Open Proposition Research Articles

Towards a new typology of the referential information structure of specificational it-clefts

Abstract This paper investigates the referential information structure (IS) of full and reduced specificational it-clefts, which interacts as a distinct layer with their relational IS. Drawing on spontaneous spoken data from the London-Lund Corpus, this study examines how discourse-new and discourse-given information, i.e., referential IS, is distributed over the clefted noun phrase (NP) and cleft-relative clause. To assess the discourse-familiarity of nominal referents and open propositions, I develop an analytical model hinging on the predictability of information in accordance with the prospective dynamic of spoken language. The findings show that the distribution of given and new information is more diverse than described in existing typologies. In particular, it is revealed that the hitherto overlooked pattern in which both value and variable are discourse-given and in which the specification relation may be new or given is in fact the most common one. The findings also show that the choice between full and reduced it-clefts as two basic options is only partly motivated by the discourse-familiarity of the variable. The analysis of the prosodically coded relational IS reveals that multiple prosodic patterns can be mapped onto each category of clefts, thus demonstrating that the conflation of the referential and relational IS of it-clefts is untenable.

현대 중국어 논항 생략 계사문의 정보구조 — ‘我就是’, ‘就是我’ 형식을 중심으로

In communication, the way in which information is conveyed in sentences is essential. Every language possesses language-specific methods in which information is expressed. In the case of the Mandarin Chinese language, information packaging is directly expressed through word ordering. The Chinese sentences ‘Wo jiu shi(我就是)’ and ‘Jiu shi wo(就是我)’, which are the subjects of this study, are interpreted as ‘저입니다(It’s me)’ in Korean. However, selectional restrictions of these sentences exist and are dependent upon the context. Therefore, this study aims to reveal that the selectional restrictions are caused by differences in information structures through the analysis of discourse context, focus structure, and accent distribution. Based on the findings of this study, the following conclusions can be drawn: First, when answering a question with ‘Wo jiu shi’ or ‘Jiu shi wo’, there is a tendency to maintain the information structure of the question asked. Second, in the copular sentence ‘X是Y’, ‘X’ is an unmarked constituent that refers to the denotation of a referent(object). Further, ‘Y’ is an unmarked constituent that refers to the connotation of the referent and sometimes is marked as referring to denotation in the equative relation. Third, in the ‘X是Y’ structure, ‘X’ becomes an unmarked topic and ‘Y’ becomes the natural focus. However, when an exclusive focus is required in the context of an open proposition, the speaker can utter ‘Wo jiu shi’. In this case, the accented stress occurs in the subject ‘Wo(我)’. In other words, when looking for a specific entity within a group, such as ‘laoban zai ma?(老板在吗?)’ or ‘≪zhenlibao≫ jizhe shi na wei?(≪真理报≫记者是哪位?)’, the speaker can answer ‘Wo jiu shi’ regardless of the word order of the question asked. Fourth, the predicate-focus structure ‘Wo jiu shi’ is divided into the following three types. First, the pro-verbal form ‘shi(是)’ is the focus and it is a substitution of the predicate in the previous sentence. Second, the predicate ‘Jiu shi (NP)(就是(NP))’ is the focus. Third, the sentence is a verum-focus structure that emphasizes propositional truth, and ‘Jiu(就)’ is accented. Fifth, ‘Jiu shi wo’ is realized with two information structures: the predicate-focus(object) structure in which ‘wo’ is the focus; and, the verum-focus structure in which ‘jiu’ is the focus.

The Effect of ODOI On Innovative Work Behavior and Employee Performance

The research objective is to develop optimal distinctive open innovation (ODOI) concepts, propositions and indicators as well as to test them empirically. ODOI was formed using a synthesis method of two concepts, namely optimal characteristics, derivatives of social identity theory, and open innovation derived from innovation theory. Quantitative empirical testing using SEM on primary data, the PTS lecturers in the LLDIKTI VI Central Java environment were 190 respondents. The test results show that ODOI is able to mediate the effect of innovative work behavior on improving employee work performance. Innovative work behavior has an effect on increasing ODOI and has an effect on improving employee work performance. ODOI has an effect on improving employee work performance.

A Puzzle about Belief-about

AbstractI present a puzzle for the standard, propositional semantic account of belief reports by considering novel inferences which it incorrectly predicts to be invalid under assumptions that are plausible by its advocates’ own lights. In response, I propose a conservative departure from the standard view on which certain ‘that’-clauses designate novel devices of semantic type <e,t> that I call open propositions. After outlining some desiderata for a theory of open propositions, I provide some reasons for advocates of the standard view to treat them as properties of a certain kind. Then I give a bridge principle between the core notions of belief and belief-about before showing how the resulting view can be implemented in accordance with formal theories of syntax and semantics. I bring out some of the consequences this investigation has beyond our semantic theorizing and conclude, more generally, that any response to the puzzle requires paying some surprising cost or another.

This is not an interrogative: the prosody of “wh-questions” in Hebrew and the sources of their questioning and rhetorical interpretations

Wh-questions are regarded as a prototypical, nearly universal interrogative construction. Although they can have other functions beside eliciting information, these are considered to be pragmatically special, “rhetorical” usages of the interrogative structure. This study of wh-questions in natural Israeli Hebrew speech demonstrates that taking prosody into account makes this standard view untenable for Hebrew. The analysis of the accentuation of the wh-word and of the final intonation shows that the function of the utterance is compositionally constructed from its basic constituents. The construction is an expression of an open proposition, underspecified with respect to its “prototypical” function. The contribution of the utterance is constructed from the direct marking of a few designated categories, such as interest in gapped information and an appeal to the addressee. In this view, the concepts of “genuine” and different types of “rhetorical” questions break down into different combinations of the basic categories. Moreover, it is the “genuine wh-questions” that exhibit more complex marking and function, compared to structurally more basic “rhetorical wh-questions”.

What is this, sarcastic syntax?

This study considers sarcasm as a linguistic genre, and explores the use of constructions to capture conventions of sarcastic speech. It does so by examining the English Split Interrogative (SI), e.g., What are you, a senior?, What is this, Spain? We argue that lexical, syntactic and semantic idiosyncrasies of SI require us to recognize it as a distinct grammatical construction with two related conversational functions. In its basic, or sincere, function, SI is a collateral-track signal in terms of Clark & Fox Tree 2002: it comments on ongoing performance by (a) indexing the user’s effort to attach the right value to a property variable in a contextually salient open proposition and (b) proposing the result of that effort. In its secondary, or sarcastic, function, SI expresses a dissociative Doppelurteil, or double judgment. Just as topic-comment utterances involve two communicative acts — acknowledging a particular entity as a locus of inquiry and attributing a property to that entity — sarcastic SI makes a judgment about the present situation — it’s the inverse of the expected one — and offers an assessment of what makes it so: the value of the wh-variable (a variable over people, places, things, reasons, etc.) is extreme on some contextually available scale. We postulate that the sarcastic function is a conventionalized (or short-circuited) conversational implicature (in terms of Morgan 1978). Certain divergent syntactic properties support the view that SI is ambiguous with respect to sincere and sarcastic senses. We thus view SI as a case in which what started as a rhetorical gambit has become conventionalized into a rhetorical figure (Kay 1997).

Truncated Clefts are Ambiguous

This paper explores the so-called truncated cleft in English. This construction has been classified as a type of copular clauses since Higgins’s (1973) taxonomy of copular clauses. Along the line of Hedberg (2000) and Birner et al. (2007), I observe that truncated clefts are transformationally ambiguous between the copular reading and the cleft reading. I argue that a sufficiently salient open proposition is a crucial factor of disambiguating these two readings. The presence of a salient open proposition engenders the cleft reading of truncated clefts in linguistic contexts, whereas the copular reading is available in situational contexts. Hence, truncated clefts are placed between deep anaphora and surface anaphora in the sense of Hankamer and Sag (1976).

Calvino e Calvino: saltos no escuro, fabulare

This article assembles a crossed reading among the narrative and some open propositions by Italo Calvino and the book of the Portuguese writer Goncalo M. Tavares entitled O Senhor Calvino, which is part of a larger project called O Bairro. What Calvino defines as attitude toward fable may refer to a recovery of the free territory of in-fancy, of the oral experience (the report), together with some categories elaborated by Italo Calvino, such as lightness and as exactitude. Thus, in another fold, Goncalo Tavares also insists on maintaining the lightness proposed by Italo Calvino, in reaction to the weight of things, as output and political task to happiness.

Functional Compositionality and the Interaction of Discourse Constraints

We argue for the existence of functionally complex constructions whose elements compositionally impose discourse-functional constraints on the use of the whole. In particular, we examine th-clefts (as in That’s John who wrote the book), equatives with epistemic would and demonstrative subjects (as in That would be John), and simple equatives with demonstrative subjects (as in That’s John). We show that, contra previous approaches, the latter two constructions need not be analyzed as truncated clefts. Rather, the properties that these constructions share with th-clefts can be straightforwardly accounted for as the sum of the constraints on their shared elements—that is, the equative construction, the demonstrative subject, and the presence of a contextually salient open proposition. The convergence of these elemental properties in each of these three constructions results in the possibility of the demonstrative being used to refer to the instantiation of the variable in the open proposition, which in turn predicts a complex of distributional behaviors shared by precisely the constructions that share these properties. Because these distributional behaviors can be straightforwardly explained in terms of this functional compositionality, the motivation for a truncated-cleft analysis disappears. These results support the view that not all functional properties must be learned on a construction-by-construction basis; instead, the discourse functions of an utterance are built up compositionally from those of its parts.

Argument focus in Kar (Senufo)

Focus theories distinguish different types of focus according to the pragmatic conditions or communicative point on the one side and different scopes of focus on the other side. The assertion in term focus constructions (Dik 1989), called by others argument focus constructions or identificational sentences (Lambrecht 1994), has the purpose of establishing a relation between an argument and an open proposition. Kar, a north-eastern Senufo language of Burkina Faso, which has the basic word order S-Aux-O-V-other, has at its disposal different strategies to mark argument focus, among them fronting of the focused item. In many West African languages the displacement of the focused argument involves other devices, such as the use of special verb forms. In Kar fronting of a focused argument requires the use of special pronouns in the out-of-focus part of the sentence, called background subject pronouns. They are used in other backgrounded contexts, too, for example in relative clauses, adverbial clauses and constituent questions. Their inconsistent use is attributed to a particular sociolinguistic situation in which the data has been collected. The use of the same focus strategies for completive and contrastive focus suggests that Kar does not distinguish pragmatic conditions on the level of sentence grammar.

Equatives and Deferred Reference

Previous accounts of DEFERRED REFERENCE (e.g. Nunberg 1995) have argued that all (nonostensive) deferred reference is the result of MEANING TRANSFER, a shift in the sense of a nominal or predicate expression. An analysis of deferred equatives (I'm the pad thai) suggests an alternative account based on the notion of PRAGMATIC MAPPING: a contextually licensed mapping operation between (sets of) discourse entities, neither of which undergoes a transfer of meaning. Moreover, the use of a deferred equative requires the presence of a contextually licensed OPEN PROPOSITION whose instantiation encodes the particular mapping between entities, both of which remain accessible to varying degrees within the discourse model. Finally, it is shown how a complete account of deferred reference must provide for transfers of reference as well as sense.

Meaning and Use of Indefinite Expressions

Sentences containing pronouns and indefinite noun phrases can be said to express open propositions, propositions which display gaps to be filled. This paper addresses the question what is the lingu...

When subjects behave like objects

This paper is concerned with the cross-linguistic expression of a universal information-structure category called the ‘thetic’ or ‘sentence-focus’ (SF) category. The SF category differs from the unmarked ‘predicate-focus’ (PF) or ‘categorical’ category by the absence of a topic-comment relation between the subject and the predicate and it differs from the marked ‘argument-focus’ (AF) category by the absence of a focus-presupposition relation between an argument and an open proposition. The theoretical issue explored here is the question of the relationship between the form and the function of SF constructions, i.e. the question of motivation in grammar. I argue that the form of SF constructions is motivated by the need to distinguish them minimally from corresponding PF constructions. The form and interpretation of a given SF sentence is thus determined not only by the syntagmatic relations among its constituents but also by the paradigmatic relation between the SF sentence as a whole and the corresponding PF sentence, i.e. in terms of a systemic opposition. Since the distinctive property of SF sentences is the absence of a topic-comment relation between the subject and the predicate, SF marking entails the marking of the subject as a non-topic. I show that across languages this non-topic marking of SF subjects tends to be done via those morphosyntactic, prosodic, or behavioral features which are normally associated with the focal objects of PF constructions. The analysis confirms the necessity to treat the pragmatic relations topic and focus on a par with the grammatical relations subject and object and the semantic roles agent and patient. In seeking to explain the form-function fit in SF constructions in terms of the structuralist notion of paradigmatic opposition the analysis challenges both functional and formal generative approaches to grammar.

Through the Labyrinth: An Interview with Cildo Meireles

Cildo Meireles was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1948. Since the late 1960s, he has created sculptures and installations that function as open propositions in which the audience is invited to become acutely aware of the experience of their bodies in space and time—not only as physical beings, but as psychological, social, and political ones as well.

The Experimental Exercise of Freedom: A Conversation with Rina Carvajal and Alma Ruiz

The Experimental Exercise of Freedom: Lygia Clark, Gego, Mathias Goeritz, Hélio Oiticica, and Mira Schendel is an exhibition curated by Rina Carvajal and Alma Ruiz for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. It was on view at MOCA from October 17, 1999, to January 23, 2000, and is accompanied by a catalogue with essays by the curators, as well as Catherine David, Suely Rolnik, Sônia Salzstein, and Osvaldo Sánchez. Focusing on the work of a group of important artists who are nevertheless little known in the United States, it proposes a remapping of the landscape of post– World War II art and culture to incorporate not only artists who lived outside the United States or Europe, but also works of art conceived not as objects, but as open propositions.

Kopulasätze mit den pronominalen Elementen "to/ėto" im Polnischen und Russischen

In this paper we investigate the structure of specificational sentences like [Raskol'nikov]NP 1 - ėto [ubìjca staruxi]NP2 'Raskolnikov - that is the murderer of the old lady' in Russian and Polish, which - depending on the type of NP1 and NP2 - correspond to English pseudo-cleft-constructions (What Raskolnikov is is the murderer of the old lady) and specificational sentences (The person I like most is my father), respectively. We propose that the Slavic constructions can be analysed similarly to their English counterparts: the first fragment contains a semantic variable, which is specified in the second fragment.
 
 We show that the pronouns "ėto" <Rus.> / "to" <Pol.>, which are obligatory in Slavic specificational sentences, have two functions. 1. the deictic function: "ėto/to" take an open proposition available in the discourse or reconstructed from it, and assign this open proposition to another proposition, which provides the value for the variable of the open proposition. 2. the operative function: "ėto/to" link two syntactically independent fragments, the first of which can be semantically interpreted as an indirect question comparable to the wh-clause in the English pseudo-clefts, and the second as an answer to this question.

Antecedent Contained Deletion and Pied-Piping: Evidence for a Variable-Free Semantics

No abstract.

Virtual Mine Design

Mineral Resources EngineeringVol. 07, No. 03, pp. 233-246 (1998) No AccessVirtual Mine DesignZbigniew J. HladyszZbigniew J. HladyszDepartment of Mining Engineering, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, 501 East St. Joseph Street, Rapid City, SD 57701, USA Search for more papers by this author https://doi.org/10.1142/S0950609898000249Cited by:0 PreviousNext AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsRecommend to Library ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail AbstractThe paper specifies requirements necessary to develop a smart mine design system through the application of virtual reality. Virtual mine, presented in this paper, is a hard rock skeletal model developed using Vulcan software. The mine can be viewed and toured interactively. Relevant information about mine entities, including geology, reserves, mine openings and excavations, support systems and equipment, can be accessed at will. It provides new visualization opportunities and new communication tools for the engineers — to see their creations in 3D, students — to learn mine design, corporate managers — to see the effects of their decisions, and the public — to understand what mining is all about. Virtual mine illustrates what is presently available in mine visualization. Virtual design paradigm, presented in the last part of this paper, is a conceptual design model that could guide the engineer in the design process through the integration of various pieces of mining software with harmony with components and systems making up the mine. Its intent is to emulate the way the engineers perform complex design tasks. Its framework is structured as a 4D-fractal flowchart representing the virtual design process. This new design paradigm is an open proposition to re-engineer mine design software to address the future needs of the mining industry. FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Recommended Vol. 07, No. 03 Metrics History PDF download

Response to Abbott

Abbott raises two major objections to our analysis of definites in there-sentences (Ward & Birner 1995): first, that it uses the term HEARER-NEW in a way that differs significantly from the original definition given in Prince 1992, and second, that it fails to account for the data. We will address these issues in turn. It is true that we extend the use of the terms hearer-old and hearer-new (and, correspondingly, discourse-old and discourse-new) in two related ways. First, Prince restricts their use to describing the information status of entities realized as NPs. It seems clear, however, that such statuses are also applicable to, for example, events, locations, and properties that may be realized as VPs, PPs, AdjPs, etc. (see Birner 1994). Second, Prince in fact recognizes three distinct categories of given/new: discourse-old/discourse-new, hearer-old/hearer-new, and focus/presupposition. By analyzing an entity as representing a hearer-new instantiation of the focus variable in an open proposition, we implicitly assume that the three categories are not mutually exclusive, but rather that the focus of an open proposition itself has an independent discourseand hearer-status. In fact, it's unclear to us why the fact that we extend Prince's usage of this term should constitute counterevidence to the claim in question. While it is true that we extend Prince's theory in a direction that Prince herself did not envision, such an extension is not in itself a shortcoming; on the contrary, it is an improvement if it handles the data in a unified and predictive way. In connection with this same criticism, Abbott notes that sentences like Then there is that resentment in her example 2 contain an explicit marker of hearerold status (i.e. the demonstrative); however, as explained in our original analysis, the entity in such cases is being marked as simultaneously hearer-old (in that it has been previously evoked) and hearer-new (in that the hearer is not expected to recall it). Thus, it is not at all surprising that an indication of hearerold status would be present; in fact, such a state of affairs is entailed by the analysis of these tokens as reminders: something must be (assumed to be) hearer-old in order for the hearer to be reminded of it. The claim is merely that it is being TREATED as hearer-new. For this same reason, Abbott's remark that 'the obvious way to treat an entity as hearer-new would be to refer to it using an indefinite NP' misses the mark, since referring to the entity in this way would treat it ONLY as hearer-new and omit the crucial treatment as SIMULTANEOUSLY hearer-old and hearer-new that signals the NP's reminder status. Moreover, indefiniteness correlates only indirectly with hearer-new status, by virtue of marking information as not being uniquely identifiable (see Hawkins 1978, 1991, Gundel et al. 1993, inter alia). Thus, just as accommodation involves the use of a definite in a context where it has not (strictly speaking) been licensed, the

Foregrounding structures in American sign language

Foregrounding structures serve the primary function of highlighting information by clause-external placement. Foley and Van Valin (1985) identify five such structures: Topicalization, Clefts, Pseudoclefts, Left Dislocation, and Right Dislocation. This paper will argue that there is strong evidence that ASL has the first four of these structures, but that evidence for the existence of Right Dislocation is weak. While Topicalization and Left Dislocation in ASL have already been discussed in the literature, the contribution of the present discussion is to provide pragmatic evidence primarily for Pseudoclefts and secondarily for Clefts. Of significance is the argument that the prevailing view of the ASL Pseudocleft as a ‘rhetorical question-answer’ sequence fails to account for both syntactic and pragmatic aspects of Pseudocleft behavior. The final constituent in the Pseudocleft is shown to be a focused phrase that provides the value of a variable in an open proposition; it is not an afterthought nor Right Dislocation.