On the Identification of Quantifiers’ Witness Sets: A Study of Multi-quantifier Sentences

被引:0
作者
Livio Robaldo
Jakub Szymanik
Ben Meijering
机构
[1] University of Turin,Department of Computer Science
[2] University of Amsterdam,Institute for Logic, Language and Computation
[3] University of Groningen,Institute of Artificial Intelligence
来源
Journal of Logic, Language and Information | 2014年 / 23卷
关键词
Global Maximization; Maximality Condition; Target Sentence; Main Predication; Pragmatic Factor;
D O I
暂无
中图分类号
学科分类号
摘要
Natural language sentences that talk about two or more sets of entities can be assigned various readings. The ones in which the sets are independent of one another are particularly challenging from the formal point of view. In this paper we will call them ‘Independent Set (IS) readings’. Cumulative and collective readings are paradigmatic examples of IS readings. Most approaches aiming at representing the meaning of IS readings implement some kind of maximality conditions on the witness sets involved. Two kinds of maximization have been proposed in the literature: ‘Local’ and ‘Global’ maximization. In this paper, we present an online questionnaire whose results appear to support Local maximization. The latter seems to capture the proper interplay between the semantics and the pragmatics of multi-quantifier sentences, provided that witness sets are selected on pragmatic grounds.
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页码:53 / 81
页数:28
相关论文
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