Antecedent (grammar)

About: Antecedent (grammar) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1392 publications have been published within this topic receiving 41824 citations.

Managing Uncertainty in Rule Based Cognitive Models

Abstract: An experiment replicated and extended recent findings on psychologically realistic ways of modeling propagation of uncertainty in rule based reasoning. Within a single production rule, the antecedent evidence can be summarized by taking the maximum of disjunctively connected antecedents and the minimum of conjunctively connected antecedents. The maximum certainty factor attached to each of the rule's conclusions can be sealed down by multiplication with this summarized antecedent certainty. Heckerman's modified certainty factor technique can be used to combine certainties for common conclusions across production rules.

SVO, (silent) topics and the interpretation of referential pro: a discourse-syntax interface approach

Abstract: The issue of how a null subject (or argumental pro) is licensed and interpreted has been a matter of debate in syntactic theory for decades. Participating in this debate, this paper proposes a novel approach to the licensing and interpretation of the referential 3 (person) pro/topic in human languages, based on discourse-syntax interface. I provide evidence from across languages that the antecedent of the dropped pro/topic is a (silent) preverbal DP. I show that this DP is an aboutness-topic, merged in the C-domain, specifically in the Specifier of the Topic Phrase, where Topic Phrase is assumed to be a phase whose head, i.e. Topic, is endowed with an aboutness feature. Based on interpretation motivations, the aboutness feature counts as an Edge Feature, which requires merging a (silent) aboutness-topic in Spec,TopP, hence yielding a discourse property and coreferentially correlating the given aboutness-topic with the argumental pro in Spec, v P. Evidence is provided that pro enters the derivation with valued, but uninterpretable features. These valued features (of pro) value T’s unvalued features via agree. The uninter - pretable features of pro are interpreted by the interpretable features of the A-topic via agree as Match. As a result, pro is interpreted as a definite 3 person pronoun. The paper also provides empirical evidence that pro can be locally and nonlocally coreferentially correlated with the A-topic via matching A`-chains. A (Silent) A-topic Principle is proposed as a Universal Grammar condition, which is necessitated by interpretive and performative requirements. Given this Universal Grammar property, the Silent A-topic Principle licenses (silent) A-topics as antecedents for pros/dropped topics across human languages

Generalized and specialized adverbial resumption in Middle High German and beyond

Abstract: The paper discusses specialized and generalized adverbial resumption (Salvesen 2016) in Middle High German, focusing on two correlative elements derived from originally referential-deictic adverbs, do (lit. ‘there’, ‘then’) and so (lit. ‘so’). I show that while the former only resumes temporal and local (and, to a certain extent, causal) antecedents and can, thus, be classified as a specialized item, the latter exhibits ‘hyper-referentiality’, in the sense that it is compatible with virtually any type of antecedent (e.g. temporal, conditional, causal, concessive, etc.). On the basis of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of corpus data including adverbial correlative patterns extracted from the Referenzkorpus Mittelhochdeutsch, as well as of independent assumptions on the makeup of the left periphery in Historical German, I propose that (at least this type of) resumption is the non-pronominal counterpart of German left dislocation. Assuming a derivation a la Grewendorf (2002), I claim that both resumptives are maximal projections. In particular, they are base-generated in the middle field of the clause together with the to-be-fronted XP and ‘stranded’ in [Spec,FinP], while the adjunct antecedent moves up higher to a CP-internal [Spec,FrameP]. Finally, a central claim of this paper is that do behaves consistently throughout the history of German with respect to its resumptive function, whereas so gradually switches from a universal to a specialized element (in PDG, it can only resume conditional and concessive adjuncts).

The role of prosody in overt pronoun resolution in a null subject language and in a non-null subject language: A production study

Abstract: In this study, we investigate how prosodic cues are used when an overt pronoun is associated with either a subject or an object antecedent in Italian and in Swedish. To address this question, 28 Italian speakers and 28 Swedish speakers completed a production task, by reading out loud globally-ambiguous sentences containing overt pronouns and a control interpretation task, where they selected either a subject or an object antecedent for each pronoun, contained in a globally-ambiguous sentence. We expected that the different preference patterns in antecedent assignment in the two languages would affect the speakers’ use of prosody. In Italian, overt pronouns are usually associated with object antecedents, whereas null pronouns are usually associated with subject antecedents (Position of Antecedent Strategy – “PAS” – Carminati 2002). On the other hand, Swedish overt pronouns leave a measure of ambiguity with respect to antecedent assignment. The results of the control interpretation task confirmed that the Italian speakers conformed to the PAS, but the results for the Swedish speakers unexpectedly indicated a preference for subject antecedents. For the production task, the Italian speakers produced longer inter-clausal pauses and pronouns with a higher degree of prominence with subject rather than object antecedents. In contrast, the Swedish speakers produced longer pauses and pronouns with a higher degree of prominence with object rather than subject antecedents. These results suggest that inter-clausal pause and prosodic prominence favoured the most unpredictable antecedent of overt pronouns (see Goad et al. 2018): the subject in Italian and the object in Swedish.