Publisher Summary This chapter presents a discussion on the syntax–semantics interface. The task of a theory of semantic interpretation is to characterize how elements in a syntactic string semantically relate to one another. Clearly, this depends on how one conceptualizes the meaning of the elementary building blocks—that is, the terminal nodes of a syntactic tree. Interpreting an expression typically requires integrating it into an evolving discourse model. Frequently, this requires resolving ambiguities at conceptually distinct levels, fixing reference, and drawing inferences to align local and global aspects of the discourse. To fully accomplish this task, it is uncontroversial that, in addition to lexical and syntactic constraints, comprehenders must draw upon pragmatic knowledge. The importance of high-level constraints has been illustrated by the finding that comprehenders sometimes adopt a pragmatically plausible interpretation even if it is incongruent with lexical and syntactic constraints.

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The Syntax-Semantics Interface: On-Line Composition Of Sentence Meaning

Processing Events: Behavioral and Neuromagnetic Correlates of Aspectual Coercion.

Natural language interpretation is generally thought to be compositional, that is, the meanings of expressions are a function of the meanings of their parts and of the way the parts are syntactically combined. Theories of the syntax–semantics interface aim to articulate the details of this function. This article discusses a new research program in which psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic experiments on so-called syntax–semantics mismatches are used to elucidate the mechanisms that mediate between structure and meaning.

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Mismatching Meanings in Brain and Behavior

This phenomenon is quite common: the examples above have been taken from existing toplevel ontologies used in practice, and they are responsible, in our opinion, of many situations of tangleness, confusion, and lack of semantic rigour. We advocate in the present paper a design principle aimed to clarify such situations and produce more reusable and well-founded ontologies. It can be stated as follows:

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Stratified ontologies: the case of physical objects

The verb "pounce" describes a single, near-instantaneous event. Yet, we easily understand that, "For several minutes the cat pounced'" describes a situation in which multiple pounces occurred, although this interpretation is not overtly specified by the sentence's syntactic structure or by any of its individual words—a phenomenon known as "aspectual coercion." Previous psycholinguistic studies have reported processing costs in association with aspectual coercion, but the neurocognitive mechanisms giving rise to these costs remain contentious. Additionally, there is some controversy about whether readers commit to a full interpretation of the event when the aspectual information becomes available, or whether they leave it temporarily underspecified until later in the sentence. Using ERPs, we addressed these questions in a design that fully crossed context type (punctive, durative, frequentative) with verb type (punctive, durative). We found a late, sustained negativity to punctive verbs in durative contexts, but not in frequentative (e.g., explicitly iterative) contexts. This effect was distinct from the N400 in both its time course and scalp distribution, suggesting that it reflected a different underlying neurocognitive mechanism. We also found that ERPs to durative verbs were unaffected by context type. Together, our results provide strong evidence that neural activity associated with aspectual coercion is driven by the engagement of a morphosyntactically unrealized semantic operator rather than by violations of real-world knowledge, more general shifts in event representation, or event iterativity itself. More generally, our results add to a growing body of evidence that a set of late-onset sustained negativities reflect elaborative semantic processing that goes beyond simply combining the meaning of individual words with syntactic structure to arrive at a final representation of meaning.

When events change their nature: The neurocognitive mechanisms underlying aspectual coercion

This paper is concerned with some aspects of the relationship between ontological knowledge and natural language understanding. More specifically, I will consider how knowledge of ontological domains and knowledge of lexical meaning work together in the interpretation of linguistic expressions. An essential assumption is that in accordance with ontological distinctions there are various semantic sorts which linguistic expressions can be divided. The specific purpose of the paper is to explore how under these conditions the intricate problem of systematic ambiguity can be dealt with. Here the term "systematic ambiguity" stands for the phenomenon that a word or a phrase has several possible meanings which systematically related to one another and from which a suitable meaning can be selected dependently on the linguistic and non-linguistic context of use. Taking into consideration that many predicative expressions impose on their arguments certain sortal selection restrictions. I will deal with the phenomenon that a word or a phrase being systematically ambiguous in some cases adapt itself to the semantic format of the expression it is combined with. Such an adaptation eliminating one or more possible meaning of the word or phrase is in fact a coercion of its semantic sort. I will argue for an approach which takes into account a set of semantic coercion operations to meet sortal constraints. Moreover, I will show how such sort coercions performed in language understanding are sanctioned by world knowledge.

Johannes Dölling

Papers

Ontological domains, semantic sorts and systematic ambiguity