Entailment Patterns Research Articles

Robert Rosen’s Anticipatory Systems Theory: The Science of Life and Mind

When I am at conferences, talking about the scientific work of my father (theoretical biologist Robert Rosen, 1934–1998), I am often asked which aspects of his work I think are most important. My answer is Anticipatory Systems Theory. It’s about the entailment and characterization of both life and mind. It explains the fundamental nature of all life, showing how the human mind is an evolutionary concentration of the same peculiar behavior patterns manifested by all living organisms, regardless of species. How can we hope to fully understand ourselves or anything else in the biosphere of Earth without an accurate scientific comprehension of the entailment patterns underlying and generating all of it? The physics of orbital mechanics or atomic particles is insufficient for this. Therefore, I spend a lot of my time working to make the meaning of my father’s scientific discoveries accessible to as many human minds as possible. I think humanity is going to need this work in the future, and already needs it now. This paper will examine the basic premises of Anticipatory Systems Theory and describe, using examples familiar to all of us from daily life, how we can recognize Anticipation at work in ourselves and in local ecosystems all over the planet. I will conclude with some important ramifications of this theory, including how Anticipation necessarily plays into evolutionary processes. I will also point out the vulnerabilities of Anticipatory Systems (i.e., living organisms) to rapid change in environment, potentially leading to extinction cascades.

Modelling Selectional Super-Flexibility

The selectional flexibility of some attitude verbs (e.g. know, realize, report) between declarative and interrogative complements has been the subject of much recent work in formal semantics. However, little attention has been paid to verbs (e.g. see, remember, observe) that embed an even wider variety of complements (incl. subject-controlled gerundive small clauses and concrete object-denoting DPs). Since the familiar types of some of these complements resist an embedding in the type for questions [= sets of propositions], these verbs challenge Theiler, Roelofsen & Aloni’s (2018) uniform interpretation strategy for the complements of responsive verbs. My paper answers this challenge by uniformly interpreting the different complements of selectionally super-flexible verbs like remember in a generalized type for questions, viz. as parametrized centered questions. It shows that the resulting semantics captures the intuitive entailment pattern of these verbs.

Verbalizing nouns and adjectives: The case of behavior-related verbs

In languages such as French, it is possible to derive from nouns or adjectives unergative verbs that intuitively describe ways of behaving, for example, diplomatiser ‘behave like a diplomat’, or bêtifier ‘behave like an idiot’. In addition to their unergative use, a number of behavior-related verbs have formally identical counterparts that are causative, anticausative or transitive activity verbs. The availability of the additional uses depends on the morphological make-up of the verb. This paper provides a semantic analysis of each use of these verbs, which is derived in a compositional fashion from the meaning of their different morphological pieces. We focus on the semantic contribution of the incorporated noun or adjective, by looking at the entailment patterns between the verb (e.g., diplomatiser ‘behave like a diplomat’, bêtifier ‘behave like an idiot’) and the corresponding noun (e.g., être (un/une) diplomate ‘be a diplomat’) or adjective (e.g., être bête ‘be stupid’). We observe that the noun is (re)interpreted in the same way in both the behavior-related verb and the figurative reading of the indefinite NP. The analysis proposed explicitly captures this figurative reading of (e.g.) être un/une diplomate ‘be a diplomat’, the link between the meaning shift of N in this reading and in diplomatiser ‘behave like a diplomat’, the additional causative, anti-causative and non-causative transitive uses of the verbs at study, as well as the entailment patterns observed. We also account for the way the morphosyntactic makeup of the predicate restricts the range of available readings.

Measuring the cognitive cost of downward monotonicity by controlling for negative polarity

Our goal in this study was to behaviorally characterize the property (or properties) that render negative quantifiers more complex in processing compared to their positive counterparts (e.g. the pair few/many). We examined two sources: (i) negative polarity; (ii) entailment reversal (aka downward monotonicity). While negative polarity can be found in other pairs in language such as dimensional adjectives (e.g. the pair small/large), only in quantifiers does negative polarity also reverse the entailment pattern of the sentence. By comparing the processing traits of negative quantifiers with those of non-monotone expressions that contain negative adjectives, using a verification task and measuring reaction times, we found that negative polarity is cognitively costly, but in downward monotone quantifiers it is even more so. We therefore conclude that both negative polarity and downward monotonicity contribute to the processing complexity of negative quantifiers.

Color adjectives, standards, and thresholds: an experimental investigation

Are color adjectives (“red”, “green”, etc.) relative adjectives or absolute adjectives? Existing theories of the meaning of color adjectives attempt to answer that question using informal (“armchair”) judgments. The informal judgments of theorists conflict: it has been proposed that color adjectives are absolute with standards anchored at the minimum degree on the scale, that they are absolute but have near-midpoint standards, and that they are relative. In this paper we report two experiments, one based on entailment patterns and one based on presupposition accommodation, that investigate the meaning of scalar adjectives. We find evidence confirming the existence of subgroups of the population who operate with different standards for color adjectives. The evidence of interpersonal variation in where standards are located on the relevant scale and how those standards can be adjusted indicates that the existing theories of the meaning of color adjectives are at best only partially correct. We also find evidence that paradigmatic relative adjectives (“tall”, “wide”) behave in ways that are not predicted by the standard theory of scalar adjectives. We discuss several different possible explanations for this unexpected behavior. We conclude by discussing the relevance of our findings for philosophical debates about the nature and extent of semantically encoded context sensitivity in which color adjectives have played a key role.

Anticausatives are semantically reflexive in Norwegian, but not in English

In this paper we will discuss cross-linguistic variation in semantic entailment patterns in causative alternations. Previous work has probed this issue with data from elicited semantic judgements on paired linguistic forms, often involving linguistic negation and contradiction. We contribute to the debate in the form of a related psycholinguistic experiment that taps into direct judgements of truth conditions based on visualized scenarios. The stimulus consisted of video sequences of agents causing events, and the task involved answering a Yes-No question based on the anticausative/inchoative alternant. We were therefore able to test two languages, Norwegian and English, with the very same stimuli and directly compare the judgements. Based on our results, we will argue that the causative alternation is qualitatively different in the two languages. More specifically, the results support an entailment relation between the causative and its anticausative counterpart in English, as predicted by the whole class of “causer-less” analyses (Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1995; Ramchand 2008; Reinhart & Siloni 2005) in the literature. In contrast to this, our results support a reflexive analysis of anticausatives in Norwegian (Chierchia 2004; Koontz-Garboden 2009), where no such entailment holds.

Adjectival 'as'-phrases as intensional secondary predicates

This paper focuses on adjectival as-phrases that co-occur with transitive verbs, and contribute additional information on the verb’s internal arguments. I claim that these as-phrases behave like secondary predicates, specifically object-oriented depictives, but—in contrast to object-oriented depictives—contribute intensional content, a modal property. In the course of the paper, I delimit the type of as-phrases that are covered in this paper, and propose a formal analysis for these cases that builds on results by Rothstein (2003) on object-oriented depictives, and the notion of information-based modality in Kratzer 2012. I show how the analysis captures the entailment patterns found with these as-phrases, and how it can be extended to related nominal as-phrases.

Children’s Knowledge of Structure-Dependent Semantic Interactions Between Logical Words

ABSTRACTThe current study examined preschool children’s ability to evaluate the entailment patterns yielded by sentences containing two downward entailing (DE) operators, every and no. When no precedes every, the entailment pattern typically licensed by every changes, but only if no also c-commands every in the hierarchical structure of the sentence. While children had been shown to be sensitive to the effect of a preceding and c-commanding negation on every, it had not been shown whether children were sensitive to the c-command relation between these elements or simply to their linear order. We demonstrate that children’s evaluation of the entailment patterns engendered by sentences with no and every makes recourse to hierarchical structural representations. These findings run counter to models positing that young children lack such representations and instead suggest that young children possess both detailed syntactic representations and knowledge of logical operators such as no and every.

Marking aspect along a scale: The semantics of -te iku and -te kuru in Japanese

This paper proposes an analysis of two aspectual markers "-te iku" and "-te kuru" in Japanese within a scale-based approach to semantics, focusing on cases in which they occur with degree achievements (or, incremental change of state predicate). It will be shown that the complex telicity and entailment patterns that these aspectual markers exhibit when they occur with degree achievements in Japanese can be explained by analyzing them as operators that change the scale structures of the predicates that they take as arguments.

Hey Little Sister, Who's the Only One? Modulating Informativeness in the Resolution of Privative Ambiguity.

We present two eye-tracking experiments on the interpretation of sentences like "The tall girl is (not) the only one that …," which are ambiguous between the anaphoric (the only girl that …) and the exophoric interpretation (the only individual that …). These interpretations differ in informativeness: in a positive context, the exophoric (strong) reading entails the anaphoric (weak), while in a negative context the entailment pattern is reversed and the anaphoric reading is the strongest one. We tested whether adults rely on considerations about informativeness in solving the ambiguity. The results show that participants interpreted one exophorically in both positive and negative contexts. Given these findings, we cast doubts on the idea that Informativeness plays a role in ambiguity resolution and proposes a Principle of Maximal Exploitation: When a context is provided, adults extend their domain of evaluation to include the whole scenario, independently from truth-conditional considerations about informativity and strength.

Scalar implicatures and downward entailment in child Mandarin

This study aims to test whether or not the computation of scalar implicatures in child Mandarin is influenced by the entailment properties of linguistic contexts. Experiment 1 compared adults’ and children’s interpretations of the scalar term huozhe ‘or’, when it appeared in the two arguments of the universal quantifier mei ‘every’. The results showed that Mandarin-speaking adults accepted huozhe as compatible with he ‘and’ in the (downward entailing) restrictor of mei, but not in the (non-downward entailing) nuclear scope of mei, indicating that adults’ calculation of scalar implicatures is sensitive to the influence of entailment patterns. Unlike adults, 4–5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children persistently interpreted huozhe as compatible with he in both contexts. Two further experiments confirmed that children were insensitive to scalar implicatures related to huozhe in non-downward entailing contexts (Experiment 2), unless alternative sentences containing the scalar terms huozhe and he were explicitly presented (Experiment 3). Taken together with previous child studies, the experimental findings suggest that scalar implicatures are not derived in downward entailing contexts. In addition, young children do not spontaneously compute scalar implicatures to the same extent as adults do in non-downward entailing contexts. In both cases, then, young children appear to interpret disjunction as its meaning in classical logic, i.e., inclusive-or.

Anticipation in (M,R)-systems

Relational biology is a study of life in terms of the organization of entailment relations in living systems, independent of any particular physical mechanism or material realization. Anticipatory systems and metabolism–repair (M,R)-systems are two classes of relational models that characterize life. In this paper, I explore the connections between them: I explicate the circumstances under which anticipation occurs in an (M,R)-system, and show that the entailment pattern of an anticipatory system may be represented as a network of metabolism and repair components.

Marking aspect along a scale: The semantics of -te iku and -te kuru in Japanese

This paper proposes an analysis of two aspectual markers "-te iku" and "-te kuru" in Japanese within a scale-based approach to semantics, focusing on cases in which they occur with degree achievements (or, incremental change of state predicate). It will be shown that the complex telicity and entailment patterns that these aspectual markers exhibit when they occur with degree achievements in Japanese can be explained by analyzing them as operators that change the scale structures of the predicates that they take as arguments.

Understanding and Semantic Strucure: Reply to Timothy Williamson

In his essay ‘“Conceptual Truth”’, Timothy Williamson (2006) argues that there are no truths or entailments that are constitutive of understanding the sentences involved. In this reply I provide several examples of entailment patterns that are intuitively constitutive of understanding in just the way that Williamson rejects, and I argue that Williamson's argument does nothing to show otherwise. Williamson bolsters his conclusion by appeal to a certain theory about the nature of understanding. I argue that his theory fails to consider the role that the structure of a sentence plays in determining its meaning. The cases I present suggest that this role imposes greater cognitive requirements on understanding than Williamson can acknowledge.

On the role of entailment patterns and scalar implicatures in the processing of numerals

There has been much debate, in both the linguistics and the psycholinguistics literature, concerning numbers and the interpretation of number denoting determiners (‘numerals’). Such debate concerns, in particular, the nature and distribution of upper-bounded (‘exact’) interpretations vs. lower-bounded (‘at-least’) construals. In the present paper we show that the interpretation and processing of numerals are affected by the entailment properties of the context in which they occur. Experiment 1 established off-line preferences using a questionnaire. Experiment 2 investigated the processing issue through an eye tracking experiment using a silent reading task. Our results show that the upper-bounded interpretation of numerals occurs more often in an upward entailing context than in a downward entailing context. Reading times of the numeral itself were longer when it was embedded in an upward entailing context than when it was not, indicating that processing resources were required when the context triggered an upper-bounded interpretation. However, reading of a following context that required an upper-bounded interpretation triggered more regressions towards the numeral when it had occurred in a downward entailing context than in an upward entailing one. Such findings show that speakers’ interpretation and processing of numerals is systematically affected by the polarity of the sentence in which they occur, and support the hypothesis that the upper-bounded interpretation of numerals is due to a scalar implicature.

Cross-Polar Nomalies

No abstract.

The Processing Consequences of the Imperfective Paradox

In this paper we present a semantic analysis of the imperfective paradox based on the Event Calculus (van Lambalgen & Hamm 2004), a planning formalism characterizing a class of models which can be computed by connectionist networks. We report the results of a questionnaire that support the semantic theory and suggest that different aspectual classes of VPs in the progressive give rise to different entailment patterns. Further, a processing model is outlined, combining the semantic analysis with the psycholinguistic principle of immediacy in the framework of recurrent networks. The model is used to derive predictions concerning the electrophysiological correlates of the computations described by the Event Calculus.

Trying to be Progressive: the Extensionality of Try

We observe that indefinite noun phrases in complement clauses of try sometimes have an obligatory existential reading. Based on this observation, and on some similarities in entailment patterns between Progressive sentences and sentences with try, we argue that the semantics of try is different from that of other attitude verbs, in that it requires the existence of an ongoing event in the actual world, which corresponds to the complement of try. The proposed semantics for try is inspired by Landman's (1992) semantics for the Progressive.

Metaphors as structures for elementary and secondary preservice Teachers’ thinking

This study sought to describe the metaphors entry level preservice teachers bring with them as they begin a teacher education program. One hundred thirty four (134) students certifying in elementary education and 119 students certifying in secondary education completed a questionnaire designed to capture the metaphors they hold on life, children, and teaching. Secondary preservice teachers were more likely to write their own metaphors of life and childhood than their elementary counterparts. No one from the elementary group created his/her own metaphor for life and childhood, while nearly 31% of the secondary group created a metaphor of life, childhood, or both. The metaphors students created to describe teaching revealed four dominant themes: teaching as guiding, teaching as nurturing, teaching as stimulating, and teaching as telling. The chapter closes with a discussion of implications for how changes to the cognitive structure of students’ metaphor entailment patterns occur over time.