In this rich reference work, Beth Levin classifies over 3,000 English verbs according to shared meaning and behavior Levin starts with the hypothesis that a verb's meaning influences its syntactic behavior and develops it into a powerful tool for studying the English verb lexicon She shows how identifying verbs with similar syntactic behavior provides an effective means of distinguishing semantically coherent verb classes, and isolates these classes by examining verb behavior with respect to a wide range of syntactic alternations that reflect verb meaning The first part of the book sets out alternate ways in which verbs can express their arguments The second presents classes of verbs that share a kernel of meaning and explores in detail the behavior of each class, drawing on the alternations in the first part Levin's discussion of each class and alternation includes lists of relevant verbs, illustrative examples, comments on noteworthy properties, and bibliographic references The result is an original, systematic picture of the organization of the verb inventory Easy to use, "English Verb Classes and Alternations" sets the stage for further explorations of the interface between lexical semantics and syntax It will prove indispensable for theoretical and computational linguists, psycholinguists, cognitive scientists, lexicographers, and teachers of English as a second language Beth Levin is associate professor of linguistics at Northwestern University

English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation

In his analysis of action sentences, Donald Davidson drew a clear distinction between arguments and adjuncts. Neglecting temporal relations, sentences like 

(1)

We bought your slippers in Marrakesh.

Severing the External Argument from its Verb

Nominal Reference, Temporal Constitution and Quantification in Event Semantics

Multichannel recordings of the electromagnetic fields emerging from neural currents in the brain generate large amounts of data. Suitable feature extraction methods are, therefore, useful to facilitate the representation and interpretation of the data. Recently developed independent component analysis (ICA) has been shown to be an efficient tool for artifact identification and extraction from electroencephalographic (EEG) and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings. In addition, ICA has been applied to the analysis of brain signals evoked by sensory stimuli. This paper reviews our recent results in this field.

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Independent component approach to the analysis of EEG and MEG recordings

1. Introduction 2. The empirical ground 3. A first phase syntax 4. Deriving verb classes 5. Paths and results 6. Causativization 7. Conclusion.

/pdf/verb-meaning-and-the-lexicon-a-first-phase-syntax-19xdjidegm.pdf

Verb Meaning and the Lexicon: A First Phase Syntax

This extended investigation of the semantics of event (and state) sentences in their various forms is a major contribution to the semantics of natural language, simultaneously encompassing important issues in linguistics, philosophy, and logic. It develops the view that the logical forms of simple English sentences typically contain quantification over events or states and shows how this view can account for a wide variety of semantic phenomena.Focusing on the structure of meaning in English sentences at a "subatomic" level - that is, a level below the one most theories accept as basic or "atomic" - Parsons asserts that the semantics of simple English sentences require logical forms somewhat more complex than is normally assumed in natural language semantics. His articulation of underlying event theory explains a wide variety of apparently diverse semantic characteristics of natural language, and his development of the theory shows the importance of seeing the distinction between events and states.Parsons demonstrates that verbs, also, indicate kinds of actions rather than specific, individual actions. Verb phrases, too, he argues, depend on modifiers to make their function and meaning in a sentence specific. An appendix gives many of the details needed to formalize the theory discussed in the body of the text and provides a series of templates that permit the generation of atomic formulas of English.Terence Parsons is Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine.

Events in the Semantics of English: A Study in Subatomic Semantics

This paper has two goals. The first is to formulate an adequate account of the semantics of the progressive aspect in English: the semantics of ‘Agatha is making a cake’, as opposed to ‘Agatha makes a cake’. This account presupposes a version of the so-called “Aristotelian” classification of verbs in English into EVENT, PROCESS and STATE verbs. The second goal of this paper is to refine this classification so as to account for the infamous “category switch” problem, the problem of how it is that modification of a verb like ‘run’ by an adverbial like ‘to the store’ can turn a PROCESS phrase (‘run’) into an EVENT phrase (‘run to the store’). Views discussed include those of Aqvist, Bach, Bennett, Bennett and Partee, Dowry, Montague and Scott, and Vendler.

/pdf/the-progressive-in-english-events-states-and-processes-4a35s1dydj.pdf

The progressive in English: Events, states and processes

This paper consists principally of selections from a much longer work on the semantics of English. It discusses some problems concerning how to represent grammatical modifiers (e.g. ‘slowly’ in ‘x drives slowly’) in a logically perspicuous notation. A proposal of Reichenbach’s is given and criticized; then a ‘new’ theory (apparently discovered independently by myself, Romain Clark, and Richard Montague and Hans Kamp) is given, in which grammatical modifiers are represented by operators added to a first-order predicate calculus. Finally some problems concerning applications of adjectives to that-clauses and gerundive-clauses are discussed.

Some Problems Concerning the Logic of Grammatical Modifiers

In 1919, in the essay “Negation” (Frege, 1919), Frege addresses the issue of whether there are two distinct ways of judging affirmative judging and negative judging or only one. His answer, which is widely accepted nowadays, is that there is only one kind of judgment affirmative judgment and that the rejection of a proposition is always accomplished by accepting or affirming some ofher proposition, namely, the negation of the proposition being rejected. For example, we reject the claim that the accused was in Rome at the time of the murder by accepting the different claim that the accused was nor in Rome at the time of the murder (Frege, 1919, pp. 129-130). Frege argues further that negation itself is always part of the content of a judgment, and never forms part of the judgmental act or attitude. Frege’s views are very different from certain earlier views, such as those of the Port Royal Logic (Arnauld, 1662). In that work, a judgment that the accused was nor in Rome at the time of the murder would have the very same content as the corresponding positive judgment. The difference between the positive and negative judgments would lie in the judging activities themselves, not in their contents. The negative aspect of a negative judgment would be part of the act, not part of the content. There is a parallel issue in the philosophy of language (also discussed by Frege): Are there two distinct types of illocutionary acts assertion and denial or only one? The Fregean answer is that there is only one assertion and that a linguistic denial of a proposition is always effected by means of asserting the negation of that proposition. Further, in Austinian terms, negation is always part of the locutionary content of a speech act, and never part of the illocutionary force (Austin, 1962). In Hare’s terms, negation is always to be located in the phrastic, never in the neustic (Hare, 1952).

Assertion, denial, and the Liar Paradox

s and the Evans Argument (and its Successors). Any theory that allows for indeterminacy in the world places constraints on how language might relate to the world. Suppose that our language has (at least) the syntax of the predicate calculus with identity, and that it contains some predicates that stand for properties, and some names that stand for objects. Suppose further that an atomic sentence of the form Fa is true if what a stands for definitely has the property that F stands for, false if what a stands for definitely lacks the property that F stands for, and otherwise indeterminate. Now suppose, in addition, that we have in this language some lambda abstracts that form complex predicates, such as 'Xx[Ax & Bx]', i.e. the predicate of 'being both A and B.' If the language is sufficiently rich then we cannot assume that any such abstract refers to a property whose application to objects is perfectly characterized in the usual way by lambda abstraction, the principle that '?D(a)' is interchangeable with 'Xx[<D(x)](a)' in all extensional contexts. Such a powerful assumption leads to paradoxes (like the Russell paradox) whenever the language is sufficiently rich. Such constraints are well-known, and people are used to restricting either the abstraction axiom or quantification over properties to avoid such paradoxes. Here is a less familiar constraint. Suppose our language contains an indeterminacy operator 'V', which obeys these laws: V(S) is true iff S is lacking in truth-value. V(S) is false iff S is true or is false. Then one cannot take for granted that lambda abstracts that bind variables in contexts governed by 'V' stand for properties and also fully satisfy lambda abstraction. This may seem to be a dry technicality, but it is a crucial one. This is because Evans' 1978 argument and all arguments similar to it (that is, virtually alj arguments on this matter in the literature) beg the question by ignoring this point-by assuming without argument that such abstracts automatically stand for properties and that they simultaneously satisfy the abstraction principle. We are not in a position here to find fallacies in arguments for these joint assumptions, for such arguments are never given. But we can say with some confidence This content downloaded from 157.55.39.220 on Fri, 02 Sep 2016 04:44:07 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 176 TERENCE PARSONS AND PETER WOODRUFF that the assumption that arbitrary abstracts both stand for properties and satisfy lambda abstraction cannot be proved from the assumptions stated two paragraphs above. It is an additional assumption, and one that must be rejected by any proponent of indeterminate identity. Indeed, Evans' argument proves this. To get clear on this, consider the Evans argument. It is a proof that if there were a case of indeterminacy of identity, the supposed indeterminate identity could be shown to be a determinate non-identity. That is, from the claim that there are objects a and b such that it is indeterminate whether a is b one can prove that a is notb: 1. V(a=b) Hypothesis. 2. x[V(x=b)](a) From 1 by abstraction. 3. -_V(b=b) (Definite) truth of self-identity. 4. -1Ax[V(x=b)](b) From 3 by abstraction. 5. (3P)[P(a) & -1P(b)] Conjoin 2 and 4 and existentially generalize. 6. --(a=b) From 5 together with the definition of identity. Thus from the assumption that it is not determinate whether a is b, we prove that a is not b. Several authors point out that the argument as stated is too strong; surely identity statements can lack truth values if there is linguistic vagueness in the singular terms.7 We agree with most commentators that Evans intended his argument to prove that if the singular terms are not themselves vague, then there can be no truth-valueless identity statements. If the only escape from the argument is to hold that the terms are linguistically vague, then the argument successfully disproves the possibility of indeterminate identity in the world. Since one can coherently maintain that it is indeterminate whether a is b, we regard this proof as establishing instead that the fault lies elsewhere, in particular, either in the abstraction steps or in the existential generalization in 5. We cannot assume that there is a genuine property ('not being determinately identical to b') that 7 Broome 1984, Cook 1986, Burgess 1989, Garrett 1988, Noonan 1982, 1984, Rasmussen 1986, Thomason 1982. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.220 on Fri, 02 Sep 2016 04:44:07 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms WORLDLY INDETERMINACY OF IDENTITY 177 behaves in accordance with the full abstraction principle. To avoid assuming this, we have two options. One is to assume that the principle of abstraction always holds for predicates, but to leave it open whether the resulting predicates stand for properties. If we do this, the above argument begs the question at step 5. The other option is to take for granted that abstracts stand for properties, but reject the principle of abstraction as always providing the conditions under which such properties hold of objects. Then the abstraction steps 2 and 4 may be unjustified. Recall what is at issue. It is not whether all property abstracts are meaningful; that is a conceptual point, and says nothing about what there is. The issue is whether for every such abstract there is a property in the world for which the abstract stands. In the case of identity, the issue of how identity behaves in the world is not a conceptual matter, it is an ontological one. It is characterized in terms of properties and relations, not in terms of concepts or meanings. And so assuming that a property abstract is meaningful does not mean that it stands for a property. The abstract used above does not stand for a property, or it stands for a property that is not fully equivalent with the subformula in the abstract. Evans' own argument appears to avoid these considerations, since that argument does not quantify over properties at all. Evans apparently bypasses any appeal to properties by moving directly from lines 2 and 4 to line 6, citing Leibniz's Law:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/4545215

Terence Parsons

Papers

Events in the Semantics of English: A Study in Subatomic Semantics

The progressive in English: Events, states and processes

Some Problems Concerning the Logic of Grammatical Modifiers

Assertion, denial, and the Liar Paradox

Worldly Indeterminacy of Identity