HENDRIKS AND DE HOOP

Language
SEMANTICS IN THE ABSENCE OF SYNTAX

Advanced course

PETRA HENDRIKS and HELEN DE HOOP

Cognitive Science and Engineering (TCW), University of Groningen and

Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University

First week
hendriks@let.rug.nl and dehoop@let.ruu.nl

Course description

A compositional interpretation based on sysntactic structure is usually not sufficient to obtain the intended interpretation for incomplete sentences; contextual aspects are of utmost importance as well. We opt for a redically different line of approach and hypothesize that syntax is merely one of the ways to restrict interpretation. Lexical material is only expressed if the context alone is not sufficient to yield an unambiguous interpretation. Thus, the introduction of complex machinery solely to complete syntactic structure is avoided (unlike in standard deletion approaches and direct interpretation approaches like categorial type logic). In fact, the interpretation can often not be derived from overt material.

Our view differs from the syntax-first model and the interactive model in language processing: syntactic clues not related to grammaticality are only used very late in processing, and only when contextual and prosodic clues are not sufficient. Quantified expressions, comparatives, gapping strings and word order variation will illustrate out main point.

Prerequisites
None

Literature
No specific recommendation

HOME PROGRAMME CONTACT REGISTRATION

Language	SEMANTICS IN THE ABSENCE OF SYNTAX
Advanced course	PETRA HENDRIKS and HELEN DE HOOP Cognitive Science and Engineering (TCW), University of Groningen and Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University
First week	hendriks@let.rug.nl and dehoop@let.ruu.nl
Course description	A compositional interpretation based on sysntactic structure is usually not sufficient to obtain the intended interpretation for incomplete sentences; contextual aspects are of utmost importance as well. We opt for a redically different line of approach and hypothesize that syntax is merely one of the ways to restrict interpretation. Lexical material is only expressed if the context alone is not sufficient to yield an unambiguous interpretation. Thus, the introduction of complex machinery solely to complete syntactic structure is avoided (unlike in standard deletion approaches and direct interpretation approaches like categorial type logic). In fact, the interpretation can often not be derived from overt material. Our view differs from the syntax-first model and the interactive model in language processing: syntactic clues not related to grammaticality are only used very late in processing, and only when contextual and prosodic clues are not sufficient. Quantified expressions, comparatives, gapping strings and word order variation will illustrate out main point.
Prerequisites	None
Literature	No specific recommendation