According to the alternative semantics for focus, the semantic reflec of intonational focus is a second semantic value, which in the case of a sentence is a set of propositions. We examine a range of semantic and pragmatic applications of the theory, and extract a unitary principle specifying how the focus semantic value interacts with semantic and pragmatic processes. A strong version of the theory has the effect of making lexical or construction-specific stipulation of a focus-related effect in association-with-focus constructions impossible. Furthermore, while focus has a uniform import, the sources of meaning differences in association with focus are various.

https://www.sfs.uni-tuebingen.de/~astechow/Lehre/SS06/Focus/rooth92.pdf

A theory of focus interpretation

人教版高中英语新课程教材中,语言运用（Using Language）是每个单元必不可少的部分,提供了围绕单元中心话题的听、说、读、写的综合性练习,是单元中心话题的延续和升华.如何设计Using Language部分的教学,使自己的教学模式既不落俗套,又能真正体现新课程标准所倡导的教学理念,正是广大一线英语教师一直努力探索的问题.

打磨Using Language,倡导新理念

In this provocative book, Barwise and Perry tackle the slippery subject of \"meaning, \" a subject that has long vexed linguists, language philosophers, and logicians.

/pdf/situations-and-attitudes-57f065zg2d.pdf

Situations and Attitudes.

This paper is devoted to the study of bare nominal arguments (i.e., determinerless NPs occurring in canonical argumental positions) from a crosslinguistic point of view. It is proposed that languages may vary in what they let their NPs denote. In some languages (like Chinese), NPs are argumental (names of kinds) and can thus occur freely without determiner in argument position; in others they are predicates (Romance), and this prevents NPs from occurring as arguments, unless the category D(eterminer) is projected. Finally, there are languages (like Germanic or Slavic) which allow both predicative and argumental NPs; these languages, being the ‘union’ of the previous two types, are expected to behave like Romance for certain aspects of their nominal system (the singular count portion) and like Chinese for others (the mass and plural portions). This hypothesis (the ‘Nominal Mapping Parameter’) is investigated not just through typological considerations, but also through a detailed contrastive analysis of bare arguments in Germanic (English) vs. Romance (Italian). Some general consequences of this view, which posits a limited variation in the mapping from syntax into semantics, for current theories of Universal Grammar and acquisition are considered.

/pdf/reference-to-kinds-across-language-4t96juuwlv.pdf

Reference to Kinds across Language

The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning is the first comprehensive and authoritative handbook covering all the core topics of the field of thinking and reasoning Written by the foremost experts from cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience, individual chapters summarize basic concepts and findings for a major topic, sketch its history, and give a sense of the directions in which research is currently heading The volume also includeswork related to developmental, social and clinical psychology, philosophy, economics, artificial intelligence, linguistics, education, law, and medicine Scholars and students in all these fields and others will find this to be a valuable collection

https://bilder.buecher.de/zusatz/14/14676/14676883_vorw_1.pdf

The Cambridge handbook of thinking and reasoning

This article takes stock of the basic notions of Information Structure (IS). It first provides a general characterization of IS—following Chafe (1976)—within a communicative model of Common Ground (CG), which distinguishes between CG content and CG management. IS is concerned with those features of language that affect the local CG. Second, this paper defines and discusses the notions of Focus (as indicating alternatives) and its various uses, Givenness (as indicating that a denotation is already present in the CG), and Topic (as specifying what a statement is about). It also proposes a new notion, Delimitation, which comprises contrastive topics and frame setters, and indicates that the current conversational move does not entirely satisfy the local communicative needs. It also points out that rhetorical structuring partly belongs to IS.

/pdf/basic-notions-of-information-structure-4f9bsgamht.pdf

Basic notions of information structure

Nominal Reference, Temporal Constitution and Quantification in Event Semantics

Genericity: An Introduction

This paper treats the correspondence between the reference type of NPs (i.e., mass nouns, count nouns, measure constructions, plurals) and the temporal constitution of verbal predicates (i.e., activities, accomplishments). A theory will be developed that handles the well known influence of the reference type of NPs in argument positions on the temporal constitution of the verbal expressions, assuming an event semantics with lattice structures and thematic roles as primitive relations between events and objects. Some consequences for the theory of thematic roles will be discussed, and the effect of partitive case marking on the verbal aspect, as in Finnish, and of aspectual marking on the definiteness of NPs, like in Slavic, will be explained.

/pdf/thematic-relations-as-links-between-nominal-reference-and-2yzg2jmh4r.pdf

Thematic Relations as Links between Nominal Reference and Temporal Constitution

The distinction between telic and atelic predicates has been described in terms of the algebraic properties of their meaning since the early days of model-theoretic semantics. This perspective was inspired by Aristotle’s discussion of types of actions that do or do not take time to be completed which was taken up and turned into a linguistic discussion of action-denoting predicates by Vendler (1957). The algebraic notion that seemed to be most conducive to express the Aristotelian distinction appeared to be the mereological notion of a part, applied to the time at which these predicates hold: atelic predicates, like push a cart, have the subinterval property, that is, whenever they are true at a time interval, then they are true at any part of that interval; this does not hold for telic predicates, like eat an apple, cf. Bennett & Partee (1972), Taylor (1977), and Dowty (1979)2. Bach (1986) integrated these insights into a semantics based on events.

/pdf/the-origins-of-telicity-3ut5pigafc.pdf

Manfred Krifka

Papers

Basic notions of information structure

Nominal Reference, Temporal Constitution and Quantification in Event Semantics

Genericity: An Introduction

Thematic Relations as Links between Nominal Reference and Temporal Constitution

The Origins of Telicity