Felicitous Use Research Articles

The presupposition of even

I present a new observation with regard to the felicity of using even: There is no apparent focus/QUD congruence for even-sentences. For example, Even Mary came cannot be used to answer a question like who came or who was unlikely to come. Instead, the felicitous use of Even Mary came is to address issues like how successful the exhibition was, how enthusiastic people were, how urgent the matter was, etc. Thus I propose that the use of even is QUD-sensitive, always with regard to a contextually salient degree question. Even brings a degree-based presupposition of additivity, not an entity-based one (see also Greenberg 2018 for a similar view). An even-sentence presupposes that its prejacent is associated with a degree value, a benchmark value higher than the usual contextual threshold, resolving a degree question with an increasingly positive answer. E.g., under a relevant scenario about how popular a certain talk was, Even Mary came is roughly interpreted as (the talk was so popular) that Mary came. Under the current analysis, the entity-based additivity and likelihood-based scalarity of even, which are considered presuppositions under the traditional view, are now considered implicatures.

Relating agent prominence to discourse prominence: DO-clefts in German

Abstract The article investigates the hypothesis that prominence phenomena on different levels of linguistic structure are systematically related to each other. More specifically, it is hypothesized that prominence relations in morphosyntax reflect, and contribute to, prominence management in discourse. This hypothesis is empirically based on the phenomenon of agentivity clines, i.e. the observation that the relevance of agentivity features such as volition or sentience is variable across different constructions. While some constructions, including German DO-clefts, show a strong preference for highly agentive verbs, other constructions, including German basic active constructions, have no particular requirements regarding the agentivity of the verb, except that at least one agentivity feature should be present. Our hypothesis predicts that this variable relevance of agentivity features is related to the discourse constraints on the felicitous use of a given construction, which in turn, of course, requires an explicit statement of such constraints. We propose an original account of the discourse constraints on DO-clefts in German using the ‘Question Under Discussion’ framework. Here, we hypothesize that DO-clefts render prominent one implicit question from a set of alternative questions available at a particular point in the developing discourse. This then yields a prominent question-answer pair that changes the thematic structure of the discourse. We conclude with some observations on the possibility of relating morphosyntactic prominence (high agentivity) to discourse prominence (making a Question Under Discussion prominent by way of clefting).

(In)felicitous use of subjects in Greek and Spanish in monolingual and contact settings

This paper focuses on subject distribution in Greek and Chilean Spanish, both null subject languages, as evidenced in the oral production of monolingual and bilingual speakers. Narratives elicited from 40 monolinguals and 76 bilinguals of different types, namely, first- generation immigrants, heritage speakers, and L2 speakers, were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively to explore potential differences in expressing subject reference between the groups in monolingual and contact settings. The qualitative analysis of contexts of topic continuity and topic shift showed no overextension of the scope of the overt subject pronoun expected to be found in the bilingual performance according to the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace 2011; 2012) and previous research. The findings also show that the redundancy of lexical subjects observed in topic continuity contexts mostly involved felicitous (pragmatically appropriate) constructions. Moreover, while null subjects in topic shift were found to be mostly felicitous in both monolinguals and bilinguals, cases of ambiguity were observed in the bilingual performance in this discourse context.

영어 제외의미 표현 but과 but for의 비교 분석

The word but (for) representing the meanings of exception is often regarded as a preposition by English-English and English-Korean dictionaries. However, the exceptional but occurs in the constructions which take all kinds of components after that. According to a traditional perspective, this construction is regarded as ungrammatical. This paper examines the grammatical status of but with the meaning and function and the revised E/S/P conditions proposed by Ahn and Kim (2013), which certify the felicitous use of the correlative conjunction except. The findings show that but can be divided into but1, which satisfies the conditions, and but2, but3, and but4, which violate them. Therefore, but1 functions as a correlative conjunction, but2 as a preposition, but3 as an adverb and but4 as a coordinate conjunction. But for can also be divided into but for1, but for2, and but for3 depending on their functions and meanings. All of them violate the revised E/S/P conditions.

Shrinking Your Deictic System: How Far Can You Go?

Languages around the world differ in terms of the number of adnominal and pronominal demonstratives they require, as well as the factors that impact on their felicitous use. Given this cross-linguistic variation in deictic demonstrative terms, and the features that determine their felicitous use, an open question is how this is accommodated within bilingual cognition and language. In particular, we were interested in the extent to which bilingual language exposure and practice might alter the way in which a bilingual is using deictic demonstratives in their first language. Recent research on language attrition suggests that L2 learning selectively affects aspects of the native language, with some domains of language competence being more vulnerable than others. If demonstratives are basic, and acquired relatively early, they should be less susceptible to change and attrition. This was the hypothesis we went on to test in the current study. We tested two groups of native Spanish speakers, a control group living in Spain and an experimental group living in Norway using the (Spatial) Memory game paradigm. Contra to our expectations, the results indicate a significant difference between the two groups in use of deictic terms, indicative of a change in the preferred number of terms used. This suggests that deictic referential systems may change over time under pressure from bilingual language exposure.

Contrast, Verum Focus and Anaphora: The Case ofet pourtant si/nonin French

This study examines the anaphoric status of the sequenceet pourtant si/nonin French. This sequence displays some properties not only of TP-Ellipsis but also of propositional anaphora. Consequently, the antecedent of this sequence can be recovered by means of either type of anaphoric process. I argue that the salient and relevant antecedent is constrained by the presence of a modalized environment. I claim that the discursive markerpourtantis assimilated to a modal operator (Jayez 1988, Martin 1987) expressingdiscourse contrastbetween two propositions anchored in two possible worlds that are not contradictory.Polarity Particles(POLPARTS) involved in this sequence are analyzed as emphasizing the truth of a proposition. As such, they are conveyingsemantic contrastbetween two polarities, that of a salient and accessible discourse antecedent and that of the missing part afteret pourtant si/non. This is how POLPARTS upgrade the Common Ground. I develop a focus-based account forVerum Focus, building on alternatives along the lines of Hardt & Romero (2004). I suggest that the scope of an epistemic operator (Romero & Han 2004) and the conditions of use are relevant in order to reconstruct the adequate antecedent, which is not possible in an analysis based solely on lexical insertion and upgrading the Question Under Discussion (qud) by conditions governing the felicitous use ofet pourtant si/non.

Microparametric variation in the syntax of Spanish and Greek pronominal subjects

The present research aims to investigate the interface phenomenon of third-person subject distribution in two prototypical null subject (NS) languages, Greek and Spanish focusing on Chilean Spanish, in adult monolingual speakers. The data were obtained from oral production of narratives (Study 1) and anaphora resolution (AR) (Study 2). All elicited data were submitted to statistical analyses while the production data were as well qualitatively scrutinised. Greek and Spanish were directly compared in order to discover differences between them, which were expected to emerge in the scope of the overt subject pronoun (OSP). The two languages were largely similar, sharing analogous clause structures and displaying generally similar properties on the distribution of subject forms, i.e. NS, OSP, as well as lexical subjects (LS) in oral production. The findings, confirming the predictions, showed crosslinguistic differences in the scope of OSP in topic shift (TS) between the languages due to deictic distinctions, with Greek OSP carrying deictic properties, which are less pronounced in its Spanish counterpart. This evidences the fact that NS languages may not be identical regarding subject distribution. Another key aspect, which emerged in the oral production data in both Greek and Spanish, was the felicitous use of NS in TS contexts. NS were also found to be flexible or ambiguous in AR in both languages, thereby displaying a more variable distribution than sometimes assumed.

Knowledge in the face of conspiracy conditionals

A plausible principle about the felicitous use of indicative conditionals says that there is something strange about asserting an indicative conditional when you know whether its antecedent is true. But in most contexts there is nothing strange at all about asserting indicative conditionals like ‘If Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy, then someone else did’. This paper argues that the only compelling explanation of these facts requires the resources of contextualism about knowledge.

Big Data In Banking: A Bird’s Eye View

Banking industry is the backbone of any economy. It plays a very significant role in leading the country towards the growth path by improving the gross capital formation, which consecutively improves the GDP. Success of the banking industry depends on its ability to serve its customers efficiently and expeditiously. The functionality of the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) can be effectuated by felicitous use of customer data. Banks have voluminous data about their customers, which most of the banks failed to utilize in a well-timed manner. Banks can fortuitously satisfy their customers by offering much personalized and focused services by pursuing big data analytics and other hi-tech tools or applications. Big data analytics can be actuated in key areas like customer segmentation, offering customer lifetime value, fraud detection, risk modeling, etc. Preeminent banks in the industry are utilizing big data to leverage the accumulated customer data for improvising their services. Big data offers a promising scope of ventures to banks which consider it strategically. This article is attempts to present an overview of the big data application in the banking industry.

Endogenetic structure of filter bubble in social networks.

The filter bubble is an intermediate structure to provoke polarization and echo chambers in social networks, and it has become one of today's most urgent issues for social media. Previous studies usually equated filter bubbles with community structures and emphasized this exogenous isolation effect, but there is a lack of full discussion of the internal organization of filter bubbles. Here, we design an experiment for analysing filter bubbles taking advantage of social bots. We deployed 128 bots to Weibo (the largest microblogging network in China), and each bot consumed a specific topic (entertainment or sci-tech) and ran for at least two months. In total, we recorded about 1.3 million messages exposed to these bots and their social networks. By analysing the text received by the bots and motifs in their social networks, we found that a filter bubble is not only a dense community of users with the same preferences but also presents an endogenetic unidirectional star-like structure. The structure could spontaneously exclude non-preferred information and cause polarization. Moreover, our work proved that the felicitous use of artificial intelligence technology could provide a useful experimental approach that combines privacy protection and controllability in studying social media.

The Present Perfect Puzzle in US-American English: an FDG Analysis

Abstract This paper examines the rare but well-attested combinations of the Present Perfect with definite temporal adverbials denoting past time in US-American English. The goal of this paper is twofold. For one thing, it outlines the disemous analysis FDG proposes for the form have + past participle in its prototypical use, arguing that two different operators can reliably trigger this form, one marking anteriority and one encoding phasal resultativeness. For another, it shows how, via synchronic inferential mechanisms, the Present Perfect may have absorbed discourse pragmatic functions that now permit the felicitous use of definite temporal adverbials together with the Present Perfect in certain contexts. It is argued that this combination has routinized, taking over certain functions typically associated with the Present Perfect in a manner that suggests this development as potentially part of a grammaticalization process. The paper proposes that they are not as such part of the function the Present Perfect encodes, but that they currently represent a switch stage in the development of the US-American Present Perfect. It further suggests that in this switch stage, the combination of the Present Perfect with an adverb specifying past reference can be read as signaling the relationship between two Discourse Acts as justificational or can encompass the temporal specification as a necessary part of the action that is then available for a Resultative reading.

Frames of Reference and Antecedentless Anaphora in Spanish Conversation.

This study examines native Spanish speakers' use of anaphoric pronouns and null subjects in conversational discourse in the absence of coreferential antecedents. It also considers the adequacy of Gundel et al.'s proposal (Language 69(2):274-307, 1993) that the cognitive status "in focus" corresponds with speakers' use of minimal referring expressions (i.e., unstressed pronouns and zeros). Analysis of naturally occurring Spanish conversation shows how the felicitous use and interpretation of non-canonical (antecedentless) anaphoric pronouns and null subjects are possible due to the activation of underlying cognitive frames that are shared by the interlocutors. Furthermore, the speaker's mention of a referent, dubbed a "neighborhood antecedent" by Langacker (Conceptual grouping and pronominal anaphora, in: Fox (ed) Studies in anaphora, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996), and the information "filled in" over the course of the conversation on account of the activation of relevant cognitive frames, both license and disambiguate the non-canonical anaphoric relations.

Exploring the Repeated Name Penalty and the Overt Pronoun Penalty in Spanish

Anaphoric expressions such as repeated names, overt pronouns, and null pronouns serve a major role in the creation and maintenance of discourse coherence. The felicitous use of an anaphoric expression is highly dependent on the discourse salience of the entity introduced by the antecedent. Gordon et al. (Cogn Sci 17:311-347, 1993) showed that, in English, sentences containing repeated names were read more slowly than corresponding sentences containing pronouns when the antecedent of the anaphoric expression was the subject of the previous sentence. This effect was dubbed the Repeated Name Penalty (RNP), and it was further found that this processing delay is eliminated if the antecedent of the anaphoric expression is the object of the previous sentence. The RNP was later extended to Mandarin Chinese (Yang et al. in Lang Cogn Process 14:715-743, 1999) and to Spanish (Gelormini-Lezama and Almor in Lang Cogn Process 26(3):437-454, 2011), which suggests that this might be a universal phenomenon. Moreover, the Spanish results showed an additional effect: sentences containing overt pronouns were read more slowly than corresponding sentences containing null pronouns when the antecedent of the anaphoric expression was the subject of the previous sentence. This effect was dubbed the Overt Pronoun Penalty (OPP) and, like the original RNP, the effect is also eliminated if the antecedent is in object position (Gelormini-Lezama and Almor 2011; Gordon etal. 1993). The similarity of the RNP and the OPP in Spanish suggests that these two processing phenomena might be caused by the same underlying principles. This paper is a critical review of the literature on these processing delays in Spanish and an attempt to integrate the data in a unified framework. Specifically, and following pragmatic explanations like the Informational Load Hypothesis (Almor in Psychol Rev 106:748-765, 1999), the RNP and OPP in Spanish can be understood as superficial manifestations of an imbalance between processing cost and discourse function.

Children’s felicitous use of intersubjective particles evidences sensitivity to constellations of perspectives

Discourse particles specify how interlocutors’ understandings converge and differ, and appropriate use requires ability to represent propositions from two perspectives simultaneously. This makes discourse particles a highly useful case for investigating developments in children’s ability to monitor and compare mental states, a controversial issue in child language research. Being neither salient, nor obligatory, the particles further allow us to assess children’s motivation to look for interpersonal meanings without strong linguistic incentives. By means of a corpus analysis of peer group conversations (123 hours, 19 children: 1;9–6;3 years), the present study examines at which ages Danish kindergarteners demonstrate stable mastery of the interpersonal contextual demands of five particles marking shared knowledge, disagreement and differential access to knowledge. As background for evaluating children’s particle use as well as order of occurrence, adult consensus on particle meanings was substantiated with a gap-filling test and relative input frequency estimated in caregiver speech. Children were significantly above chance in producing intersubjective particles in felicitous contexts and differentiated clearly between the particles. While there was a strong increase in token frequency over the kindergarten years, children evidenced sensitivity to context from their first productions, and particle felicity did not improve significantly with higher age or production experience. The results suggest that 3-to-6-year-olds routinely monitor and compare representational states, and that they are highly motivated to coordinate conversations as joint actions by pointing to interlocutor perspectives.This article is part of Special Collection: Perspective Taking

A novel problem for the likelihood-based semantics of "even"

This paper describes and examines novel data which is problematic for the popular view that the scale in the scalar presupposition of even is based on comparative (un)likelihood or probability. Several theories in the past attacked this characterization of the scale by pointing out examples where even is felicitous although the likelihood-based presupposition does not seem to be met, indicating that the comparative unlikelihood of p is not a necessary condition for a felicitous use of even p . In contrast to these theories, this paper examines novel data where even is in felicitous although the likelihood-based presupposition is met, indicating that the comparative unlikelihood of p is not a sufficient condition for a felicitous use of even p . In particular, I look at the unexpected infelicity of even p in the context of a salient p or q alternative. I examine, and reject, several potential objections to the claim that such sentences pose a problem for the likelihood-based approach to even and conclude that the novel data constitute a real challenge for this popular approach to even . http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.9.2 BibTeX info

Must, knowledge, and (in)directness

This paper presents corpus and experimental data that problematize the traditional analysis of must as a strong necessity modal, as recently revived and defended by von Fintel and Gillies (in Nat Lang Semant 18(4):351–383, 2010). I provide naturalistic examples showing that must p can be used alongside an explicit denial of knowledge of p or certainty in p, and that it can be conjoined with an expression indicating that p is not certain or that not-p is possible. I also report the results of an experiment involving lotteries, where most participants endorsed a sentence of the form must not-p despite being instructed that p is a possibility. Crucially, endorsement was much higher for must in this context than for matched sentences with knowledge or certainty expressions. These results indicate that the requirements for felicitous use of must are weaker than for know and certain rather than being at least as strong, as the epistemic necessity theory would predict. However, it is possible to account for these data while retaining the key insights of von Fintel and Gillies’ analysis of the evidential component of must. I discuss several existing accounts that could be construed in this way and explain why none is completely satisfactory. I then propose a new model that embeds an existing scalar theory into a probabilistic model of informational dynamics structured around questions and answers.

On truth unpersistence: At the crossroads of epistemic modality and discourse

We propose a semantic analysis of the particles afinal (European Portuguese) and alla fine (Italian) in terms of the notion of truth unpersistence, which combines both epistemic modality and constraints on discourse structure. We argue that the felicitous use of these modal particles requires that the truth of a proposition p* fail to persist through a temporal succession of epistemic states, where p* is incompatible with the proposition modified by afinal/alla fine, and that the interlocutors share knowledge of a previous epistemic attitude toward p*. We analyze two main cases, that of plan-related propositions and that of propositions without plans. We also discuss the connections between truth unpersistence and evidentiality.

Discriminating CEFR levels in Greek L2: a corpus-based study of young learners’ written narratives

In line with cross-linguistic research aiming at identifying criterial features that discriminate the CEFR proficiency levels, the present study investigates language elements that are core characteristics of each proficiency level for Greek L2. It is based on a graded corpus of 150 written narratives produced by young L2 learners (aged 8–14) at levels A2 to B2. This corpus was annotated with respect to a set of features at both the sentence and discourse level, such as clause subordination, connectives, modifiers and grammatical accuracy. Statistical analysis identified certain aspects of these features that discriminate language proficiency levels in L2 Greek narratives and are put forward as criterial features. These include the frequency of dependent and centre-embedded clauses, the gradual decrease of additive and the emergence of contrastive and inferential connectives, the felicitous use of clitics, as well as the use of evaluative adverbs and adjectives.

Magnitude Estimation: can it do something for your pragmatics?

We report the results of a pilot study investigating whether the technique of Magnitude Estimation, widely used in psychophysics but also in syntax and phonology, can be exploited in discourse pragmatics. In this domain, unacceptable data (i.e. data labeled ‘#’) play an important role but acceptability judgments can be subtle, context-dependent, and thus a topic of debate, as shown by endless disputes in the literature. Using two sets of data, (in)felicitous topicalizations from Birner and Ward (1998) and the (in)felicitous use of appositive relative clauses as discussed in Loock (2010a, 2010b) on the fame effect, we aim to determine whether the Magnitude Estimation technique can provide reliable results that would overcome the difficulties with intuitive acceptability judgments. We discuss whether this technique provides acceptability judgments that are less problematic than those obtained introspectively or via regular questionnaires.

Anaphoric biases of null and overt subjects in Italian and Spanish: a cross-linguistic comparison

The present study explores the cross-linguistic differences between Spanish and Italian in the anaphoric interpretation of null subjects and overt pronominal subjects. The availability of null subjects in a language is determined by the parametric settings of its syntax, but their felicitous use as an alternative to overt pronouns depends on contextual conditions affecting how different expressions retrieve their antecedents in the discourse. According to Accessibility Theory, at least some of these principles must have universal validity; however, up to now no experimental research has been carried out with the aim of comparing directly the interpretation of anaphoric dependencies in two typologically similar null subject languages. In this paper, we report the results of two self-paced reading experiments carried out in Spanish and in Italian. The results show a similar pattern for the resolution of null subjects, as predicted by Accessibility Theory, whereas the resolution of overt pronouns seems to diverge. This suggests that subtle differences restricted to the scope of the overt pronoun yield systematic variation between the two languages.