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Semantics

In semantics we approach the theory of grammar from the side of meaning, with theoretical and experimental research in a range of areas, including modality, attitude verbs, speech acts, argument structure, causal constructions, quantification, and anaphora.

Grammars pair sounds or gestures with meaning. In semantics we approach the theory of grammar from the side of meaning. What sorts of meanings does the grammar yield and by what rules are these meanings assembled? Answering these questions involves us in others. What is the syntax, relative to which sound and meaning are paired? How do the meanings of expressions relate to acts of using expressions and to various aspects of cognition, especially those deployed immediately in communication? And how does semantic knowledge develop in children? At Maryland we address these questions with theoretical and experimental research in a range of areas, including modality, tense, aspect, argument structure, causal constructions, comparatives, attitude reports, implicature, presupposition, reference, number and quantification.

Our work proceeds in close collaboration with colleagues in syntax, acquisition and psycholinguistics. We have a special relation to the Department of Philosophy, with a long history of connections between the two. Alexander Williams is an Associate Professor in the department, Valentine Hacquard is an Affiliate Professor, and we work closely with others in the department, especially professors Paolo SantorioFabrizio Cariani and Georges Rey. Philosophy at Maryland is strong not only in language, but also in logic and the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Together with our students, we meet regularly at the Meaning Meeting.
 
Maryland is among a group of departments that participate in MACSIM, the annual Mid-Atlantic Colloquium of Studies in Meaning. Many of our semantics students also take courses in the Philosophy Department, and have led PHLING, a graduate student research group comprising students from the departments of linguistics and philosophy, which now continues as the Meaning Meeting

Primary Faculty

Valentine Hacquard

Professor, Linguistics
Affliliate Professor, Philosophy

1401 F Marie Mount Hall
College Park MD, 20742

(301) 405-4935

Alexander Williams

Associate Professor, Linguistics
Associate Professor, Philosophy

1401 D Marie Mount Hall
College Park MD, 20742

(301) 405-1607

Secondary Faculty

Norbert Hornstein

Professor Emeritus, Linguistics

3416 G Marie Mount Hall
College Park MD, 20742

(301) 405-4932

Jeffrey Lidz

Professor, Linguistics

1413 Marie Mount Hall
College Park MD, 20742

(301) 405-8220

Being pragmatic about syntactic bootstrapping

Syntactic and pragmatic cues to the meanings of modal and attitude verbs.

Linguistics

Author/Lead: Valentine Hacquard
Dates:

Words have meanings vastly undetermined by the contexts in which they occur. Their acquisition therefore presents formidable problems of induction. Lila Gleitman and colleagues have advocated for one part of a solution: indirect evidence for a word’s meaning may come from its syntactic distribution, via SYNTACTIC BOOTSTRAPPING. But while formal theories argue for principled links between meaning and syntax, actual syntactic evidence about meaning is noisy and highly abstract. This paper examines the role that syntactic bootstrapping can play in learning modal and attitude verb meanings, for which the physical context is especially uninformative. I argue that abstract syntactic classifications are useful to the child, but that something further is both necessary and available. I examine how pragmatic and syntactic cues can combine in mutually constraining ways to help learners infer attitude meanings, but need to be supplemented by semantic information from the lexical context in the case of modals.

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Individuals versus ensembles and "each" versus "every": Linguistic framing affects performance in a change detection task

More evidence that "every" but not "each" evokes ensemble representations.

Linguistics

Contributor(s): Jeffrey Lidz, Paul Pietroski
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Tyler Knowlton *21, Justin Halberda, 
Dates:

Though each and every are both distributive universal quantifiers, a common theme in linguistic and psycholinguistic investigations into them has been that each is somehow more individualistic than every. We offer a novel explanation for this generalization: each has a first-order meaning which serves as an internalized instruction to cognition to build a thought that calls for representing the (restricted) domain as a series of individuals; by contrast, every has a second-order meaning which serves as an instruction to build a thought that calls for grouping the domain. In support of this view, we show that these distinct meanings invite the use of distinct verification strategies, using a novel paradigm. In two experiments, participants who had been asked to verify sentences like each/every circle is green were subsequently given a change detection task. Those who evaluated each-sentences were better able to detect the change, suggesting they encoded the individual circles' colors to a greater degree. Taken together with past work demonstrating that participants recall group properties after evaluating sentences with every better than after evaluating sentences with each, these results support the hypothesis that each and every call for treating the individuals that constitute their domain differently: as independent individuals (each) or as members of an ensemble collection (every). We situate our findings within a conception of linguistic meanings as instructions for thought building, on which the format of the resulting thought has consequences for how meanings interface with non-linguistic cognition.

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Psycholinguistic evidence for restricted quantification

Determiners express restricted quantifiers and not relations between sets.

Linguistics, Philosophy

Contributor(s): Jeffrey Lidz, Alexander Williams, Paul Pietroski
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Tyler Knowlton *21, Justin Halberda (JHU)
Dates:

Quantificational determiners are often said to be devices for expressing relations. For example, the meaning of every is standardly described as the inclusion relation, with a sentence like every frog is green meaning roughly that the green things include the frogs. Here, we consider an older, non-relational alternative: determiners are tools for creating restricted quantifiers. On this view, determiners specify how many elements of a restricted domain (e.g., the frogs) satisfy a given condition (e.g., being green). One important difference concerns how the determiner treats its two grammatical arguments. On the relational view, the arguments are on a logical par as independent terms that specify the two relata. But on the restricted view, the arguments play distinct logical roles: specifying the limited domain versus supplying an additional condition on domain entities. We present psycholinguistic evidence suggesting that the restricted view better describes what speakers know when they know the meaning of a determiner. In particular, we find that when asked to evaluate sentences of the form every F is G, participants mentally group the Fs but not the Gs. Moreover, participants forego representing the group defined by the intersection of F and G. This tells against the idea that speakers understand every F is G as implying that the Fs bear relation (e.g., inclusion) to a second group.

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