Von Stechow Research Articles

Belief or consequences

We argue for a new inference-based analysis of belief attribution in which the embedded proposition is inferable from, but need not directly identify, an underlying belief of the subject’s. The analysis accounts for attributions of belief in necessary truths and falsities, overcoming a major difficulty facing Hintikka (1962), and goes beyond Cresswell & von Stechow (1982) in accounting for intuitively valid inferable belief attributions. The analysis is based on a novel subjective I-semantics in which extensions depend dually on extension conditions assigned by a judge, and on the judge’s beliefs about what satisfies those conditions. The interpretation of believe uses syntactic inference over logical formulas, with premises deriving from beliefs of both the attributor and the attributee, and the conclusion derived from the clause embedded under believe. Unlike nearly all prior analyses of belief attribution since Hintikka, our proposal makes no commitment to possible worlds while generating de dicto, de re, de qualitate, de translato and other interpretations, with the only formal semantic ambiguity deriving from what gets raised out of the embedded clause. EARLY ACCESS

Cessation implicature and simultaneous readings

Altshuler & Schwarzschild (2013a, 2013b) provide an account of the simultaneous reading of past-under-past sentences in English (called the sequence-of-tense (SOT) phenomenon) based on a lack of cessation implicature. However, this analysis encounters empirical and technical issues in accounting for the English data in the same construction involving the future auxiliary would, the past perfect, and the future-under-future configuration. It also faces difficulty in accounting for the cross-linguistic data that concerns tense in verb complements. We are, therefore, led to conclude that the traditional solution to this problem (Abusch 1988, 1997, Ogihara 1996, von Stechow 1995, Stowell 1996, and Kratzer 1998) that renders structurally lower past tense morphemes in English semantically empty (or plain variables) is preferable. This system allows us to adopt the same semantic mechanism for both SOT languages such as English and non-SOT languages such as Japanese.

Directed motion entailments in the semantics of roots: A root-sensitive approach

Syntactic, decompositional theories of verb meaning hold that verbs are created in the syntax by merging roots, which provide idiosyncratic information, with functional heads, which introduce structural components of meaning such as change or causation. In this paper, we examine the consequences of such a view for verbs of inherently directed motion like arrive, enter, ascend, descend, depart, leave, etc. (Levin, 1993; Rappaport Hovav, 2014). We show that this class of verbs does not show uniform behavior with respect to sub-lexical modification with modifiers like again and durative temporal modifiers, which are well-established diagnostics for decompositional theories of verb meaning (e.g., Dowty, 1979; von Stechow, 1996; Beck and Johnson, 2004). This suggests that a syntactic, decompositional view may be appropriate only for some of these verbs, while others must contain all directed motion entailments within their verb roots. We argue that a root-sensitive approach to lexical decomposition of this verb class is necessary in order to account for their distinct grammatical properties.

Agent entailments and the division of labor between functional structure and roots

An influential proposal about the status of a verb’s agent argument maintains they are severed from the verb’s argument structure and introduced as external arguments via functional heads in the syntax (Kratzer 1996). Nonetheless, there are various conceptual and empirical arguments against this view (e.g., Dowty 1989; Wechsler 2005; Bale 2007; Müller & Wechsler 2014; Wechsler 2020). In this paper, we build on Bale’s (2007) arguments that transitivity plays a role in whether a verb’s external argument can be introduced outside the domain of the verb. Specifically, he argues based on sub-lexical modification with again that only eventive transitive verbs have their external arguments severed from the verb, and stative transitive and intransitive verbs do not. We present empirical evidence against this macro-classification, showing that particular classes of eventive transitive verbs, namely verbs of killing like murder, slay, slaughter, massacre, and assassinate in fact do not permit what Bale calls subjectless (agentless) presuppositions. Given an understanding of again’s presupposition being uniquely determined by the structural constituent it attaches to (Dowty 1979; von Stechow 1996; Beck & Johnson 2004; Bale 2007), this must mean that these verbs cannot have their external arguments severed, contra Bale’s generalization. Further we claim that intentionality entailments, which are often taken to be entailments of an Agent thematic role (Dowty 1991; Kratzer 1996), can in fact be dissociated from the syntactic introduction of the agent argument, and that certain verbs can lexically introduce them without directly introducing their agents. This is argued for by examining what we call manner of forced taking verbs like confiscate, snatch, and seize, which permit agentless presuppositions with again but still impose intentionality requirements on their subjects. We provide a compositional semantics for these two classes of verbs capturing these facts, and close with some speculations about the nature of intentionality entailments in regard to Rappaport Hovav & Levin’s (2010) MANNER/RESULT COMPLEMENTARITY.

Comparisons of Equality With Germanso…wie, and the Relationship Between Degrees and Properties

AbstractWe present a compositionally transparent, unified semantic analysis of two kinds of so…wie-equative constructions in German, namely degree equatives and property equatives in the domain of individuals or events. Unlike in English and many other European languages (Haspelmath & Buchholz 1998, Rett 2013), both equative types in German feature the parameter marker so, suggesting a unified analysis. We show that the parallel formal expression of German degree and property equatives is accompanied by a parallel syntactic distribution (in predicative, attributive, and adverbial position), and by identical semantic properties: Both equative types allow for scope ambiguities, show negative island effects out of context, and license the negative polarity item überhaupt ‘at all’ in the complement clause. As the same properties are also shared by German comparatives, we adopt the influential quantificational analysis of comparatives in von Stechow (1984ab), Heim (1985, 2001, 2007), and Beck (2011), and treat both German equative types in a uniform manner as expressing universal quantification over sets of degrees or over sets of properties (of individuals or events). Conceptually, the uniform marking of degree-related and property-related meanings is expected given that the abstract semantic category degree (type $d$) can be reconstructed in terms of equivalence classes, i.e., ontologically simpler sets of individuals (type $\langle e,t\rangle $) or events (type $\langle v,t\rangle $). These are found in any language, showing that whether or not a language makes explicit reference to degrees (by means of gradable adjectives, degree question words, degree-only equatives) does not follow on general conceptual or semantic grounds, but is determined by the grammar of that language.

The expression of modality in Logoori

Abstract This study presents a theoretically informed description of the expression of modality in Logoori (Luyia; Bantu). We document verbal and non-verbal modal expressions in Logoori, and show how these expressions fit into proposed typologies of modal systems (Kratzer, Angelika. 1981. The notional category of modality. In Hans-Jurgen Eikmeyer & Hannes Rieser (eds.), Words, worlds, and contexts: New approaches in word semantics, 38–74. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, Kratzer, Angelika. 1991. Modality. In Armin von Stechow & Dieter Wunderlich (eds.), Semantics: An international handbook of contemporary research, 639–650. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter; van der Auwera, Johan & Vladimir Plungian. 1998. Modality’s semantic map. Linguistic Typology 2. 79–124. https://doi.org/10.1515/lity.1998.2.1.79; Nauze, Fabrice. 2008. Modality in typological perspective. Amsterdam: Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation PhD thesis). We show that Logoori’s modal system raises some interesting questions regarding the typology and theoretical analysis of modality and its relationship to other kinds of meaning. Our study contributes to the nascent but growing research on modal systems cross linguistically by adding data from an understudied Bantu language.

Degree achievements and degree morphemes in competition in Southern Aymara

In this paper, I give an account of degree achievements in Southern Aymara, an understudied Andean language. I focus on degree achievements that are derived from gradable bases by means of the verbal suffix -cha, e.g., llusk’a-cha-na ‘to straighten’ or q’anu-cha-na ‘to dirty’. I provide arguments suggesting that Aymara should be analyzed as a degree language (Bochnak in Semant Pragmat 8(6):1–48, 2015b). I further propose an analysis of Aymara degree achievements in terms of a differential measure function (Kennedy and Levin, in: McNally, Kennedy (eds) Adjectives and adverbs: syntax, semantics and discourse. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 156–182, 2008) The main point argued for in this paper is that this language has two degree morphemes in competition (Heim, in: von Stechow, Wunderlich (eds) Semantik: ein internationales Handbuch der zeitgenossischen Forschung. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, pp 487–535, 1991) combining with degree achievements, namely, a covert verbal positive morpheme v.pos and the overt morpheme -su. The latter restricts the standard of comparison to change where maximal values are reached, so it is preferred over v.pos when such values are targeted. v.pos is thus felicitous when the maximum is not reached. I propose an initial typology that distinguishes how telicity is achieved cross-linguistically when degree achievements are considered.

CO2-to-Fuels Renewable Gasoline and Jet Fuel Can Soon Be Price Competitive with Fossil Fuels

Download : Download high-res image (69KB) Download : Download full-size image Rob McGinnis, PhD, is an inventor and entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of Prometheus, a company that is developing technology to remove carbon dioxide from the air and turn it into fuels. He previously founded Mattershift, where he developed large-scale carbon nanotube membranes. Rob was previously founder of Oasys Water, a company focused on developing forward osmosis technologies for water purification. Rob received his PhD in Engineering from Yale University.

The Embedding Puzzle: Constraints on Evidentials in Complement Clauses

The Embedding Puzzle: Constraints on Evidentials in Complement Clauses

Evaluativity across adjective and construction types: An experimental study

An adjectival construction is evaluative if and only if it conveys that the property associated with the adjective exceeds a relevant threshold. The questions of which adjectival constructions are evaluative and why have formed the foundation for semantic theories of these constructions and of adjectives themselves (Klein 1980, von Stechow 1984), although it has been alleged that these theories are based on an incomplete picture of the phenomenon of evaluativity (Bierwisch 1989, Rett 2008a). We present the first experimental tests of the scope and nature of evaluativity across adjectival constructions and adjective types. These studies confirm that evaluativity is conditioned by adjective type (relative or absolute, Kennedy & McNally 2005) and is not restricted to the positive construction. However, they also show several new and surprising aspects of evaluativity: that it is perhaps better characterized as a gradable property than a binary one; that the ways in which relative and absolute adjectives differ in their evaluativity vary across construction; and that, contrary to standard intuitions, subjects are willing to attribute evaluativity to the subject position of comparative constructions likeSue is taller than Bill. We show that this last particularly surprising result reveals a lot about how subjects interpret contextually sensitive constructions, and we discuss its consequences for experimental studies and semantic theories of adjectival evaluativity as well as context-sensitive phenomena more generally.

Comparison Across Domains in Delineation Semantics

This paper presents a new logical analysis of quantity comparatives (i.e. More linguists than philosophers came to the party.) within the Delineation Semantics approach to gradability and comparison (McConnell-Ginet in Comparison constructions in English. PhD thesis, University of Rochester, Rochester, 1973; Kamp in Formal semantics of natural language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1975; Klein in Linguist Philos 4:1---45, 1980) among many others. Along with the Degree Semantics framework (Cresswell in Montague grammar. Academic Press, New York, 1976; von Stechow in J Semant 3:1---77, 1984; Kennedy in Projecting the adjective. PhD thesis. University of California, Santa Cruz, 1997, among many others) Delineation Semantics is one of the dominant logical frameworks for analyzing the meaning of gradable constituents of the adjectival syntactic category; however, there has been very little work done investigating the application of this framework to the analysis of gradability outside the adjectival domain. This state of affairs distinguishes the Delineation Semantics framework from its Degree Semantics counterpart, where such questions have been investigated in great deal since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Nevertheless, it has been observed [for example, by Doetjes (Seventeenth amsterdam colloquium. University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 2011); van Rooij (The vagueness handbook. Springer, Dordrecht, 2011c)] that there is nothing inherently adjectival about the way that the interpretations of scalar predicates are calculated in Delineation Semantics, and therefore that there is enormous potential for this approach to shed light on the nature of gradability and comparison in the nominal and verbal domains. This paper is a first contribution to realizing this potential within a Mereological extension of a simple version of the DelS system.

Quantizing scalar change

This paper provides a new analysis of N-BY-N adverbials that captures their previously unrecognized close connection to verbs of scalar change. After providing a series of arguments that N-BY-N modification requires the VP to provide a scalar interval it can measure, we use this as novel evidence that incremental theme verbs, as well as inherently directed motion and change of state verbs, must make reference to scales. The analysis thus supports a unified scalar account of verbs of variable telicity (e.g., Hay, Kennedy & Levin 1999; Kennedy & Levin 2008; Kennedy 2012). Finally, we show that our analysis avoids empirical problems for previous approaches to these adverbials in both English (Beck & von Stechow 2007; Brasoveanu & Henderson 2009) and Russian (Braginsky & Rothstein 2008).

Quantifiers, "Again" and the Complexity of Verb Phrases

No abstract.

Early Modern English again: a corpus study and semantic analysis

This article investigates uses of the adverb again in Early Modern English (EModE) correspondence. The study collects occurrences of again and analyses their interpretation. It reveals interesting differences in the use of again between EModE and Late Modern English (LModE) as well as Present-day English (PDE). To bring out the grammatical significance of the results, we connect the study methodologically as closely as possible with Beck, Berezovskaya & Pflugfelder's (2009) study of LModE/PDE correspondence. We show that the key diachronic alteration we observe when considering EModE is not just numerical in nature but also qualitatively distinct from the later change at the transition between LModE and PDE. At the heart of our proposal is the finding that while a structural approach to again (Rapp & von Stechow 1999; Beck 2005) is successful for characterizing the transition between LModE and PDE, a uniform analysis for the entire diachronic trajectory is not warranted; a combined theoretical modelling is required instead. Specifically, a lexical analysis relying on counterdirectionality (e.g. Fabricius-Hansen 2001) is required to capture the differences in the EModE data.

Fake Tense in conditional sentences: a modal approach

Many languages allow for “fake” uses of their past tense marker: the marker: can occur in certain contexts without conveying temporal pastness. Instead it appears to bear a modal meaning. Iatridou (Linguist Inq 31(2):231–270, 2000) has dubbed this phenomenon Fake Tense. Fake Tense is particularly common to conditional constructions. This paper analyzes Fake Tense in English conditional sentences as a certain kind of ambiguity: the past tense morphology can mark the presence of a temporal operator, but it can also signal a specific modal operator. The ambiguity is proposed to be the result of recategorization: the Simple Past develops a second, modal meaning because of structural similarities between the temporal and the modal/epistemic domain. The proposal is spelled out in the generative semantics framework (Heim and Kratzer, Semantics in generative grammar, 1998), using the restrictor approach to conditionals (Kratzer, in: R. Bauerle et al. (eds.) Semantics from different points of view, 1979; in: A. von Stechow and D. Wunderlich (eds.) Semantics: an international handbook of contemporary research, 1991), and building on von Stechows et al.’s recent work on the English tense system (von Stechow, in: W. Klein (ed.) The expression of time in language, 2010; Romero and von Stechow, Tense: introduction, 2008).

Quantizing scalar change

This paper provides a new analysis of N-BY-N adverbials that captures their previously unrecognized close connection to verbs of scalar change. After providing a series of arguments that N-BY-N modification requires the VP to provide a scalar interval it can measure, we use this as novel evidence that incremental theme verbs, as well as inherently directed motion and change of state verbs, must make reference to scales. The analysis thus supports a unified scalar account of verbs of variable telicity (e.g., Hay, Kennedy & Levin 1999; Kennedy & Levin 2008; Kennedy 2012). Finally, we show that our analysis avoids empirical problems for previous approaches to these adverbials in both English (Beck & von Stechow 2007; Brasoveanu & Henderson 2009) and Russian (Braginsky & Rothstein 2008).

Tense in Ancient Greek Reports

AbstractThis paper shows that tenses in Ancient Greek reports have both an anaphoric and a shifted-indexical component. It develops a new account of Ancient Greek tenses that deals with this combination of features. Following Klein's (1994) semantics of tense, I claim that tense indicates the relation between an anaphoric topic time and the moment of utterance, the now. As for Ancient Greek indirect discourse, I argue that the anaphoric component works exactly the same as in non-embedded discourse (contra von Stechow 1995). The indexical component, however, is di ferent in that the now is not provided by the actual context of utterance, but by the reported context. The DRT account developed models this combination of features, taking also into account the role of aspect.

Rhetorical comparatives: Polarity items, expletive negation, and subjunctive mood

While the semantic approaches differ on whether there is a negative operator (¬: Jespersen, 1917; Ross, 1969; McConnell-Ginet, 1973; Seuren, 1973; Klein, 1980; Stassen, 1984; Larson, 1988) or a non-negative inequality operator (>: Von Stechow, 1984; Rullmann, 1995; Kennedy, 1997a; Beck et al., 2004) in the comparative, various issues remain unresolved surrounding the “negativity” of comparatives. This paper proposes a novel dichotomy of comparatives between ‘rhetorical’ comparatives (RCs) and regular ‘degree’ comparatives (DCs), and shows that only RCs convey “negativity” in a way parallel to negativity in rhetorical questions; while regular DCs merely establish an ordering between two objects. The variation concerning negativity in turn squares neatly with the presupposition toward the content of the standard (negative presupposition in RCs and no presupposition in DCs). In exploring the semanticopragmatic properties of RCs, it is shown that rhetorical effects can be triggered by negative polarity items, expletive negation, and the subjunctive mood. This result supports an important insight that negative polarity items and the subjunctive are of similar nature ( Giannakidou, 1994, 1995, 2009; Quer, 1998; Borschev et al., 2007), and goes one step further to suggest another important link between expletive negation and the subjunctive mood. This analysis implicates that the three components are closely connected under the principle of non-veridicality. The notion of RCs in the sense that we suggest here can give us a plausible foundation for the analysis of rhetorical effects in other environments, for instance, rhetorical questions.

Scales in the meaning of adjectives

The goal of this paper is to show that a degree-based semantics for comparative constructions in English, based on a degree ontology going back to Cresswell (1976), meets the challenge of polarity effects in antonymous adjectives, once it is properly adapted to deal with measure expressions and the so called norm-related inferences. I present an alternative to theories that rely on a shift from degrees as points to degrees as intervals as proposed in von Stechow (1984). My approach builds on the assumption that degrees constitute simple ordinal scales and measures are introduced at the LF by necessity of interpreting numerals. The proposal is evaluated against the data from two languages with completely different polarity patterns, English and Russian.

Conditional Disruption of Pkd1 in Osteoblasts Results in Osteopenia Due to Direct Impairment of Bone Formation

PKD1 (polycystin-1), the disease-causing gene for ADPKD, is widely expressed in various cell types, including osteoblasts, where its function is unknown. Although global inactivation of Pkd1 in mice results in abnormal skeletal development, the presence of polycystic kidneys and perinatal lethality confound ascertaining the direct osteoblastic functions of PKD1 in adult bone. To determine the role of PKD1 in osteoblasts, we conditionally inactivated Pkd1 in postnatal mature osteoblasts by crossing Oc (osteocalcin)-Cre mice with floxed Pkd1 (Pkd1(flox/m1Bei)) mice to generate conditional heterozygous (Oc-Cre;Pkd1(flox/+)) and homozygous (Oc-Cre;Pkd1(flox/m1Bei)) Pkd1-deficient mice. Cre-mediated recombination (Pkd1(Delta flox)) occurred exclusively in bone. Compared with control mice, the conditional deletion of Pkd1 from osteoblasts resulted in a gene dose-dependent reduction in bone mineral density, trabecular bone volume, and cortical thickness. In addition, mineral apposition rates and osteoblast-related gene expression, including Runx2-II (Runt-related transcription factor 2), osteocalcin, osteopontin, and bone sialoprotein, were reduced proportionate to the reduction of Pkd1 gene dose in bone of Oc-Cre;Pkd1(flox/+) and Oc-Cre;Pkd1(flox/m1Bei) mice. Primary osteoblasts derived from Oc-Cre;Pkd1(flox/m1Bei) displayed impaired differentiation and suppressed activity of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase-Akt-GSK3beta-beta-catenin signaling pathways. The conditional deletion of Pkd1 also resulted in increased adipogenesis in bone marrow and in osteoblast cultures. Thus, PKD1 directly functions in osteoblasts to regulate bone formation.