Conflicts in Interpretation

Henriëtte de Swart

UiL-OTS/Utrecht

Polysemy of round

The postman ran around the block

Prototype of round: circle, circular shape or movement

Less prototypical I

He drove round the barrier.

He ran round the corner.

Less prototypical II

The captain sailed round the lake

The tourist drove round the city centre.

Round

Interpretation: interaction of lexical semantics (cognitive grammar), model-theoretic semantics (spatial path), and pragmatics (world knowledge).

Consequently: cross-modular approach.

Conflicting information

Differentiated weight

Interpretation as Optimization

Optimization in neural network modelingApplication to theories of grammar: Prince and Smolensky (1991, 1997). Optimality TheoryPhonologySyntaxSemantics: Hendriks and de Hoop (2001), de Hoop and de Swart (2000)

OT Semantics

Input: form.

Output: candidate set of possible interpretations.

Parallel evaluation

Violable constraints.

Ranking determines strength.

Optimal interpretation: winner takes all.

Conflicts in Interpretation

Cognition Program

2002-2006

Research team:Petra Hendriks, Gerlof Bouma (Groningen), Helen de Hoop, Irene Krämer (Nijmegen), Henriëtte de Swart, Joost Zwarts (Utrecht)

Research Themes

Cross-modularity (focus, pronoun resolution)

Cross-linguistic semantics (bare nominals, lexical semantics, negation)

Language Acquisition (acquisition of anaphoric relations, noun phrases).

Central concern: role of context.

Interpretation in context

Semantics of round: Zwarts (2003).

How round is interpreted depends on the context in which it occurs: round the block, round the barrier, round the corner, round the city center, …

Polysemy

Prototype

Compositionality

Context-dependency leads to problems of compositionalityPrinciple of Compositionality of meaning: the meaning of a complex whole is a function of the meaning of its parts and the way they are put togetherUnderspecification?Prototype

Round in vector space semantics

Zwarts and Winter 2000, Zwarts 2003

Completeness: a vector pointing in every direction

Constancy: all the vectors are of the same length.

Uniqueness: do not touch a place more than once.

Violations of prototype

Constancy not satisfied:

The earth goes around the sun.

Uniqueness not satisfied:

The mouse keeps running round the computer

Weakening Completeness

Inversion: two vectors point in opposite directions (at least half-circle).

The burglar drove round the barrier.

Orthogonality: two vectors point in perpendicular directions (at least a quarter-circle).

He ran round the corner.

Strongest meaning wins

Two contraints:

Strength: favor stronger interpretations over weaker ones (Blutner 2000, Zeevat 2000)

Fit: consistency or avoid contradiction (Hendriks and de Hoop 2001, Zeevat 2000)

Fit >> Strength

Strong prototype has to be weakened to fit the context in which round occurs.

Possible interpretations

Interpretations of round the door

COMPLETENESS INVERSION ORTHOGONALITY DETOUR

‘round the door’ in OT

formround the door

meaning Fit Strength

Completeness *

Inversion *

Orthogonality **

Detour ***

Context and Compositionality

Local context and general context:He walked round the door.He put his head round the door.

Lexical semantics and world knowledge

Bi-directional OT: recoverability and compositionality.

Functional compositionality

Blutner, Hendriks and de Hoop (2003): functional compositionality arises in a process of bi-directional optimization; role of context is crucial.

Compositionality across languages

Negation: not, Negative quantifier: nobody, nothing, Assumption: knowledge of first-order logic part of general human cognition.Prediction: negation, negative quantifiers behave alike across languages.Prediction is not borne out by data.

Quanta Costa?

Negative concord

Nobody said nothing. (Eng) xy

Niemand zei niets. (Dutch) xy

Nadie miraba a nadie. (Spa) xy

Nessuno ha parlato con nessuno. (Ital) xy

Personne n’a rien dit. (Fr)ambiguous

Negation in context

Double negation versus

negative concord

negative quantifiers versus n-words.

In isolation: same form, same meaning.

In a sequence: different forms, different meanings.

Bi-directionality

Faithfulness and Markedness

Negation is more marked than assertion, both in form and in meaning.

*Neg: Avoid negation in the output.MaxNeg: Mark the arguments of a

negative chain formally. InterpretNeg: Interpret every expression

marked for negation as contributing a semantic negation.

Concord (production)

MaxNeg >> *Neg >> InterpretNeg

Nessuno ha parlato con nessuno. (Ital)

meaning xy

form MaxNeg *Neg IntNeg

neg+indef * *

neg+neg **

Concord (interpretation)

MaxNeg >> *Neg >> InterpretNeg

form neg+neg

meaning MaxNeg *Neg IntNeg

xy **

xy * *

Double Negation (production)

InterpretNeg >> *Neg >> MaxNeg

Niemand zei iets

meaning xy

form IntNeg *Neg MaxNeg

neg+indef * *

neg+neg **

Double Negation (interpretation)

InterpretNeg >> *Neg >> MaxNeg

Nobody said nothing

form neg+neg

meaning IntNeg *Neg MaxNeg

xy * *

xy **

Various Rankings

InterpretNeg >> *Neg >> MaxNegMultiple negative expressions

multiple negation (English, Dutch, etc.)MaxNeg >> *Neg >> InterpretNeg

Multiple negative expressions single negation (Spanish, Italian, etc.)Overlapping range of *Neg and InterpretNeg ambiguities (French).

Form and meaning

If you mark arguments of a negative chain formally (MaxNeg >> *Neg in production), make sure they are not interpreted as each contributing negation (*Neg >> InterpretNeg in interpretation) (NC).If you interpret each negative expression as contributing a negation (InterpretNeg >> *Neg in interpretation), make sure they are not marked formally as arguments of a negative chain (*Neg >> MaxNeg in production) (DN).

Variation in form and meaning

When meaning is less variable in context, we find variation in form.

Ik begrijp er niks van/geen fluit/sikkepit/snars

When form is less variable in context, we find variation in meaning.

Hij eet een appel. He *eats/is eating an apple.

De Hoop, Haverkort en v.d. Noort (2003)

Moving on…

Bi-directionality and anaphora resolution: elided meaning needs to be recoverable from context.

Work on ellipsis and sluicing by Jennifer Spenader (Groningen)

For an automatic system of pronoun resolution in OT, see G. Bouma (2003):

http://wodan.let.rug.nl/gerlof_bin/oplos_script

Language Acquisition

Irene Krämer: interpretation of quantifier many; interpretation of pronouns and indefinites within a story context

Acquisition and Cognition

Relation between learning of language and learning in other cognitive domains.

Discourse: children need to learn to use syntactic and discourse information over non-linguistic (contextual) information.

Conflicts in Interpretation

OT modeling of interpretation

Bi-directionality

context-dependency

Variation

Language and learning

Human cognition