their primary communicative functions, all categories of Greek right dislocations are instances of the same phenomenon. All right-dislocated constructions of all categories are used for a tacit, casual, even polite projection of the thematicality of the anaphoric clause and for a simultaneous unemphatic projection of the speaker's referential or attitudinal differentiation towards the thematic information of the con struction-whether the thematically involved is justified by the discourse context or simply taken for granted. Thus, we can also conclude that the pre posed anaphoric clause is as a marker for pragmatic coherence, whereas the dis located expression is the indicator of the emotive meaning of the state of affairs described in the anaphoric clause.
8o Agreement and Greek RDs French RD with an indefinite right dislocated NP, which seems to be subject to contexrual conditions similar to the ones defined for (5 ). 6 Incidentally, I have come across the following RD in a wrinen dialogue of a Greek regional dialect, where the dis located NP is the indefinite pronoun tipotas (-nothing):
Ta mathes, tipotas; [Them1 learned you] -anaphoric clause [nothingi]-dis located expression
8 9
10
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7
The particular RD is employed by one of the rwo interlocutors just before she goes on with some piece of sensational news. In my dialect, however, which is the Modern Greek standard variety, one would probably use the expressions 'Ta mathes;' (-them learned-you?, i.e. Have you heard it?) or the RD ' Ta mathes ta nea;' ( -them(cliric)1 learned-you the news1?, i.e. Have you heard the news?) or possibly 'Emathes tipota;' (-Learned-you nothing?, i.e. Have you heard anything?) or even 'Emathes tipota nea;' (-Learned you nothing news?, i.e. Have you heard any news?). Although I do not know how often the RD with tipotas is used in the particular dialect or whether it sounds natural, I could suggest that it is a dialectal amalgamation of the four alter native expressions that are used in my dialect. Although all the RDs discussed in this paper can be further analysed in contra distinction to potential alternatives, I will not attempt such an approach for reasons which have to do with the length of the present paper. Both the classification and the terminol ogy used in this paper are fully developed m Valiouli ( 1 990). The term antitopic is used to denote a (re-)ropicalization strategy. It should be noted, however, that Lambrecht ( 1 98 1 , 1 987) uses the term antitopic for all French RDs. These rwo terms have been coined by
Prince ( 1 978), who proposes a similar distinction for It -Cleft sentences. More specifically, she claims that there are rwo varieties of It -Clefts, which differ With respect to their presupposed pans: (a) the Stressed-Focus It -Clefts whose presup posed parts represent information that the speaker assumes and that the addres see knows or can deduce, and (b) the Informative-Presupposition It -Clefts whose presupposed pans represent infor mation which is known to the speaker only. 1 1 The term tail has been chosen because of a specific connotation that the corres ponding Greek word oura implies when it is used in a saying that has to do with any definitive last-minute change of an overall picture. Thus, it should not be confused with the term tail in Dik (1978), which is a pragmatic function outside the predication presenting 'afterthought' mformation for the clarification or modificatiOn of a term in the predication. 1 2 The term local topic reinstaters is used 111 Cornish (1 988). 1 3 Cornish ( 1 986: 36) uses the term nominal 'in its more semantic sense as determining a first-order referent'. q The term concord is more appropriate than the term agreement as the latter presupposes syntactic relations rather than pragmatic ones (see also W1ese 198 3). 1 5 Em is an interjection which can be used for the introduction of rwo clauses which describe rwo instances of improper behaviour, the second always being worse than the first. 16 See Wiese (1983) for a detailed discussion of the conceptual meanings of personal pronouns. 1 7 Note that the expression tou Imou Ietc. tin Jerane (lit.: they brought her to him/me/ etc.) is an idiom meaning 'he's/I've/etc. been had'. Moreover, the indirect object of the ditransitive verbferno has to be in the genitive. 1 8 Examples (1 2), ( 1 3), ( 1 4), (1 5), (1 7a), ( 17b),
Maria Valiouli 8 1 ( 17c), ( 1 8) and (19) were also analysed in a paper entitled 'Right-Dislocated Ana phorically Functioning Nominals, Con cord, and Referential!Attitudinal Perspective', which I presented at the sth Annual Symposium on the Description
and/or Comparison of English and Greek, held by the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, School of English, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece, in March 199 1 .
RE FERE N CE S
Some Universals in Language Usage, Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, Sydney. Chafe, W. (1 987), 'Cognitive constraints on information flow', in R. S. Tomlin (ed.),
Typological Studies in Language I I : Coherence and Grounding in Discourse , J. Benjamins
Publishing Co., Amsterdam, Philadelphia, 2 1- 5 1 . Chafe, W . (1 988), 'Linking intonation units in spoken English', in ]. Haiman & S. A. Thompson (eds), Typological Studies in
Language 1 8: Clause Combining in Grammar and Discourse,]. Benjamins Publishing Co.,
Amsterdam, Philadelphia, 1-27. Cornish, F. ( 1 986), Anaphoric Relations in
English and French: A Discourse Perspective, Croom Helm, London, Sydney, Dover, New Hampshire. Cornish, F. ( 1 988), 'Anaphoric pronouns: under linguistic control or signalling particular discourse representations?', Journal ofSemantics, 5, 23 3-60. Dik, S. ( 1 978), Functional Grammar, North Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam. Given, T. ( 1 983), 'Topic continuity in dis course: an introduction', in T. Given (ed.),
Topic Continuity in Discourse: A Quantitative
Cross-Language Study, ]. Benjamins Publishing Co., Amsterdam, Philadelphia, 5-4 1 . Joseph, B. D. & I . Philippaki-Warburton, ( 1 987), Modern Greek , Croom Helm, London, Sydney, Wolfero, New Hamp shire. Kazazis, K. & ]. Pentheroudakis (1975), 'Reduplication of indefinite direct objects in Albanian and Modern Greek', Language, 52, 398-403. Kuno, S. (1976), 'Subject, theme and the speaker's empathy' in C. N. Li (ed.), Subject and Topic , Academic Press, London, New York, Toronto, Sydney, San Francisco, · P 7-44· Lambrecht, K. ( 1 98 1 ), Topic, Antitopic and Verb Agreement in Non-Standard French , ]. Ben jamins Publishing Co., Amsterdam. Lambrecht, K. (1 987), 'On the status of SVO sentences in French discourse', in R. S. Tomlin (ed.), Typological Studies in Language I I : Coherence and Grounding in Discourse, J. Be�amins Publishing Co., Amsterdam, Philadelphia, 2 1 5-6 1 . Lyons, ]. ( 1 97 5), 'Deixis a s the source of reference', in E. L. Keenan (ed.), Formal Semantics of Natural Language , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, London, New York, Melbourne, 6 1 -83. Marmaridou, S. ( 1 989), 'Proper names in communication', journal ofLinguistics , 25, 3 5 5-72. Marrhiessen, C. & S. A. Thompson ( 1 988), 'The structure of discourse and subordina tion', in J. Haiman & S. A. Thompson (eds.), Typological Studies in Language I 8:
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Ashby, W. J. ( 1 988), 'The syntax, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics of left- and right dislocations in French', Lingua , 75, 20329. Bosch, P. ( 1 98 3 ), Agreement and Anaphora , Academic Press, London, New York, Toronto, San Francisco. Brown, P. & S. C. Levinson ( 1987), Politeness:
X2 Agreement and Greek RDs Clause Combininx in Grammar and Discourse , J. Benjamins Publishing Co., Amsterdam, Philadelphia, 275-329. Pawley, A. & F. H. Syder (1 98 3), 'Natural selection in syntax: notes on adaptive variation and change in vernacular and hterary grammar', Journal of Pragmatics, 7, 5 51 -79· Prince, E. F. (1 978), 'A comparison of Wh clefts and It-clefts in discourse', Languaxe, 54. 8 8 3-906. Prince, E. F. ( 1 98 5 ), 'Fancy syntax and "shared
knowledge"', Journal of Pragmatics, 9, 6581. Sandford, A. J., K. Moar & S. C. Garrod ( 1 988), 'Proper names as controllers of discourse focus', Language and Speech , J I , Pan 1, 43-56. Valiouli, M. (1 990), 'Anaphora, Agreement and the Pragmatics of"Right Dislocations" in Greek', Ph.D. thesis, Aristotle Uni versity, Thessaloniki, Greece. Wiese, B. (1 983), 'Anaphora by pronouns', Linguistics , 21, 373-4 1 7. Downloaded from jos.oxfordjournals.org by guest on January 1, 2011
journal ofSemantics 1 1 : X 3 - 1 0 1
© Oxford Umversiry Press 1 99�
Tense, Temporal Reference, and Tense Logic PATRICK BLACKBURN
Utrecht University
Abstract
1
I N T RO D U C T I O N
Few formal semanticists look with much favour upon Priorean tense logic. For a start, natural language tenses usually have referential import-bur reference to times is not possible in Priotean languages. Secondly, the focus of research on tense has shifted in recent years. The anaphoric properties of tense, and the role temporal constructions have to play in discourse, are now centre stage. Such issues seem alien to tense logic. These shortcomings are real; none the less there is a great deal of value in Prior's approach. Prior insisted on the primacy of the internal view of time. This view situates the speaker firmly inside the temporal flow: the speech-time centred ordering of past, present , and future , rather than the absolute earlier than \later-than relation, is considered central to the analysis of tensed talk. This is natural: we live in time, and the internal perspective is imprinted on natural language in many ways. Prior's insistence on the internal perspective led him to develop his temporal calculi as modal logics, not classical logics. Classical logic, with its explicit variables and binding, offers a God's-eye-view of temporal structure; modal logic, on the other hand, uses operators to quantify over structure 'from the inside'. Moreover, because modal logic rejects the complexities ofvariables and binding in favour of operators, the resulting systems are very simple. Prior's decision to work with modal languages has interesting logical consequences. For example, as we now know from modal correspondence theory (see van Benthem 1 983, 1 991 ), to work with a modal languages is essentially to
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This paper examines extensions of Priorean tense logic in which reference to times is possible. The key technical idea IS to sort the atomic symbols of Prior's language and to impose different interpretational restrictions on the different sorts. Among the sorts introduced are nominals (which permit Reichenbachian analyses of tense and tense-in-texts to be reconstructed m tense logic) and sorts which mim1c temporal index1eals and calendar terms. The possibilities ra1sed by sorting richer systems are briefly discussed.
84 Tense, Temporal Reference and Tense Logic
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work with a very restricted fragment of classical logic, a fragment with many special properties. Thus if a problem can be modelled in a modal language, we already know something important: the full power of classical logic is not needed. Other logical aspects of Prior's system are also well understood. For example completeness, decidability, and complexity results for interesting classes of temporal structures have been obtained, and there is a growing interest in developing good theorem provers. Given the increasing interplay between formal semantics and disciplines such as knowledge representation, and the consequent emphasis on the role of inference, this logical insight is valuable. Thus there are many good reasons for attempting to extend Prior's approach rather than simply abandoning it. This paper introduces a number of extensions and shows that they are adequate for dealing with the problems mentioned above, as well as a number of other difficulties. Now, when extending Prior's system we must take care not to destroy those properties that made it attractive in the first place. The extensions proposed in this paper are all particularly simple and revolve around one central strategy: sorting the atomic symbols of the language. Different sorts of propositional symbols are introduced, and their interpretation is constrained in various ways to achieve the desired forms of temporal reference. This strategy preserves the simplicity of the Priorean model (both the syntactic and semantic changes introduced are confined to the atomic level) and does not tamper with the 'internal perspective' characteristic of modal logic. Moreover, the logical results known for systems of the kind considered here confirm that the strategy really is straightforward: completeness, complexity, and correspondence results have been given for such systems (see, for example, Gargov & Goranko (1993) or Blackburn (1993a, b) and these results typically extend the standard results for Priorean languages in a direct manner. Thus the proposed extensions preserve the desirable properties of Prior's system: it remains to be seen, however, whether they are of interest in natural language semantics. The purpose of the present paper is to show that they are. We proceed as follows. After a resume ofPriorean tense logic, we introduce our first sorted language: nominal tense logic . In this extension a second sort of propositional variable-the nominal -is introduced. Norninals are constrained to be true at exactly one time; thus they act as a name for the time at which they are true. This simple referential mechanism enables us to combine the ideas of Prior and Reichenbach in a natural way. It also allows us to deal with certain anaphoric phenomena; the key idea here is to use norninals as if they were discourse markers of temporal DRT. With the sorting strategy thus established, we turn to indexicals. Nominal tense logic is enriched with three new propositional symbols: yesterday, today , and tomo"ow, and these are interpreted using the semantic machinery of the
Patrick Blackburn Ss
California theory of reference. As we shall see, the exploitation of this machinery by means of sorted atomic symbols yields a clean account of some basic interactions between tense and temporal adverbiak Following this we introduce calendar terms, and then discuss the possibility of sorting richer systems. Some historical remarks are in order. The idea of sorting intensional languages can be traced back to work done in the late t9(Sos by Arthur Prior (1¢7, I9(}8) and Roben Bull (1970). This work seems
(O
have been largely
overlooked. The Sofia school of modal logic independently developed similar ideas in the I 98os, in the context ofboth Propositional Dynamic Logic (Passy & Tinchev 198 5, 1991 ), and modal logic (Gargov el a/. I 987; Gargov & Goranko temporal logic. With the exceptions ofPrior's discussion of the indexical 'now', most of this literature is technical and does not consider application of sorting to natural language semantics.
2.
PRIOREAN TENSE L O G I C
The language o f (propositional) Priorean tense logic is constructed out of the following primitive symbols. First we have a countably infinite collection VAR of propositional variables, which we officially write as p, q, and
r,
possibly
subscripted; however, when discussing examples drawn from natural language we shall frequently use more mnemonic symbols such asJohn run, Fido bark, and Tlze third door on tlze left be brown . In addition we have some truth functionally adequate collection of Boolean connectives (in chis paper we shall choose--. and /\), and the tense operators P and F. We form the well-formed forn1.ulas (or sentences) of Priorean tense logic from these symbols as follows. First we define ATOM, the set of atomic symbols of the language, ro be precisely VAR, the set ofpropositional variables. We then stipulate that WFF, the set ofwell-formed formulas ofthe language, is to be the smallest set containing ATOM that is closely under negation,
conjunction, and the application oftense operarors. We make free use of all the usual defined symbols. In particular, we define the other Boolean connectives and - in the usual manner, and in addition defme Of> to be -.F---¢, and H¢ to be -.P...¢ . , for all wffs ¢ .
-, V
All this will probably be familiar to the reader, with one (perhaps puzzling) exception: why did we bother introducing the set ATOM? This is dearly redundant: we could have defined WFF directly in terms of VAR In fact the introduction of ATOM is an anticipation of the later sorted languages we shall consider. Syntactically, sorting merely amounts to introducing different kinds of atomic symbols, and alterations of the definition of ATOM are the only
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I99J). Slightly later Blackburn (I990, 1993a) considered sorting in the setting of
X6 Tense, Temporal Reference and Tense Logic
M t= a [t] M t= -.rp [t] M t= ¢> 1\ lfJ [t] M F= 116 [t] M F= Prj> [t]
iff iff iff iff iff
t E V(a ), for all a E ATOM not M F= rj> ( t] M t= rj> ( t ] and M t= ljJ ( t] 3t '(t < t ' and M F= ¢> [ t ]) 3t '(t ' < t and M t= ¢> [t ']) '
Note the way this satisfaction definition captures the essence of the internal perspective. We evaluate formulas at points inside models (the evaluation point can be thought of as speech-time) and the operators F and P scan forwards and backwards relative to this deictic centre. In the work that follows we occasionally make use of the idea of logical equivalence. This is defined as follows. Two wffs ¢> and ljJ are logically equivalent iff for all models M and all points t in M: M t= rj> [t]
iff M t= l/J [t].
One final remark is worth making. Note that the base case of satisfaction definition is parameterized in terms of ATOM. As we proceed we are going to impose a syntactic sortal structure on ATOM. This syntactic sortal structure will have a semantic correlate: we are going to place constraints on how the different sorts may be interpreted. But such atomic level constraints are the only semantic changes we shall make; the satisfaction definition given above will not need changing when we consider nominal tense logic in the following section.
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syntactic changes made in what follows. Thus all the languages discussed in this paper have the same formation rules, those stated above. Prior's language is interpreted usingframes and Kripke models. A frame T is a pair ( T, [t ]. This relation is defined as follows:
Patrick Blackburn 87
3 N O M I NA L TE N SE L O G I C As Priorean tense logic contains no mechanism for referring to times, its use as a
.
=
=
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model of tense in natural language has severe limitations. Tenses aren't solely, or even primarily, quantificational in nature: they usually have referential import. For example, an utterance of john ran' doesn't mean that John ran at some completely unspecified past time, but that he ran at some particular (contextually determined) past time. The natural representation of this sentence in Priorean tense logic, P(lohn run ), fails to mirror the referential nature of the English original. Our solution to this difficulty is very simple. We make Priorean tense logic referential by means of the following extension. We add a new type of propositional symbol, called nominals, to our language. Nominals will typically be written as i ,j, k , and so on. They will be wffs, and we will be able to combine them freely with other wffs in the usual fashion to form new wffs. The point of introducing nominals lies in their interpretation: we shall insist that in any model nominals are to be true at exactly one time. Nominals thus 'name' the unique time at which they are true and our problem is solved. For example we will now have a simple representation for john ran' that captures its referential force: P(i A John run ) suffices, for in order for this to be trueJohn must run at the past time picked out by i . That's all there i s to it. Let u s now go through i t i n more detail and see where it leads. Syntactically we obtain the language of nominal tense logic NTL from the language ofPriorean tense logic by adding a denumerably infinite set NOM of fresh atomic symbols to the language. The elements of NOM are denoted by i , j, k . ., possibly subscripted, and they are called nominals. These symbols are 'fresh' in the sense that NOM n VAR 0. That is, nominals and propositional variables are distinct. We define the set of atoms ATOM of the language of NTL to be NOM u VAR, and we make the wffs of this enriched language using exactly the same formation rules as for the Priorean language: WFF is the smallest set containing ATOM that is closed under negation, conjunction, and application of tense operators. Thus the only syntactic difference is that ATOM is now VAR u NOM, instead of simply VAR (T, As with the Priorean language, we interpret NTL in Kripke models M V). As before T is a frame (T, -roles (represented by means of E>-role labels (c£ Stowell I98I)), e.g. PUT: (Agent, Theme, Location) 2.
the ordered E>-grid approach 1: diacritics are used to distinguish between external and internal arguments (Williams I 98 I), therefore encoding informations about the structural organization of the simple sentence; E>-role labels may be substituted by variables bearing no semantic content at all, e.g.
3·
the ordered E>-grid approach II: an additional diacritical distinction between direct and indirect internal arguments (Marantz 1984) is introduced, e.g. PUT: Agent ( Theme , Location)
4· the prominence theory of a-structure: a-structure is a hierarchically ordered representation along the dimensions of 'thematic' and 'aspectual' promi nence (G I 990). These various versions of a-structure representation differ sharply from traditional subcategorization frames; for example, they do not impose any restrictions on the part of speech a selected argument has to belong to, and a-structure does not encode any information about the linear precedence relations among the arguments whatsoever. Furthermore, a-structure is a level of representation distinct from , but via linking rules related to the semantic representation. G emphasizes that a-structure mediates between this level of meaning representation (specified in terms ofLexical Conceptual Structures; c£ Jackendoff (I 98 3, I 990)) and syntactic 0-srructure, operating as some sort of formal 'interface'. She points out that the 'organization of the a-structure for a predicate is taken to be a reflection of its lexical semantics, so that the a-structure of a predicate should be derivable from key characteristics of its meaning' (G: 3 ). This point raises the question why a-structure remains necessary as an independent level of representation at all if its main characteristics are 'predictable' from lexical meaning. G argues against reductionist solutions by pointing out that important restrictions on syntactic processes follow from the interaction of a-structure and independent sub-modules of syntax. One example is passivization: 'It is only by positing a-structure that we can explain the limits of passivizability' (G: 4; c£ foomote 2).3 In other words: a-structure is 'projected ' from the lexical meaning of an item (G: 1 ), but lexical meaning is not sufficient to explain its syntactic behaviour. It should be noted, however, that it
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PUT: Agent (Theme, Location) or PUT: x(y, z)
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is nor only a-structure itself which might account for syntactic phenomena {such as an item's participation in certain rypes of transitivity alternations), but also linking relations holding between lexical semantic structure and a-structure. For example, word pairs with identical representations at the level of conceptual structure {semantic converses like the verbs give and receive) differ with respect to the variables of lexical conceptual structure (henceforth lcs) being mapped to their respective positions in a-structure (Speas I 990: 30), and studies on middle constructions show that there are lcs variables which remain unlinked to a-structure positions entirely {Hale & Keyser I 986; see also below).
In the second chapter ('The Structure of Argument Structure': 7-44), G argues for an internally organized representation of a-structure. The characteristic structure of this representation is derived from a fine-grained semantic analysis of the individual predicate, based on the notions of thematic and aspectual prominence . In the course of developing her theory, G eliminates thematic role labels from a-structure representation and defines the external argument as a concept based on the 'architecture' of the representation. Empirical evidence for structured a-structure is drawn from data concerning 0-marking in Japanese light verb constructions (which will not be covered in this review) and English synthetic compounding. Let us consider the notion of thematic prominence first. 3.1
The notion ofthematic prominence
Following Jackendoff's early proposal { I 972),4 G { I 990: 8) assumes a proto argument structure representing the Agent as the most and the Theme as the least prominent argument in a predicator's a-structure: (I) {AGENT{EXPERIENCER{GOAL/SOURCE/LOCATION{THEME)))) Due to the central claim of 0-prominence theory, the most prominent argument of a-structure (in agenrive predicates the argument bearing the Agent-role) is realized as the most prominent constituent in syntactic structure, i.e. as the subject of the sentence. A-structure itself does not contain any 0-role labels,5 the 'hierarchy itself plays only one role, and this is located stricrly in the interface between lexical conceptual structure and argument structure' {G: I o). Consequently, the syntactic functions which were originally ascribed to 0-roles are now attributed to thematic hierarchy, which has syntactic effects only indirectly via a-structure.
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3 T H E H I E RARC H I C A L O R G A N I Z AT I O N O F A - S T R U C T U RE
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This quite general property assigned to a-structure requires a deeper conceptual clarification. G states that the 'structural organization of the argument array is determined by universal principles based on the semantic properties of the arguments' (G 1990: 7). She neither elaborates on the 'universal principle' she is referring to, nor on 'the semantic properties' claimed to be relevant to the structural organization of the predicates a-structure. These important points are explained later in the chapter in terms of event-structure representations as far as the 'aspectual dimension' is concerned. The motivation for thematic analysis remains rather superficial from a semanticist's point of view. Thematic hierarchy, interpreted as the above mentioned 'unversal principle' might indeed function as some kind of 'organizing device' (e.g. in the sense of a well-formedness condition); one should bear in mind, however, that the arguments of a predicator do not have any semantic properties inherently, i.e. independently of the predicator. This fact makes it quite hard to defend a version of thematic a-structure organization based on 'the semantic properties of arguments', as the above quoted statement suggests.6 What G really means is the set of semantic (i.e. here: thematic) properties the predicator assigns to its arguments. Implicit to the assumption that 'the prominence relations expressed . . . are a reflection of the nature of the lexical semantic representations from which a-structure is projected' is the insight that merely stipulating thematic hierarchy in terms of a proto-argument structure is a rather weak hypothesis. As is well known from the literature, the very notion of e-role is poorly understood-both in terms of the semantic content or 'nature' of individual roles and even their number.7 This makes any conclusion based on the notion 'thematic role' equally unprecise. To summarize: G does not make explicit whether the hierarchy she proposes is some sort of grammatical, formal device (as suggested by her statement that 'it is located strictly in the interface between lexical conceptual structure and argument structure', 1 0), or whether it is a 'reflection' of the lexical semantic representation (which would be a conceptually rather different characteriza tion). The latter approach is based on the assumption that a-structure is 'preorganized' semantically-a position which makes it much harder to defend the existence of a level of a-structure as an independent level of representa tional organization of grammar. Lacking a well-founded theory of 8-roles is only symptomatic for a serious problem G's analysis faces: she has to base her theory upon semantic concepts (including not only thematic roles, but also the notions of 'events' and 'states', etc.; see below) without being able to provide the reader with a clearpicture ofthe theory ofsemantics she assumes. Claiming that 'the prominence relations expressed . . . are a reflection of the nature of the lexical semantic representations from which a-structure is projected' just promises that there might be a way to derive certain
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generalizations from the proper semantic representation, but G fails to illustrate how this derivation might proceed. In the context of thematic prominence theory, it might even be possible that thematic hierarchy is 'a ref lection' of extra-linguistic prominence constraints, based on general principles of cognition.8 3.2
Empirical evidencefor thematic prominencefrom synthetic compounding
(2) a. gift-giving to children b. *child-giving of gifts
In other words: 'When the head takes more than one internal argument, the least prominent must be inside the compound, and the more prominent outside' (G: 1 4- 1 s ). In a later paragraph (68-70), G convincingly shows that the observed differences in the behaviour of synthetic and root compounds can be reduced to their respective a-structure representation; since root compounds lack a e-marking head, they do not have an a-structure, hence constraints and principles of a-structure do not apply. This allows, for example, for the occurrence of subjects inside root compounds. Applying this empirical generalization to the description of the compounds with psychological predicates reveals that the direct object of frighten -class verbs does not participate in well-formed compounding: (3) a. God frightens man. b. *man-frightening god This fact is easily explained within the framework of G's theory: the Theme argument god is the least prominent argument in terms of thematic hierarchy, therefore it may not be expressed externally to the compound. Put in other words: since man is thematically more prominent than god, it must not be realized within the compound. This generalizes to the prediction that 'compounding of an external argument will be impossible when the predicate
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Let us proceed by reviewing some of the empirical syntactic evidence G uses to argue for thematic prominence dimensions, focusing on English synthetic compounding. English shows an interesting asymmetry with respect to the distribution of Theme and Goal arguments within synthetic (i.e. verbal) compounds: the Theme argument has to be realized within the compound (i.e. close to the e-marking verbal head), whereas the compound formed with the Goal argument yields an ungrammatical structure (cf. G: 1 4):
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The notion ofaspectual prominence
G starts her analysis with the observation that frighten -class verbs obviously contain a causative meaning component which fear-verbs are lacking. Since 'cause arguments of cause predicates are always subjects' (G: 23), this provides a simple explanation for frighten -verb constructions, given that we accept Pesetsky's analysis that 'the subject offrighten has the role "cause of emotion" ' (G: 2o). This explanation, however, draws from 'thematic reanalysis'-a strategy already rejected.10 A Principle ofThematic Uniqueness requires that the subject of frighten and the object of fear do bear the same 0-role. It is necessary, therefore, to express the insight that 'the arguments offear and frighten are thematically the same but . . . differ fundamentally in that for frighten the Theme is a cause, and in the fear-class it is not' (G: 24) independently from 0-structure considerations. This is achieved by introducing a (preliminary) 'causal tier' into the semantic analysis. The 'causal level' is eventually interpreted as expressing what G calls 'aspecrual' information. This conception is based on a level of analysis which is known from the literature as 'event structure analysis'. The version of event structure semantics G adopts is configurational in the sense that (certain types of) events are organized in terms of an internal hierarchical structure, where
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takes an internal argument in addition to the external' (G: r 6), since the external argument is-almost by definition-the thematically maximally prominent argument.9 How does this apply to the fact that frighten -verbs always express the least prominent argument in subject position (cf (3a))? G argues that the explanation cannot be attributed to 0-marking mechanisms, since 'the VP does not define a domain for e-marking, perhaps because all subjects are generated and E>-marked inside VPs' (G: r6). This statement is hard to understand at first glance. What exactly is the domain of 0-marking? There is no explicit definition provided; just a stipulation is presented: '. . . synthetic compounds define two distinct E>-marking domains with a single predicate responsible for e-marking within them' (G 1 990: p. r6), namely the domain within and the domain outside the compound, with 0-marking having to apply inside the compound first. In order to account for the fact thatfrighten - andfear-class predicates behave differently, e.g. with respect to which semantic role is expressed as the external argument, G concludes that the lexical semantic structure of the respective predicators has to be considered in a more detailed manner. Thematic information is not sufficient to explain the asymmetric behaviour of the predicates under consideration.
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certain grammatical phenomena (e.g. instances of adverbial modification) are sensitive to this internal structuring. An example for an internally organized structure of an event is presented in (4):
(4) [EVENT [activity] [state/change of state]) (G: 40)
( s)
(Exp
(Theme)) 2
formally allows for a representation like (6)
(Exp 2
(Theme))
This leads to an undesirable result, since by the same logic structures like (7) a. (Agent (Theme)) 2
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This structure illustrates the structure of so-called 'accomplishment'-predicates (like the verb in sentences like 'Mary built a house'). In order to get a clearer pic ture of the event theory G pursues, the reader should consult Pustejovsky (I 99 I ). Pustejovsky develops an articulated theory ofevent structure representation and what he calls 'event composition', based on the idea that 'words lexically specify a �pecific sequence of sub-events organized by a well-defined geometry' (Pustejovsky I 991: 78). This is represented in (4) by the sequence of a state resp. change ofstate predicate following an activity . 1 1 G is not very explicit about the internal structuring of different event types and their respective motivation, probably because she considers this to belong to the domain oflexical semantics proper. However, if a theory draws so heavily from lexical semantics as G's theory does, it would have been useful to be more specific about the fundamentals of the approach. If we are willing to accept this rather intuitive motivation of event structure and the idea of 'sub-eventual properties' of verbs, this should allow for the configurational definition of certain notions, among them the notion of'cause argument': the cause -argument is defined 'configurationally' as the argument associated with the first sub-event of a complex event-structure associated with the predicate.12 In the case offrighten -verbs, the two dimensions of thematic and aspectual prominence do not coincide, i.e. the most prominent argument in terms of 8-hierarchy (the Experiencer) is not the most prominent one in terms of aspectual hierarchy. The possibility of 'mismatches' of this kind is predictable from the fact that there are two independent levels of semantic analysis which may combine unrestrictedly. Given a matching representation like
I Io
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b. (Agent (Theme)) 2
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should exist. However, narural languages obviously do not exhibit patterns like (7b). The combinatorics of a-strucrure semantic levels is obviously too unrestricted since it does not rule our structures like (7b) which would violate the special property attributed to the Agent role: 'Agents and causes are always subjects . . . no matter what their properties might be' (G: 3 I ). At first sight, this generalization exempts Agent arguments from the generalization that 'the aspectual hierarchy determines which argument gets realized as subject' (G: 3 I ). If the latter assumption is correct, there must be a narural constraint ensuring that the Agent argument is always mapped to the aspectually most prominent position. To attribute this property to the very notion of agenthood or causality1 3 conflicts with the earlier assumptions that the observed misalignments of the semantic dimensions are in principle predictable on the grounds of the mere existence of two independent levels of semantic analysis. In other words: there is no convincing (empirical or formal) explanation for the statement that 'since Agents are always maximally prominent on the aspectual dimension, the two dimensions always coincide for Agents, and their subject status is assured' (G: 33), as long as deeper semantic insights into the structure of event strucrure are not taken into consideration. In case offrighten -verbs, where the two levels do not coincide, an external argument is completely lacking. There is a subject, however, since 'aspectual hierarchy determines which argument gets realized as subject' (G: 3 I ). This marks an important difference to unaccusatives which also lack an external argument, but derive the surface subject via NP-movement.I4 Thus, the thematic dimension appears to be irrelevant to subject realization, but it remains necessary in order to account for facts from compounding (see above) and preposition choice. G argues that the specific properties offrighten -class verbs 'are not a matter of lexical idiosyncrasy; it is a principled consequence of the dimensions of meaning in natural languages, and their interaction. Since there are two dimensions of prominence, there is no particular reason why they should always coincide' (G: 30-I). This holds for misalignments in the case of Expetiencer and Theme roles with respect to their aspecrual associations, bur it should also hold for Agent and Theme; G does not provide an argument from the combinatorics of semantic tiers ruling out the possibility of a misalignment in the latter case. In other words: an explanation is required why, for example, in the case of agentive predicates the 'dimensions of meaning' do coincide-it is not sufficient to point our the likelihood that 'the very notion of Agent encodes both aspecrual starus and thematic starus' (G: 3 3 ). Using this argument, the fine grained conceptual and semantic analysis is evenrually abandoned. I suspect
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that the explanation has to be found at the level of conceptual analysis of causation (in the sense of allowing certain event structure representations where sub-events stand in a causal relation). There are, however, important questions left unanswered: I . What is the exact nature of the proposed causal relation ? Where and how is this relation to be represented? 3· Agent and Cause are two very different notions; is the set of generalizations stated so far applicable to agentive predicates?
2.
The definition ofthe concept 'external argument'
One of the most important concepts mentioned above is the notion of'external argument', defined in G's theory as the maximally prominent argument along both semantic dimensions considered so far. Earlier accounts of argument externality depend heavily on notational devices (c£ Williams I 98 I ; Rappaport & Levin I 98 8). These approaches, however, do not offer an explanation of the fact wlzy a certain argument is external. G provides such an explanation in terms of an articulated semantic analysis. The existence of exactly one external argument follows from its definition; there can always be just one maximally prominent argument. It should be noted that G defines the notion of a different level than other authors did before. Whereas in Williams's theory the external argument is defined as a d-structure element, it figures as an a-structure construct in G's theory. This distinction on the basis of representational levels finally charac terizesfrighten -class verbs as lacking an external argument, although a subject is present. There remains a problem, however, with unaccusatives. They also lack an external argument, because the argument of an unaccusative verb presumably 'fails to reach maximal prominence either in the aspectual dimension or the thematic dimension (or both)' (G: 39). The problem is: prominence is a relational notion, and unaccusatives are often monadic. How can prominence be defined at all if there is just one element? In other words: what prevents it from being the maximally prominent argument? A semantic solution, based on lexical conceptual structures as proposed in the theory of Hale & Keyser (I 986), assumes a 'hidden' lcs argument with causal properties. An explicit account of what 'hidden argument' really means and what prevents it from being expressed overtly is not offered. The explanation G gives looks pretty much like the 'diacritic approach' she criticized earlier: 'We might define a maximally prominent argument as one surrounded by a single set of parentheses and propose that the Theme is always surrounded by two sets' (G: 39). The semantic motivation for this notational
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4 THE A R GU M ENT S T R U CT U RE O F N O M I N A L I Z AT I O N S 4· I
Ambiguous noun classes
The central claim of the chapter on nominalizations can be summarized as follows: so-called 'complex event nominals' select obligatory arguments in order to satisfy their a-structure requirements. Although all nouns have a lexical conceptual representation containing a set of semantic participants , not every noun projects all of these participants into a-structure, where they eventually become grammatical arguments .
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procedure is derived from aspectual analysis. Unaccusatives belong to an aspectual class denoting either STATES or CHANGE OF STATES, i.e. event types which correspond-according to G-to the second sub-event of the event structure representation of so-called accomplishment predicates. Since the aspectually most prominent argument is defined as the argument being associated with the first sub-event (denoting ACTIVITY), it follows from event structure that an unaccusative verb must lack an external argument. G draws the final conclusion: 'The argument of an unaccusative can never meet the aspectual requirement for externality, because it intrinsically has the wrong status with respect to event structure' (G: 40). Let us briefly summarize the main topics addressed in the second chapter: the internal organization of a-structure is a projection from lexical representa tion. Crucial is the concept of 'external argument', defined on the level of a-structure, making use of the two independent 'tiers' of semantic analysis: thematic prominence and aspectual prominence, the latter being a reflection of the predicate's event structure analysis. An a-structure argument qualifies as external, if it is the maximally prominent one along both dimensions of semantic analysis. Agents are always realized as subjects due to the event structure analysis of the verb, associating the Agent argument with the first sub-event of a complex event structure. In the case offrighten -verbs, the thematically most prominent argument is not the aspectually most prominent one; therefore frighten -verbs do not have external arguments. Independent evidence shows that unaccusatives lack external arguments, too. To make this observation compatible with the theory of hierarchically organized a-structure G develops, we have to assume that the single argument of monadic unaccusatives fails to be maximally prominent in the aspectual dimension, a hypothesis well motivated on the basis of the event structure analysis of the verb, showing that the argument is associated with the second (and hence by definition the non-prominent) sub-event of the complex event structure.
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Complex event nouns differ from result nominals and simple event nouns by having an internally complex event structure analysis. What appears to be an instance of 'optionaliry' in the expression of arguments reduces to this ambiguity within the nominal system: certain instances of nouns have different readings, where the complex event reading always requires the overt realization of the respective arguments which qualify as being obligatory , 15 the simple event or result reading being grammatical without the arguments being expressed. A prominent example for an ambiguous noun with this respect is examination . The difference between the two classes becomes obvious when the respective nouns are tested by means of various disambiguation techniques, among them event modiflcation , behaviour ofpossessive subjects, and the occurrence of subject-like by-phrases. In the case of event modification, 'the [event, F.B.] modifier forces the event reading' of an ambiguous nominal such as expression . Once this reading is forced, one observes that 'the object of the event nominal is obligatory' (G: so).16 G attributes this effect of event modifiers to the fact that they are licensed by the event structure of the nominal, i.e. whenever it can occur, the nominal being modified has an a-structure which has to be satisfied. However, there is no technical explanation offered as to how this licensing procedure might work, i.e. an articulated theory of event structure based licensing conditions is lacking.17 Ifwe take for granted that some kind oflicensing exisrs and regulates the co occurrence of nominals and event modifiers, how does this relate to the fact that 'constant and frequent [being typical instances ofevent modifiers, F.B.] have other uses . . . which are not associated with an event' (G: p. 5 1)? In these cases, the modifiers are no longer interpreted as event modifiers, i.e. they must be subject to an independent set of licensing conditions. This relates to the question what exactly makes constant and frequent event modifiers: is it inherent semantic properties, or a compositional intepretation being based on the event structure analysis of the modified nominal? If an event modifier is interpreted as an event modifier due to its inherent semantic properties, there must be an answer to the question why there are 'other uses' of the modifier at all. If the interpretation is triggered by the interpretation of the event structure of the nominal, the 'event modifier' should not be able to trigger the event reading. In other words: what is really needed is a convincing theory explaining what makes a modifier compatible with non-event readings of the noun. The behaviour of possessives is a further diagnosis for the distinction between complex event nouns and other nouns. The diagnostic is based on the hypothesis that subject-like possessives are licensed by a-structure, leading to the prediction that 'the presence of a possessive interpreted as subject will force the complex event reading of the noun, where the noun has an argument structure to be satisfied' (G: 5 1). Derailed arguments for the hypothesis that
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subject-like possessives are a-structure related is provided in a later chapter. Important, however, is again the notion of'licensing'; since subject-possessives are optional, one has to explain why they do not act like the other, a-structure related (object) arguments which are not only licensed, but required. Prenominal genitives show an interesting correlation between subjecthood and agenthood that should be mentioned. In a sentence like (8) The instructor's examination took a long time.
(9) The instructor's examination of the papers took a long time. Just like subject-like possessives, subject-like by-phrases are licensed by a-structure. By -phrases may occur, however, also as 'simple modifiers' if they are not construed as subject-like elements. As in the case of 'subject-like possessives', it would have been helpful if G had previously defined her notion of 'subjecthood'. The strucrure of the argument she develops suggests that the notion of subjecthood is rather closely related to the notion of agenthood, a correlation that has often been observed but does not play an explicit role within the theory of grammar, neither in the configurational conception of grammatical functions in standard GB theory, nor within the functional conception pursued in theories like Lexical Functional Grammar. 4.2
Ambiguous noun classes and their syntactic properties
A wide range of syntactic phenomena distinguishing the above-mentioned nominal classes is described on pp. 54-9· Differences in the behaviour concern the determiner system , the behaviour ofmodifiers , and aspectual properties . Let us briefly discuss the problem of 'unambiguous modifiers' (pp. 56-7). G argues that 'some phrases occur only as modifiers and never have an a-structure related interpretation' (p. 57). One example of such an unambiguous modifier is the post-nominal modifier. What seems to be unclear is the following statement: 'Certain possessives can never be interpreted as related to a-structure, since their meaning is such that they cannot contribute information about an argument position' (ibid.). The latter part of this statement opens a new perspective not considered before, namely the contribution which the meaning of a phrase provides 'about an argument position'. What kind of information is referred to here, and how does
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the possessive cannot be construed as a subject. The phrase 'the instructor's' cannot be interpreted as the Agent of the construction without making the sentence ungrammatical. An agentive interpretation makes the object obli gatory:
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it relate-if inherently being part of the meaning of the possessive-to an a-strucrure position opened by the predicator? The claim that the sentence ( 10) This semester's constant assignment of unsolvable problems led to a disaster (p. 57)
4·3
The lexical representation ofnominals
4.3.1 Event variables and the a-structure of nominals
The important issue of the lexical representation of nominals is addressed in paragraph 3·3· G proposes a non-thematic argument-comparable to the event
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suggests that 'complex event nominals can take adjuncts but not modifiers' requires further clarification. Equally unclear is why the fact that 'these modifi ers (G obviously refers to temporal possessives, F.B.] are associated only with nouns with no a-structure' qualifies as 'another reflection of the fact that non argument taking nouns refer to individuals and simple events and argument taking nouns refer to complex events' (G: 57). With respect to aspectual modification, complex event nominals are also clearly distinguished from other nominals; whereas complex event nominals 'admit the same aspecrual modifiers as their verbal counterparts', result and simple event nouns lack an internal analysis ofevent structure and therefore do not license aspectual modifiers like infive hours. Although simple event nouns do denote events with temporal extent, they lack the internally organized com plex event strucrure necessary to license an aspectual modifier as quoted above. Again, the notion of'licensing' remains rather intuitive. G does not put for ward a well-articulated theory providing an explication of the interaction between event structure and the syntactic realization of aspectual modifier phrases. Furthermore, explaining the possibility of aspectual modification on the grounds of event structure rather than the level ofa-structure questions the initially presented general picture of the organization of grammatical levels. If d-strucrure is projected from a-strucrure, but aspecrual modifiers are not directly related to a-strucrure but event strucrure, they should not occur on the level of d-strucrure. This is compatible with the well-known conception of d-structure as a pure representation of a predicate's thematic structure; since adjuncts are not E>-marked, they should not occur on the level of d-strucrure. The odd thing is, however, that d-strucrure is the syntactic level most closely related to the lexicon (via a-structure), but event-structure as part of the lexical representation of the item licenses modifiers which occur quite 'far away' from the lexicon in a syntactic representation somewhere between d-structure and s-strucrure.
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variable known from a-strucrure representations ofverbs18-which serves as the external argument of nominals. She distinguishes between 1.
2.
a non-thematic argument R for simple event and result nouns which is involved in modification and predication; although members of this noun class lack an elaborated a-strucrure, an open argument defined as being external is present; a non-thematic argument Ev for complex event nouns which is present in addition to the 'thematic a-strucrure, an a-strucrure projection of their lcs participants' (G: 6s); as in case ofR, Ev is characterized as being external
-
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in order to account for a wide range of syntactic phenomena being connected with the two subclasses of nominals. The explanation offered to account for the characterization of a non-the matic argument as external argument looks rather weak to me. G says that 'nouns always have an open argument. By this reasoning, all nouns have an external argument' (G: 64); why does it follow from the existence of an open argument that this argument figures as prominent? In this context, there is also an asymmetry compared to the definition of the notion 'external argument' provided in an earlier chapter: '. . . we define an external argument as an argument that is maximally prominent in both dimen sions', i.e. in the dimension of aspecrual and thematic hierarchy (G: 35). How does this definition apply to the non-thematic arguments of nominals? The argument seems to be circular when G states later (G: 66): 'Ev . . . is the external argument of a complex event nominal. In the prominence theory of a-struc rure, it must be the most prominent argument, since it is external.' In order to maintain the above-quoted definition of external argument as an a-strucrure notion, it is necessary to justify this in terms of prominence theory one cannot infer maximal prominence from the external starus of the argument, all the more since the notion of thematic prominence seems hardly applicable to an argument being inherently non-thematic. How can the distinction between Ev and R be put to use in order to account for the different properties of the two classes of nominals? 'A noun gets Ev as its external argument if it has an event strucrure' (G: 67); this raises the immediate question how this description is implemented in a technical sense: 'No noun with R as its external can ever have an event strucrure associated with it' (G: 67). Quite obviously, event strucrure is a precondition for the presence of Ev in a-scrucrure; but where does R come from? It seems unlikely to project it from the non-existence of event-scrucrure. In case of morphological derivations, the non-thematic argument is introduced by the respective affiXes: zero derivation unambiguously intro duces R, -ing-nominalization unambiguously introduces Ev and others are ambiguous with respect to R and Ev. Whereas thematic a-strucrure is
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4.3 .2 8-Marking properties of argument-taking nominals
3·5 discusses the important issue of E>-marking in argument-taking nominals. Nominals do not select bare NP arguments, a fact G attributes to the hypothesis that nominals are 'defective E>-markers' (G: 70) which require a preposition in order to yield a well-formed E>-marking configuration G (71). Both nominals and prepositions have an a-structure, but complex event nouns 'are not E>-markers', and the prepositions 'that combine with nouns for E>-marking purposes also have a-structure . . . but have no independent semantic roles to assign' (G: 70). This raises the question as to what really constitutes the E>-marking capacity of a lexical item. Assuming that it is the ability to assign an 'independent semantic role' which depends on the presence of a lexical conceptual structure, prepositions lack this ability, since they do not have an lcs representation, whereas complex event nouns should be E>-markers since they have an lcs representation. However, G explicitly says that complex event nouns are defective E>-markers. In other words, the problem is: what makes a preposition a non-defective E>-marker, even though it cannot assign a semantic role, and
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projected from lexical conceptual structure, non-thematic arguments are present due to a very different procedure, they do nor seem to be projectable. I think the crucial question as to where they eventually come from remains unanswered. G shows convincingly how the differences in the behaviour of the nominals with respect to the determiner system can be reduced to the Ev/R distinction. Her theory is based on the assumption that determiners also have a non thematic a-structure; the determiner the-which can co-occur with both types of nouns-can introduce both Ev and R, i.e. the non-thematic external argument can principally be identified with the external argument of both noun classes. Other determiners unambiguously introduce R, allowing for an identification exclusively with the R argument of result and simple event nouns. What remains unclear, however, is the question how exactly event structure 'licenses modifiers like frequent and constant . . . and it is the event structure that licenses aspectual adjuncts like for a day and in a day'. Does licensing apply via the non-thematic Ev argument, or does it apply directly on the basis of event structure? A terminological detail should be mentioned: R is said to constitute a 'non thematic a-structure' of result and simple event nominals, therefore one should not say that 'complex event nominals have both an event structure and argument structure, and other nominals have neither' (G: 70). The crucial difference with respect to a-structure is that complex event nouns have a the matic a-structure which is lacking in others.
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1 . arguments which are licensed by a-structure, being obligatory satellites of complex event noun; 2. modifiers which are licensed by predication; they can be separated from the head by the copula, John's dog - the dog isJohn's ; 3· complements which are licensed 'by direct relationship to the lcs', i.e. the complement is-contrary to the modifier-in some way dependent on the lexical semantics of the head; they are found exclusively with simple event and result nouns. G holds lcs responsible for complement selection, a fact which explains why even nominals lacking a-structure have 'selectional control over their complements' (G: 94). She cannot offer a detailed theory of lcs representation, which none the less seems to be absolutely necessary in order to develop a convincing theory of the interaction between lexicon and syntax.
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what makes a complex event noun a defective e-marker even though it can contribute a thematic role due to the presence of an lcs representation? The reason seems to be the failure of complex event nouns to transmit the role directly to the argument, requiring the help of a transferring preposition; bur this transmission failure is merely stipulated, not justified or derived by means of a general principle or representational assumptions. G rejects standard GB explanations which refer to Case Theory as the relevant module, since CP arguments are absent from nominals, although they do not require case marking at all. 19 I will not go into the details of an analysis of CP complements which cannot be arguments, a fact which is concluded both from their optionality and their syntactic behaviour which suggests that 'they are not regulated by a-structure at all' (G: 74). This perfectly fits with the observation that CP complements co-occur with nouns which 'consistently act as result nominals or simple event nominals', i.e. nominals shown completely to lack a thematic a-structure. An unsolved mystery, however, remains the question why and in which sense nouns are 'defective e-markers'. The detailed discussion of passive nominals provides evidence that passive nominals do not rake arguments, a fact which is eventually also attributed to 'the limited e-marking capacity of nominals' (G: 88). However, this statement is merely a descriptive generalization without any explanatory value. To summarize: we need independent evidence not just to claim the 'defectiveness of nouns as 8-markers' (G 1 990: 89), but to justify and derive it from more general principles. One remaining important point concerns the '. . . various satellite phrases associated with non-argument taking nominals' (G: 9 1). G distinguishes three types of'stellites' on the grounds of their licensing conditions:
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5 A - STRUCTURE O F P A S S IVES A N D N O M I N A L S
s.r
A-structure and the licensing of'a-adjuncts }
The adequate treatment of adjuncts is one of the most challenging topics ofGB style syntactic theory. G introduces the main differences between adjuncts and arguments as follows: 1 . arguments are licensed by a-structure; 'they can occur only if they are 0-marked by a predicate' (G: 108); 2. adjuncts are not 'licensed by relationship to an a-structure' (ibid.). The immediate question is: what are the licensing conditions for adjuncts? G does not elaborate on this problem, but it seems to be quite clear that the lexical meaning of the predicate plays a crucial role, e.g. the event structure representation of the item in question.21 What requires further clarification, however, is the theoretical status of adjuncts compared to the status of complements. In paragraph 3.6, G defines complements as follows: 'A phrase acting as a complement must be licensed by direct relationship to the lcs' (G: 92), i.e. complements are not licensed by a-structure Gust like adjuncts). To show the difference between adjuncts and complements, we illustrate their different behaviour by examining their co occurrence restrictions: ( 1 1 ) a. b. c. d.
Bill broke the window with a hammer. Bill broke the window yesterday. *The window broke with a hammer. The window broke yesterday.
In the anti-causative alternation, the instrumental PP requires the presence of a cause element in the lcs representation of the verb. This lcs-element licensing the with -phrase cannot be combined with the anti-causative use of the verb. The PP qualifies as complement-due to its association with an lcs
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G's hypothesis put forward i n this chapter is that the a-structure representa tions of passives and nominals differ from the representations of the corresponding active base verb in that they have suppressed argument positions which license the occurrence of optional satellite phrases, namely passive by phrases and possessive NP phrases. These expressions are called a-adjuncts in order to indicate their intermediate status: in terms of syntactic behaviour, they are similar to adjuncts, but they also resemble arguments because they 'contribute information about positions in the a-structure of predicates' (G: 109).20
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argument-whereas the temporal adverb is licensed by different conditions which are independent of the lcs representation. G is primarily interested in optional phrases which are licensed by a-structure. This poses a conceptual problem, since a-structure positions must be satisfied, a fact which contradicts their indisputable optionaliry. She proposes that the 'positions that can license a-adjuncts are those that are
5 .2
Nominalization and passivization: the role ofexternal argument
G provides further evidence to support her hypothesis that possessives and by phrases are not 'true arguments' which need not be reviewed here, but we should have a more detailed look at the topic of 'external arguments and suppression'. The basic assumption defended in paragraph 4·3 is the prediction that verbs lacking an external argument (namely non-agentive psych predicates and unaccusatives) fail to undergo the processes of passivization and nominalization, because 'passivization and nominalization suppress the external argument of a base verb' (p. I 1 2). Since passivization is sensitive only to external arguments, non-agentive psych-verbs (such as frighten ) cannot form verbal passives, but only adjectival passives_23.U G convincingly reanalyses Jackendoff's 'Thematic Hierarchy Condition'.25 The effects of the thematic hierarchy condition follow in G's theory from hierarchically organized a-structure and the 'hypothesis that the passive suppresses an external argument' {G: u s). The passive by -phrase qualifies as a-adjunct, licensed by the suppressed external argument position of the verb. Since the external argument is by definition the most prominent one, the
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lexically satisfied or suppressed' (G: 1 09), i.e. the positions are present in an a-structure representation, but 'not available for purposes ofE>-marking' (ibid.). The notion of 'suppressed positions' is introduced on a rather intuitive level, primarily using notational devices to indicate or mark the suppressed a-position, whereas a technical explication of what it means that an a-structure position is 'lexically satisfied or suppressed' (ibid.) is not at hand. Furthermore, it is not clear why the observed optionality of passive by-phrases and possessive NPs provides 'immediate support for the suppression proposal' (ibid.). What can be inferred from optionality is primarily a difference between a-structure representations of base verb and its nominalization of passivization, but it cannot favour, for example, the suppression approach over, say, an 'elimination approach'22 {or any other technical alternative to suppression). The a-structure framework to account for the optionality of satellite phrases, however, is superior to any approach which derives optionality from different 8-marking principles in nominals of passives. The a-structure theory 'allows us to maintain the same principle ofE>-marking for all argument-taking items' {G: I 1 0) and hence figures as a more unified account.
Review Article 1 2 1 argument figuring as derived subjects is-also by definition-always lower in the hierarchy than the by-phrase. On the one hand, this is a very convincing analysis, since the predictions based on the rather stipulative approach pursued byJackendofffollow from independently motivated assumptions ofa-structure
s .2. 1 -ing-nominalizations In this context,
-ing
nominalizations are quite interesting. They always have a
complex event reading, and since they are 'productively formed only by suppression of an external argument, they are not derivable for the frighten psych verbs' (G: I 2 I ). This should also hold for -ing nominalizations of monadic unaccusatives which lack external arguments, but 'apparently -ing nominalization is possible for certain verb classes with no suppression at all' (G: 122). G admits that it is 'not entirely clear what conclusions' ( I23 ) should be drawn from the data. A proposal to revise the theory she offers looks rather ad
hoc :
If the base has no external arguments, suppression is not necessary. Thus we could view the suppression of an external under nominalization as following from the addition of a new external, which forces a former external to suppress, rather than from the operation of nominalization itsel£ (G: 1 23) G does not give an explanation what is meant by 'addition of a new external', and I do not see any solution as to how this added external argument might 'force a former external to suppress'. This statement becomes clearer rather late in this chapter (G: I 4 I ), when she explains that 'nominalization both suppresses the original external argument and internalizes it in the sense that it adds a more prominent argument that then counts as the external'. In case of complex event nouns, this is Ev, i.e. a non-thematic argument. In this context, the same problem remains: how can a non-thematic argument figure as external in a prominence theory of a-structure? 5.2.2 Adjectival passive formation
A very interesting solution to adjectival passive formation (APF) is developed in paragraph 4·3·3· G presents an alternative to the analysis of APF proposed by
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representation. On the other hand, the technical details are not spelled out. It is not self-evident, e.g. why the by -phrase must correspond to the suppressed agent argument which functions as licensing element. G shows that 'nominalizations resembles passivization in that the external argument of the base verb is suppressed in both cases' (G: I I 8); she convincingly argues that 'only verbs with external arguments' will form complex event norninalizations (G: I 2 I ). Result nominalizations offrighten -verbs are possible, as are nominalizations of agentive psych-predicates.
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Levin & Rappapon (1 986) which is based on the asssumption that adjectival passives are formed from verbal passives in the course of a relabelling process changing the verb to an adjective, where an internal argument becomes externalized. This solution is not available in a prominence theory of a-structure, and the alternative solution she presents is quite impressive. She proposes a process of conversion which adds an external argument R (which is identified with an internal argument of the base) to the a-structure of the item. This process is inapplicable to items which do not have a genuine external argument. This also means that APF is possible with items which do not allow verbal passivization, since verbal passivization is possible only with verbs which have external arguments which are suppressed in passivization. Whereas verbal passives allow the occurrence of a-adjuncts (by -phrases) being licensed by the suppressed position, adjectival passives require the by -phrase 2 which satisfies an internal argument position of the head. 6 To summarize: a new external argument can be introduced only when a former external argument is either not present at all or suppressed. Assuming that adjectives cannot suppress argument positions, APF should be possible only with base verbs which do not have externals of their own. This seems to be plausible, but poses a problem with transitive verbs which obviously do undergo APF. G proposes that these APFs are formed on the basis of the corresponding verbal passive where the external was suppressed. This would explain why these APFs do not co-occur with obligatory by-phrases; the by phrases are optional, because they are licensed by the suppressed a-position. In case of adjectival passives formed from adjective verbs (which do not have an external argument), the by-phrases are obligatory, since the open argument position (i.e. the position of the internal y-argument) has to be satisfied. One observes, however, that by -phrases are extremely limited in adjectival passives only when they are formed on the basis of verbal passives; this leads G to the hypothesis that the 'optional' by -phrases co-occurring with adjectival passives derived from verbal passives are no a-adjuncts at all. By-phrases occur only rarely in adjectival passives. They are analyzed as internal arguments, which explains that they are obligatory (not optional, as would be expected if they were licensed by a suppressed a-position). A questionable generalization, though, seems to underlie the statement that these by-phrases 'occur only with verbs that do not form verbal passives' (G: 1 27). As G explained before, the adjectival passive is formed on the basis of a verbal passive, i.e. from an active base verb which must have an external argument. Thus, in adjectival passives, by -phrases are analyzed as internal arguments when they occur with adjectival passives. An open question concerns the optionality of PP phrases co-occurring with members of the frighten -class. Causative frighten -class verbs yield adjectival passives where adjectival passivization alters the underlying event structure representation from a
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I23
complex event structure (consisting of an activity causally related to a resulting state) to a simple state representation. This means that the activity-component is eliminated, i.e. it cannot be projected into a-structure, hence a by-phrase cannot be combined with the construction. The sentence can only have a non agentive reading. In case the by-phrase occurs, it is licensed by a-structure and therefore qualifies as an a-adjunct. 5 .2 . 3 The notion 'obligatory adjunct'
(12) a. *The house was built/designed. b. This house was built/designed by a French architect. These examples illustrate that the passivized verb requires an additional phrase whose categorial realization is nevertheless rather unrestrictedP A question is: does variability of the form suffice to characterize the expression as being an adjunct? One might argue that the uses of examples like (1 2a) are pragmatically highly marked. The information expressed by a sentence like (I 2a) is poor, since the predicate does not provide any further information compared to the informational content of the subject. This new information is presented by the by-phrase (or any other adjunct), which eventually makes-one might argue the sentence pragmatically acceptable. It is possible to construe contexts where a sentence like ( 1 2a) is perfectly acceptable, whereas this 'sentential context' is not related to the event structure of the predicate (see below). One example is:
( 3) This house was built, (and this one was made by magicians) I
G seeks a solution on the level of event structure, assuming that 'verbs that take obligatory adjuncts in the passive have a complex event structure' (G: I 3 3). By stipulation, each of the sub-events of the complex event structure must be syntactically identified, which is not the case in (I 2a) where the Theme argument identifies the resulting state, but the activity sub-event remains unidentified. On the other hand, in (I 2b) the by-phrase identifies exactly this complex event structure component, an observation which amounts to the following generalization: whereas a-structure is altered by passivization, the event structure of the item in question 'remains two-part and still requires the
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Paragraph 4·4 critically evaluates approaches which assume that the a-structure of nominals and passives is not distinct from the a-structure of the base verb. According to these theories, either by -phrases or passive morphology satisfy the external argument position of the item. I will not go into the details of the evidence G uses to argue for her solution. However, the notion of 'obligatory adjuncts' she introduces requires a brief comment. The term 'obligatory adjunct' is used to describe the prepositional phrases found in data like G's (67) (G: I 32), quoted here as (12):
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identification of both the activity and the (resulting) state' (G: I 3 3 ). This description, however, holds only for verbal passives, since APF does change the event structure;28 this state-component is identified with the Experiencer in examples like 'Mary was frightened'. This is coherent in the light of G's theory. However, one feels slightly uncomfortable with a notion like 'obligatory adjunct' which sounds a bit like a 'round square', at least under the standard definition of the very notion of 'adjunct'.
6
A R G U M E N T STR U C T U RE A N D A N A P H O R A
The explanation of this description is based on the idea 'that the Romance clitics are not arguments but rather valency reducing morphemes added to verb complexes' (G: I 52-3), while pronominal clitization leaves the transitivity of the verb unaltered. Crucial to the valency reducing process is the assumption that a lexical binding process binds the external argument to the internal argument of the respective verb (practically making it intransitive), i.e. 'reflexive cliticization turns a verb with an external argument into a verb with no external argument: the syntactically expressed argument is the internal argument of the verb' (G: I S4)· In other words, reflexive cliticization satisfies an external argument which is no longer available for grammatical processes, a fact which implies the prediction that verbal passivization should not be possible with verbs which have undergone (reflexive) cliticization The paragraph on 'Local anaphora and thematic hierarchy effects' (G: I s8)
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I n order to complete this overview, I will briefly discuss the final chapter o fG's book which is aimed to answer a further challenge to the 'structured a-structure approach'. She has to show that the specific anaphoric properties offrighten class verbs (with respect to reflexive cliticization, local and long-distance anaphora) can be explained in the framework she developed, since the configu rational solutions put forward in earlier papers are no longer at hand. One topic in this context is the phenomenon of reflexive cliticization in romance languages where reflexive (anaphoric) clitics cannot be bound by the subject of the respective Romance counterparts of the English frighten -class verbs. Belletti & Rizzi (I988) proposed for Italian that 'the anaphoric clitic si cannot be bound by a derived subj ect' (G: I 52). This descriptive generalization is no longer available in a structured a-structure approach, since here the members of the frighten -class have underlying subjects. G's alternative might be called the 'unaccusative analysis of clitic reflexiviza tion' (G: I S S)· Since frighten-verbs both lack external arguments and do not participate in reflexive cliticization, one might descriptively state that reflexive cliticization 'is possible only with verbs that have external arguments' (G: I 52).
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re-evaluates the notion of a-command which was introduced in order to account for the ungrammaticaliry of sentences where the object of a non agentive member of the frighten-class verbs is an anaphor.29 There are various problems (both theoretical and empirical in nature) with a solution along these lines; therefore G develops an alternative based on type theoretic considerations elaborated in a paper by Partee & Roath (198 3). With respect to their semantic type, the subject of the non-agentive frighten-verb belongs 'to the type of properties ofindividuals' (G: 16o) which is different from the individual type of the anaphor in subject position. This semantic typing applied to the example in ( 1 5) reveals the reason for the ungrammaticaliry independent from binding theoretical assumptions: the types do not match. However, this solution remains incomprehensible since the reader is not able to relate this idea to the topic discussed by Partee & Roath (198 3). These authors are concerned with type ambiguities in the context of conjunction theory; the theory they provide draws heavily from Montagovian-sryle type theory, i.e. a version of formal semantics which does not have any implications for the informal version of semantics G uses. Furthermore, it is by no means obvious how type theory (in the sense of Montague Grammar) might be related to a theoretical explication of anaphoric relations. In G's theory, the unusual behaviour with respect to anaphora naturally follows from the specific a-structure of non-agentive frighten -verbs: The subjects (i.e. Themes) of these verbs are never individuals, whereas Agents are always individuals-a fact which explains why in agentive readings of psych predicates and transitive/ditransitive agentive predicates the ungrammaticaliry is not observed. Psych -predicates differ from other verbs also with respect to long-distance anaphora in that the c-command requirement of Principle A of Binding Theory is obviously violated without yielding ungrammatical constructions. Rather than pursuing a configurational solution, she argues that binding might be sensitive to a-structure. Certain sets of data seem to suggest that long-distance anaphors require subjects as antecedents. However, this is not entirely correct; there are 'cases in which the antecedent is the object of one of the frighten-verbs'. The solution is simple in terms of prominence structure: the external argument must be the antecedent of the long-distance anaphor, i.e. the argument which is always the thematically most prominent one. Reference to the thematically most prominent argument allows the behaviour of'normal' predicates and non-agentive frighten-predicates to unify. In cases where no external argument exists, the most prominent argument in terms of thematic hierarchy functions as antecedent. The more basic criterion determining agenthood, however, is thematic prominence, since external arguments are by definition thematically maximally prominent.
1 26 Review Article
7 C ONCL U S I O N G focuses on the following topics in her attempt to develop a theory of a-structure which is meant to be a convincingly structured alternative to earlier unstructured proposals:
A number of detailed analyses presented in the book look quite promising at first glance: the notion of'external argument' is defined as an a-structure notion which figures prominently in a wide range of syntactic data, covering phenomena from nominalization, compounding, passivization, and anaphora, and the behaviour of psych -predicates seems to be described more adequately than in alternative theories which do not refer to a hierarchically organized a-structure. However, studied more closely, the reader will be disappointed: the introduction of notions such as 'a-adjunct' and 'obligatory adjunct' is empirically motivated, but remains unsatisfactory since the theoretical catego-
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1 . The structure of a-structure . A-structure representations are structured in terms of thematic and aspectual hierarchy conditions. Empirical evidence is drawn from the behaviour of psychological predicates, their properties in English compounding and E>-marking properties in Japanese light verbs. Furthermore, in a-structure-based explication of the notion of 'external argument' is offered. 2. Nominalizations. Nominalizations are ambiguous with respect to their argument selecting properties. Nominals denoting complex events (where the notion 'complex event' is defined in terms of a configurational theory of event structure) do have an a-structure representation as part of their lexical entry and do require obligatory arguments in order to satisfy their a-structure requirements, whereas simple event nouns and result nominals do not. 3· The argument structure ofnominals and passives . Nouns are defective E>-markers, which accounts for the fact that they never select bare NP complements, but always need the presence of a preposition. In verbal passivization and nominalizarion, the external argument of the active base verb is suppressed, which explains data illustrating the distribution of by-phrases and posses sives which qualify as 'a-adjuncts'. A-adjuncts are licensed by suppressed argument positions. 4· A-structure and anaphora . G shows that specific anaphoric properties observed with the occurrence of psych -predicates can be explained ' by making binding sensitive to thematic hierarchy. Reflexive cliticization is described by means oflexical binding which changes a verb with an external argument into a verb lacking this argument.
Review Article I 27
FRANK BECKMANN
Received: I 5-03-93 Revised version received: I 6-07-93
Sprachwissenschafiliches Institut Ruhr Universitiit Bochum Universitatsstrasse D-4480 1 Bochum Germany
NOTES I I would like to thank Marrin Hoelter and Tibor Kiss for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. 2 I will focus on the conception of a-structure as it is entertained within the framework of'principles and parameters'; alternative versions of a-structure, e.g. Bresnan's interpretation of a-structure within the model ofLFG, will be ignored; c£ Bresnan & Kanerva ( 1 992) for an outline of the 'Lexical Mapping Theory' of correspondences beween thematic structure and syntactic function, a theory relying on a notion of thematic hierarchy;
this concept is also a crucial feature ofG's theory (see below). Alsina ( 1 992) uses Mapping Principles based on thematic hierarchy for an analysis of causative constructions. G presents a theory of passivizarion where this grammatical process is sensitive to the presence of an external argument. 4 C( Jackendoff's Thematic Hierarchy Con dition as a constraint on the interpretation of by-phrases in passive constructions Oackendoff 1 972: 43). 'Thematic roles . . . are purely lexical conceptual labels and do not project into
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ries as they were defined on the basis of syntactic tests (e.g. the elimination test) or theoretical axioms (8-theory) become fuzzy. This also holds for quite a number of other phenomena leading to terminological confusion and oxymor ons like G's notion of 'optional argument'. The major problem, though, is more serious: G fails to meet the challenge she formulated as the research programme of her study, namely: 'The fundamental goal of this enterprise is to derive a-structure from semantics and then to derive the lexical behaviour of a predicate and its d-structure from its argument structure representation' (G 1 990: 3). Essential semantic notions remain unexplained; this holds primarily for the presented version of event semantics which is not introduced and motivated systematically. Furthermore, G does not show how event structure is put to use in order to derive the syntactic facts she examines. The same is true for the Thematic Hierarchy she uses as the fundamental device for deriving facts concerning synthetic compounds in English orJapanese light verb constructions, etc.: one is forced to draw the final conclusion that the notion of 'prominence' in a-structure representations is not derived from anything, but merely stipulated. This conclusion, if correct, must be disastrous to the programme G pursued, namely developing a sound alternative to underived but merely diacritically enriched a-structure representations.
1 28 Review Article
6
8
9
10
II
I2
13 14
I5
'well-behaving' verbs, eventually forcing the conclusion that the very claim 'that the psychological predicates exhibit a cluster of significantly related gram matical properties must inevitably be denied' (G: 20). However, the basic idea of 'individualizing' thematic roles (as opposed to Thematic Role Types, cf. Dowry I 99 I : 5 50) by means of different sets of verbal entailments looks rather promising to me from a semantic point of VIeW. The example in (4) makes very clear that the version of event semantics G uses differs radically from what Pustejovsky ( 1 991: 48) calls the 'conventional view of events' usually pursued in linguistics based on the work of Davidson ( I 967). The conventional view is characterized by the assumption that the logical form of sentences contains an existentially quan tified event variable; for a recent elabora tion of this theory, the reader is referred to Parsons ( I 990). 'The generalization is that an argument which participates in the first sub-event in an event-structure is more prominent than an argument which participates in the second sub-event' (G: 26). Which would be natural in the sense that the causative sub-event always precedes the sub-event denoting the result. Unaccusative verbs like arrive are syntactically-intransitive verbs lacking an external argument; Burzio's General ization (Burzio I 986) predicts that these verbs fail to assign Accusative Case to their complement NP (i.e. their internal argu ment). This forces movement of the respective NP to subject position (to which nominative case is assigned) in order to satisfy the Case Filter, deriving well formed structures like [IPNPi[VPverb till· The very notion of being obligatory, however, seems to be rather fuzzy. G states: 'Of course, obligatory must mean the same for nouns as for verbs: capable in principle of being obligatory, but perhaps subject to lexical variation' (G: 49). What
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7
the grammatical representation. Thema tic role labels provide convenient termin describing for ology many lexico-syntacnc problems, but they do not figure in solving them' (G: 44). In this respect, G's theory is akin to the position defended by Rappaport & Levin (I988) who also argue that 8-roles have to be eliminated from a-structure. They define 8-roles in terms of positions in lexical conceptual structure. This is a well-known observation in thematic analysis. Assuming that a verb like hit semantically selects (in an intui tive sense) an agent and a patient argu ment inorder to yield a well-formed sentence like John hit Mary, neither John nor Mary bear their respective 8-role due to their inherent semantic properties, but only due to the 8-roles the verb assigns to them. Therefore, thematic roles are strictly relational, depending on the semantic content of the verb and the event described by the sentence. In terms of thematic structure, arguments do not have a 'semantic life of their own'. cf. work of Carlson ( I 984) and Dowry (I 989, I 99 1 ) for proposals concerning a model-theoretic explication of 8-roles. This seems to be the starting point for Fillmore who argues that semantic roles (his 'deep cases') are the reflection of perceptual abilities of humans, i.e. of 'certain types of judgements human beings are capable of making about the events that are going on around them' (Fillmore I 968: 24). Strictly speaking, the external argument is defined as the argument being maximally prominent along both dimensions of prominence, i.e. thematic and aspecrual; see section 3 ·4 of this review. Thematic Reanalysis claims that 'Exper iencer [or alternatively Theme, F.B.) is nor really a unified category: perhaps the thematic role involved forfoar is different from the one involved forfrighten ' (G: I 9). A solution along these lines would assimilate the frighten -verbs to the other,
Review Article I 29 is required in this context is an appro priate definition of 'lexical variation', combined with a set of convincing criteria to determine whether an argu ment is obligatory or not. 16. c£ G's example (7), p. so: a. *The frequent expression is desirable. b. The frequent expression of one's feel ings is desirable.
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17 'Licensing' is a crucial slogan in Chomsky's 'principles and parameters' approach to syntax, claiming that 'Every element that appears in a well-formed strucrure must be licensed in one of a small number of available ways' (Chomsky 1986: 93). The idea oflicensing is spelled out by showing that syntactic elements in strucrural descriptions have to be related in some principled manner to other elements within the same srrucrure without violating any condi tions on grammatical well-formedness. Taking event strucrure into considera tion, it remains to show how this semantically rather than syntactically based level of analysis fits into the syntactic research program of Chomsky's theory. 1 8 This relates to the Davidsonian concep tion of event logic cited above; the point is that Davidson (1967) posrulated an existentially quantified event argument for the a-strucrure representation of verbs in order to allow for certain cases of adverbial modification. This is to dis tinguish sharply from the configurational event strucrure theory posrulated by Pustejovsky (1991); c£ section J . J of this review. However, the event argument G seems to have in mind is quite obviously not interpretable configurationally, but interpretable in the sense of Davidson's approach. 19 With respect to Case Theory and Theta Theory one should bear in mind that a number of phenomena might well be language-specific. In German, nouns and adjectives are usually considered as
having case-assigning properties, e.g.'die Zersti:irung der Stadt', the destruction c!fthe city, with no preposition necessary in order to provide case. Since in German the bare NP argument of Zerstiirung is permitted, one might ask how this relates to the notion of 'defective 9-marker'. It might be possible to conclude that nominals like the one in the example are not defective with respect to e-marking in German. This raises the further ques tion in which sense and to which extent a-strucrure properties are language specific or universal. 20 In paragraph 4·5· G points out that possessive NPs and passive by-phrases underlie slightly different licensing conditions, whereas 'the possessive a-adjunct can be licensed by any sup pressed argument position' (G: 1 3 s). 'a by-phrase can be licensed by any external argument' (G: 1 36), which is, as G shows, suppressed in the case of verbal passiviza tion. 21 c£ (G: 26): 'event srrucrure . . . determines such things as which adjuncts are admiss ible'; I think this statement is too general-there are rypes of adjuncts which are possible due to licensing conditions independent of event srruc rure; c£ also G's hint that 'the roles taken by adjuncts . . . form a kind of secondary argument strucrure not associated with the lexical representation of individual predicates, but constiruting a template to which the adjunct strucrure of the clause must be accommodated' (G: 1 49). This seems to conrradict the above-mentioned dependence of adjuncts from the event srrucrure of the item. The latter charac terization might be resrrictable to senten tial adjuncts. 22 The idea of a-srrucrure position elimina tion is discussed later in paragraph 4·3·3 on adjectival passive formation; G argues that adjectival passives formed on the basis of verbal passive, i.e. the passive of a base verb which contains an external argument which is suppressed in the
1
30 Review Article
(x AGENT
(y)))
THEME
25 This says that a passive by-phrase must be higher in terms of thematic hierarchy than the derived subject. 26 However, the strucrure she presents in (43) (G: 1 25) is ill formed since the brackets do not match. The argument developed so far makes clear that the proper strucrure looks like ((x(y))), a structure which is similar to the strucrure of causative psych-predicates lacking an external argument. Compared to the rypology of a-strucrures on p. 4 1 , one asks
what the proper thematic labelling of 'rim -verbs' would be. In any case, since conversion is applied only ro verbs lacking externals, the strucrure must be as given above. The alternative solution to repair (43) would be to drop one of the opening brackets, e.g. (x(y)) which would make x the external argument, since the 'external argument is one surrounded by only one set of parentheses' (G: 41). 27 A wide 'range of other expressions, including adjuncts of rime, place, manner, and purpose' (G: I 32) can subsri rute the by-phrase. 28 This process G calls 'starivizarion'. 29 The relation of a-command is defined over a-strucrure, essentially saying that 'a more prominent argument asymmetri cally a-commands a less prominent argument' (G: I 59). In non-agenrivefrigh ten -verbs, exemplified in (I 4) ?Politicians depress each other (G: I 58) 'the binding relation violates a-command because the anaphor corresponds to the Experiencer, which a-commands the Theme antecedent, instead of the other way round' (G: 1 59).
REFEREN CE S Alsina, A. ( I 992) 'On the argument structure of causa rives', Linguistic Inquiry, 23, 5 I 756. Andrews, A. D. (I989), 'Lexical strucrure', in F. J. Newmeyer (ed.) Linguistics: The Cam bridge Survey. I. Linguistic Theory: Founda tions. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 6o-88. Bresnan,J. & J. M Kanerva ( I992), 'Locative inversion in Chichewa: a case srudy of factorization in grammar', in T. Stowell & ,
E. Wehrli (eds.), Syntax and the Lexicon, Syntax and Semantics, vol. 26, Academic Press, San Diego, 53-102. Belletti, A. & L. Rizzi (I988), 'Psych-verbs and 9-theory', Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 6, 291-352. Burzio, L. (I986), Italian Syntax, D. Reidel, Dordrecht. Carlson, G. (I984), 'Thematic roles and their role in semantic representation', Linguis tics, 22, 259-79. Chomsky, N. (198 1), Lectures on Government
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course of passivizarion, lose this sup pressed external argument completely. This fact allows to account for the obser vation that a-adjuncts, i.e. by-phrases which are licensed by a suppressed argument position, are not found very often in adjectival passives. 23 Agenrive readings of these psych predicates, however, do undergo passiv ization, since these verbs contain an Agent which figures as external argu ment which can be suppressed in passivi zarion. 24 The sample strucrure presented in (9) (p. 1 1 3), however, is ill formed: the structure should read as
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( 1983), 'Generalized
conjunction and type ambiguity', in R. Bauerle, C. Schwarze & A. von Stechow (eds.),
Meaning, Use, and Interpretation of Language, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin. Pustejovsky, J. ( 1 991 ), 'The syntax of event structure', Cognition , 41, 47-8 1. Rappaport, M . & B . Levin ( 1 988 ), 'What t o do with theta-roles', in W. Wilkins (ed.),
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© Oxford University Press 1 994
Review Article
Propositions, Attitudes, and Russellian Annotations
A critical study of Mark Richard, Propositional Attitudes: An Essay on Thoughts and How We Ascribe Them , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy), 1 990, 275 pages.
Abstract Richard's
Propositional Attitudes
contains a novel theory of belief-sentences in the Russellian
tradition of'direct reference'. It distances itselfcritically from model-theoretic approaches, the tradition of Fregeau sense theory, and also from more psychologically orientated semantics. The theory can be described as a compromise between a referential and a linguistic view of propositions, taken to be fine-grained as in a Structured-Intensions approach. The way terms in a that-clause represent the 'how' of someone's belief are seen as determined by speakers' intentions, this being made explicit by staring restrictions on possible translations of those terms into different contexts. Propositions are formally reconstructed as Russellian annotated matrixes (RAMs), i.e. sequences of pairs consisting of sentential constituents and their respective Russellian interpretations. For a propositional attitude ascription to be true, the RAM of the ascriber's that- clause has to match, in accordance with the contextual restrictions in force, one of the
RAMs in the ascribee's belief system.
The theory is criticized on several counts, most importantly as being incomplete in not sufficiently spelling out how to get to the believer's RAM. Further, it is argued that-due to their hybrid nature-RAMs can hardly be taken as explaining the notion of a that-clause's content.
0
attitude ascription is a sentence whose principal verb is an attitude verb, and the latter is any verb taking singular terms as grammatical subjects and that clauses as objects (p. 7). This initial characterization is quite broad: not only believe , think , wish , etc., but also verbs like remark , assert , calculate , verifY , observe , imply , and others thus count as attitude verbs. (For some of the latter examples, this will invite opposition, since these do not share some of the typical 'psychological' properties of attitude verbs as usually conceived.) The book sets out to treat truth-conditions and ascription of some attitude sentences, mostly English. The only type of attitude considered in detail is An
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GABRIEL FALKE NBERG
1 3 4 Review Article
belief, and-as the book makes clear-Richard thinks that the results can easily be generalized for all other attitudes. No type of content sentence other than that-clauses is dealt with. Both limitations are deplorable but are not uncommon in attitude semantics, and, of course, to some extent legitimate. What is misleading is the tide of the book. If only the author had simply had the courage to announce a treatment of one English attitude verb in its main grammatical construction. Richard's theory belongs, inevitably for a serious work in analytic philosophy, to the established tradition of Gotrand Fressel, that famous German-British philosopher who once lived, once upon a time and more or less happily ever after, somewhere between Jena and Cambridge. More precisely,
to Situation Semantics, the closest continuer of classical Possible-Wodds Semantics, there is a novel account of propositions, and an extended treatment of belief-retention. The work is, more specifically, connected with and influenced by ideas of David Kaplan, Scott Soames, and Nathan Salmon. Something like a reorienta tion in attitude semantics has been 'in the air' for the last couple of years, coming mainly from people working in the Russellian tradition of 'direct ref erence'. This reorientation distances itself from classical model-theoretic approaches, from the tradition of Fregean sense theory and also from more psychologically orientated conceptual-role semantics. (One may well wonder if this leaves any theoretical room to move.) Richard's book may serve as a welcome introduction to this line of reasoning in the field.
Here is a first, rough oudine of the basic tenets of the theory. Suppose someone says
Maggie thinks that Odile is tired. For this to be true, Maggie must have some 'representation' of Odile and of being tired, these representations being 'put together' somehow in an appropriate way (p. 2 . On the other hand, the speaker's sentence also contains
)
parts representing Odile, and being tired (i.e. the respective words Odile and is tired . So, in some sense,.what makes the propositional attitude ascription true is
)
the fact that there is a match between some parts of the ascriber's sentence and some corresponding things in Maggie's mind. (In fact, as will become clear,
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the theory is Russellian with some concessions to Fregeanism, conceived in a Camapian way. (In fact, the term propositional attitude seems to have been 1 coined by Russell.) There is very good criticism of the work of others, there are some interesting ideas about contextual constraints which have some affinities
Review Article I 3 S Richard just reads the structure of the content sentence into the mind.) The corresponding parts on both sides-speaker's as well as thinker's-have to pick out, as it were, the same items in the world. Put in contemporary jargon, both must determine the same Russellian proposition. (Note that this does not yet differentiate the example ascription from other attitudes towards the same proposition.) Richard sidesteps attitude ascriptions containing empty and fictional names, as well as the general issue of 'quantifying out', which involves notorious problems as with sentences like Paul dreamt about the golden mountain, and Peter thought he even saw it, which have defied Russellian treatment so far. He
s),
astonishing in view of his heavily Russellian view on names that appears to determine, or at least to restrict, his position concerning the issue in advance. In fact, he is not able, in the following, to leave this important topic completely out of the picture.
As it stands, the Russellian condition is not sufficient. Frege's examples about the morning and evening star have amply demonstrated that some condition has to be added to the effect that the items represented must be united, for speaker and thinker, under an epistemic equivalence relation like 'same way of thinking', 'same Fregean sense', or something of the sort. Richard first strongly rejects any proposal of this kind, saying that ways of thinking are much to idiosyncratic for the purpose (p.
3). Indeed, in his
core theory, he chooses to
enrich Russellian propositions with linguistic expressions doing duty for whatever cognitive contact is deemed indispensable for belie£ But later, when dealing with Kripke's puzzles, he is compelled to employ a notion of a way of thinking, claimed to be 'thin' (p. 1 5 3) and not necessarily intersubjectively comparable. Furthermore, it is assumed that the match between ascription and things ascribed can vary from context to context. The upshot of this first rough outline is that Maggie believes that p is true in some context iff the content sentence p matches, in this context, something that constitutes a belief of Maggie's. What needs to be developed, then, are the two notions of match and beli constitution .
ef
It is clear that this view involves a strong form of semantic sententialism about the attitudes (p. 4): that-clauses are regarded as designating sentence-like
entities of a particular sort. It also involves a form ofpsychological sententialism
according to which what constitutes a belief is a psychological state that itself has some sort of sentential structure. Richard is prepared to defend both kinds of sententialism, although, concerning the second, he is at pains to be as uncommitted as possible to any particular proposal. What we are told throughout the book about belief states and their constitution is very meagre, and even this is open to criticism.
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maintains, or tries to maintain, strict neutrality on any particular theory about the semantic contribution of definite descriptions (p. which is somewhat
1 36
Review Article
2
Chapter I (Structure) of the book sets the stage by reviewing two other proposals about propositions presently on the market, both being developments in or out of classical Possible-Wodds Semantics. The first proposal is Robert Stalnaker's in Inquiry ( I 984). As is well known, classical Possible-Worlds Semantics like Montague's assumes that propositions have no internal structure; they are conceived simply as sets of circumstances, i.e. items that make sentences true. Two logically equivalent sentences must therefore designate the same proposition, and whoever believes the one must also believe the other. Put differently: any variant of this view requires the attitudes to be closed under logical consequence, something which they clearly are not. (At least, most of them. If to be entitled to know can be held to designate an attitude, it would presumably be one closed under logical consequence. But this case is surely the exception.) This requirement has hampered any real advance on the attitudes by Possible-Worlds Semantics, and has at times been pronounced by critics its theoretical tombstone. Today's communis opinio is that, in order to qualify as entities at which attitudes can be seen as being directed, propositions have to be more fine-grained. The question is only: how fine-grained must they be? As a guide in this search, the following methodological principle is enunciated which is in fact a sufficient condition for difference of things believed: In general, if it is possible that x believes that p be true while x believes that q not be true, then we have to assign the terms
that p
and
that q
to different things (pp.
I 7- I 8).
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Richard refrains from giving an analysis of attitude ascnpnons (in the Moore-Church sense of individually necessary and jointly sufficient con ditions) which he deems 'probably impossible' to attain; rather, he rests content with stating, 'in a correct and illuminating way, exactly what situation-what worlds, if you like-are correctly characterized by various uses' of attitude sentences (p. 1 57). It appears that what have arisen above as two basic notions to be explained by the theory both centre around a suitable notion of proposition. Ifsuch a notion can be provided it may serve to elucidate what it is that is being believed, and, therefore, also to define the necessary match between speaker and believer. Or so Richard believes. Central to his account is the bold view that propositions 'have a structure that for all practical purposes is isomorphic to that of the sentences forming their canonical names' (p. 8).
Review Article I 3 7
Incidentally, from this condition it follows that no two belief sentences differing from one another only in the substitution of a synonym must designate the same proposition (since a case can always be constructed in which the believer may happen either not to know the expression q , or associate a different meaning with it). The principle makes the fine-grainedness of propositions towards which attitudes are directed dependent, so to speak, on the lowest limit of psychological narrow-rnindedness imaginable. (How dull, forgetful, logically short-sighted, etc. can we be while still being said to believe that p? It may not be clear whether this question receives a stable and workable
3 Propositions have to be internally structured in order to qualify as objects or contents of the attitudes. Richard therefore turns, as a working hypothesis, to the other extreme line of thought. It is one connected with the Structured Intensions approach developed by Max Cresswell in Structured Meanings ( I 98 5 ). This theory holds, roughly, that propositions designated by that- clauses also have their structure. Propositions are taken to be fine-grained in the same way that sentences are built up .from their constituent parts. This is in effect also what Richard believes, so there is really not much to criticize for him at this point, in a principled way. He rightly points out, though, along with other critics, that Cresswell's theory predicts many ambiguities for which there is no empirical evidence and, by claiming that the complementizer that is the real source of the trouble, locates the problem wrongly. That not any old change in a sentence seems to induce a change in the corresponding proposition was of course already noticed by Frege and, following him, Carnap. What we want is a clear demarcation between those sentential changes that do and those that do not preserve 'propositional identity'. But, as an excellent observation of Cresswell's has made very probable, no general way of drawing the line appears to be forthcoming because changes of wording are attitude-sensitive (p. 27). For instance, the verb say , as used for indirect quotation, seems propositionally indifferent to permutations around the conjunction and, so that in sentences of the form
·
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answer.) But, as a rule of thumb, the principle is certainly of value. A preferable formulation had been given by Gareth Evans ( I 982: I . 5). It is of course related to the Fregean attitude-based criterion for proposi tional identity: p is the same proposition as q iff it is necessary that any sufficiently reasonable creature (in grasp of both p and q) who believes that p also believes that q, and conversely.
1 3 8 Review Article A said that m and r A said that r and m the same proposition can be held to be designated by the two that-clauses. On the other hand, with the verb deduce this is not possible, since one can deduce that r and m without at the same time deducing that m and r (precisely because
4 In my view, Cresswell's point is much underrated and does have important consequences for any theory of the attitudes. First, if the observation is not confined to one isolated example-and it seems that it is not-it opens up the exciting avenue of ordering attitude verbs according to their 'logical strength', relative to some operations in the content sentence. This is not undertaken in the book under review. Attention is only called by Richard, without any elaboration, to those structural operations that do not touch (as it may be called) 'propositional isomorphy' in the attribution of belief: conjunction and disjunction permuta tion, permutation of adjectival or adverbial modifiers, movement of material into or out of a relative clause, permutation of arguments around symmetric predicates (p. 32). Attention should, I think, be paid to the fact that all these 'belief-preserving operations' in the content-sentence involve the same lexical material being moved around (perhaps with the exception of a few syncategorematic morphemes). This is in line with the earlier methodological principle about propositional nonidentity of belief, and its consequences (see section 2 above). A more thorough investigation would be a promising topic of
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one deduces the first from the second). Suppose, for example, that A, a pupil in an elementary logic course, is asked to derive r 1\ m , given m 1\ r. This provides a reason for denying that the proposition that m and r is the proposition that rand m , at least in the vicinity of deduction, for you can do something to the first proposition (i.e. deduce it) without doing it to the second (p. 30). I will call this observation, henceforth, Cresswell's point. Thus, whereas the verbs say and deduce are both closed under, for example, some adjectival permutation in the content sentences they govern, say is closed under conjunction permutation while deduce is not. This seems to indicate that the second attitude requires a finer notion ofproposition than the first, and that both require a finer than, for example, verify or make it happen (my examples; note that all these are attitude verbs according to Richard's very broad usage recorded at the outset). Although only the first of them appears to be opacity inducing, both seem to permit what neither say nor deduce allow, i.e. existential generalization with respect to contained singular terms.
Review Article 1 39
research for the semantics ofword-order; it is, moreover, in accord with Frege's lifelong attempt at formulating a criterion of sense-identity (his very first eXamples having been active/passive-pairs; c£ van Heijenoon 1977). On the other hand, Cresswell's point may be used to shed sceptical light on the whole enterprise of a theory of attitudes, as it is usually undenaken, since the notion ofproposition sansphrase has apparently to go overboard. Instead, we would have a family of proposition notions, each for a different but related purpose. This would, of course, complicate the whole business of attitude theory enormously; but although Richard refrains from taking this step, it is, perhaps, just what is needed.
Chapter 2 (Some Cognitive Theories of Content) gives Fregean theories of sense and cognitive content their due. After pointing out the difficulties Frege has with quantifying-in and the way the sense of an expression is given and identified, two extended arguments are developed. First, Fregeans have problems with iterated (multiply embedded) attitudes, since, with every new embedding of a that-clause, its designation changes. Second, their treatment makes that-clauses flaccid (as Richard aptly puts it) in a way that excludes proper treatment of valid arguments involving propositional quantification (A believes that p , B believes everything that A believes, ergo B believes that p ) Both shoncomings depend on the same feature of Frege's theory, i.e. that-clauses invariably switch their designation with every new embedding governed by an attitude verb. These sections are well taken and eminently readable; although the arguments as such are known from the literature, the extended way they are put here may well become standard; in any event, they pose serious challenges to a Fregean. (The only criticism I have is that Richard tends to mix Frege's theory with a much more psychological one in which senses are idiosyncratic ways of thinking; as Richard is of course aware, Frege nearly everywhere underscores the objectivity of sense.) Richard also prepares here the way for evaluating his oWn later account, since he claims that it allows us to treat attitude iteration and propositional quantification more successfully. .
6 Richard comes to his own theory in Chapter 3 (Ascribing Attitudes), sections 1 and 2 of which contain the central parts of the book. Anyone versed enough in the literature who is only interested in Richard's core theory will not miss too
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5
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much if(s)he sticks only to these fifty pages or so. One can describe the theory as broadly Carnapian in spirit in being a compromise between a referential and a linguistic view of propositions. A compromise, that is, in the most liberal manner conceivable: propositions are nothing but referential and linguistic items put together peacefully side by side. On this count, propositions are not entities sui generis , but logical constructions out of other entities. At the same time they are claimed, apparently without argument, to be objective and mind independent (p. 3 7). First, Richard argues that attitude verbs must be seen as indexical. By this he means that, for example, the sentence can be both true and false at the same time, only in the mouths of different speakers in different contexts. Here is the story, told in two parts. One ofOdile's friends, Mutt, knows that Odile lists Twain under dead Americans; thus he says she believes that Twain is dead. Another friend of Odile's, Jeff, is asked by someone who couldn't understand why Odile, pointing to a picture of Twain, wants to meet him Doesn't she realize that Twain is dead? Jeff answers: no, Odile does not believe that Twain is dead. According to Richard, Mutt and Jeff are both right, each in his own way. Of course, one may say, the example only works because Odile has two different 'dossiers' of the same man in her 'mental archive' without connecting them, and that Mutt's and Jeff's uses of Twain just trade on these different understandings of the name. Richard denies, though, that the sentence is semantically ambiguous. In some respects possibly important for our intuitions, the example seems underdescribed by Richard. The men could only be held to be both right, it seems, if the latter is assumed to share Odile's false opinion that the man in the picture is not dead. Moreover, Richard more than once switches back and forth, as he does here, between believing and rea lizing,without taking into account the subtler semantic differences between these verbs which seem to play a role. In this case, the example begins to lose, at least for me, some of its initial dramatic impact since the name Twain is, in each part of the story, part of a different 'chain of transmission'. And one may grant that names can be, in some sense, indexical; but from this it does not seem to follow, as Richard wants, that attitude verbs are indexical. Of course, according to some authors, nearly everything in language from natural-kind terms to the truth predicate is 'indexical'. But this is only an inflated way of speaking to which Richard is not party. In fact, I am at a loss to understand, after all, what it could mean for a verb to be indexicaP Decisive for Richard's theory is the way the variations in the two parts of the story are reconstructed a!!d brought to bear on the meaning of attitude
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( 1 ) Odile believes that Twain is dead
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1.p
(2a) Context Mutt Odile : Twain - Twain (2b) Context Jeff Odile : Twain - that man (in the picture) Each contextual restriction contains three things: a person, an input expression, and an output expression.3 The restriction tells us that, in evaluating an attitude ascription to someone (here: Odile), we are restricted to using correlations that map a particular input expression of ours to a particular output expression (i.e. of Odile). The role of the context in Richard's theory is mainly to provide a collection of constraints on translations. Noteworthy is that context plays a strictly semantic role, not a merely supplementary (waste-basket 'pragmatic') one. By contributing restrictions on how the beliefs of others are identified in our ascriptions, our intentions can be seen to affect the use and meaning of attitude verbs. This comes out well in Richard's remarkable treatment of belief retention (pp. 22o-44), which is the most sophisticated I have encountered and too rich to be summarized here, but largely independent of his particular theory of content. It is, rather, one development of a line of thought from an important earlier paper (Richard I 98 I).
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ascriptions. What is said to vary, in the two contexts exemplified, is 'what counts as an acceptable translation of the sentences Odile accepts, in a broad sense of "sentence' " (p. I07). This is of course still putting things quite metaphorically. The idea is that there are substantive restrictions on translation at work here: in Mutt's context, Odile's acceptance of a is dead (for some standard name a of Twain) makes sentence ( I ) above true; whereas in Jeff's context, it seems necessary chat she accepts I am pointing at a before Twain can translate a . In the first context, Twain translates Twain ; in the second, Twain translates that one. So Twain and that one have the same Russellian interpretation guaranteed. (Of course, the whole idea of a translation hinges on how the idealization that Odile 'accepts some sentence' is spelled out in the end.) It is assumed that the interests and intentions of the speaker, and to some extent of his audience, are what fundamentally determine the way that terms in a that-clause represent the 'how' of someone's belie£ This can be made explicit by seating the restrictions constraining the translations of those terms into different contexts. In Mute's context, a constraint like 'Twain (Mutt) translates Twain (Odile)' is operative; in Jeff's, it is something like 'Twain Geff) translates that one (Odile)'. Formally:
1 42 Review Article
7 The next step is Richard's development of a novel account of propositions. The proposition a sentence determines is said to contain not only its usual Russellian designations (objects, properties, etc.) but, in addition, all the constituents of the sentence itsel£ We have a sequence of pairs, each pair (also called an annotation ) consisting of a sentential constituent and its Russellian interpretation. These hybrids are called RAMs (Russellian Annotated Matrixes). Thus, the RAM of the sentence
Twain is dead
is
(In fact, this is also the RAM of the
that- clause that Twain is dead.
Richard
nowhere, as far as I can see, provides for an interpretation of the com plementizer
that.)
Every sentence has at least one RAM. The set of all the
believer's RAMs that encodes the totality of facts about her that are relevant to the truth and falsity of belief ascriptions to her is called the believer's
representational system . Since the sentences treated are all of very simple structure, higher grammatical constituents are nowhere dealt with; but in a full statement of the theory, such constituents, together with the grammatical rules that generate them, would appear mandatory. A related, more serious defect is that one does not really see how the insight drawn from Cresswell's point (see section
3
above) is integrated into the theory. The sentences John believed that a fot, ugly man came and John believed that an ugly,fot man came would, on the face of it, receive two different RAMs since order of constituents is decisive in a RAM. One would therefore have expected some notion of 'propositional iso
RAMs)
at work, with respect to the class of morphy' (i.e. an equivalence class of belief-preserving verbal operations. But we are given nothing of this kind and are consequently at a loss to treat linguistically somewhat more sophisticated examples, like the two just cited. In short, the notion of a RAM cannot yet be the notion of proposition wanted for the attitudes; it can only do preliminary duty for it by applying to a particularly chosen diet of examples, and this is the only nourishment we are given in Richard's book. In general, more complex matters oflinguistic form are eschewed, the remaining ones often being treated in a very cavalier manner simply as variants of logical form.
8 In ascribing to Odile the belief that Twain was dead using our above problem sentence 1 ), Odile believes that Twain is dead, what is it that makes this ascription
(
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(3) ((is dead, being dead), (Twain , Twain)).
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true, according to the theory? The RAM of our that-clause has to match one of the RAMs in Odile's representational (belief) system, and match it, moreover, in accordance with the contextual restrictions in force. In the example scenario the that-clause of sentence (I) above designates the same RAM in both contexts, namely (3). In fact, the RAM of a that-clause remains the same in all contexts. What changes is not what the that-clause designates, but what it correlates with, i.e. which of Odile's RAMs the speaker's RAM is able to match. Everything, therefore, depends on the explanation of the notions of match and restriction employed. Our RAM (3) above matches Odile's RAM iff (a) the two RAMs amount to the same Russellian proposition (i.e. are both identical as to their objectual parts, given in the same order), and (b) this relation ofRAMs observes all restrictions on our context (expressible as mappings between linguistic expressions) (p. I 40). Thus match would be defined via existential generalization over correlations, i.e. partial functions that map annotations to annotations preserving reference. This looks deceptively simple. Well, it is. What it conceals is the most important problem of all: how and whence do we get Odile's RAM, primarily its linguistic parts? In fact, at no time does Richard spell out the metaphor of Odile conversing in a language of thought to which we as theoreticians have open and unlimited access. Thus we find Jeff's contextual restriction (2b) above also stated as follows: Twain translates the 'names of Twain Odile associates with her current perceptual experience ofTwain' (p. I48). But apart from the fact that it is highly idealized to assume that Odile necessarily associates names everywhere with what she sees, we are never told what these names are and how they are to be identified. (Of course, Richard cannot assume that our RAM, together with our restrictions, suffices to reconstruct the matching RAM of the believer.) At other places, we are told that to believe something is to accept a sentence or a sentence-like entity (p. 47), and that the notion of acceptance is used technically here, but this sense is in fact nowhere further explained. Even in later passages, Richard sticks to his 'let's pretend' way of talking about acceptance as 'a matter of having sentence tokens written inside of the head' (p. I 8 I ). The critical notion of two expressions representing 'the same way of thinking' presupposes the notion of acceptance as already explained (p. I s 3 ). Without a separate theory about Odile's RAM-in other words, without something more of an account of the nature of mental representation-the notion of a match between speaker's and believer's RAMs runs idle, and with it the truth-conditions of the whole attitude ascription. This is my first main objection to the theory; I am only astonished to find that nowhere in his book does Richard openly address the difficulty. The official theory developed later is that believe and other verbs of
1 44
Review Article
pr op os ti i on al atti tu de ar e not simp ly r elati ons taking singu lar terms andRAMs,
bu t actu ally tri adic r elati ons with corr elati ons bu ilt into them as an extr a ar gu mentp lace(p. 1 42):
3 f B(a, thatp ,
f).
Pr op os iti onal qu antifi cati on involves qu antifyi ng over corr elati ons (p. 1 48); these ar e also br ou ght to bear on a solu ti on toKr p i ke's P ierr e Puzz le. Bu t in many cases, they can besuppr essed for simp licity.
9 p hilosop hicalpr ogr ess, or whether it amou nts to a son of'closet Fr egeanism',
with lingu isti c expr essions doing du ty for Fr egean senses, and is evenpr ep ar ed
to gra nt the ep ithet(p. 1 49). In fact, u j st like theFr egean, he sees the tru th of an atti tu de ascr p i ti on as being sensiti ve to facts abou t the way someone thinks
abou t the objects andpr op erti es her belief is abou t. Bu t he seems to over state his cas e when he wri tes: Whether Mutt and Odile associate similar ways of thinking ofTwain with their uses of Twain is wholly irrelevant to the question Does, or Could, Mutt use of
Twain ? In fact, one can
Twain
to represent Odile's uses
comfortably hold the sort of view I am urging and insist that, in
general, interpersonal comparisons of a sentence's cognitive role or sense can't be made. (p.
1
so)
This si pu tti ng matter s too str ongly. O f cours e, Richar d makes nou se of non r efer enti al content or Fr egean sense. Thi s si what allows him, inter alia , a
tr eann ent of qu antify ing- in that is not op en toFr egeans. Instead of sens es, he u ses the noti on of a match between sp eaker 's and believer 's RAM s, sup
p lemented by r estr icti ons ontr ans lati on. B oth match and tr anslati on cer tainly
pr esupp ose a standar d of comp ari son betw een sp eaker and beli ever , i. e. betw een
pu bli c langu age and the believer 's 'langu age of thou ght'. In vi ew of the sad incomp leteness of Richar d's exp lanati on of exactly those noti ons that ar e supp os ed to do the wor k of cogniti ve sens e in his theor y , he is r eally not in a
p ositi on thatpu ts him well aboveFr egeani sm. An additi onalpr oblem whi chis conn ected with evalu atin gRichar d's vis -a
vis a Fr egean accou nt is bur ied in one of the 'techn ical niceti es ' secti ons. It comes ou t wi th iter ated atti tu dessu ch as
(4) J ohn
believes thatH enry beli eves thatp.
T he RAM of its highes t that- claus e servi ng as a r epr esentati on of whatJ ohn
beli eves contains the wor d believe, s ince the second occurr ence of the ver b, the
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Ri char d does anti cip ate thequ esti on as to whether his theor y consti tu tesr eal
Review Article 1 4 5 one inside the that-clause, must go into one of the annotations of the highest that-clause. Richard regards this as a 'technological problem' (p. 1 45), solvable by stipulating a hierarchy of semantic levels. Thus, according to him, there is actually not one verb believe in English, but indefinitely many: believe1, believe2, believe3, etc., each with a slightly different meaning. The theory makes the attitude verb indefinitely ambiguous, as does the orthodox treatment of the truth-predicate. The meaning of believe seems to vanish from our eyes by hierarchical segmentation. No general statement is even possible about all verbs
believen. I find this move counter-intuitive in the extreme, as I find the corresponding level-treatment of the antinomies, for which other, more natural solutions have
is not open for us to use, in representations of the meaning of this verb, the verb itself, in this very meaning, only to claim a moment later that in fact the second verb isn't actually the same, but a slightly different one, and so on indefinitely (and that anyway technology will somehow take care of it). This wavering between downright circularity and endless regress does not seem to me a serious attempt to set the meaning of the propositional attitude verb straight.
10 I think that the example (4) above and Richard's reasoning about it indicate that
·
there is something fundamentally wrong with the notion of a RAM really being, as it aspires to be, a sound and fruitful explication of the notion of a that clause's content. One is inclined to think that any such ontological bastard lacks the necessary internal unity required for this role. This is my second main complaint. Let me explain. Frege held that senses are those entities that we know if we correctly understand the expressions having these senses. When we grasp these senses, and grasp what they are senses of, we know the content of the corresponding expressions. This Richard evidently denies. In his theory, the content of a that clause is a RAM, something in which we find all the pieces of the very that clause which is held to designate that RAM So, according to Richard, not only do expressions such as that-clauses designate things which contain those expressions themselves, but the content of an expression is allowed literally to contain all the parts of the expression itsel£ It must be granted that these are curiously hypertrophic notions of 'designation' and 'content'. The whole language goes into the units of its own semantic interpretation! I think doubts about the legitimacy of this undertaking would remain even if s�mehow it .
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been proposed in recent years (Kripke, Gaifman 1992). But this is not my main complaint. Remember what we are doing here, as I see it: we are doing natural language semantics, trying to describe the meaning of the verb believe . I think it
1 46 Review Article
(sa) Louis believes that Hector is a Hellene (sb) Louis believes that Hector is a Greek (sc) Louis glaubt, daB Hektor ein Grieche ist Richard allows the second to be false and the third to be true! A sentence and its natural, in fact synonymous, translation into another language are therefore prevented by the theory from saying the same thing any more (c£ also Richard 1 990, esp. iv). Richard is thus prepared to sacrifice the generalization that translation must preserve truth-value (p. 161). This is in line with his view that he is not supplying us with a paraphrase-type of analysis but aims only at giving truth-conditions. Thirdly, the notion of RAM seems to be of doubtful value when applied to other operators on propositions, e.g. it is true that or it is necessary that. The respective RAMs contain extra material that apparently has to be disregarded in the formalization of arguments involving those operators. If not, and if it is held to deal with propositions, logic would no longer be language-independent on this count; instead, we would be faced with a separate logic for each natural language. RAMs are simply too rich to be suitable bearers of truth-values. Where the extreme language-relativity of RAMs also gets Richard into · trouble is, fourthly, in connection with the beliefs of speechless creatures (animals and small children). He discusses these in the book's last section. According to him, successful belief ascription requires 'referential agreement' between the ascriber's that-clause and the believer's state. If the that-clause contains expressions (other than verbs of attitude) which have a particular Russellian interpretation, then the ascription is true only if the ascribee is in a state with a part that determines the Russellian interpretation (p. 252). This remains vague, since no attempt is made to spell out what it is for a part of a state to determine a particular referential value. What is more, Richard grants that this makes most of our workaday attitude ascription to animals false
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technically works. For me, the general relation between natural-language expressions and their RAMs remains the basic semantic mystery in Richard's theory. What is more, this position makes the notion of content language-relative in an extreme way. The sentences Snow is white and Schnee ist weifi never, according to Richard, designate the same proposition: the first designates an English RAM, the second a German one.4 At first sight, this seems to prevent us from saying that two expressions of different languages have the same content at all. Actually, it only makes it more complicated to say so: Richard needs an additional step, the comparison of the two RAMS and the stripping-off of their linguistic parts. Secondly, his theory is open to Church-like translation arguments: for example, in the following sentences (the first one is assumed to be true)
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1 47
Acknowledgement I am indebted to Graeme Forbes, Mark Richard, and an anonymous referee for helpful remarks on an earlier version, and
to
Colin Foskett for stylistic advice.
GABRIEL FALKENBERG
Received:
Bergische Universitdt-Gesamthochschule Wuppertal Sonderforschungsbereich zSz 'Theorie des Lexikons' D-42097 Wuppertal Germany eMail:Jalkesjb @ wrcd I.urz.uni-wuppertal.de
Revised version received:
1 5-02-93 30-06-93
N O TE S 1
excellent entry Indexicality in Bright's International Encyclopedia of Linguistics
'I mean by "propositional attitude" any one of those whose expression involves
( 1 992).
propositions-desiring, believing, doubt ing, etc.' (Russell
1 9 1 8/J 986: 268).
The
3
first occurrence of the term in print seems lO
tations; I simplify for expository reasons.
have been in Russell's Introduction to
Ludwig Wittgenstein's genstein
1 922: 1 9);
Tractatus
Ostwald (in
(Witt
Annalen
der Natur- und Kulturphilosophie , 14, 1 92 1 :
95) rranslated 'Satz-Einstellungen'.
2 Richard does not claim
this in his
Actually, restrictions map annotations (as explained in the next section) into anno
4
Incidentally, the German examples that there are in the book abound with grammatical mistakes; their main value seems ornamental.
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(p. 259). For example, The dog believes that this is a bone will tum out false, as there fails to be referential agreement with respect to bone and a relevant state or sub state of the dog. Richard does not consider the possibility of relaxing the requirement of referential agreement. He allows some animal concepts and attitudes, though, construing The dogs thinks that the bone is behind the couch in a very uncommitted way as For some x and some y, the dogs thinks that x is behind y . This strongly imputes to the dog only the concept of something being behind another thing; but I do not see the theoretical resources in Richard's account to back up even this very modest claim. Richard's strategy at this point is the one he often follows in the book: refuting some strong arguments against the position he is developing and then letting the matter stand, rather than going on to advance reasons in favour of his theory. That his theory of propositions and propositional attitudes is not downright false or incoherent is one thing; that it is hard to believe, another.
148 Review Article
R E F E RE N CE S
International
Richard, Mark (1 990), 'Comments on Schif
Oxford Uni
fer's Remnants of Meaning', Pacific Philo sophical Quarterly, 71, 223-39.
Structured Meanings.
Russell, Bertrand ( 1 9 1 8/I 986), 'Propositions
Bright, William (ed.) (1 992),
Encyclopedia of Linguistics, versity Press, Oxford. Cresswell, Max J. (1985),
Bradford/MIT Press, Cambridge Mass. Evans, Gareth (1 982),
erence, J. M
The Varieties of Rtf
McDowell (ed.), Clarendon
Press, Oxford. Gaifman, Haim (1 992), 'Pointers to
truth',
MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Heijenoon, Jean van (1 977), 'Frege o n sense identity', journal
of Philosophical Logic, 6,
IOJ-8.
Philosophicus, London.
Richard, Mark (1981), 'Temporalism and etemalism',
Wittgenstein, Ludwig ( 1 922),
Philosophical Studies, 39,
1-1 3·
Routledge
Tractatus Logico & Kegan Paul,
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Journal ofPhilosophy, 89, 223-6 1 .
(Ms), in B. Russell, The Philosophy oJLogical Atomism and Other Essays 1 9 14-19 , J. G. Slater (ed.) (Collected Papers, vol. VIII), Allen & Unwin, London. Stalnaker, Robert (1 984), Inquiry. Bradford/