Abstract
Abstract A semantic universal, which we here dub the Veridical Uniformity Universal, has recently been argued to hold of responsive verbs (those that take both declarative and interrogative complements). This paper offers a preliminary explanation of this universal: verbs satisfying it are easier to learn than those that do not. This claim is supported by a computational experiment using artificial neural networks, mirroring a recent proposal for explaining semantic universals of quantifiers. This preliminary study opens up many avenues for future work on explaining semantic universals more generally, which are discussed in the conclusion.
Highlights
A semantic universal, which we here dub the VERIDICAL UNIFORMITY UNIVERSAL, has recently been argued to hold of responsive verbs
This paper begins to develop an explanation for a semantic universal concerning so-called responsive verbs
A rough statement, to be made precise later: every responsive verb is veridically uniform, in that it is veridical with respect to declarative complements if and only if it is veridical with respect to interrogative complements
Summary
A semantic universal, which we here dub the VERIDICAL UNIFORMITY UNIVERSAL, has recently been argued to hold of responsive verbs (those that take both declarative and interrogative complements). This paper offers a preliminary explanation of this universal: verbs satisfying it are easier to learn than those that do not This claim is supported by a computational experiment using artificial neural networks, mirroring a recent proposal for explaining semantic universals of quantifiers. This paper begins to develop an explanation for a semantic universal concerning so-called responsive verbs. These are verbs – such as know, forget, and be wrong – which can take both declarative and interrogative complements.. C. Carlos knows that Maria won the race
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