The non-partitivity of Catalan and Italian nominal ne

INTRODUCTION There is a general notion of semantic argument . It says that A is a semantic argument of B when it instantiates a term (fills a slot) in a relation expressed by B. But under this rubric fall several more specific ideas, all commonly evoked, that need to be distinguished. In this chapter I will discuss four, which I call functional arguments (Section 4.2), content arguments (Section 4.3), entailed role arguments (Section 4.4) and participant arguments (Section 4.5). In Section 4.6, I will review common ideas on the correspondence of semantic and syntactic arguments. The need for distinction reflects actual diversity in usage. The term “argument” is used with more variety in semantics than it is in syntax, and for a reason. In syntax it is clear what sort of fact the distinction between arguments and adjuncts is meant to account for: namely, different effects on distributional category. The string carry the chair slowly has nearly the same distribution as carry the chair, but these two strings both differ substantially in distribution from carry on its own. The claim that the chair but not slowly is an argument is meant to encode this. In semantics, however, the distinction between arguments and non-arguments finds no single agreed explanandum that is equally clear. Consider (1). (1) Mo might cook sausage in the kitchen with our blowtorch. Its meaning relates Mo, sausage, the kitchen and our blowtorch all to an event of cooking. If any single aspect of this fact demands a purely semantic distinction between arguments and adjuncts, it is not clear at first blush. Any distinction we might care to make will therefore be based on observations that are subtle or even tendentious – nothing so plain as a difference in string distributions. And with no single kind of fact to be accountable to, usage of “semantic argument” is correspondingly diverse. Linguists feel free to use it in any of several different ways. In the interests of clarifying conversation, I will now put labels to a few of these uses.

This chapter investigates the relationship between metonymy and two related semantic phenomena: profile/zone discrepancy and facetization. Both of these phenomena aim to explain linguistic examples that activate only a specific zone or facet of the entity referred to. However, their precise semantic status, both with respect to each other and to metonymy, remains unclear. In order to resolve the resulting terminological confusion, we claim that profile/zone discrepancy functions as an overarching category that spans a continuum ranging from the classic concept of metonymy, via facetization, to non-metonymical language. We put forward several pragmatic, syntactic, and semantic arguments in support of this position.

The aim of this article is to present and confront the arguments in support of euthanasia and physician assisted suicide, and the arguments against. The arguments for and against euthanasia are listed and discussed to literature cited. Euthanasia is an act of mercy, and, basically means to take a deliberate action with the express intention of ending a life to relieve intractable, persistent, unstoppable suffering. The phenomenon about both the morality and legality of euthanasia and physician assisted death have been a significant debates of the last decades of the twentieth century and they will remain further a source of controversies. This paper explores and analyze the arguments in support and against e uthanasia and physician assisted suicide. For the purpose of this article has been viewed over the Internet and Google total of 247 journal articles, book chapters and websites, and, in writing of this article we used 74 references cited in the manuscript. The ‘end of life’ issue in relation to euthanasia and physician assisted suicide is a most widely discussed phenomenon not only in academic and official literature, but also in daily life. Euthanasia should be legally permissible if certain conditions are present: the patient is terminally ill, death is imminent, and, treatment was appropriate and well. If a patient autonomously chooses to end his life or have someone else assist him in doing so, then it is morally permissible. Patient must be fully inform ed of the diagnosis and prognosis of an incurable, fatal disease, and competent Mini - review Article

Fictional realists hold that we should accept fictional objects into our ontology. They offer three sorts of arguments in support of their view: semantic arguments, inferential arguments, and metaphysical arguments. However, these arguments fail. The pretense-theoretic account of fictional character discourse developed earlier can account for the data invoked by the semantic arguments without our needing to posit fictional objects. The inferential arguments ultimately presuppose the correctness of the semantic arguments. And two metaphysical arguments recently offered by Voltolini and Thomasson also fail.

This chapter analyses Ronald Dworkin's interpretative challenge. One of Dworkin's main arguments against legal positivism is based on the following two premises: first, determining what the law is in each particular instance results from an interpretative reasoning; secondly, that interpretation necessarily involves evaluative considerations. Therefore, the argument concludes, it follows that determining what the law is always depends on evaluative considerations. The chapter focuses on the first premise, examining three possible arguments in support of it: a semantic argument, an epistemic argument, and Dworkin's theory of legal principles. The chapter argues that none of these arguments succeeds. Neither semantic nor epistemic considerations can support the idea that determining what the law is always follows from an interpretation. It is also argued that there are no legal principles of the kind envisaged by Dworkin.

Background: Sentence production impairment in aphasia has been attributed to several possible sources that are not mutually exclusive. Linguistic accounts often attribute the difficulty to the complexity of a verb's syntactic and/or semantic argument structure. Cognitive processing accounts emphasise the reduced processing capacity observed in agrammatic aphasia, which in turn has been attributed to reduced semantic short-term memory (STM) or slowed processing. Aims: In this study we used verb particles and prepositions to investigate effects of differences in syntactic and semantic argument structure on sentence repetition in aphasia. We predicted that verb particles and sentences containing verb-particle constructions would be easier to repeat than prepositions and prepositional transitive sentences, as the former have a less-complex semantic and syntactic argument structure than the latter. Also, semantic and phonological spans were assessed to determine if a reduction in either capacity correlates with repetition ability. Methods & Procedures: Participants were eight individuals with chronic aphasia. The experimental task was repetition of transitive sentences balanced for length and lexical content containing either verb particles or prepositional object structures. Accuracy of sentence repetition and repetition of verb particles and prepositions within sentences was examined. We calculated the effect of structural complexity on the sentence repetition task as the difference between proportion correct of verb-particle constructions and prepositional transitives. Semantic and phonological STM spans and word spans were also assessed and correlated with this measure of the structural complexity effect on sentence repetition. Outcomes & Results: Verb-particle sentences were repeated correctly significantly more often than prepositional transitive sentences, and within those sentences verbal particles were repeated correctly significantly more often than prepositions. The effect was strongly associated with fluency scores: it was present in participants with low fluency scores, but not in those with high fluency scores. The phonological, but not the semantic, STM probe span measure correlated with both the difference in accurate repetition of verb-particle and prepositional transitive sentences and the particles and prepositions within those sentences. Conclusions: Results indicate that differences in argument structure of particle and preposition constructions influence sentence repetition in agrammatic aphasia. The finding that lower fluency scores are associated with poorer performance on more complex structures suggests that this effect is associated with agrammatism. The impact of these structural distinctions between particles and prepositions should be taken into account during development of treatment stimuli for those with agrammatism.

The variability debate: More statistics, more linguistics

From hearsay evidentiality to samesaying relations

<p>I argue in this work that Reinhart & Reuland’s (1993) conditions A and B hold for Spanish. I provide evidence supporting the hypothesis that this language makes use of both <strong>SE </strong>and <strong>SELF</strong>-anaphors. Inherent reflexive verbs undergo an internal argument reduction operation in the lexicon. However, the syntax always requires two arguments. Therefore certain clitics, which are SE-anaphors, are inserted in these derivations. This is a last-resort mechanism that makes an adjustment between the valence of the lexical entry of the verb and the requirements of the syntax in order for the derivation to converge at the C-I interface. These clitics are syntactic arguments. Nevertheless, they are not interpreted as semantic arguments since they violate the <em>double chain condition, </em>which forces nominal elements to share both a tense and thematic features with the verb and the tense heads. Non- inherent reflexive verbs require the presence of a SELF-anaphor, which is formed out of a SE-anaphor along with a protector SELF element. Therefore, both syntactic elements are interpreted as two distinguishable semantic elements at C-I despite the fact that there is binding between them both. The interpretation of both syntactic elements as just one semantic element is a pragmatic epiphenomenon.</p>

This paper examines the strategies native speakers of American English and German employ in resolving number conflicts in subject-verb agreement. These conflicts are created by the competition of syntactic and semantic principles. Significant differences are found between the two groups of subjects. The English speakers tend to follow the semantic principle in certain lexical items and in N(sg) of NP(pl) constructions but the syntactic principle in sentences with subject complements, in clefts, and, to a lesser extent, in pseudoclefts. The German speakers do almost exactly the reverse. These inconsistencies notwithstanding, semantic arguments are claimed to prevail in English and syntactic arguments in German agreement decisions. The cross-linguistic differences may be put down to the fact that the morphology and the word-ordering component are impoverished in English but not in German. This weakens the syntactic force in the former though not in the latter language. The semanticity of English and the syntacticity of German appear to extend beyond the realm of agreement. Evidence from other areas provides preliminary support for the hypothesis that the semantic slant is a more general characteristic of English and the syntactic slant a more general characteristic of German

Treatment models, brand names, acronyms and evidence‐based practice

In recent months there has been an intensifying debate surrounding the scientific publishing industry, focusing on the important questions of who pays and who benefits, and who has access. In the UK, the debate has been particularly energetic, with many articles and letters in the press, discussion within funding agencies, culminating recently in the recommendations to the Government contained within the Finch report [1]. Other events that are helping to shape the discussion include the decision by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max-Planck Society and the Wellcome Foundation to collaboratively start their own open access journal [2] (the first example of major funding agencies owning their own scientific journal), and the worldwide boycott of Elsevier journals by more than 12,000 authors and reviewers [3].

This paper is a study of the syntactic process of Comparative Ellipsis (CE) and its semantic interpretation. Concentrating on CE constructions in Modern Hebrew containing the morphemeaSer, the paper argues for an analysis of these constructions as sentential structures undergoing ellipsis, rather than base-generated PPs that are assigned sentential meaning by semantic interpretation. The paper argues that CE differs from other rules of ellipsis in comparatives on the basis of a distinction between deep and surface anaphora. Following work by Sag (1976) and Pesetsky (1982) on gapping, the paper claims that CE involves LF copying of IP, from the main clause into the comparative clause which is base-generated as a reduced CP. This analysis accounts for various properties of CE, in particular the fact that it cannot occur in comparative clauses containingma ‘what’. The paper presents both syntactic and semantic arguments in favor of a clausal analysis of CE constructions withaSer and against an analysis of direct semantic interpretation.

In this paper, we present syntactic and semantic arguments that, in at least one articleless language (Lithuanian), bare nouns are able to project either NP or DP structures (cf. Franks & Pereltsvaig 2004; Ajíbóyè 2006; Pereltsveig 2006). We show that, in some syntactic contexts, Lithuanian bare nouns are only able to receive definite interpretations; in one context, they are only interpreted indefinitely. We then tie these interpretations to the presence or absence of D. Further, we highlight problems with the view that there is a categorical difference between articleless (NP) and articleful (DP) languages (Bošković 2010; Despić 2011), by testing Bošković’s and Despić’s generalizations about NP vs. DP languages on Lithuanian. In both cases, Lithuanian ends up behaving somewhat like an NP language, and somewhat like a DP language. Lithuanian is therefore a counterexample to the NP/DP split posited by Bošković, and must receive a different analysis.

From the introduction: "The clause in Southeastern Tepehuan (hereafter SE Tepehuan) consists of a predicate, its associated arguments, and other modifying elements. This paper seeks to show the various types of semantic and surface clauses and the relation between them.