Donkey Sentences Research Articles

When the donkey lost its fleas: persistence, minimal situations, and embedded quantifiers

This paper revisits the question of whether propositions in situation semantics must be persistent [Kratzer (1989). Linguistics and Philosophy, 12, 607–653]. It shows that ignoring persistence causes empirical problems for theories which use quantification over minimal situations as a solution for donkey anaphora [Elbourne (2005). Situations and individuals. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press]. At the same time, modifying these theories to incorporate persistence makes them incompatible with the use of situations for contextual restriction [Kratzer (2004). Ms., University of Massachusetts].

Free Choice Counterfactual Donkeys

We propose a straightforward analysis of counterfactual donkey sentences, by combining the Lewis/Stalnaker analysis of counterfactuals with standard dynamic semantics. The main idea is to define a similarity relation between world-assignment pairs such that two such pairs are unconnected if their assignments differ. We show that with the help of this ordering relation we can also account for a number of related problems involving disjunctions and the use of any in counterfactuals and permission sentences.

When the donkey lost its fleas: persistence, contxtual restriction, and minimal situations

This paper revisits the question of whether propositions in situation semantics must be persistent (Kratzer (1989)). It shows that ignoring persistence causes empirical problems to theories which use quantification over minimal situations as a solution for donkey anaphora (Elbourne (2005)), while at the same time modifying these theories to incorporate persistence makes them incompatible with the use of situations for contextual restriction (Kratzer (2004)).

When the Donkey Lost its Fleas: Persistence, Contextual Restriction, and Minimal Situations

This paper revisits the question of whether propositions in situation semantics must be persistent (Kratzer (1989)). It shows that ignoring persistence causes empirical problems to theories which use quantification over minimal situations as a solution for donkey anaphora (Elbourne (2005)), while at the same time modifying these theories to incorporate persistence makes them incompatible with the use of situations for contextual restriction (Kratzer (2004)).

Context Dependent Quantifiers and Donkey Anaphora

It is generally agreed that some anaphoric pronouns with (what appear to be) quantifier antecedents occur outside the syntactic scope (i.e., the c-command domain) of their antecedents. First, there is “donkey anaphora,” of both the conditional and relative clause varieties:(1)If Sarah owns a donkey, she beats it.(2)Every woman who owns a donkey beats it.Without going through the details, let me just assert that there is good reason to think that the pronouns in (1) and (2) do not occur in the syntactic scope of the quantifier’ a donkey’ . A second sort of case in which a pronoun with a quantified antecedent occurs outside the syntactic scope of its quantifier antecedent is one in which the pronoun and its antecedent occur in different sentences.A second sort of case in which a pronoun with a quantified antecedent occurs outside the syntactic scope of its quantifier antecedent is one in which the pronoun and its antecedent occur in different sentences. Examples of such “discourse anaphora,” from the very simple to the slightly complex, include:(3)A man is following Sarah. He is from the Internal Revenue Service.(4)A man is following Sarah. Melanie believes he is from the Internal Revenue Service.(5)It is possible that several students flunked at most five exams. Melanie believes they didn’t study for them.(6)Suzi ought to apologize to most of Ann’s dinner guests. It is certain that she insulted them. But it is unclear whether they noticed.

(In)Direct Binding

Abstract. This paper provides a syntactic configuration for the licensing of donkey anaphors that is common to virtually all other cases of variable binding, viz. c‐command. To achieve this, I am led to refine the notion of “adjunct”; in particular, the status of the if‐clause in conditionals. I argue for the well‐foundedness of such an attempt by establishing a detailed parallelism between donkey anaphors and parasitic gaps. It is shown that recent accounts of parasitic gaps in terms of sideward movement (Nunes 1995, 2001) can also capture the core properties of donkey anaphora. If correct, the arguments presented here strengthen the derivational approach to syntactic relations pursued in much recent work, and the recent attempts to capture rules of construal via movement operations (Hornstein 2000, Kayne 2002, Boeckx 2001).

The Syntax of Hungarian by Katalin É. s> Kiss (review)

712 SEER, 8i, 4, 2003 approach and the morphological conception of Slavonic accentology. Ultimately , it hinges upon the distinctionbetween syllablesand morphemes asthe host of phonologically relevant prosodic features and changes. However, as syllables and morphemes may be homophone, some of the MAS's main diachronic postulates, such as the emergence of accentual pattern b and Dybo's/Illic-Svityc's rejection of Saussure'slaw for Slavonic (cf. pp. 44-46), are phonetic in origin,but morphologicalin theirresult. Wozfson College JAN FELLERER University ofOxford Kiss,KatalinE. 7The SyntaxofHungarian.CambridgeSyntaxGuides.Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2002. Xii+ 278 pp. Bibliography . Index. I9.g95 (paperback). ITis entirelyfittingthat Katalin E. Kiss should be the author of this welcome addition to the Cambridge Syntax Guides series. As the thirty items to her credit in the bibliography here amply demonstrate, she occupies a leading position amongst the increasingly influential group of Hungarian linguists who have been over the last quarterof a century analysingHungarian syntax in the generative framework that has now burgeoned into 'Universal Grammar'. This group, which includes Ferenc Kiefer, Anna Szabolcsi and Istvan Kenesei as well as a few brave 'overseas' scholars, has played an important role in adding the description of this typologically distinctive language to its international burgeoning and laying the foundations for this very concise 'syntax guide'. This offers an introduction not only to aspects that have attracted international interest in recent years, such as the syntax and semantics of focus and quantifierscope, but also to areasless explored in traditionalHungarian synchroniclinguistics,forexample non-finiteand semifiniteverbphrasesand subordination. Limitations of space preclude any substantive engagement here with the syntactic issues raised, but it should be said that, given the nature of Hungarian, a range of morphological issues, as well as some phonological ones, are necessarily dealt with or at least touched upon, and the book will thus be of interestto any serious student of the language. However, while the series in which this volume appears 'is not committed to working in any particular framework, but rather seeks to make language-specific research available to theoreticians and practitioners of all persuasions' (p. iii), those without a knowledge of cutting-edge 'Universal Grammar'are unlikelyto be able to make fulluse of this denselywrittentext. Katalin E. Kisswas probably the first linguist to write clearly about the need to replace the traditional subject/object analysis of Hungarian with one according primacy to topic/ focus articulation, and the present volume leaves plenty of room for an introductory textbook in which her outstanding pedagogical skills (and perhaps others') might be applied to help those excited by the range of material treated here but not yet able to tackle mutual c-commandment, theta-grids,donkey anaphora,or the specifierslotsof DistP projections. REVIEWS 7 I 3 Amid all the genuine syntactic excitement, some morphosyntactic detail receives less attention. For example, aspects of the implicative (John Lotz's term) verb suffix -lak/-lekare discussed under both agreement (pp. 53-55) and infinitivephrases (pp. 203-04, with some repetition):but a present-tense example in the firstsection (Igyekezlek meglatogatni (teged)) has doubt cast upon it in the second ('Infact, intransitivematrixverbscan also apparentlyagree (sic) with a second person object, at least in the past tense'), with an example only in the past: Siettelek megldtogatni benneteket. The point being made is thoughtprovoking ,but is there or is there not a tense restriction?Similarlyincomplete is the work on the representation of the object (agreement) marker: 'the combination, or sometimes the fusion, of -(j)a/j(a) (inthe case of a frontvowel stem: an -i)' (p. 49, 1.6), j(a)/(j)a (p. 49, I-IO), -(j)a/j(a)/i (p. I73). In fact, none of these seems right, even if one is treatingonly the present tense (which ought not, surely,to be the case). As the foregoing might suggest, there are small problems not only in the language of the text but also in the English of the examples (ignoring some most likelydeliberate near-Englishin starredsentences and in the attemptsto demonstratefocus though the line is not easy to draw).With a separateline for morphological glossing, the translationline of examples shouldbe used for unambiguouslyaccurate English to help those without Hungarian appreciate the important...

On If and Only

n/a

When is Situation Semantics Allowed?

No abstract.

E-type anaphora as NP-deletion

This paper argues that donkey pronouns should be construed as definite articles, followed by an NP sister which has undergone deletion in the phonology. So Every man who owns a donkey beats it is claimed to share a Logical Form with Every man who owns a donkey beats the donkey, which means the same. There is independent evidence for assimilating pronouns to determiners, and for NP-deletion; so this theory explains E-type anaphora without postulating any special entity (`E-type pronoun') for the purpose. Since NP-deletion, like other ellipsis, requires an antecedent, this theory also explains the requirement for a "formal link" between donkey pronoun and antecedent, which standard E-type theories find difficult to account for. Other empirical advantages of this theory include its ability to explain the pattern of strict and sloppy identity displayed by donkey sentences with phonologically reduced continuations. It is shown that Bach-Peters sentences, quantificational subordination, and paycheck sentences can also be dealt with on the present approach.

The Content of Pronouns: Evidence from Focus

n/a

Indefinites between Predication and Reference

No abstract.

Dynamic Binding and the E-Type Strategy: Evidence from Japanese

No abstract.

Pragmatic Strengthening in Plural Predications and Donkey Sentences

No abstract.

Presuppositions for proportional quantifiers

Most studies of the so-called proportion problem seek to understand how lexical and structural properties of sentences containing adverbial quantifiers give rise to various proportional readings. This paper explores a related but distinct problem: given a use of a particular sentence in context, why do only some of the expected proportional readings seem to be available? That is, why do some sentences allow an asymmetric reading when other, structurally similar sentences seem to require a symmetric reading? Potential factors suggested in the literature include the distribution of donkey pronouns, certain uniqueness implications, and focus structures. I argue here that the use of an adverbial quantifier presupposes HOMOGENEITY: all individual situations that get lumped into a single case for the purposes of evaluating the quantification must agree on whether they satisfy the nuclear scope. For instance, in order for a token of Usually, if a farmer owns a donkey, he beats it to be felicitous when construed under a farmer-dominant asymmetric reading, the context must be consistent with the proposition that each farmer either beats all or none of his donkeys. Thus proportional sentences are indeed systematically ambiguous, but only some readings will be felicitous in a given context.

Total and partial predicates and the weak and strong interpretations

This paper introduces an interesting class of predicates that come in pairs, so-called total and partial predicates. It will be shown that such predicates contribute to an explanation for the weak and strong interpretations of donkey sentences. This paper proposes that the phenomenon of weak and strong interpretations is real, and that whether a sentence receives the weak or the strong interpretation depends on the predicate in the nuclear scope of the sentence. It also proposes that sum individuals are calculated at some level before the nuclear scope of the sentence is processed. Once the sum individuals are calculated, it will be decided whether the nuclear scope is true of at least one element of the sum individual (weak interpretation) or true of all elements of the sum individual (strong interpretation).

Two types of donkey sentences

Mandarin Chinese exhibits two paradigms of conditionals with indefinite wh-words that have the semantics of donkey sentences, represented by ‘bare conditionals’ on the one hand and ruguo- and dou-conditionals on the other. The bare conditionals require multiple occurrences of wh-words, disallowing the use of overt or covert anaphoric elements in the consequent clause, whereas the ruguo- and dou-conditionals present a completely opposite pattern. We argue that the bare conditionals are cases of unselective binding par excellence (Heim 1982, Kamp 1981) while the ruguo- and dou-conditionals are most naturally accounted for with the traditional E-type pronoun strategy of Evans (1980). We thus argue partly for a return to the E-type strategy (along with Heim 1990) but maintain the need for unselective binding in UG (cf. Kratzer 1989, Chierchia 1992). It is further shown that these two paradigms do not differ with respect to the proportion problem and the distribution of symmetric and asymmetric readings of Kadmon (1987), though they differ with respect to ∀ and ∃ readings (discussed in Chierchia 1992) in a non-trivial way that provides further support for the proposed approach. Finally, evidence is given that the bare conditionals should be kept apart from correlative constructions in languages like Hindi, and treated differently from the latter.

E-type pronouns, i-sums, and donkey anaphora

E-type pronouns, i-sums, and donkey anaphora

Weak vs. strong readings of donkey sentences and monotonicity inference in a dynamic setting

In this paper, I show that the availability of what some authors have called the weak reading and the strong reading of donkey sentences with relative clauses is systematically related to monotonicity properties of the determiner. The correlation is different from what has been observed in the literature in that it concerns not only right monotonicity, but also left monotonicity (persistence/antipersistence). I claim that the reading selected by a donkey sentence with a double monotone determiner is in fact the one that validates inference based on the left monotonicity of the determiner. This accounts for the lack of strong reading in donkey sentences with ↑ MON → determiners, which have been neglected in the literature. I consider the relevance of other natural forms of inference as well, but also suggest how monotonicity inference might play a central role in the actual process of interpretation. The formal theory is couched in dynamic predicate logic with generalized quantifiers.

Natural language processing using a propositional semantic network with structured variables

We describe a knowledge representation and inference formalism, based on an intensional propositional semantic network, in which variables are structures terms consisting of quantifier, type, and other information. This has three important consequences for natural language processing. First, this leads to an extended, more “natural” formalism whose use and representations are consistent with the use of variables in natural language in two ways: the structure of representations mirrors the structure of the language and allows re-use phenomena such as pronouns and ellipsis. Second, the formalism allows the specification of description subsumption as a partial ordering on related concepts (variable nodes in a semantic network) that relates more general concepts to more specific instances of that concept, as is done in language. Finally, this structured variable representation simplifies the resolution of some representational difficulties with certain classes of natural language sentences, namely, donkey sentences and sentences involving branching quantifiers. The implementation of this formalism is called ANALOG (A NAtural LOGIC) and its utility for natural language processing tasks is illustrated.