SALT 26
UT Austin
May 13, 2016
Article selection and anaphora in the German relative clause
Julian Grove
Department of Linguistics
Emily Hanink
University of Chicago
{juliang, eahanink}@uchicago.edu
Introduction: two forms of the German definite article
• The German definite article may sometimes contract with a preceding preposition (Schwarz,
2009):
(1)
Hans ging zum Haus.
Hans went to+the house
‘Hans went to the house.’
(2)
Hans ging zu dem Haus.
Hans went to the house
‘Hans went to the house.’
– The contracted form is called “weak” (1).
– The non-contracted form is called “strong” (2).
– Schwarz (2009): the weak form is required when an noun phrase’s referent is unique, while
the strong form is required when it is also anaphoric, i.e., when it refers back to an antecedent.
Problem: restrictive relative clauses
• Problem: as Schwarz (2009) points out, restrictive relative clauses likewise require the use of the
strong form, both in the matrix (in dem) and relative clauses (von dem):
(3)
Fritz wohnt jetzt {in dem, #im} Haus, {von dem, *vom} er schon seit Jahren
Fritz lives now in the in+the house, from the from+the he already since years
schwärmt.
raves
‘Fritz now lives in the house that he has been raving about for years.’
– Restrictive relative clauses do not appear prima facie to constitute instances of anaphora.
– This puzzle poses a challenge to the claim that only anaphoric uses require the strong form.
• Proposal: the strong form of the article consistently selects for a category, anaph, that intervenes between the determiner and the noun (cf. Schwarz, 2009). This intervening category
is anaphoric to the argument introduced by the relative clause.
Proposal: the strong form selects for an anaphoric category anaph
Simple anaphora
• Structural differences (cf. Elbourne, 2005; Schwarz, 2009; Simonenko, 2014).
– The strong form selects for anaph, a category whose presuppositions are satisfied by discourse
familiarity.
(4)
Fritz wohnt seit Jahren in einem groBen Haus. Er schwärmt von dem Haus.
Fritz lives since years in a
big
house. He raves
from the house
‘Fritz has lived in a big house for years. He raves about the house.’
– The weak form is contextually familiar: the noun phrase refers to an entity that is familiar
from the context, but which has not been linguistically introduced into the discourse.
(5)
Der Empfang wurde vom Bürgermeister eröffnet.
the reception was by+the mayor
opened
‘The reception was opened by the mayor.’
Framework
• We provide a variable-free, directly compositional approach to this problem, cast within Categorial Grammar with function application and function composition.
• We model the discourse context as a set of individuals which have been discursively introduced,
following de Groote (2006).
– γ is the type of contexts.
– o is the type of propositions (truth values/sets of worlds).
– e is the type of individuals.
• To facilitate composition, we ensure that every type has a contextual dependency; we use the
procedure introduced in de Groote and Kanazawa (2013) (implicit here), but set to contexts
(following Kobele (2015)).
Strong form
Category: d/anaph
(6)
(7)
Weak form
Category: d/n
Both have the same meaning: (λP (γe)γo.(λcγ .(ιxe.P ((λc0γ .x))(c))))
anaph
Category: anaph/n
Meaning: (λP (γe)γo.(λxγe.(λcγ .(P (x)(c) & x(c) = sel(c)))))
(8)
sel is the selection function (de Groote, 2006), a function from contexts (sets of individuals) to
individuals, i.e., the pronoun resolution algorithm, whatever that is.
• Composing the strong form
hanaph, (8)i ` anaph/n hhaus, (λP γe.(λcγ .house(x(c))))i ` n
(9) hdas, (6)i ` d/anaph hanaph haus, (λxγe.(λcγ .(house(x(c)) & x(c) = sel(c))))i ` anaph FA
FA
hdas anaph haus, (λcγ .(ιxe.(house(x) & x = sel(c))))i ` d
• Why anaph, rather than just two meanings for the determiner?
– Morphological evidence supports the structural distinction made between the definite and
anaphoric components of the strong form (Hanink To appear)
• An apparent counterexample to the contraction generalization: selb- (same) forces contraction in anaphoric uses:
(14)
• As predicted, same may surface wherever the anaphoric meaning is licensed (e.g., anaphora,
restrictive RCs).
– Cf. deictic same, which has been distinguished from its use on the internal reading (Barker,
2007).
• Cross-linguistic evidence that same is anaph comes from the Hebrew 3rd person accusative pronoun oto:
(15)
(16)
(10) hdas, (6)i ` d/n hhaus, (λP γe.(λcγ .house(x(c))))i ` n FA
hdas haus, (λcγ .(ιxe.house(x)))i ` d
• The two forms differ only in their presuppositions. The weak form is contextually familiar, but
the strong form also presupposes anaphoricity.
Extension to relative clauses
• Relative pronoun: the RC-internal relative pronoun is the strong form of the definite determiner, and it selects for anaph.
– Therefore, relative clauses do involve anaphora!
• We assume the relative clause is composed via a lexical item which we call “c”.
(11)
c
Category: ((p/X)\(X\X))/(s/p)
Meaning: (λP (γe)γo.(λQ((γe)γo)γe.(λR(γe)γo.(λxγe.(λcγ .P ((λc0γ .Q(R)({x(c)})))(c))))))
Es hängt an einem Haus. Am/#An dem selben Haus findet ihr eine Jahreszahl...
It hangs on a
house. On+the/on the same house find you a
date.
‘It’s hanging on a house. On the same house you’ll find a date...’
• Proposal: same is the overt allomorph of anaph, and it allows the strong form to contract.
• Composing the weak form
• Presuppositional differences (building on Heim, 1982; Roberts, 2002; Schwarz, 2009):
– The strong form is discourse familiar: the noun phrase is anaphorically related to another
discourse referent.
Morphology of contraction and structural evidence
ra’iti oto
I.saw him
‘I saw him.’
anaphoric use
karati et oto (ha)-sefer še-katavta
I.read ACC same (the)-book that-you.wrote
‘I read the (same) book that you wrote.’
RC use
Conclusion
• We explain the use of the strong form in restrictive relatives in German by postulating that
anaphoric and relative clause uses both make use of the lexical item anaph intervening between
the determiner and the noun. This lexical item makes the noun phrase anaphoric, and it:
– makes use of the globally provided context in normal anaphora,
– makes use of the locally provided context in relative clauses,
– has an overt allomorph: the anaphoric modifier same.
• We therefore preserve Schwarz’s uniqueness vs. anaphoric generalization by showing that the
uses of the strong form in restrictive relative clauses can be treated as instances of anaphora.
Acknowledgments
We thank Karlos Arregi, Rajesh Bhatt, Amy Rose Deal, Itamar Francez, Anastasia Giannakidou, Caroline
Heycock, Chris Kennedy, Greg Kobele, Ruth Kramer, Jason Merchant, Kjell Johann Sæbo, Florian Schwarz, and Ming Xiang for their
helpful discussion, as well as the audiences at CLS 52 and WCCFL 34. We also thank the anonymous reviews of SALT 26 for their helpful
• c heads the relative clause and does the following things:
– takes a clause with a gap on its right,
– takes a relative pronoun on its left (a determiner missing its restriction),
– takes a nominal restriction on its left,
– returns a new nominal restriction.
• Example
feedback.
References
Barker, Chris. 2007. Parasitic scope. Linguistics and Philosophy 30:407–444. • Elbourne, Paul. 2005. Situations and
individuals. Cambridge: MIT Press. • de Groote, Phillipe. 2006. Toward a Montagovian account of dynamics. In Proceedings of the 16th
Conference on Semantics and Linguistic Theory, ed. M. Gibson and J. Howell, 1–16. Ithaca, NY: Cornell. • de Groote, Phillipe and Makoto
Kanazawa. 2013. A note on intensionalization. Journal of Logic, Language and Information 22:173–194. • Hanink, Emily. To appear. The
German definite article and the ‘sameness’ of indices. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 23.1 • Heim, Irene. 1982. The semantics of defi-
– In the following, because sel has a choice of only one individual, it must choose it. The relative
clause meaning is therefore equivalent to (12).
nite and indefinite noun phrases. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Massachussetts, Amherst. • Kobele, Gregory M. 2015. Montagovian
dynamics in three easy steps. University of Chicago. • Roberts, Craige. 2002. Demonstratives as Definites. In Information sharing: Reference
and presupposition in language generation and interpretation, 89–196. • Simonenko, Alexandra. 2014. Grammatical Ingredients of Definiteness.
(12)
(λxγe.(λcγ .rvAbt((ιy e.(house(y) & y = x(c))))(fritz)))
– Moreover, the resulting category is anaph, so that the matrix form must also be strong.
Doctoral Dissertation, McGill University. • Schwarz, Florian. 2009. Two types of definites in natural language. Doctoral Disssertation,
University of Massachussetts, Amherst.
her, (λP (γe)γo.(λcγ .P ((λc0γ .fritz))(c)))i ` s/(d\s) hschwärmt, (λxγe.(λy γe.(λcγ .rvAbt(x(c))(y(c)))))i ` (d\s)/p
FC
(13)
hc, (11)i ` ((p/anaph)\(anaph\anaph))/(s/p)
her schwärmt, (λxγe.(λcγ .rvAbt(x(c))(fritz)))i ` s/p
hvon, (λxγe.x)i ` p/d hdas, (6)i ` d/anaph
FA
FC
hvon
dem,
(6)i
`
p/anaph
hc
er
schwärmt,
(λQ
.(λR
.(λx
.(λc
.
rvAbt
(Q(R)({x(c)}))))))i
`
(p/anaph)\(anaph\anaph)
hanaph, (8)i ` anaph/n hhaus, (λxγe.(λcγ .))i ` n
γe
γ
((γe)γo)γe
(γe)γo
FA
FA
hanaph haus, (λxγe.(λcγ .(house(x(c)) & x(c) = sel(c))))i ` anaph
hvon dem c er schwärmt, (λR(γe)γo.(λxγe.(λcγ .rvAbt((6)(R)({x(c)}))(fritz))))i ` anaph\anaph
FA
hanaph haus von dem c er schwärmt, (λxγe.(λcγ .rvAbt((ιy e.(house(y) & y = sel({x(c)}))))(fritz)))i ` anaph