Reference to individuals in
natural language
Henriëtte de Swart
Barcelona, May 2005
What is this course about?

Reference to individuals in natural language
 What is reference?
 Why study reference to individuals in
natural language? Across languages?
 Relevance for linguistics? For cognitive
science?
Semantics

Semantics: study of meaning expressed by
elements of a language or combinations
thereof.
 What is meaning?
 What is language?
What is meaning?

The red light means that you cannot go in.
 {a,b,c} means ‘the set consisting of the
elements a, b, and c.’
 The French word “chien” means ‘dog.’
 Do you know the meaning of the word
hypochondriac?
 To denote, to be described or defined as,
sense, significance, acceptation, denotation.
Not our job..

No deeper meaning or inner significance.
 What is the meaning of life?
 No intentions, purposes, etc.
 What do you mean by that look?
 No natural meaning.
 Those clouds mean rain.
Semantics in linguistic theory

Natural language as a system of
communication.
 Function: transfer of information.
 Communication implies speaker and hearer.
Speaker-hearer
speaker
hearer
Intend

Phrase

Speak
Comprehend

Understand

Hear
Speech sound
Language-cognition-world
languag
e
cognition
world
Concepts and denotations
languag
e
concepts
cognition
denotations
world
Truth conditional and
conceptual semantics
languag
e
cognition
Conceptual semantics
world
Truth-conditional semantics
Beyond words…

Lexical semantics: meaning of words.
 Beyond words: meaning of constituents,
sentences, even discourses.
 Relevance of structure:
 ‘John hit Peter’  ‘Peter hit John’
 Word order  Subject-Object relation 
Agent-Patient relation.
Compositionality

Principle of Compositionality of meaning:
the meaning of a complex whole is a
function of the meaning of the composing
parts, and the way in which they are put
together.
 Lexical and structural information jointly
determine the meaning of constituents and
sentences.
Variation across languages

Natural languages vary: lexicon, sounds,
syntactic structure.
 Generative linguistics: universal grammar
(innate) and parametrisation.
 Optimality theory (OT): universal
constraints (innate/learnt) and different
orders of constraints.
Pro-drop
Some languages allow ‘empty’ subjects
(e.g. Italian), others don’t (e.g. English).
 Piove
[Italiaans]
 It is raining
[English]
 Pro-drop parameter: on or off (child has to
learn the right setting). Assumes empty
categories in linguistic representations.

Competition in OT:
‘soft constraints’
Subject constraint: ‘Every sentence has a
subject.’
 Meaning constraint: ‘Every word in the
sentence must be meaningful.’
 Prince & Smolensky (1997): relative weight
of constraints determines English vs. Italian.
 English: Subject C >> Meaning C
 Italian : Meaning C >> Subject C.

Typology in OT
pro-drop
‘raining’
no pro-drop
MeanC SubjC
piove 
‘it’ piove
*
*
‘raining’ SubjC
 is
raining
It is 
raining
MeanC
*
*
Variation in meaning

Basic assumption: human cognition is
universal.
 Knowledge of first-order logic or equivalent
leads to similar claims about entailments
and other inference relations.
 Prediction: semantics is always universal.
 No variation in meaning?????
Locus of semantic variation

Semantic variation arises:
 (i) in the distribution of labor between
forms and meanings.
 (ii) at the syntax-semantics interface.
 (iii) at the semantics-pragmatics interface.
Semantic Variation I

Tense and aspect. E.g. English Progressive
vs. French Simple Present tense.
 John is eating an apple
 #John eats an apple/ John bikes to school.
 Jean est en train de manger une pomme.
 Jean mange une pomme/Jean va à l’école en
vélo.
Perfect Tenses
‘Universal’ Perfect; for or since
 Mary has lived in London for three years
(now).
 Marie a vécu à Londres pendant trois ans
(#maintenant).
 Marie vit à Londres depuis trois ans.
 Mary lives in London since three years.

Perfect tenses in discourse

French uses Passé Composé to tell a story (e.g.
Camus); English does not; Dutch does sometimes.
 Aujourd’hui, maman est morte (PC). Ou peut-être
hier, je ne sais pas (PR). J’ai reçu un télégramme
de l’asile (PC) (…).
Mother died today (SP). Or maybe yesterday, I
don’t know (PR). I had a telegram from the home
(SP): (...).
Vandaag is moeder gestorven (VTT). Of misschien
gisteren, ik weet het niet (OTT). Ik ontving een
telegram uit het gesticht (OVT): (...)
Questions about tense/aspect





Questions about tense and aspect in crosslinguistic semantics.
What forms are available in a language?
How are truth-conditional meanings distributed
over available forms?
Are certain meanings only available as ‘hidden’
aspectual shifts (coercion)?
How are the forms used in discourse (dynamic
semantics, pragmatics)?
Semantic variation II

Meaning of determiners. E.g. Dutch
Sommige vs. English some.
 Some flowers grew behind the shed.
 #Sommige bloemen groeiden achter de
schuur.
 ‘Some do, others don’t’
Bare plurals

English bare plurals: existential or generic.
 Dogs were playing in the garden.

 Dogs like to play.
Gen
 Bare plurals in Romance: existential, not
generic.
Italian

Elefanti di colore bianco hanno creato in
passato grande curiosità.
 Elephants of color white have raised in the
past great curiosity.
 *Ucelli di zone paludose sono intelligenti.
 Birds of the marshlands are intelligent.
 Gli ucelli di zone paludose sono intelligenti.
French

No bare plurals, but indefinite plurals.
 Only existential, not generic (like Italian).
 Des enfants jouaient dans la rue.
 Indef-pl children were playing in the street.
 *Des enfants aiment le chocolat.
 Indef-pl children like chocolate.
 Les enfants aiment le chocolat.
Incorporation

Incorporation in West Greenlandic, Hindi,
Hungarian, etc, not in English, Romance:
direct relation between verb and object.

Arnajarq eqalut-tur-p-u-q.
[WG]
A.abs salmon-eat-Ind-[-tr]-3sg.
‘Arnajaraq eats salmon/is a salmon-eater.’
Questions about bare plurals

How are bare plurals related to other
NPs/DPs (scope, anaphora, quantificational
force, referential force, incorporation).
 How are bare plurals related to bare
singulars? To bare mass nouns? To
indefinite plurals as in French?
 If generic reference is strongly related to
‘bareness’, why do Romance bare plurals
not allow generic readings?
Semantic Variation III

“Despite the simplicity of the one-place
connective of propositional logic (p is true
if and only if p is not true) and of the laws
of inference in which it participates (e.g. the
Law of Double Negation: from p infer
p, and vice versa), the form and function of
negative statements in ordinary language
are far from simple and transparent.”
Horn (1989)
Negative quantifiers
‘Split’ scope in Germanic languages.
 Iedereen is geen genie.
Dutch
 Everyone is no genius
(split: )
 Jeder Arzt hat kein Auto.
 Every doctor has no car.

‘Split’ scope with modals.

Ze hoeven geen verpleegkundigen te ontslaan.
 They need no nurses to fire 
 Hanna sucht kein Buch
– De re: there is no book that Hanna is looking for.
– De dicto: the object of H’s quest is not a book.
– ‘split’: it is not the case that what H. is looking for is a
book.
Double Negation and
Negative Concord

Multiple negations: DN and NC
 Nobody said nothing. (Eng)
xy
 Niemand zei niets. (Dutch)
xy
 Nadie miraba a nadie. (Spa)
xy
 Nessuno ha parlato con nessuno. (Ital)
xy
 Personne n’a rien dit. (Fr)
ambiguous
Questions about DN and NC

Negative Concord raises problems for the
principle of compositionality of meaning:
two negative expressions, but only one
semantic negation.
 How are double negation and negative
concord languages related? (typology of
negation).
Aims of this course

Learn semantic tools to address reference to
individuals in natural language: type theory,
lambda abstraction, type shift, DRT.
 Learn to use these tools to address questions
about reference to individuals in a particular
language/ in a cross-linguistic perspective.
 Enjoy doing natural language semantics!