The semantic function of the modifier 'together' in adnominal position has generally been considered to be that of preventing a distributive reading of the predicate. This paper will argue that this view is mistaken. The semantic function of adnominal 'together' rather is that of inducing a cumulative measurement of the group that together is associated with. The measurement-based analysis of adnominal together that I propose can also, with some modifications, be extended to adverbial occurrences of together.

This article focuses on foundational issues in dynamic and static semantics, specifically on what is conceptually at stake between the dynamic framework and the truth-conditional framework, and consequently what kinds of evidence support each framework. The article examines two questions. First, it explores the consequences of taking the proposition as central semantic notion as characteristic of static semantics, and argues that this is not as limiting in accounting for discourse dynamics as many think. Specifically, it explores what it (...) means for a static semantics to incorporate the notion of context change potential in a dynamic pragmatics and denies that this conception of static semantics requires that all updates to the context be eliminative and distributive. Second, it argues that the central difference between the two frameworks is whether semantics or pragmatics accounts for dynamics, and explores what this means for the oft-heard claim that dynamic semantics blurs the semantics/pragmatics distinction. (shrink)

We present a new frame semantics for positive relevant and substructural propositional logics. This frame semantics is both a generalisation of Routley–Meyer ternary frames and a simplification of them. The key innovation of this semantics is the use of a single accessibility relation to relate collections of points to points. Different logics are modeled by varying the kinds of collections used: they can be sets, multisets, lists or trees. We show that collection frames on trees are sound (...) and complete for the basic positive distributive substructural logic $\mathsf {B}^+$, that collection frames on multisets are sound and complete for $\mathsf {RW}^+$ (the relevant logic $\mathsf {R}^+$, without contraction, or equivalently, positive multiplicative and additive linear logic with distribution for the additive connectives), and that collection frames on sets are sound for the positive relevant logic $\mathsf {R}^+$. The completeness of set frames for $\mathsf {R}^+$ is, currently, an open question. (shrink)

The study of biodiversity spans many disciplines and includes data pertaining to species distributions and abundances, genetic sequences, trait measurements, and ecological niches, complemented by information on collection and measurement protocols. A review of the current landscape of metadata standards and ontologies in biodiversity science suggests that existing standards such as the Darwin Core terminology are inadequate for describing biodiversity data in a semantically meaningful and computationally useful way. Existing ontologies, such as the Gene Ontology and others in the Open (...) Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry library, provide a semantic structure but lack many of the necessary terms to describe biodiversity data in all its dimensions. In this paper, we describe the motivation for and ongoing development of a new Biological Collections Ontology, the Environment Ontology, and the Population and Community Ontology. These ontologies share the aim of improving data aggregation and integration across the biodiversity domain and can be used to describe physical samples and sampling processes (for example, collection, extraction, and preservation techniques), as well as biodiversity observations that involve no physical sampling. Together they encompass studies of: 1) individual organisms, including voucher specimens from ecological studies and museum specimens, 2) bulk or environmental samples (e.g., gut contents, soil, water) that include DNA, other molecules, and potentially many organisms, especially microbes, and 3) survey-based ecological observations. We discuss how these ontologies can be applied to biodiversity use cases that span genetic, organismal, and ecosystem levels of organization. We argue that if adopted as a standard and rigorously applied and enriched by the biodiversity community, these ontologies would significantly reduce barriers to data discovery, integration, and exchange among biodiversity resources and researchers. (shrink)

An important problem with machine learning is that when label number n>2, it is very difficult to construct and optimize a group of learning functions, and we wish that optimized learning functions are still useful when prior distribution P(x) (where x is an instance) is changed. To resolve this problem, the semantic information G theory, Logical Bayesian Inference (LBI), and a group of Channel Matching (CM) algorithms together form a systematic solution. MultilabelMultilabel A semantic channel in the G theory consists (...) of a group of truth functions or membership functions. In comparison with likelihood functions, Bayesian posteriors, and Logistic functions used by popular methods, membership functions can be more conveniently used as learning functions without the above problem. In Logical Bayesian Inference (LBI), every label’s learning is independent. For Multilabel learning, we can directly obtain a group of optimized membership functions from a big enough sample with labels, without preparing different samples for different labels. A group of Channel Matching (CM) algorithms are developed for machine learning. For the Maximum Mutual Information (MMI) classification of three classes with Gaussian distributions on a two-dimensional feature space, 2-3 iterations can make mutual information between three classes and three labels surpass 99% of the MMI for most initial partitions. For mixture models, the Expectation-Maxmization (EM) algorithm is improved and becomes the CM-EM algorithm, which can outperform the EM algorithm when mixture ratios are imbalanced, or local convergence exists. The CM iteration algorithm needs to combine neural networks for MMI classifications on high-dimensional feature spaces. LBI needs further studies for the unification of statistics and logic. (shrink)

Vector models of language are based on the contextual aspects of language, the distributions of words and how they co-occur in text. Truth conditional models focus on the logical aspects of language, compositional properties of words and how they compose to form sentences. In the truth conditional approach, the denotation of a sentence determines its truth conditions, which can be taken to be a truth value, a set of possible worlds, a context change potential, or similar. In the vector models, (...) the degree of co-occurrence of words in context determines how similar the meanings of words are. In this paper, we put these two models together and develop a vector semantics for language based on the simply typed lambda calculus models of natural language. We provide two types of vector semantics: a static one that uses techniques familiar from the truth conditional tradition and a dynamic one based on a form of dynamic interpretation inspired by Heim’s context change potentials. We show how the dynamic model can be applied to entailment between a corpus and a sentence and provide examples. (shrink)

Bilattices, introduced by Ginsberg as a uniform framework for inference in artificial intelligence, are algebraic structures that proved useful in many fields. In recent years, Arieli and Avron developed a logical system based on a class of bilattice-based matrices, called logical bilattices, and provided a Gentzen-style calculus for it. This logic is essentially an expansion of the well-known Belnap–Dunn four-valued logic to the standard language of bilattices. Our aim is to study Arieli and Avron’s logic from the perspective of abstract (...) algebraic logic . We introduce a Hilbert-style axiomatization in order to investigate the properties of the algebraic models of this logic, proving that every formula can be reduced to an equivalent normal form and that our axiomatization is complete w.r.t. Arieli and Avron’s semantics. In this way, we are able to classify this logic according to the criteria of AAL. We show, for instance, that it is non-protoalgebraic and non-self-extensional. We also characterize its Tarski congruence and the class of algebraic reducts of its reduced generalized models, which in the general theory of AAL is usually taken to be the algebraic counterpart of a sentential logic. This class turns out to be the variety generated by the smallest non-trivial bilattice, which is strictly contained in the class of algebraic reducts of logical bilattices. On the other hand, we prove that the class of algebraic reducts of reduced models of our logic is strictly included in the class of algebraic reducts of its reduced generalized models. Another interesting result obtained is that, as happens with some implicationless fragments of well-known logics, we can associate with our logic a Gentzen calculus which is algebraizable in the sense of Rebagliato and Verdú . We also prove some purely algebraic results concerning bilattices, for instance that the variety of distributive bilattices is generated by the smallest non-trivial bilattice. This result is based on an improvement of a theorem by Avron stating that every bounded interlaced bilattice is isomorphic to a certain product of two bounded lattices. We generalize it to the case of unbounded interlaced bilattices. (shrink)

Logical Probability (LP) is strictly distinguished from Statistical Probability (SP). To measure semantic information or confirm hypotheses, we need to use sampling distribution (conditional SP function) to test or confirm fuzzy truth function (conditional LP function). The Semantic Information Measure (SIM) proposed is compatible with Shannon’s information theory and Fisher’s likelihood method. It can ensure that the less the LP of a predicate is and the larger the true value of the proposition is, the more information there is. So the (...) SIM can be used as Popper's information criterion for falsification or test. The SIM also allows us to optimize the true-value of counterexamples or degrees of disbelief in a hypothesis to get the optimized degree of belief, i. e. Degree of Confirmation (DOC). To explain confirmation, this paper 1) provides the calculation method of the DOC of universal hypotheses; 2) discusses how to resolve Raven Paradox with new DOC and its increment; 3) derives the DOC of rapid HIV tests: DOC of “+” =1-(1-specificity)/sensitivity, which is similar to Likelihood Ratio (=sensitivity/(1-specificity)) but has the upper limit 1; 4) discusses negative DOC for excessive affirmations, wrong hypotheses, or lies; and 5) discusses the DOC of general hypotheses with GPS as example. (shrink)

A picture of the world as chiefly one of discrete objects, distributed in space and time, has sometimes seemed compelling. It is however one of the main targets of Henry Laycock's book; for it is seriously incomplete. The picture, he argues, leaves no space for "stuff" like air and water. With discrete objects, we may always ask "how many?," but with stuff the question has to be "how much?" Laycock's fascinating exploration also addresses key logical and linguistic questions about the (...) way we categorize the many and the much. (shrink)

Recent discoveries of semantic compositionality in Japanese tits have enlivened the discussions on the presence of this phenomenon in wild animal communication. Data on semantic compositionality in wild apes are lacking, even though language experiments with captive apes have demonstrated they are capable of semantic compositionality. In this paper, I revisit the study by Boesch (Hum. Evol. 6:81–89, 1991) who investigated drumming sequences by an alpha male in a chimpanzee (_Pan troglodytes_) community in the Taï National Park, Côte d’Ivoire. A (...) reanalysis of the data reveals that the alpha male produced semantically compositional combined messages of travel direction change and resting period initiation. Unlike the Japanese tits, the elements of the compositional expression were not simply juxtaposed but displayed structural reduction, while one of the two elements in the expression coded the meanings of both elements. These processes show relative resemblance to blending and fusion in human languages. Also unlike the tits, the elements of the compositional expression did not have a fixed order, although there was a fixed distribution of drumming events across the trees used for drumming. Because the elements of the expression appear to carry verb-like meanings, the compositional expression also resembles simple verb-verb constructions and short paratactic combinations of two clauses found across languages. In conclusion, the reanalysis suggests that semantic compositionality and phenomena resembling paratactic combinations of two clauses might have been present in the communication of the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans, not necessarily in the vocal modality. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the temporal connective prima (‘before’) is a comparative adverb. The argument is based on a number of grammatical facts from Italian, showing that there is an asymmetry between prima and dopo (‘after’). On the ground of their divergent behaviour, I suggest that dopo has a different grammatical status from prima. I propose a semantic treatment for prima that is based on an independently motivated analysis of comparatives which can be traced back to Seuren (in: (...) Kiefer and Ruwet (eds.) Generative grammar in Europe, 1973). Dopo is analyzed instead as an atomic two-place predicate which contributes a binary relation over events to the sentence meaning. The different semantic treatments of the two connectives provide an explanation for the grammatical asymmetries considered at the outset; interestingly, they also shed some light on other asymmetries between prima and dopo, which are known to hold for the English temporal connectives before and after as well: these asymmetries are related to the veridicality properties, the distribution of NPIs, and the logical properties of these connectives first described in Anscombe (Philos Rev 73:3–24, 1964). (shrink)

This paper outlines a quantitative theory of strongly semantic information (TSSI) based on truth-values rather than probability distributions. The main hypothesis supported in the paper is that the classic quantitative theory of weakly semantic information (TWSI), based on probability distributions, assumes that truth-values supervene on factual semantic information, yet this principle is too weak and generates a well-known semantic paradox, whereas TSSI, according to which factual semantic information encapsulates truth, can avoid the paradox and is more in line with the (...) standard conception of what generally counts as semantic information. After a brief introduction, section two outlines the semantic paradox implied by TWSI, analysing it in terms of an initial conflict between two requisites of a quantitative theory of semantic information. In section three, three criteria of semantic information equivalence are used to provide a taxonomy of quantitative approaches to semantic information and introduce TSSI. In section four, some further desiderata that should be fulfilled by a quantitative TSSI are explained. From section five to section seven, TSSI is developed on the basis of a calculus of truth-values and semantic discrepancy with respect to a given situation. In section eight, it is shown how TSSI succeeds in solving the paradox. Section nine summarises the main results of the paper and indicates some future developments. (shrink)

The logicality of language is the hypothesis that the language system has access to a ‘natural’ logic that can identify and filter out as unacceptable expressions that have trivial meanings—that is, that are true/false in all possible worlds or situations in which they are defined. This hypothesis helps explain otherwise puzzling patterns concerning the distribution of various functional terms and phrases. Despite its promise, logicality vastly over-generates unacceptability assignments. Most solutions to this problem rest on specific stipulations about the properties (...) of logical form—roughly, the level of linguistic representation which feeds into the interpretation procedures—and have substantial implications for traditional philosophical disputes about the nature of language. Specifically, contextualism and semantic minimalism, construed as competing hypotheses about the nature and degree of context-sensitivity at the level of logical form, suggest different approaches to the over-generation problem. In this paper, I explore the implications of pairing logicality with various forms of contextualism and semantic minimalism. I argue that to adequately solve the over-generation problem, logicality should be implemented in a constrained contextualist framework. (shrink)

We describe a strategy that is being used for the horizontal integration of warfighter intelligence data within the framework of the US Army’s Distributed Common Ground System Standard Cloud (DSC) initiative. The strategy rests on the development of a set of ontologies that are being incrementally applied to bring about what we call the ‘semantic enhancement’ of data models used within each intelligence discipline. We show how the strategy can help to overcome familiar tendencies to stovepiping of intelligence data, and (...) describe how it can be applied in an agile fashion to new data resources in ways that address immediate needs of intelligence analysts. (shrink)

I start out by reviewing the semantics of ‘seem’. As ‘seem’ is a subject-raising verb, ‘it seems’ can be treated as a sentential operator. I look at the semantic and logical properties of ‘it seems’. I argue that ‘it seems’ is a hyperintensional and contextually flexible operator. The operator distributes over conjunction but not over disjunction, conditionals or semantic entailments. I further argue that ‘it seems’ does not commute with negation and does not agglomerate with conjunction. I then show (...) that the mental states expressed by perceptual uses of ‘seem’ have non-conceptual, yet perspectival contents. In the final part of the paper I argue that while the content of the mental states expressed by perceptual uses of ‘seem’ are non-conceptual, having a mental state of this type requires possessing conceptual abilities corresponding to what the mental state represents. (shrink)

A formal model of metaphor is introduced. It models metaphor, first, as an interaction of “frames” according to the frame semantics, and then, as a wave function in Hilbert space. The practical way for a probability distribution and a corresponding wave function to be assigned to a given metaphor in a given language is considered. A series of formal definitions is deduced from this for: “representation”, “reality”, “language”, “ontology”, etc. All are based on Hilbert space. A few statements about (...) a quantum computer are implied: The sodefined reality is inherent and internal to it. It can report a result only “metaphorically”. It will demolish transmitting the result “literally”, i.e. absolutely exactly. A new and different formal definition of metaphor is introduced as a few entangled wave functions corresponding to different “signs” in different language formally defined as above. The change of frames as the change from the one to the other formal definition of metaphor is interpreted as a formal definition of thought. Four areas of cognition are unified as different but isomorphic interpretations of the mathematical model based on Hilbert space. These are: quantum mechanics, frame semantics, formal semantics by means of quantum computer, and the theory of metaphor in linguistics. (shrink)

Covaluation is the generalization of coreference introduced by Tanya Reinhart. Covaluation distributes in patterns that are very similar yet not entirely identical to those of binding. On a widespread view, covaluation and binding distribute similarly because binding is defined in terms of covaluation. Yet on Reinhart's view, binding and covaluation are not related that way: binding pertains to syntax, covaluation does not. Naturally, the widespread view can easily explain the similarities between binding and covaluation, whereas Reinhart can easily explain the (...) dissimilarities. Reciprocally, the widespread view finds it harder to explain the dissimilarities, whereas Reinhart finds it harder to explain the similarities. Reinhart and others have proposed more than one explanation of the similarities, but as I argue, these explanations do not work. Hence although I adopt Reinhart's view, I propose a new explanation of the similarities and dissimilarities between binding and covaluation: While Reinhart has invoked semantic structure only to explain dissimilarities, I do so to explain both similarities and dissimilarities at once. Finally, I examine in light of this approach the topics of language acquisition, only-constructions, the identity predicate, the Partee/Bach/Higginbotham problem, the Dahl puzzle and its recent versions by Roelofsen. (shrink)

This paper presents a theory of situated part structures involving the notion of an integrated and not just a part-of relation. The theory is applied in particular to the semantics of the modifiers 'whole' and 'individual', as in 'the whole collection' and 'the individual students'. The adnominal modifiers 'whole' and 'individual' have been entirely been ignored in the linguistic and philosophical literature, even though they pose significant challenges for standard views of reference, of the semantics of referential NPs, (...) and for ontology (the exception being medieval philosophy of language where 'whole' has received significant attention). 'Whole' strikingly displays two opposite readings: 'The whole collection is expensive' can mean - 'as a whole' or 'every part'. The paper proposes that the two readings be traced to two different conceptions of part structures of objects: one according to which the parts of an objects are just the material parts and another, Aristotelian conception according to which the parts of an object include properties of form. (shrink)

As health systems around the world turn towards highly distributed, specialized and cooperative structures to increase quality and safety of care as well as efficiency and efficacy of delivery processes, there is a growing need for supporting communication and collaboration of all parties involved with advanced ICT solutions. The Electronic Health Record (EHR) provides the information platform which is maturing towards the eHealth core application. To meet the requirements for sustainable, semantically interoperable, and trustworthy EHR solutions, different standards and different (...) national strategies have been established. The workshop summarizes the requirements for such advanced EHR systems and their underlying architecture, presents different strategies and solutions advocated by corresponding protagonists, discusses pros and cons as well as harmonization and migration strategies for those approaches. It particularly highlights a turn towards ontology-driven architectures. (shrink)

On the example of the analysis of the content of films-leaders of the box office box office, the value dynamics of the symbols of success is revealed as an objectively occurring sociocultural process in film communication. Cultural production and consumption are being rethought as the self-communication of society, which has sustainable trends. The connections of the sociocultural process of symbolizing success with communicative, semantic and semiotic processes have been studied. The specificity of the dialectical contradiction between sociocentric and personocentric symbols (...) of success is described. The theoretical provisions that reveal the structural and functional side of the socio-cultural process of symbolizing success are presented, its objectivity is proved on the example of the analysis of an array of films, the dominant tendencies in the halo of the cultural space of the general film market are determined. The book is addressed to scientists, students and teachers interested in cultural dynamics, social communication, the role of cinema in modern society. (shrink)

A new trend in deep learning, represented by Mutual Information Neural Estimation (MINE) and Information Noise Contrast Estimation (InfoNCE), is emerging. In this trend, similarity functions and Estimated Mutual Information (EMI) are used as learning and objective functions. Coincidentally, EMI is essentially the same as Semantic Mutual Information (SeMI) proposed by the author 30 years ago. This paper first reviews the evolutionary histories of semantic information measures and learning functions. Then, it briefly introduces the author’s semantic information G theory with (...) the rate-fidelity function R(G) (G denotes SeMI, and R(G) extends R(D)) and its applications to multi-label learning, the maximum Mutual Information (MI) classification, and mixture models. Then it discusses how we should understand the relationship between SeMI and Shannon’s MI, two generalized entropies (fuzzy entropy and coverage entropy), Autoencoders, Gibbs distributions, and partition functions from the perspective of the R(G) function or the G theory. An important conclusion is that mixture models and Restricted Boltzmann Machines converge because SeMI is maximized, and Shannon’s MI is minimized, making information efficiency G/R close to 1. A potential opportunity is to simplify deep learning by using Gaussian channel mixture models for pre-training deep neural networks’ latent layers without considering gradients. It also discusses how the SeMI measure is used as the reward function (reflecting purposiveness) for reinforcement learning. The G theory helps interpret deep learning but is far from enough. Combining semantic information theory and deep learning will accelerate their development. (shrink)

Vector models of language are based on the contextual aspects of words and how they co-occur in text. Truth conditional models focus on the logical aspects of language, the denotations of phrases, and their compositional properties. In the latter approach the denotation of a sentence determines its truth conditions and can be taken to be a truth value, a set of possible worlds, a context change potential, or similar. In this short paper, we develop a vector semantics for language (...) based on the simply typed lambda calculus. Our semantics uses techniques familiar from the truth conditional tradition and is based on a form of dynamic interpretation inspired by Heim's context updates. (shrink)

We propose a nonmonotonic Description Logic of typicality able to account for the phenomenon of the combination of prototypical concepts. The proposed logic relies on the logic of typicality ALC + TR, whose semantics is based on the notion of rational closure, as well as on the distributed semantics of probabilistic Description Logics, and is equipped with a cognitive heuristic used by humans for concept composition. We first extend the logic of typicality ALC + TR by typicality inclusions (...) of the form p :: T(C) v D, whose intuitive meaning is that “we believe with degree p about the fact that typical Cs are Ds”. As in the distributed semantics, we define different scenarios containing only some typicality inclusions, each one having a suitable probability. We then exploit such scenarios in order to ascribe typical properties to a concept C obtained as the combination of two prototypical concepts. We also show that reasoning in the proposed Description Logic is EXPTIME-complete as for the underlying standard Description Logic ALC. (shrink)

We propose a nonmonotonic Description Logic of typicality able to account for the phenomenon of combining prototypical concepts, an open problem in the fields of AI and cognitive modelling. Our logic extends the logic of typicality ALC + TR, based on the notion of rational closure, by inclusions p :: T(C) v D (“we have probability p that typical Cs are Ds”), coming from the distributed semantics of probabilistic Description Logics. Additionally, it embeds a set of cognitive heuristics for (...) concept combination. We show that the complexity of reasoning in our logic is EXPTIME-complete as in ALC. (shrink)

Philosophers are often credited with particularly well-developed conceptual skills. The ‘expertise objection’ to experimental philosophy builds on this assumption to challenge inferences from findings about laypeople to conclusions about philosophers. We draw on psycholinguistics to develop and assess this objection. We examine whether philosophers are less or differently susceptible than laypersons to cognitive biases that affect how people understand verbal case descriptions and judge the cases described. We examine two possible sources of difference: Philosophers could be better at deploying concepts, (...) and this could make them less susceptible to comprehension biases (‘linguistic expertise objection’). Alternatively, exposure to different patterns of linguistic usage could render philosophers vulnerable to a fundamental comprehension bias, the linguistic salience bias, at different points (‘linguistic usage objection’). Together, these objections mount a novel ‘master argument’ against experimental philosophy. To develop and empirically assess this argument, we employ corpus analysis and distributional semantic analysis and elicit plausibility ratings from academic philosophers and psychology undergraduates. Our findings suggest philosophers are better at deploying concepts than laypeople but are susceptible to the linguistic salience bias to a similar extent and at similar points. We identify methodological consequences for experimental philosophy and for philosophical thought experiments. (shrink)

This book surveys research in quantification starting with the foundational work in the 1970s. It paints a vivid picture of generalized quantifiers and Boolean semantics. It explains how the discovery of diverse scope behavior in the 1990s transformed the view of quantification, and how the study of the internal composition of quantifiers has become central in recent years. It presents different approaches to the same problems, and links modern logic and formal semantics to advances in generative syntax. A (...) unique feature of the book is that it systematically brings cross-linguistic data to bear on the theoretical issues, discussing French, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Russian, Japanese, Telugu (Dravidian), and Shupamem (Grassfield Bantu), and pointing to formal semantic literature involving quantification in around thirty languages. -- -/- 1. What this book is about and how to use it; 2. Generalized quantifiers and their elements: operators and their scopes; 3. Generalized quantifiers in non-nominal domains; 4. Some empirically significant properties of quantifiers and determiners; 5. Potential challenges for generalized quantifiers; 6. Scope is not uniform and not a primitive; 7. Existential scope versus distributive scope; 8. Distributivity and scope; 9. Bare numeral indefinites; 10. Modified numerals; 11. Clause-internal scopal diversity; 12. Towards a compositional semantics of quantifier words. (shrink)

Ways of Scope Taking is concerned with syntactic, semantic and computational aspects of scope. Its starting point is the well-known but often neglected fact that different types of quantifiers interact differently with each other and other operators. The theoretical examination of significant bodies of data, both old and novel, leads to two central claims. (1) Scope is a by-product of a set of distinct Logical Form processes; each quantifier participates in those that suit its particular features. (2) Scope interaction is (...) further constrained by the semantics of the interacting operators. The arguments are developed using Minimalist syntax, Generalized Quantify theory, Discourse Representation Theory, and algebraic semantics. The contributors (Beghelli, Ben-Shalom, Doetjes, Farkas, Gutiérrez Rexach, Honcoop, Stabler, Stowell, Szabolcsi and Zwarts) make tightly related theoretical assumptions and focus on related empirical phenomena, which include the direct and inverse scope of quantifiers, distributivity, negation, modal and intensional contexts, weak islands, event-related readings, interrogatives, wh/quantifier interactions, and Hungarian syntax. An introduction to the formal semantics background is provided. Audience: Linguists, philosophers, computational and psycholinguists; advanced undergraduates, graduate students and researchers in these fields. (shrink)

The distinction between semantics and pragmatics is often seen as a discussion about where to place pragmatic inferences: while minimalists think that they only come into play after the proposition is grasped, for contextualists, there are already pragmatic processes in the very determination of what is said, leading to ad hoc conceptual adjustments. There is, however, another way to look at this matter: we may keep a sensitive truth-distribution across contexts without ad hoc conceptual manoeuvres. An intuitive distribution of (...) truth-values may be explained as a variation in (kaplanian) circumstances, without any tampering with sentence constituents. This way of understanding the debate connects, maybe surprisingly, a first reaction to the semantics-pragmatics divide, in Cavell, and Predelli’s original stance on this debate. (shrink)

We argue for three main claims. First, the sentence ‘A and B ought to φ and ψ’ can express what we a call a joint-ought claim: the claim that the plurality A and B ought to φ and ψ respectively. Second, the truth-value of this joint-ought claim can differ from the truth-value of the pair of claims ‘A ought to φ’ and ‘B ought to ψ.’ This is because what A and B jointly ought to do can diverge from what (...) they individually ought to do: it may be true that A and B jointly ought to φ and ψ respectively, yet false that A ought to φ and false that B ought to ψ; and vice-versa. Third, either of two prominent semantic analyses of ‘ought’ – Mark Schroeder’s relational semantics, and Angelika Kratzer’s modal semantics – can model joint-ought claims and this difference in truth-value. (shrink)

The received wisdom on ability modals is that they differ from their epistemic and deontic cousins in what inferences they license and better receive a universal or conditional analysis instead of an existential one. The goal of this paper is to sharpen the empirical picture about the semantics of ability modals, and to propose an analysis that explains what makes the can of ability so special but that also preserves the crucial idea that all uses of can share a (...) common lexical semantics. The resulting framework combines tools and techniques from dynamic and inquisitive semantics with insights from the literature of the role of agency in deontic logic. It explains not only why the can of ability, while essentially being an existential modal operator, sometimes resists distribution over disjunction and interacts with its duals in particular and hitherto unnoticed ways, but also has a tendency to license free choice inferences. (shrink)

The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. In many ways, the topic remains under-researched, though, across languages and with respect to (...) particular phenomena within a given language, with respect to its connection to cognition, and with respect to the way it may be understood ontologically. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research on the topic, in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions, diagnostics for mass and count, the distribution and role of numeral classifiers, abstract mass nouns, and object mass nouns.The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. In many ways, the topic remains under-researched, though, across languages and with respect to particular phenomena within a given language, with respect to its connection to cognition, and with respect to the way it may be understood ontologically. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research on the topic, in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions, diagnostics for mass and count, the distribution and role of numeral classifiers, abstract mass nouns, and object mass nouns. (shrink)

Formal semantics has so far focused on three categories of quantifiers, to wit, Q-determiners (e.g. 'every'), Q-adverbs (e.g. 'always'), and Q-auxiliaries (e.g. 'would'). All three can be analyzed in terms of tripartite logical forms (LF). This paper presents evidence from verbs with distributive affixes (Q-verbs), in Kalaallisut, Polish, and Bininj Gun-wok, which cannot be analyzed in terms of tripartite LFs. It is argued that a Q-verb involves discourse reference to a distributive verbal dependency, i.e. an episode-valued function that sends (...) different semantic objects in a contextually salient plural domain to different episodes. (shrink)

Metaphysical explanations, unlike many other kinds of explanation, are standardly thought to be insensitive to our epistemic situation and so are not evaluable by cognitive values such as salience. I consider a case study that challenges this view. Some properties are distributed over an extension. For example, the property of being polka-dotted red on white, when instantiated, is distributed over a surface. Similar properties have been put to work in a variety of explanatory tasks in recent metaphysics, including: providing an (...) analysis of change, giving to presentists truthmakers for past claims; giving to priority monists an account of basic heterogeneous entities; and giving to friends of extended simples an explanation of how an extended simple can enjoy qualitative variation. I argue that such explanations exhibit salience failure. How ought we represent the semantics of salience? Differences in linguistic stress induce semantic differences similar to the semantic differences induced in explanations by differences in salience, and I will draw an analogy with linguistic theories of focus sensitivity to sketch how one might model the role of salience in these kinds of explanations. I end with a few tentative conclusions about the role of cognitive values in metaphysical explanations. Some theorists view the citation of a ground as a sufficient explanation. If certain explanations appealing to distributed properties exhibit attenuated salience, then arguably the mere citation of a ground does not always provide an adequate explanation. (shrink)

The paper argues for the applicability of the notion of collective truth as opposed to distributive truth, that is, truth at times or possibilia taken in groups rather than individually. The underlying reasoning is that there are transtemporal and transworld relationships, e.g., those involving the relations of <being a descendant of> and <thinking about>. Relationships are (one type of) truth-makers. Hence, there are transtemporal and transworld truth-makers. Therefore, there is transtemporal and transworld truth, i.e., collective truth. A semantics is (...) developed (formalized in the appendix) which embodies the notion of collective truth, and which thereby, it is argued, has various advantages over standard intensional semantics. For example, it avoids a commitment to certain impossible entities. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the notions of adequacy and truth functionality in quantum logic from the point of view of a non-deterministic semantics. We give a characterization of the degree of non-functionality which is compatible with the propositional structure of quantum theory, showing that having truth-functional connectives, together with some assumptions regarding the relation of logical consequence, commits us to the adequacy of the interpretation sets of these connectives. An advantage of our proof is that it is independent (...) of the number of truth values involved, generalizing previous works. We also show the failure of the adequacy of every Nmatrix that is a model of the non-distributive lattice of quantum propositions. En este trabajo discutimos las nociones de adecuación y veritativo-funcionalidad en la lógica cuántica, desde el punto de vista de una semántica no determinista. Damos una caracterización del grado de no-funcionalidad compatible con la estructura proposicional de la teoría cuántica, mostrando que tener conectivos veritativo-funcionales, junto con algunos presupuestos relativos a la relación de consecuencia lógica, nos compromete con la adecuación de los conjuntos de interpretación de estos conectivos. Un punto ventajoso de nuestra prueba es que se independiza de la cantidad de valores de verdad involucrados, generalizando trabajos previos. Probamos también que falla la adecuación de cualquier Nmatriz que sirva como modelo para el retículo no distributivo de proposiciones cuánticas. (shrink)

According to the accepted translation-failure interpretation, the problem of incommensurability involves the nature of the meaning-referential relation between scientific languages. The incommensurability thesis is that some competing scientific languages are mutually untranslatable due to the radical variance of meaning or/and reference of the terms they employ. I argue that this interpretation faces many difficulties and cannot give us a tenable, coherent, and integrated notion of incommensurability. It has to be rejected. ;On the basis of two case studies, I find that (...) the confrontations between many classical incommensurable languages are not confrontations between two untranslatable languages with different distribution of truth values, but rather the confrontations between incompatible fundamental presuppositions at the ontological level. We can always identify a truth-value gap between two incommensurable languages. Such a truth-value gap indicates a communication breakdown between the two language communities on the one hand, and is caused by the incompatible fundamental presuppositions underlying them on the other. ;I thereby identify the truth-value functional relationship between sentences, instead of the meaning-referential relationship between terms, as the dominant semantic relation between two incommensurable languages. According to my presuppositional interpretation of incommensurability, the real secret of incommensurability lies in the ontological setup of two competing presuppositional languages. When two presuppositional languages with incompatible factual commitments encounter with each other, the confrontation leads to a truth-value gap, and consequently a communication breakdown between them. Formally put, two scientific languages are incommensurable when core sentences of one language, which have truth values when considered within its own context, lack truth values when considered within the context of the other due to an ontological gap between them. ;The presuppositional interpretation makes many significant contributions to the discussion of the issue of incommensurability and the related metaphysical and epistemological issues: It confirms the existence of the phenomenon of incommensurability and makes it metaphysically and epistemologically significant. It establishes the tenability and integrity of the notion of incommensurability. It avoids many alleged unattractive epistemological and metaphysical consequences of the translation-failure interpretation. (shrink)

Recent work in formal semantics suggests that the language system includes not only a structure building device, as standardly assumed, but also a natural deductive system which can determine when expressions have trivial truth-conditions (e.g., are logically true/false) and mark them as unacceptable. This hypothesis, called the `logicality of language', accounts for many acceptability patterns, including systematic restrictions on the distribution of quantifiers. To deal with apparent counter-examples consisting of acceptable tautologies and contradictions, the logicality of language is often (...) paired with an additional assumption according to which logical forms are radically underspecified: i.e., the language system can see functional terms but is `blind' to open class terms to the extent that different tokens of the same term are treated as if independent. This conception of logical form has profound implications: it suggests an extreme version of the modularity of language, and can only be paired with non-classical---indeed quite exotic---kinds of deductive systems. The aim of this paper is to show that we can pair the logicality of language with a different and ultimately more traditional account of logical form. This framework accounts for the basic acceptability patterns which motivated the logicality of language, can explain why some tautologies and contradictions are acceptable, and makes better predictions in key cases. As a result, we can pursue versions of the logicality of language in frameworks compatible with the view that the language system is not radically modular vis-a-vis its open class terms and employs a deductive system that is basically classical. (shrink)

Recent work in formal semantics suggests that the language system includes not only a structure building device, as standardly assumed, but also a natural deductive system which can determine when expressions have trivial truth‐conditions (e.g., are logically true/false) and mark them as unacceptable. This hypothesis, called the ‘logicality of language’, accounts for many acceptability patterns, including systematic restrictions on the distribution of quantifiers. To deal with apparent counter‐examples consisting of acceptable tautologies and contradictions, the logicality of language is often (...) paired with an additional assumption according to which logical forms are radically underspecified: i.e., the language system can see functional terms but is ‘blind’ to open class terms to the extent that different tokens of the same term are treated as if independent. This conception of logical form has profound implications: it suggests an extreme version of the modularity of language, and can only be paired with non‐classical—indeed quite exotic—kinds of deductive systems. The aim of this paper is to show that we can pair the logicality of language with a different and ultimately more traditional account of logical form. This framework accounts for the basic acceptability patterns which motivated the logicality of language, can explain why some tautologies and contradictions are acceptable, and makes better predictions in key cases. As a result, we can pursue versions of the logicality of language in frameworks compatible with the view that the language system is not radically modular vis‐á‐vis its open class terms and employs a deductive system that is basically classical. (shrink)

My bedroom window is a part of my house, but it is not a partial house. A half-built house is a partial house, but there is no house it is a part of. Being a part of something—parthood—is a familiar topic of philosophical inquiry. Being a partial something—partialhood—is not. The neglect of partialhood is a shame because it is intrinsically interesting as well as metaphysically and semantically important. After using fractions and counting constructions to identify partialhood in §1, I give (...) a theory of the relation in §2-§4. Armed with this theory I turn to applications both in the domain of objects and object-related constructions as well as the domain of events and event-related constructions. In §5 I argue that partialhood allows us to identify a notion of distributivity that helps pinpoint the metaphysical basis of the mass/count distinction. In §6 I argue that the progressive morpheme expresses partialhood; in metaphysical terms, what it is for something to be happening is for there to be a partial event. (shrink)

Standard theories of scope are semantically blind. They employ a single logico-syntactic rule of scope assignment quantifying in Quantifier Raising, storage, or type change etc which roughly speaking prefixes an expression \aplha.

An ongoing philosophical discussion concerns how various types of mental states fall within broad representational genera—for example, whether perceptual states are “iconic” or “sentential,” “analog” or “digital,” and so on. Here, I examine the grounds for making much more specific claims about how mental states are structured from constituent parts. For example, the state I am in when I perceive the shape of a mountain ridge may have as constituent parts my representations of the shapes of each peak and saddle (...) of the ridge. More specific structural claims of this sort are a guide to how mental states fall within broader representational kinds. Moreover, these claims have significant implications of their own about semantic, functional, and epistemic features of our mental lives. But what are the conditions on a mental state's having one type of constituent structure rather than another? Drawing on explanatory strategies in vision science, I argue that, other things being equal, the constituent structure of a mental state determines what I call its distributional properties—namely, how mental states of that type can, cannot, or must co‐occur with other mental states in a given system. Distributional properties depend critically on and are informative about the underlying structures of mental states, they abstract in important ways from aspects of how mental states are processed, and they can yield significant insights into the variegation of psychological capacities. (shrink)

Conceptual combination performs a fundamental role in creating the broad range of compound phrases utilised in everyday language. This article provides a novel probabilistic framework for assessing whether the semantics of conceptual combinations are compositional, and so can be considered as a function of the semantics of the constituent concepts, or not. While the systematicity and productivity of language provide a strong argument in favor of assuming compositionality, this very assumption is still regularly questioned in both cognitive science (...) and philosophy. Additionally, the principle of semantic compositionality is underspecifi ed, which means that notions of both "strong" and "weak" compositionality appear in the literature. Rather than adjudicating between different grades of compositionality, the framework presented here contributes formal methods for determining a clear dividing line between compositional and non-compositional semantics. In addition, we suggest that the distinction between these is contextually sensitive. Compositionality is equated with a joint probability distribution modeling how the constituent concepts in the combination are interpreted. Marginal selectivity is introduced as a pivotal probabilistic constraint for the application of the Bell/CH and CHSH systems of inequalities. Non-compositionality is equated with a failure of marginal selectivity, or violation of either system of inequalities in the presence of marginal selectivity. This means that the conceptual combination cannot be modeled in a joint probability distribution, the variables of which correspond to how the constituent concepts are being interpreted. The formal analysis methods are demonstrated by applying them to an empirical illustration of twenty-four non-lexicalised conceptual combinations. (shrink)

Ramseyan humility is the thesis that we cannot know which properties realize the roles specified by the laws of completed physics. Lewis seems to offer a sceptical argument for this conclusion. Humean fundamental properties can be permuted as to their causal roles and distribution throughout spacetime, yielding alternative possible worlds with the same fundamental structure as actuality, but at which the totality of available evidence is the same. On the assumption that empirical knowledge requires evidence, we cannot know which of (...) these worlds is actual. However, Lewis also appeals to a range of familiar semantic principles when framing his argument, which leads some authors to suppose that he can also plausibly be interpreted as offering a purely semantic argument for humility in addition. In this paper I grant that these arguments are Lewisian, but argue that Lewis is also committed to a theory of mind that licenses a purely metaphysical argument for humility based on the idea that mental properties supervene on fundamental structure. Given that knowing which x is the F requires knowing that a is the F, the supposition that we could come to know which properties actually occupy the fundamental roles entails differences in mental properties between worlds with the same fundamental structure, violating supervenience. Humility follows right away, without any further epistemic or semantic principles. This argument is immune to almost every way of rebutting the sceptical and semantic arguments; conversely, almost every way of rebutting the metaphysical argument tells equally against the others. (shrink)

Positive polarity items (PPIs) are generally thought to have the boring property that they cannot scope below negation. The starting point of the paper is the observation that their distribution is significantly more complex; specifically, someone/something-type PPIs share properties with negative polarity items (NPIs). First, these PPIs are disallowed in the same environments that license yet type NPIs; second, adding any NPI-licenser rescues the illegitimate constellation. This leads to the conclusion that these PPIs have the combined properties of yet-type and (...) ever-type NPIs: what appears to be a prohibition is nothing but “halfway licensing”. The paper goes on to propose a unification of the analyses of rescuable PPIs, NPIs, and negative concord, and questions the grounding of polarity sensitivity in the scalar or the referential semantics of the items involved. (shrink)

The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research on (...) the topic, in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions, diagnostics for mass and count, the distribution and role of numeral classifiers, abstract mass nouns, and object mass nouns (furniture, police force, clothing). (shrink)

Philosophers typically rely on intuitions when providing a semantics for counterfactual conditionals. However, intuitions regarding counterfactual conditionals are notoriously shaky. The aim of this paper is to provide a principled account of the semantics of counterfactual conditionals. This principled account is provided by what I dub the Royal Rule, a deterministic analogue of the Principal Principle relating chance and credence. The Royal Rule says that an ideal doxastic agent’s initial grade of disbelief in a proposition \(A\) , given (...) that the counterfactual distance in a given context to the closest \(A\) -worlds equals \(n\) , and no further information that is not admissible in this context, should equal \(n\) . Under the two assumptions that the presuppositions of a given context are admissible in this context, and that the theory of deterministic alethic or metaphysical modality is admissible in any context, it follows that the counterfactual distance distribution in a given context has the structure of a ranking function. The basic conditional logic V is shown to be sound and complete with respect to the resulting rank-theoretic semantics of counterfactuals. (shrink)

The first part of this article (Sections 1–5) focuses on the classical notions of scope and binding and their formal foundations. It argues that once their semantic core is properly understood, it can be implemented in various different ways: with or without movement, with or without variables. The second part (Sections 6–12) takes up the empirical issues that have redrawn the map in the past two decades. It turns out that scope is not a primitive. Existential scope and distributive scope (...) have to be distinguished, leaving few if any run-of-the-mill quantifiers. Scope behavior is also not uniform. At least three classes of expressions emerge: indefinites, distributive universals, and counters. Likewise, the bound variable interpretation of pronouns is joined by co-variation with situations. As a result, the classical notions of scope and binding are likely to end up as building blocks in the varied mechanisms at work in “scope phenomena” and “binding phenomena”, and not as self-contained analyses of those phenomena. (shrink)

Mereological entities often seem to violate ‘ordinary’ ideas of what a concrete object can be like, behaving more like sets than like Aristotelian substances. However, the mereological notions of ‘part’, ‘composition’, and ‘sum’ or ‘fusion’ appear to find concrete realisation in the actual semantics of mass nouns. Quine notes that ‘any sum of parts which are water is water’; and the wine from a single barrel can be distributed around the globe without affecting its identity. Is there here, as (...) some have claimed, a ‘natural’ or ‘innocent’ form of mereology? The claim rests on the assumption that what a mass noun such as ‘wine’ denotes — the wine from a single barrel, for example — is indeed a unit of a special type, the sum or fusion of its many ‘parts’. The assumption is, however, open to question on semantic grounds. (shrink)

Background: Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine—Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT, hereafter abbreviated SCT) is acomprehensive medical terminology used for standardizing the storage, retrieval, and exchange of electronic healthdata. Some efforts have been made to capture the contents of SCT as Web Ontology Language (OWL), but theseefforts have been hampered by the size and complexity of SCT. Method: Our proposal here is to develop an upper-level ontology and to use it as the basis for defining the termsin SCT in a way that will (...) support quality assurance of SCT, for example, by allowing consistency checks ofdefinitions and the identification and elimination of redundancies in the SCT vocabulary. Our proposed upper-levelSCT ontology (SCTO) is based on the Ontology for General Medical Science (OGMS). Results: The SCTO is implemented in OWL 2, to support automatic inference and consistency checking. Theapproach will allow integration of SCT data with data annotated using Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundryontologies, since the use of OGMS will ensure consistency with the Basic Formal Ontology, which is the top-levelontology of the OBO Foundry. Currently, the SCTO contains 304 classes, 28 properties, 2400 axioms, and 1555annotations. It is publicly available through the bioportal athttp://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/SCTO/. Conclusion: The resulting ontology can enhance the semantics of clinical decision support systems and semanticinteroperability among distributed electronic health records. In addition, the populated ontology can be used forthe automation of mobile health applications. (shrink)

There is a common misconception across the lntelligence Community (IC) to the effect that information trapped within multiple heterogeneous data silos can be semantically integrated by the sorts of meaning-blind statistical methods employed in much of artificial intelligence (Al) and natural language processlng (NLP). This leads to the misconception that incoming data can be analysed coherently by relying exclusively on the use of statistical algorithms and thus without any shared framework for classifying what the data are about. Unfortunately, such approaches (...) do not yield sustainable results where we are dealing with widely distributed, highly heterogeneous and often changing bodies of data. We argue here that the needed integration requires the use of what we call an lntegrating Semantic Framework (ISF), which provldes a consistent set of categories and relationships that can be reused over and over again to tag successive bodies of data in ways which foster more coherent representation and reasoning. (shrink)