Publications

Abstract

Contrary to received opinion, the Aristotelian Square of Opposition (square) is logically sound, differing from standard modern predicate logic (SMPL) only in that it restricts the universe U of cognitively constructible situations by banning null predicates, making it less unnatural than SMPL. U-restriction strengthens the logic without making it unsound. It also invites a cognitive approach to logic. Humans are endowed with a cognitive predicate logic (CPL), which checks the process of cognitive modelling (world construal) for consistency. The square is considered a first approximation to CPL, with a cognitive set-theoretic semantics. Not being cognitively real, the null set Ø is eliminated from the semantics of CPL. Still rudimentary in Aristotle’s On Interpretation (Int), the square was implicitly completed in his Prior Analytics (PrAn), thereby introducing U-restriction. Abelard’s reconstruction of the logic of Int is logically and historically correct; the loca (Leaking O-Corner Analysis) interpretation of the square, defended by some modern logicians, is logically faulty and historically untenable. Generally, U-restriction, not redefining the universal quantifier, as in Abelard and loca, is the correct path to a reconstruction of CPL. Valuation Space modelling is used to compute the effects of U-restriction.

Abstract

Semantic Syntax (SeSyn), originally called Generative Semantics, is an offshoot of Chomskyan generative grammar (ChoGG), rejected by Chomsky and his school in the late 1960s. SeSyn is the theory of algorithmical grammars producing the well-formed sentences of a language L from the corresponding semantic input, the Semantic Analysis (SA), represented as a traditional tree structure diagram in a specific formal language of incremental predicate logic with quantifying and qualifying operators (including the truth functions), and with all lexical items filled in. A SeSyn-type grammar is thus by definition transformational, but not generative. The SA originates in cognition in a manner that is still largely mysterious, but its actual form can be distilled from the Surface Structure (SS) of the sentences of L following the principles set out in SeSyn. In this presentation we provide a more or less technical résumé of the SeSyn theory. A comparison is made with ChoGG-type grammars, which are rejected on account of their intrinsic unsuitability as a cognitive-realist grammar model. The ChoGG model follows the pattern of a 1930s neopositivist Carnap-type grammar for formal logical languages. Such grammars are random sentence generators, whereas, obviously, (nonpathological) humans are not. A ChoGG-type grammar is fundamentally irreconcilable with a mentalist-realist theory of grammar. The body of the paper consists in a demonstration of the production of an English and a French sentence, the latter containing a classic instance of the cyclic rule of Predicate Raising (PR), essential in the general theory of clausal complementation yet steadfastly repudiated in ChoGG for reasons that have never been clarified. The processes and categories defined in SeSyn are effortlessly recognised in languages all over the world, whether indigenous or languages of a dominant culture—taking into account language-specific values for the general theoretical parameters involved. This property makes SeSyn particularly relevant for linguistic typology, which now ranks as the most promising branch of linguistics but has so far conspicuously lacked an adequate theoretical basis.

Abstract

Language in Cognition argues that language is based on the human construal of reality. Humans refer to and quantify over virtual entities with the same ease as they do over actual entities: the natural ontology of language, the author argues, must therefore comprise both actual and virtual entities and situations. He reformulates speech act theory, suggesting that the primary function of language is less the transfer of information than the establishing of socially binding commitments or appeals based on the proposition expressed. This leads him first to a new analysis of the systems and structures of cognitive language machinery and their ecological embedding, and finally to a reformulation of the notion of meaning, in which sentence meaning is distinguished from lexical meaning and the vagaries and multifarious applications of lexical meanings may be explained and understood. This is the first of a two-volume foundational study of language, published under the title, Language from Within. Pieter Seuren discusses and analyses such apparently diverse issues as the ontology underlying the semantics of language, speech act theory, intensionality phenomena, the machinery and ecology of language, sentential and lexical meaning, the natural logic of language and cognition, and the intrinsically context-sensitive nature of language - and shows them to be intimately linked. Throughout his ambitious enterprise, he maintains a constant dialogue with established views, reflecting on their development from Ancient Greece to the present. The resulting synthesis concerns central aspects of research and theory in linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science.

Abstract

The present paper is part of a large research programme investigating the nature and properties of the predicate logic inherent in natural language. The general hypothesis is that natural speakers start off with a basic-natural logic, based on natural cognitive functions, including the basic-natural way of dealing with plural objects. As culture spreads, functional pressure leads to greater generalization and mathematical correctness, yielding ever more refined systems until the apogee of standard modern predicate logic. Four systems of predicate calculus are considered: Basic-Natural Predicate Calculus (BNPC), Aritsotelian-Abelardian Predicate Calculus (AAPC), Aritsotelian-Boethian Predicate Calculus (ABPC), also known as the classic Square of Opposition, and Standard Modern Predicate Calculus (SMPC). (ABPC is logically faulty owing to its Undue Existential Import (UEI), but that fault is repaired by the addition of a presuppositional component to the logic.) All four systems are checked against seven natural logical intuitions. It appears that BNPC scores best (five out of seven), followed by ABPC (three out of seven). AAPC and SMPC finish ex aequo with two out of seven.

Abstract

The article concentrates on the question of the composition, the internal ordering and the placement of clitic-clusters (C-clusters) in French and Italian, though clitic data from other languages are drawn in occasionally. The system proposed is top-down transformational, in the terms of Semantic Syntax (Seuren, Blackwell, 1996). Clitics are taken to originate in underlying structure as canonical argument terms or adverbial constituents of clauses. During the process of transformation from semantic to surface form, nonfocus, nonsubject, pronominal argument terms are assigned values for the features of animacy ([±an]), dative status ([±dat]) and reflexivity ([±refl]). On the basis of these, the rule feature cm, inducing clitic movement, is assigned or withheld. Plus-values increase, and minus-values reduce, the “semantic weight” of the clitics in question. Pronouns without the feature cm are not cliticised and stay in their canonical term position in their full phonological form. Pronouns with the feature cm are attached to the nearest verb form giving rise to clitic clusters, which accounts for the composition of well-formed C-clusters. The attachment of clitics to a cluster occurs in a fixed order, which accounts for the ordering of clitics in well-formed clusters. Branching directionality, together with a theory of complementation, accounts for the placement of C-clusters. Clitics often take on a reduced phonological form. It is argued that, in French and Italian, which are languages with a right-branching syntax and a left-branching flectional morphology, postverbal clitics, or enclitics, are part of left-branching structures and hence fit naturally into the morphology. They are best categorised as affixes. Occasionally, as in Italian glielo, dative clitics (e.g., gli) turn preceding lighter clitics (e.g., lo) into affixes, resulting in the left-branching structure glielo, where -lo is an affix. In a brief Intermezzo, instances are shown of the irregular but revealing lui-le-lui phenomenon in French, and its much less frequent analog in Italian. On these assumptions, supported by the official orthographies, the clitic systems of French and Italian largely coincide. This new analysis of the facts in question invites further reflection on the interface between syntax and morphology. The final section deals with reflexive clitics. There, the system begins to be unable to account for the observed facts. At this end, therefore, the system is allowed to remain fraying, till further research brings greater clarity.

Abstract

Ever since the category of evidentiality has been identified in the verbal grammar of certain languages, it has been assumed that evidentiality plays no role in the grammars of those languages that have not incorporated it into their verb morphology or at least their verb clusters. The present paper attempts to show that even if evidentiality is not visible in the verbal grammar of English and Dutch, it appears to be a motivating factor, both historically and synchronically, in the process whereby evidential predicates are made to play a subordinate syntactic role with regard to their embedded subject clause. This process, known as AUXILIATION (Kuteva 2001), appears to manifest itself in a variety of, often successive, grammatical processes or rules, such as Subject-to-Subject Raising (the subject of the embedded clause becomes the subject of the main verb, as in John is likely to be late), V-ING (as in The man stopped breathing), Incorporation-by-Lowering (the evidential main verb is lowered on to the V-constituent of the embedded subject clause, as in John may have left), or Incorporation-by-Raising (also known as Predicate Raising), not or hardly attested in English but dominant in Dutch. A list is provided of those English (and Dutch) predicates that induce one of the above-mentioned auxiliation rules and it is checked how many of those have an evidential meaning. This is set off against evidential predicates that do not induce an auxiliation rule. It results that, for English and Dutch, lexical evidentiality is a powerful determinant for the induction of syntactic auxiliation.