Logical Subject Research Articles

The First Person, Embodiment, and the Certainty that One Exists

Descartes made vivid that my certainty as to which psychological states are mine seems to outrun by far my certainty about which body is mine, or even that I have a body. This can make it seem compelling that in our ordinary use of the first person, we are referring to purely psycho logical subjects, which just so happen to be specially related to particular bodies. This would explain why your certainty about your ownership of a particular psychological life can outrun your certainty about your ownership of a body. The problem is that it is difficult to make sense of this notion of the self as a purely psychological subject. You might argue that Descartes was wrong to think that I can hold on to my knowledge that various psychological states are mine while ques tioning whether I have a body. For, you might argue, I undermine my own understanding of the first person when I question whether I have a body. So I cannot hold on to my knowledge that these psychological states are mine while questioning whether I have a body. In this paper I want to explore the possibility of taking a different tack. I want to explore the possibility of acknowledging Descartes's point as correct, while resisting the need to make sense of the notion of the self as a purely psychological subject. I want to argue that our knowledge of our own psychological lives leaves it open what kinds of things we are. For our ordinary use and understanding of the first person leaves it open what kinds of things we are. The puzzle is to understand how it can be that you could hold on to your understanding of the first person while being radically uncertain as to which particular thing you are. For the first person is a singular term, and we would ordinarily think of understanding a singular term as a matter of knowing which thing it stands for.

COMPELLED BY HONOUR—A NEW INTERPRETATION OF ZECHARIAH II 12A (8A)

This article proposes that direct speech begins immediately after the words thus says the Lord in Zech. ii 12. It follows that the word ?, understood as honour, is the logical subject of the verb he/it has sent me while God is its natural object. The verb send is further understood in a figurative sense commission, and the following preposition ? is translated as against. In this way, Zech. ii 12 is a metaphorical expression describing how God is sent by (His) honour to proclaim punishment for the nations. Such a reading fits well with the rest of Zech. i-viii (e.g. Zech. i 7-17): having let His own people being deported and His temple destroyed, God's honour was at stake. A similar idea is found in Ezekiel (e.g. Ez. xx 44).

Russian: A Linguistic Introduction by Paul s> Cubberley (review)

Reviews Cubberley, Paul.Russian. A Linguistic Introduction. CambridgeUniversityPress, Cambridge and New York, 2002. xvi + 380 pp. Maps. Tables. Bibliography .Index. [5o.oo; [i8.95. THISoverview of Russian testifiesto Cubberley'simpressiveknowledgeof the language and its social setting and the chapters on phonology, inflectional morphology and word formation contain interesting data and observations. However, the book is disappointing. It lacks focus; in some chapters the presentationis inadequate;much of the content does not match the intended readership;and the space availablefordiscussionof Russianhas been severely reduced by having examples both in Cyrillic and in transliteration,and with glossesas well as idiomatic translations. The contents arethese:eleven pages on Russia,Russianand Russianwithin linguistics; forty-one pages on Russian as a Slavonic and Indo-European language, the development of standard Russian, and the history of its orthography; forty-nine pages on phonology; seventy-four pages on inflectional morphology which includes brief discussions of aspect, tense, voice, case, number and gender;seventy-eightpages on syntax;fifty-sevenpages on derivationalmorphology,with a shortsection on lexical itemsborrowedfrom other languagesand on differentregistersof lexical item and phrase;nineteen pages on dialects;and thirty-one pages on sociolinguisticscovering standard and non-standard usage, variation in pronunciation and morphology, and speech etiquette. The book is for students and teachers of Russian and for non-Russianists with a professional or amateur interest in linguistics or language studies. Cubberley assumesno professionalcompetence in linguisticsbut attemptsto 'elucidatetheoreticallinguisticapproachesto descriptionwith a minimum of specialist terminology' (p. 9). The trouble is that key terms such as 'aspect', 'complement' and 'logical subject' are not introduced and explained, nor archaictermssuch as 'Supine'(p. 42). Concepts such asAgent and otherroles are ignored and, for example, 'formal subject'is used where the more usual term is now 'grammaticalsubject'. Replete with technical termsand distinctivefeaturetheory, the chapter on phonology is impenetrable to readers without an excellent grounding in phonology. Readers recently instructed in phonology will not be helped by the fact that the featuresare fromJakobson and Halle's workin the fiftiesand have been partlysuperseded. The discussionof intonation (pp. 89-92) employsRussianlinguistictheory. This is fine in principle, but intonation cannot be explained in three pages with no diagrams. The discussion of stylisticvariation in Chapter 7 is brief and offersno examples or analysisof differenttext types. According to Chapter 6 rural dialects have their own phonological and grammaticalsystemsbut urban dialects are mere 'prostorecie',an unacceptably low level of language. Why? And what is the relationship between this 'prostorecie'and the hybrid dialect of Moscow mentioned on p. 3I4? Why is 526 SEER, 8i, 3, 2003 the stressedpluralsuffix-a referredto on p. 345 as a southerndialectalfeature (presumablynon-standard)while threelinesfurtheron thepluralforminzenera is labelled 'substandard'?'Substandard'is not used in WesternEuropean and North American sociolinguistics. There is no referenceto the huge amount of analysisof spontaneousspoken Russianby Zemskaja,Lapteva,Shmelev, Kitajgorodskajaand many others. The treatment of syntax is brief and uneven. For example, discussing examples 'Mne nuzna eta kniga', Cubberley states (p. 2I6) that 'In some impersonal constructions the logical object may appear in the Nominative, though one may argue that the Nominative is as much logical subject as object'. Nuizna is neither transitivenor a verb, the clause is active and knigais nominative. How could it be a logical object (Patient)?'Logical object' is undefined (pp. 215-I6), and the definition of 'logical subject' (p. i85) collapsesAgent with theme/topic. Middle voice (p. I96) is saidto be essentiallya morphologicalissue,but it is equally a valency issue and a discourse issue to do with how middle voice functionsin texts. What does it mean to saythatreflexiveverbsareone way of expressing the Passive (p. I97)? Cubberley neither explains nor defines 'PassiveVoice'. Crisp discussion of the genitive-accusativewith negated verbs requiresthe concept of reference to specific and non-specific entities and the distinction between singular and plural nouns and concrete and abstract nouns. Cubberley'saccount has none of these. Non-Russianists will profit more from relevant books in the LINCOM EUROPA series. Rich data and clear 'non-technical' syntactic analysis are offered in T. Wade's A Comprehensive RussianGrammar (Oxford, 200 I) or D. Offord's UsingRussian. A Guide toContemporagy Usage (Cambridge, I996). For information about on-going changes in Russian studentswill consult Ryazanova -Clarkeand Wade's TheRussian Language Today (London, I999). Three books in Englishhave...

Der Einfluss obersorbischer Lexik auf die niedersorbische Schriftsprache. Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der niedersorbischen Schriftsprache by Anja Pohontsch (review)

526 SEER, 8i, 3, 2003 the stressedpluralsuffix-a referredto on p. 345 as a southerndialectalfeature (presumablynon-standard)while threelinesfurtheron thepluralforminzenera is labelled 'substandard'?'Substandard'is not used in WesternEuropean and North American sociolinguistics. There is no referenceto the huge amount of analysisof spontaneousspoken Russianby Zemskaja,Lapteva,Shmelev, Kitajgorodskajaand many others. The treatment of syntax is brief and uneven. For example, discussing examples 'Mne nuzna eta kniga', Cubberley states (p. 2I6) that 'In some impersonal constructions the logical object may appear in the Nominative, though one may argue that the Nominative is as much logical subject as object'. Nuizna is neither transitivenor a verb, the clause is active and knigais nominative. How could it be a logical object (Patient)?'Logical object' is undefined (pp. 215-I6), and the definition of 'logical subject' (p. i85) collapsesAgent with theme/topic. Middle voice (p. I96) is saidto be essentiallya morphologicalissue,but it is equally a valency issue and a discourse issue to do with how middle voice functionsin texts. What does it mean to saythatreflexiveverbsareone way of expressing the Passive (p. I97)? Cubberley neither explains nor defines 'PassiveVoice'. Crisp discussion of the genitive-accusativewith negated verbs requiresthe concept of reference to specific and non-specific entities and the distinction between singular and plural nouns and concrete and abstract nouns. Cubberley'saccount has none of these. Non-Russianists will profit more from relevant books in the LINCOM EUROPA series. Rich data and clear 'non-technical' syntactic analysis are offered in T. Wade's A Comprehensive RussianGrammar (Oxford, 200 I) or D. Offord's UsingRussian. A Guide toContemporagy Usage (Cambridge, I996). For information about on-going changes in Russian studentswill consult Ryazanova -Clarkeand Wade's TheRussian Language Today (London, I999). Three books in Englishhave yet to be written:a historicaland variationist account of standardspoken and written Russian and the many non-standard varieties; an introduction to style and the analysis of Russian discourse; a sociolinguisticaccount of the emergence and elaborationof standardRussian. Where Cubberleyhas gone astrayis in tryingto hit all these targetsand reach two differentaudiences. Theoretical andApplied Linguistics JIMMILLER School ofPhilosophy, Psychology andLanguage Studies University ofEdinburgh Pohontsch,Anja.DerEinfluss obersorbischer Lexik aufdieniedersorbische Schrftsprache. Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der niedersorbischen Schriftsprache. Schriftendes SorbischenInstituts/Spisy Serbskehoinstituta, 30. Domowina Verlag, Bautzen, 2002. 368 pp. Tables. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography .?22.90 (paperback). THOUGH the questionwhetherSorbianisone languageor twoisunanswerable, there is no doubt about the existence of the two standardlanguages.Until the REVIEWS 527 I840s they were both used to produce predominantly devotional literature. The national movement among the Upper Sorbs stimulatedthe appearance of varioussecularpublications, including a weekly newspaper,but among the Lower Sorbsit was on the initiativenot of national activistsbut of the Prussian authorities that a weekly newspaper was founded in i848. The Bramborski serbski Casnik, as it was called, circulated in a few hundred copies among the 72,000 Sorbs estimated to have been living in Lower Lusatia at that time. Since then it has changed its name several times and suffered a few interruptions,but it has managed to surviveto the present day (since I949 as NowyCasnik). Longevity alone makes it a uniquely valuable linguistic source and Dr Anja Pohontsch has chosen wisely in taking it as the basis for this excellent study of Upper Sorbian lexical influence on the Lower Sorbian standard language. A vocabulary analysing 858 Upper Sorbian borrowings used in the Lower Sorbian weekly between i 848 and I995 formsthe nucleus of the book. The preliminarychaptersinclude a helpfulsurveyof the historical background and the vocabulary is followed by a chronological account relatinglexical to historicalevents and by an examination of the treatmentof the borrowings of lexicographers. This is a thoughtful contribution to the history of the Lower Sorbian standard language, providing significant new insightsinto the mind of its users. Identifying words borrowed by one Slavonic language from another is particularlydifficultwhen the languages in question are as closely related as Upper and Lower Sorbian. Formalcriteriaalone are often inadequate. One might, for example, regardthe presence in a given word of Proto-Slavonic *g (absence of the Upper Sorbian sound change g> h)as evidence that it is not a borrowing;but it has been observed, not only in the Sorbian situation (e.g. Uriel Weinreich, Languages in Contact. Findings andProblems, 2nd...

Knowledge Games

The subject of epistemic logic is firmly entrenched in game theory, including the analysis of common knowledge and of public announcements, such as in ‘hat problems’. How to analyse communications to subgroups of the public, and the effects of such common knowledge of a subgroup on the information state of a larger group, has only recently come into fruition. Knowledge games are introduced to provide a comfortably concrete vehicle for the study of such interactions. This paper introduces the concepts of knowledge game, deal of cards, knowledge game state, game action, and action execution. A deal of cards is a function from cards to players. A knowledge game state is represented by a pointed multiagent S5 model on the set of card deals where all players hold the same number of cards as in the actual deal. A game action combines a question with an answer, and is represented by a pointed multiagent S5 frame on the set of possible answers. The execution of a game action in a knowledge game state corresponds to the computation of a pointed multiagent S5 model that is a restriction of the direct product of the corresponding action frame and game model.

What is happened may not be what appears to be happening: a corpus study of ‘passive’ unaccusatives in L2 English

Second Language (L2) researchers have been studying ‘passive’ unaccusative errors such as What was happened?, but have not yet reached a consensus about the ultimate cause of this unique interlanguage structure. This article critically reviews five major accounts proposed in the literature, namely: • transfer of a compound tense/aspect structure in the learner's first language (L1); • overgeneralization of adjectival passive formation in English; • nontarget lexical causativization; • identification of the passive morphosyntax with the lack of a logical subject; and • nontarget overt marking of syntactic NP movement. By analysing each account in terms of its ramifications in light of the data already available in the literature and additional data from a large corpus of nonnative English, I demonstrate that the most plausible account of the ‘passive’ unaccusative structure is to regard it as an overt marker of NP movement, an overgeneralization of the passive morphosyntax of the target English.

Information status and noncanonical word order in English By Betty J. Birner and Gregory Ward (review)

BOOK NOTICES 219 properly understood as complementizers; H analyzes for and whether as prepositions. In the following chapter ('Lexical properties of prepositions', 190-235), H considers the subclass of lexical prepositions , to which she assigns temporal adverbial subordinators , and argues for the necessity of three additional functional projections dominating PP. She ties together her analyses ofcomplementizers, prepositions , and their projections in Ch. 8 ('Subordinating conjunctions straddle the dividing line between the lexical and the functional universe', 236-61) and introduces the functional head Subcon and the constituents which it both dominates and is dominated by. Though clearly organized, this study would have been made much more readable had it been more closely proofread for typos and, especially, English style. [Mark L. Louden, University of Texas at Austin.] Information status and noncanonical word order in English. By Betty J. Birner and Gregory Ward (Studies in language companion series 40.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins , 1998. Pp. 314. The pragmatics of word order is a popular issue in present-day linguistics: few linguistic phenomena lend themselves that easily to empirical research, and it is an area in which more or less everyone agrees on the general principles involved, i.e. on the overall role played by the information status of the ordered constituents. But the notions 'given' vs. 'new', and similar dichotomies, are usually used in a fairly unrefined way. Studies in this area also often single out particular syntactic constructions without considering their information structural similarities to or differences from other constructions. Birner and Ward do not upset the quasiconsensus on the role of information status in word order ('given' before 'new'), but they claim that it is possible to make generalizations about the functions of syntactically similar constructions on condition that the information structural notions employed are sufficiently fine-grained. Three kinds of construction that deviate from the unmarked canonical word order ofEnglish are distinguished : those that involve 'proposing' (i.e. when some argument of the verb appears to the left of its canonical position, as in For that last bold assertion there are no statistics), those that involve 'postposing ' (some argument of the verb appears to the right of its canonical position, as in There 's a dog running loose somewhere in the neighborhood), and those that involve both (argument-reversing constructions: the logical subject appears in postverbal position and some canonically postverbal argument appears in preverbal position, as in Also a nice woman is our next guest). Each of these is treated in a separate chapter (Chs. 2-4). Preposed constituents (to be distinguished from left-dislocated constituents, which are formally and functionally different) represent discourse -old (rather than simply 'given') links that situate the information presented in the current utterance with respect to the prior context. Postposed constituents (formally and functionally different from rightdislocated constituents) represent information that is unfamiliar in some sense (rather than simply 'new'): existential fnere-sentences need a postverbal NP that represents information that is (presumed to be) new to the hearer, whereas presentational i/iere-sentences only require a postverbal NP that represents information that is new to the discourse. Argument-reversing constructions serve to preserve the normal ordering of information (given before new) in cases where canonical word order would result in relatively new information preceding relatively old information. 'Relatively' is the operative word here: with preposing and postposing the information constraints are 'absolute'; in the case of argument reversal the first constituent must only be at least as familiar within the discourse as the second. Ch. 5 compares the distribution ofpreposing, postposing , and argument reversal in discourse; examines properties shared by preposing and argument reversal ; and looks at correlations between information structure and intonation. In the concluding sixth chapter some crosslinguistic data from Farsi, Italian, and Yiddish are presented to suggest that the proposed generalizations are not limited to English. The book is somewhat repetitive (perhaps because of the fact that it is a reworked compilation of eight previously published articles), but without question B&W have added much-needed explicitness to the study of information packaging in their efforts to arrive at generalizations about the form-function, or syntax-discourse, relation. The publication of their work in book format will help to...

The Effects of Linguistic Voice on Evaluations and Attributions of Ingroup And Outgroup Members

This current study investigated the effects of English language active and passive voice on evaluations and attributions of responsibility toward an ingroup member or an outgroup member who behaved in either a positive or a negative manner. Prior theoretical and empirical analyses suggested that passive voice transformations would have the effect of: (1) reducing the saliency of the logical subject of a sentence relative to the logical object, thereby (2) reducing attributions of responsibility toward the logical subject. Results indicated that, regardless of group membership, attributions of responsibility for positive behavior, but not negative behavior, were reduced when described in the passive voice compared to the active voice. A passive voice transformation also had the effect of reducing the extremity of ingroup evaluations relative to outgroup evaluations for both positive and negative behaviors. We discuss the implications of these data with reference to social‐linguistic analyses of masking and influence.

A Neurocomputational Approach to Abduction

Recent developments in the cognitive sciences and artificial intelligence suggest ways of answering the most serious challenge to Peirce‘s notion of abduction. Either there is no such logical process as abduction or, if abduction is a form of inference, it is essentially unconscious and therefore beyond rational control so that it lacks any normative significance. Peirce himself anticipates and attempts to answer this challenge. Peirce argues that abduction is both a source of creative insight and a form of logical inference subject to a degree of conscious control. In this paper I shall sketch a developing account of abduction that is suggested by the work of Paul Churchland, Paul Thagard, Chris Eliasmith, William Wimsatt, Owen Flanagan, and others. I shall argue that a credible account of abduction will require that we approach the phenomenon from both higher and lower levels as represented by these approaches.

Verb Movement and Expletive Subjects in the Germanic Languages

This book is the study of two different kinds of variation across the Germanic languages. One involves the position of the finite verb, and the other the possible positions of the logical subject in constructions with expletive (or dummy) subjects. The book applies the theory of principles and parameters to the study of comparative syntax. Several languages are considered, including less frequently discussed ones like Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, and Yiddish.

Higher Verbs and Their Nonfinite Complements

English higher verbs impose constraints on the form of their nonfinite complements (i.e., gerunds and infinitives) functioning as objects of the verbs. A number of linguists and grammarians, notably Bolinger (1968) and Wood (1965), have looked at the proposition and tried to identify a principle that can be used to account for the underlying semantic distinction. The strategies of Bolinger and Wood are insufficient to explain the occurrence of the nonfinite complements following various higher verbs or to express the subtleties of the phenomenon. The objective of this article is to analyze strategies about higher verbs and their nonfinite complements with submerged logical subjects and resolve the apparent contradiction between the positions of Bolinger and Wood. Bolinger (1968) formulated the hypothesis that the infinitive very often ex

The spread of the reflexive adjunct middle in the Limburg dialects

It is intriguing that in Standard Dutch, unlike other Germanic languages such as English and German, a special kind of a middle construction shows up, namely the so-called adjunct middle in (1).1 In general, it is assumed that the adjunct middle has the following characteristics: (i) the logical subject argument is syntactically absent but semantically present, (ii) the grammatical subject, such as deze zaal `this hall' in (1a), denotes a location and (iii) the adverb, such as gemakkelijk `easily', has to be present (if there is no focus intonation or negation) (cf. HoekstraR SD = Standard Dutch):

Pick Your Verbs with Care When You Formulate a Question!

Two studies examining how the use of action or state verbs in question formulation influences the locus of causal origin in answers are reported. The first study identifies a number of methodological problems for the selection of action and state verbs in the formulation of semantically symmetrical questions. This study shows a semantic asymmetry between action and state verbs. The second study finds support for the hypothesis that questions formulated with action verbs cue the logical subject of the question sentence as the causal origin for answers and that those formulated with state verbs cue the logical object Additionally, the influence that the actor-observer perspective has on the explanation of social events is shown to be modified by the type of verb used in the formulation of questions. The implications of thesefindings fora number of basic and applied settings are discussed.

The Answer is in the Question: The Effect of Verb Causality on Locus of Explanation

Two studies investigated how verb causality in question formulation affects the locus of causal origin for answers. It was hypothesized that questions formulated with action verbs (join, help, cheat) cue the logical subject of a question sentence as the causal origin for answers. The reverse tendency was expected for answers to questions formulated with state verbs (like, hate, abhor), where the logical object of the question was expected to be the causal origin. The experiments provide support for the hypothesis and also show that choice of verb type in question formulation affects respondents' answers in a way that modfies the expected differences between actors' and observers' viewpoints. The influence of the causality implicit in interpersonal verbs on methodological issues in applied and theoretical settings is discussed.

Os objetos têm história? Encontro de Pasteur com Whitehead num banho de ácido láctico

Did Pasteur discover, construct, invent lactic acid? This Gordian knot in social studies of the sciences is happily cut when the scene played out at Lille in 1857 is peopled with Whiteheadean conceptual characters. The Nature addressed by Pasteur does not speak the language of scientific utterances but neither is it mute; it is imbued with propositions. Insofar as Pasteur plays the character of a scientist, he is 'acted on' by a singular proposition -- "a tale that perhaps might be told," as Whitehead would say, but that will only be true or false if Pasteur manages to make a real world correspond to this proposition, a world capable of providing logical subjects, and thus offering proof to "whomever judges with impartiality." A hybrid-mediator-translator of Pasteurian and microorganismic propositions, the experimental environment "makes the event," in an encounter from which a new Pasteur and a new yeast emerge, partners of a new history.

The Narrative Approach to Reality in Relation to Children's Cooperative Interaction

It was hypothesized that children who use a narrative style of classification are more capable of cooperating with a play-mate than children who use a logical style of classification. Participants were 907-year-old children: 50 females and 40 males. Style of classification was studied by giving the subjects 13 miniature toys to classify. Three main classification criteria were distinguished: categorical, functional and narrative. Forty-five children who classified the objects by category without making use of narrative were designated as logical, 45 children who classified the objects chiefly by narrative criteria were identified as narrative classifiers. Three experimental groups were formed: a logical-logical group consisting of 15 dyads of logical subjects; a narrative-narrative group consisting of 15 dyads of narrative subjects, and a logical-narrative group consisting of 15 dyads composed of one narrative subject and one logical subject. Each subject was asked to perform a cooperative task with a narrative or a logical companion. The task entailed manoeuvring a pulley device that required coordination between the members of the dyad. The children's proficiency at the task was analysed by computing the number of errors each dyad made. The results showed that narrative-narrative dyads were more capable of carrying out the task and cooperating than logical-logical dyads.

A unified approach to type theory through a refined λ-calculus

In the area of foundations of mathematics and computer science, three related topics dominate. These are λ-calculus, type theory and logic. There are moreover, many versions of λ-calculi and type theories. In these versions, the presence of logic ranges from the non-existent to the dominant. In fact, the three subjects of λ-calculus, logic and type theory, got separated due to the appearence of the paradoxes. Moreover, the existence of various versions of each topic is due to the need to get back to the lost paradise which allowed a great freedom in mixing expressivity and logic. In any case, the presence of such a variety of systems calls for a framework to unify them all. Barendregt's cube, for example, is an attempt to unify various type systems and his associated logic cube is an attempt to find connections between type theories and logic. We devise a new λ-notation which enables categorising most of the known systems in a unified way. More precisely, we sketch the general structure of a system of typed lambda calculus and show that this system has enough expressive power for the description of various existing systems, ranging from Automath-like systems to singly typed pure type systems. The system and the notation that we propose have far reaching advantages than just being used as a generalisation formalism. These advantages range from generalising reduction and substitution to representing Mathematics and are investigated in detail in various articles cited in the bibliography.

Fuzzy logic for embedded control solutions

Abstract Many excellent and informative books and papers have been written on the subject of fuzzy logic and its applications. For the most part, emphasis has been placed either on the underlying mathematical theory of fuzzy sets [1], or on providing a study into the ‘glamorous’ applications where it has been used [2]. This technical report provides a compromise of both areas, in order to give practising engineers a theoretical background of fuzzy logic along with an understanding of its role in today's electronics industry, and what all the fuss is about.

The middle construction and the syntax-semantics interface

English and Dutch middle verbs have a grammatical subject that is the corresponding transitive verb's object. In this paper we will account for this fact by invoking the properties of a pre-syntactic level of semantic representation and its interplay with syntax proper. We will argue that the grammatical subject of a middle is its actual external argument, and we will propose a model of projection of arguments that allows for this. We will show that other special properties of middle constructions follow from the way the verb's logical subject is represented at the pre-syntactic level of representation. In particular, it will be shown that the Affectedness Condition on middle formation is not a condition on the type of argument that can appear as the middle verb's grammatical subject, but that its effects and some exceptions to it naturally follow from this representation. Our model will also allow an account of Dutch impersonal and ‘adjunct’ middles.

Moral dilemmas and nonmonotonic logic

From a philosophical standpoint, the work presented here is based on van Fraassen [26]. The bulk of that paper is organized around a series of arguments against the assumption, built into standard deontic logic, that moral dilemmas are impossible; and van Fraassen only briefly sketches his alternative approach. His paper ends with the conclusion that “the problem of possibly irresolvable moral conflict reveals serious flaws in the philosophical and semantic foundations of ‘orthodox’ deontic logic, but also suggests a rich set of new problems and methods for such logic.” My goal has been to suggest that some of these methods might be found in current research on nonmonotonic reasoning, and that some of the problems may have been confronted there as well. I have shown that nonmonotonic logics provide a natural framework for reasoning about moral dilemmas, perhaps even more useful than the ordinary modal framework, and that the issues surrounding the treatment of exceptional information within these logics run parallel to some of the problems posed by conditional oughts. However, there is also another way in which deontic logic might benefit from a connection to nonmonotonic reasoning. A familiar criticism among ethicists of work in deontic logic is that it is too abstract, and too far removed from the kind of problems confronted by real agents in moral deliberation. It must be said that similar criticisms of abstraction and irrelevance are often lodged against work in nonmonotonic reasoning by more practically minded researchers in artificial intelligence; but here, at least, the criticisms are taken seriously. Nonmonotonic logic aims at a qualitative account of commonsense reasoning, which can be used to relate planning and action to defeasible goals and beliefs; and at least some of the theories developed in this area have been tested in realistic situations. By linking the subject of deontic logic to this research, it may be possible also to relate the idealized study of moral reasoning typical of the field to a more robust treatment of practical deliberation.