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Linguistics
Department
Stanford
University |
Stanford
Humanities Center
Mellon
Foundation
Graduate
Research Workshop Program
Stanford
Semantics and Pragmatics Workshop:
THE
CONSTRUCTION OF MEANING
Friday, January 10, 3:30pm in 460-126:
A Semantics for Pseudo-Incorporation
Veneeta Dayal (Rutgers)
Many languages allow reduced nominals (those lacking determiners, case
marking, possibly also inflection and modification) as inner
arguments. This talk is concerned with the semantics of constructions
involving such reduced nominals.
The primary focus is on Hindi incorporation, which is known to manifest a
peculiar mismatch between syntax and semantics (Mohanan 1995, Dayal 1999,
Wescoat 2002). The reduced nominal of Hindi incorporation behaves
syntactically like a complement of the verb, with respect to agreement for
example. At the same time, its interpretive possibilities align it with
nominals inside compounds. Hindi can therefore be considered a
pseudo-incorporation language. This talk explores the possibility of
deriving the interpretation associated with compounds without
necessitating a syntactic analysis combining an NO with VO. It is shown
that the semantics of pseudo-incorporation must capture at least four
properties, which I illustrate with familiar examples from English:
(1) Kim is a book-seller.
(2) The baby ate *(something). It was a piece of fruit lying on the floor.
(3) Sue didn't eat apples.
(4) Mary went apple-picking. #They/The apples were delicious.
Although the nominal in (1) is 'singular', there is no implication that
only one book is involved in selling. We can call this the property of
number-neutrality. Number-neutrality is related to, but distinct from, the
second property which we can call prototypicality. As (2) shows, the
intransitive version of eat restricts the interpretation of the understood
direct object to prototypical themes such as meal. The third property is
obligatory narrow scope, shown by bare plurals in examples such as
(3). Finally, pronominal anaphora to compounds is disallowed, as shown in
(4). Hindi pseudo-incorporation is shown to manifest all four of these
properties.
The two detailed proposals that have been made for the semantics of
incorporation (Bittner 1984, Van Geenhoven 1997) derive existential
interpretations, addressing only the properties of number neutrality and
obligatory narrow scope. They are therefore inadequate for the
construction at hand. A third proposal (Porterfield & Srivastav 1988,
Ramchand 1997, Dayal 1999), in terms of complex-predicates, attempts to
capture the other relevant properties but remains programmatic. This talk
takes up the challange of fleshing out the details of this proposal,
deriving some of the desired effects via restrictions on the rule of
complex predicate formation.
The talk concludes with a discussion of the applicability of the proposed
semantics to other constructions involving reduced inner arguments. This
includes pseudo-incorporation in other languages (Albanian, Hungarian,
Niuean) as well as compounding (English) and canonical noun incorporation
(Mohawk, Greenlandic).
Please contact one of the workshop organizers
if you have suggestions for presentations or the workshop in general.
Back to the workshop homepage.
This workshop is sponsored by
the Stanford Humanities Center, and funded by a grant from the Mellon
Foundation.
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