Words, Worlds, and Contexts: New Approaches in Word Semantics [Reprint 2015 ed.] 9783110842524, 9783110085044

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Words, Worlds, and Contexts

Research in Text Theory Untersuchungen zur Texttheorie Editor János S. Petöfi, Bielefeld Advisory Board Irena Bellert, Montreal Maria-Elisabeth Conte, Pavia Teun A. van Dijk, Amsterdam Wolfgang U. Dressler, Wien Peter Hartmann, Konstanz Robert E. Longacre, Dallas Roland Posner, Berlin Hannes Rieser, Bielefeld Volume 6

w DE

G Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York 1981

Words,Worlds, and Contexts New Approaches in Word Semantics Edited by Hans-Jürgen Eikmeyer and Hannes Rieser

w DE

G Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York 1981

CIP-Kurztitelaufnahme

der Deutschen

Bibliothek

Words, worlds, and contexts : new approaches in word semantics / ed. by Hans-Jürgen Eikmeyer and Hannes Rieser. — Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter, 1981. (Research in text theory ; Vol. 6) ISBN 3-11-008504-6 N E : Eikmeyer, Hans-Jürgen [Hrsg.]; GT

© Copyright 1981 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., vormals G.J. Göschen'sche Verlagshandlung — J. Guttentag, Verlagsbuchhandlung — Georg Reimer — Karl J. Trübner — Veit & Comp., Berlin 30. Printed in Germany Alle Rechte des Nachdrucks, der photomechanischen Wiedergabe, der Herstellung von Photokopien — auch auszugsweise — vorbehalten. Satz und Druck: Arthur Collignon GmbH, Berlin Bindearbeiten: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin

Editors' Preface When we thought about editing a volume on word semantics more than three years ago, our main motivation was to provide an overview representing some of the most salient developments in this field. On the one hand we wanted to show that theories concerning word semantics are developed in neighbouring fields of linguistics such as philosophical logic, language philosophy and artificial intelligence which already have led to well-established traditions and which can be used in linguistics proper. Examples are provided by possible world semantics, work in the tradition of Cresswell's λ-categorial languages or by context theories. On the other hand there was — and still is — a tendency to rediscover, carry on, reinterpret or reconstruct fundamental assumptions of structural word semantics. Sometimes these endeavours are paired with the analysis of huge material or with the set-up of task-oriented lexicons. Most of these investigations, whether they are more on the formal or more on the heuristic side, show a growing awareness for concepts and techniques developed within philosophical logic and language philosophy. Last not least, entirely new theories and concepts come up, promising that if word semantics is developed under their auspices new insights and results might ensue. In this respect, fields as different as catastrophe theory and conversational analysis have to be mentioned. We also think that our aims could be realized to a considerable extent by the present volume which covers large scale investigations in word semantics as well as the analysis of particular, more narrowly defined problems. Besides that, it contains a broad spectrum of theoretical approaches to word semantics ranging from structuralistic semantics to possible world semantics, context theory, frame theory, text linguistics and conversational analysis. We tried to evaluate and to compare all of them in our Introduction to the present volume and hope that this may be of some help for the students in the field. We want to express our gratitude to all the contributors for their cooperation, especially to those who kept the very first deadline. Although we did all we could to speed the whole endeavour up, we nevertheless want to apologize to them for the huge delay. Our editorial work was carried out in two research projects of the Universitätsschwerpunkt Mathematisierung der Einzelwissenschaften at Bielefeld University, Vagheitstheorie and Kontexttheorie. Most of the contributors to this volume gave talks about their theories concerning word semantics in one or the other of the projects. Our interest in word semantics has profited considerably from the Bielefeld tradition in semantics, lexicology, and interdisciplinary research as well as from the cooperative spirit at the Fakultät für Linguistik and Literaturwissenschaft.

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Editors' Preface

A few words should be said concerning the style and the wording of the manuscripts, perhaps. Most of the contributors are not native English speakers. Therefore we consider their essays as being written in Linguish, a language related to real English as Twin Earth is to Earth. Linguish may, however, closely resemble English, it may even almost look like English etc. In short, we left most of the wording as it was, since we belong to the ever growing community of Linguish speakers (someone even calls them "linguologists") as well. All we could have done, therefore, would have been to translate seemingly outlandish parts of manuscripts into our own native dialect of Linguish. Since many of the manuscripts contain a fair amount of formalism, we want to express our thanks to the secretaries who had to do the typing. Doubtlessly, in some Brechtian sense, they have contributed a lot to the completion of the present volume. For the time being, we regard contributors who did their own typing as their own secretaries in order to bestow upon them a double share of acknowledgemental praise. Finally, we feel very much obliged to the de Gruyter Verlag, especially to Mrs. Rade, for the excellent cooperation in organisational and editorial matters. Bielefeld, January 1981

Hans-Jürgen Eikmeyer Hannes Rieser

Table of Contents Preface

V

H.-J. Eikmeyer, H. Rieser Word Semantics from Different Points of View. An Introduction to the present volume

1

Chapter I: Possible Worlds M. J. Cresswell Adverbs of Causation

21

A. Kratzer The Notional Category of Modality

38

P. Lutzeier Words and Worlds

75

E. König The Meaning of Scalar Particles in German

107

H.-J. Eikmeyer, H. Rieser Meanings, Intensions, and Stereotypes. A New Approach to Linguistic Semantics 133 M. Grabski Quotations as Indexicals and Demonstratives

151

J. C. Bigelow Truth and Universals

168

Chapter II: Meaning Spaces B. Rieger Feasible Fuzzy Semantics. On some Problems of how to handle Word Meaning Empirically 193 J. Ballweg, H. Frosch Formal Semantics for the Progressive of Stative and Non-Stative Verbs 210

VIII

Table of Contents

J. Ballweg Simple Present Tense and Progressive Periphrases in German

222

W. Wildgen Archetypal Dynamics in Word Semantics: An Application of Catastrophe Theory 234 T. Ballmer, W. Brennenstuhl An Empirical Approach to Frametheory: Verb Thesaurus Organization 297 D. Metzing Frame Representation and Lexical Semantics

320

F. Neubauer, J. S. Petöfi Word Semantics, Lexicon Systems, and Text Interpretation

343

Chapter III: Semantic Fields and their Extensions H. Geckeler Structural Semantics

381

T. Ballmer, W. Brennenstuhl Lexical Analysis and Language Theory

414

A. Ballweg-Schramm Some Comments on Lexical Fields and their Use in Lexicography . . . . 462 M. Pinkal Some Semantic and Pragmatic Properties of German glauben

469

W. J. Edmondson Illocutionary Verbs, Illocutionary Acts, and Conversational Behaviour 485 W. Kindt Word Semantics and Conversational Analysis

500

Index

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H. J . EIKMEYER AND H. RIESER

Word Semantics from Different Points of View. An Introduction to the Present Volume

I. Possible

Worlds

Possible worlds have turned out to be useful in the semantics of modal logics and other logical systems. In a strictly logical context like the semantics of formal or artificial languages, they may well be taken as primitive unanalysed objects: a set of possible worlds with respect to which all calculations of meanings are carried out is then simply postulated. Nevertheless logicians also tried to explain their intuitions as regards the concept of possible world, they did not justify it ëxclusively by its fruitful application. As soon as philosophical logics and logical grammars paved the way for a logically based semantics of natural languages, linguists and logicians became more and more aware of the need for a linguistic motivation of the concepts used. The suggestion that linguists should not just resort to an ontological framework implied by some system of philosophical logic is made in various contributions to this volume. Thus e.g. Lutzeier tries to align the kind of possible worlds used in his approach with the ontological assumptions of natural language speakers. A proposal as to how worlds meeting the requirements of speakers, contexts, relevancy criteria etc. can be introduced is made in the article by Eikmeyer and Rieser. Ballmer and Brennenstuhl demonstrate how the ontological commitments of speakers can be analysed within their approach; assumptions concerning this point may be found in the papers of Grabski and Pinkal as well. Bigelow's contribution offers a reconstruction of possible worlds inspired by an extensionalist view of a theory of truth. The general aim of the more recent works of Max Cresswell is the construction of a comprehensive semantic framework. He regards word semantics as a legitimate part of this program, because the general framework can be justified only by applying it to actual sentences and hence to actual words of natural language. His contribution Adverbs of Causation is carried out within the theory of λ-categorial languages. Cresswell uses an analysis of causation proposed by David Lewis and starts from the hypothesis that if this analysis is sound it can be applied to the semantics of a large class of adverbs. The category of adverbs is that of predicate modifiers. Lewis' analysis of causation by means of a similarity relation between worlds quickly yields a semantics for

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relatively straightforward causal adverbs as e. g. fatally. This semantics can be carried over to adverbs tied up with perception such as e.g. audibly. The analysis proposed for these adverbs rests upon the notion of a perceptual alternative to a possible world i. e. a possible world which "is a way the world could be" as far as a person's perceptions are concerned. The semantics of audibly makes a sentence Fred sings audibly true just in case one person actually hears the singer. So no singing is audible unless someone is actually there to hear it. Another class of adverbs treated by Cresswell are perceptual adverbs which admit degrees as e. g. loudly. They are described by incorporating the concept of a degree of comparison — originally made up for the semantics of certain adjectives by Cresswell — and, if necessary, some Bigelow-style context theory. These techniques seem to be sufficient for the analysis of some other classes of adverbs mentioned by the author, too. A central problem for every semantic theory treating adjectives and adverbs is relating the semantics of an adverb to the semantics of the corresponding adjective. Cresswell observes that one can distinguish different types of adverbs with respect to the strength of their connection with the corresponding adjective. Therefore the meaning of the English morpheme -ly cannot be found out by simply comparing the semantics of adverbs and adjectives. Another problem present those adverbs of causation which do not seem to modify the predicate they are (syntactically) applied to, but some associated predicate. This "associative" sense of adverbs, however, can be modelled by adding a suitable operator to the λ-categorial language. Angelika Kratzer investigates in her contribution The Notional Category of Modality modal expressions of German. She wants to answer the following three questions: What is the logical nature of the many interpretations a modal expression can receive in different utterance situations? What is their variety due to? How is this variety restricted by the vocabulary of German itself? In answering these questions special attention is paid to the fact that natural languages have means to express degrees of possibilities and comparisons among them. The central concept of Kratzer's approach are so-called conversational backgrounds. Conversational backgrounds are context-dependent entities which may be referred to as 'what is known in a context' and contribute e. g. premises for conclusions (compare the notion background as used by Eikmeyer and Rieser in their article). This concept is reconstructed in a possible world framework which allows for the formulation of modal relations and a classification of conversational backgrounds. Angelika Kratzer demonstrates that two conversational backgrounds cooperate in determining possible worlds accessible to a given world: the first background forms a modal base which determines the accessible worlds, the second functions as an ordering source by inducing an ordering on these worlds. This cooperation of modal bases and ordering sources yields the

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3

variety of modal expressions in natural languages. Modal expressions of German can be classified according to three parameters: a modal relation, conditions for the modal base and conditions for the ordering source. However, the proposed analysis of modality is not tailormade for modal expressions only. It has obvious connections to practical inferences as well as to conditionals. According to Angelika Kratzer's observations the latter involve modals in an explicit or implicit way. Her framework allows for a treatment of material implications, strict implications and counterfactuals. Furthermore it may be used for avoiding some deontic paradoxes. Peter Lutzeier's article Words and Worlds starts from the hypothesis that sentence semantics and word semantics are connected via the "principle of meaning-composition". He then attempts to justify the use of possible worlds in word semantics by the following line of argumentation: According to the principle of meaning-composition the meaning of sentences is ultimately built up from the meaning of words. If we accept the idea that the meaning of sentences is dependent on entities called "possible worlds", we are quite naturally led to the conclusion that possible worlds should be used if we want to analyse the meanings of words. In this connection Peter Lutzeier suggests that linguists should find out which sorts of possible worlds are needed to yield a semantic analysis of different words. The worlds chosen should allow for a representation of the ontological assumptions speakers of a natural language subscribe to. He then discusses three sorts of possible worlds and shows how they can be used for describing a fragment of German containing e. g. counterfactuals related to the past or to the future and even more complicated constructions tied up with fictional entities. Subsequently he describes two different attitudes to possible worlds and provides arguments for a so-called "internal view". Afterwards he introduces possible worlds by some kind of implicit definition and points out that the introduction proposed is motivated by basic intuitions concerning the semantics of fragments of German. The notational tools used in connection with possible worlds are explained with reference to German examples as well. The resulting machinery is applied to an analysis of möglicherweise and wissen, daß. It is demonstrated then that the semantic analysis of local relations like in and vor calls for an extension of the framework. Peter Lutzeier shows however, that even difficult notions needed in the analysis of local expressions like the speaker's point of view, the front of an object, the relevant part of an object etc. can be accomodated in a fairly rigid way, and, what is of still greater importance for linguists perhaps, he succeeds in capturing and reconstructing the fabric of linguistic intuitions under discussion. Ekkehard König's contribution to this volume, The Meaning of Scalar Particles in German, shows how λ-categorial languages can be used in semantic analysis. He proposes a general schema for the semantic description of a very difficult part of the German lexicon, the so-called scalar particles, which inter alia comprise words like auch, sogar, nur and erst. One of the guiding heuristic

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principles used in his paper is that all scalar particles can be analysed in terms of a few semantic distinctions or parameters. This intuition is first captured by fixing the semantic type of scalar particles. The semantic type in turn can be used to explain how some of the particles are related to one another and why they yield something like a semantic field. Like other articles in this volume this paper serves as an example showing how the idea of lexical or semantic fields can be put into practice by use of philosophical logic. Another important heuristic principle advocated by Ekkehard König, which can easily be transferred to many other parts of the lexicon of a natural language is: "Attribute as little as possible to the meaning of a scalar particle and as much as possible to the context". Several examples are introduced which clearly show that the semantic contributions scalar particles make to the meaning of utterances are highly context-dependent. Hence, so the argument goes, it would be misleading and even counter-intuitive to overload the semantics of those particles with meaning provided by the context. Another working hypothesis put forward is that the particles do not contribute anything to the truth conditions of sentences. Following L. Karttunen and others, König proposes to characterize the contribution they make to the meaning of a sentence by the Gricean notion of conventional implicature. On the one hand the paper shows that the notions of λ-categorial languages, of their syntax as well as their semantics, i. e. concepts like variable, operator, scope, binding and denotation, provide a useful tool for the analysis of the particles, on the other hand it demonstrates how Fregean and Gricean semantics can be combined to yield results which cover a broad range of linguistic intuitions. This is something we wanted to demonstrate paradigmatically by the papers in this collection: Linguists need not stick to doing either one style of semantics or the other, they simply should combine and vary approaches until the tool developed can capture the empirical regularities found out. In our own contribution, Meanings, Intensions, and Stereotypes. A New Approach to Linguistic Semantics we try to argue for a new concept of linguistic meaning and, still more important from our point of view, for a dynamic semantic theory. We let linguistic meanings consist of intensions and stereotypes. We thus try to combine two traditions, the tradition of intensional analysis as it has been advocated by D. Lewis, M. Cresswell and others, and the semantic analysis proposed by H. Putnam, and in somewhat different shape, by P. Achinstein and G. Harman. The philosophers mentioned last drew our attention to the properties of word meanings which are closely connected with our beliefs about how things are. We call these beliefs stereotypes. They cannot be reconstructed within pure possible world approaches, since there is no way to fix them via simple truth conditions. We think that these hypotheses, taken together with E. König's proposal concerning the meaning of particles and the assumptions concerning verb models and denotations made in Ballmer and Brennenstuhl's Lexical Analysis and Language Theory show that there is a growing awareness about both the advantages and limits inherent

Word Semantics from Different Points of View

5

in the more or less classical approaches of philosophically oriented semantic analysis. Intensions and stereotypes are subject to the principle of the division of linguistic labour. They depend on a group of speakers making up a speech community, on contexts accessible for speakers, and admissible backgrounds. Contexts are conceived of holistically as models of real-world situations. Backgrounds approximate the theories speakers have developed during their socialization. They range from bodies of commonsense knowledge to sets of sophisticated hypotheses about the world. Accessibility of contexts and availability of backgrounds may vary from speaker to speaker. The fact that contexts and backgrounds may be more or less efficient or more or less powerful is modelled by two relations which impose an ordering upon the set of contexts and the set of backgrounds respectively. Among contexts there exists a relation is-more-specialized-than, the set of admissible backgrounds receives a similar structure. Changes of contexts are brought about by operators depending on speakers. They reflect meta-communicative means. We use context changes mainly in ordef to provide a semantic interpretation of vague expressions. Thus, context changes are regarded as necessary conditions for making vague expressions more precise, or, the other way round, of making expressions more vague. The dynamic momentum of this approach is inter alia based upon the principle of the division of linguistic labour, upon the notion of context change, and upon the new concept of meaning. This new concept of meaning shows some similarity to current frame conceptions (see the contributions of Ballmer and Brennenstuhl and the paper by D. Metzing), but it is more akin to the style of intensional analysis as it has been developed by M. Cresswell and others. Michael Grabski's contribution Quotations as Indexicals and Demonstratives represents an informal approach to the semantics of quotations. His work is meant to pave the way for a formal semantics which will make use of the double-indexing technique. This technique (made up e. g. for avoiding counterintuitive results originating from the application of the rule of necessitation if a truth predicate or indexical expressions are involved) separates contexts from possible worlds (or circumstances of evaluation). David Kaplan used it in order to distinguish two notions of meaning, namely content and character. Whereas contents are very similar to intensions, characters are functions from expressions, dependent on contexts, into contents. Directly referential expressions are designated by having a fixed content but not necessarily a fixed character. The author distinguishes the mention use of quotations from the use-use. In the mention use quotations refer to syntactical entities, in the use-use they may refer to non-syntactical ones. Michael Grabski concludes from his investigations that quotations of the mention use type are directly referential expressions with either the referential properties of a proper noun (i. e. with fixed character) or a demonstrative (i. e.

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with variable character). Moreover quotations of this type produce a 'textlinguistic effect' in analogy to anaphoric pronouns. Quotations of the use-use type, however, are not necessarily directly referential. But these quotations leave a directly referential property of the quoted expressions unchanged. In addition "they modify the character of the quoted expression dependent on a gesture of demonstration". Finally the author relates mention use type quotations to direct speech. Both constructions are very similar at first glance. However, it turns out that in direct speech the matrix sentence describes the context for the interpretation of the quoted expression, thus the context is not only determined by the quoted expression itself. John C. Bigelow offers in his article Truth and Universals a semantics for λ-categorial languages where possible worlds are not primitive but constructed from propositions. Propositions in turn are made up in an extensionalistic way which amounts to a rephrasing of Russell's theory of truth laid down in "The Problems of Philosophy". Propositions in the author's sense are pairs of a partial characteristic function R and a sequence σ of things. A proposition (R, σ) is true if R(o) = 1 and false if R(o) = O. Since R is partial it need not be defined for all sequences σ. As to coextensive predicates and iterations, there obviously arise familiar problems with such an extensionalistic view. Bigelow solves the problem of coextensive predicates by a technique he calls lexical decomposition. Iterations are treated by distinguishing sense and reference of expressions and letting a substructure contribute only its reference to the proposition expressed by the larger structure. After the construction of his semantical system Bigelow shows its use for λ-categorial languages with a θ-operator for opaque contexts. Any expression of such a language is associated in a recursive way with a sense and a reference. Senses are propositional functions which are derived from propositions by an abstraction technique. References are then the extensions of senses, i. e. sets of things senses map onto true propositions. The sense of θ-terms is defined such that their reference is the sense of the embedded structures. These definitions guarantee that senses of sentences are one-place propositional functions with a free argument place for indices (contexts, points of reference), which — in contrast to many other proposals — do not have a coordinate for possible worlds. The references of sentences are consequently sets of indices, called propositional contents. Using these techniques, Bigelow is able to solve some open problems such as that of logically equivalent sentences differing in meaning, problems arising with quantifying into belief contexts and the problem of how to discriminate contingently and necessarily coextensive predicates. Nevertheless, opacity over synonymous embedded sentences remains as an open problem. He is confident to solve this, however, by supervaluation techniques. Finally Bigelow offers a treatment of modality where he reconstructs possible worlds as maximal consistent sets of propositions. According to his

Word Semantics from Different Points of View

7

view, they can be looked upon as being different arrangements of the actual world. II. Meaning Spaces Several contributions in this volume are concerned with the set-up of adequate meaning spaces in order to account for the meanings of words and the semantic relations holding among them. Every approach represented argues for some sort of structure with which we can identify meanings and relations among meanings. The answers as to which structure is to be considered most adequate, most intuitive etc. differ, of course. They differ in their methodological assumption, in their terminology, the descriptive tools chosen, and in their hypotheses as regards the nature of entities which may be indentified with meaning spaces. Burghard B. Rieger uses in his Feasible Fuzzy Sets. On some problems of how to handle word meaning empirically the methods of statistical text analysis and the notational machinery of fuzzy set theory to analyze and represent word meanings. As can be seen from comparison of his paper with the article written by H. Geckeler, Rieger starts from a structuralist point of view as far as his ideas concerning the properties of meaning spaces are concerned. But in opposition to classical semantic structuralism, he proposes to set up meaning spaces by using advanced empirical and formal methods. Thus he wants to combine the intuitive insights of structural semantics with the modelling techniques used in empirical science and the consistency of formal methods. Since he is convinced that semantic investigations should start from the communicative properties of discourse, he uses a set of discourses belonging to the same register as a database. In his opinion, empirical investigations concerning the intensities of co-occurring terms, the difference of their usage, and their topological environments should be carried out. He thinks that semanticians should not rely exclusively on the introspective exploration of their linguistic knowledge. B. Rieger uses L.A. Zadeh's meaning representation system PRÜF to account for the vagueness phenomena connected with word meanings. The notational apparatus of PRÜF is re-interpreted in the light of the empirical methods mentioned above. Whereas B. Rieger's problem is getting empirically correct starting values for the calculation of meanings in some existing logical machinery, J. Ballweg and H. Frosch want to modify and generalize a traditional logical calculus in order to develop a treatment for predicates of change. In their paper Formal Semantics for the Progressive of Stative and Non-Stative Verbs they argue that a semantics for expressions such as e. g. to fall asleep has to incorporate a flow of time. Furthermore, in their system, sentences are to be evaluated at time intervals, not at time points. This allows for distinguishing stative verbs from

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verbs of change. Since sentences with the latter class of verbs leave it open whether the state resulting from a change is really reached, the concept of a change's degree of realization is needed. Talk about degrees soon suggests the use of fuzzy logic. But as regards this type of logic, the authors subscribe to quite a different view than B. Rieger: they demonstrate some shortcomings of fuzzy logic connectives which, in their opinion, render such an approach inadequate. According to them, the main reason for the inadequacy of a fuzzy logic approach arises from the fact, that in such a system the concept of degree has logical status, i. e. it is carried over into calculations of complex formulas. Ballweg and Frosch's solution treats degrees as values on general ordinal scales. Starting from a reflexive, transitive and connected relation >p 'is more of a Ρ than' they show how such a scale can be made up for every one-place predicate P. On these scales one value is designated as a threshold value Xp where objects with value greater than tp are Ps. Taking into consideration that all valuations have to be made time-dependent, the authors finally define a formal language TP1 and its semantics which allow for the treatment of expressions such as e. g. fall asleep, falling asleep, sleeping and the like. The models for TP 1 are characterized by a designated interval, the speech interval, where all calculations are carried out. Degrees enter into the calculation of truth values for complex formulas only indirectly, i. e. via the truth conditions for atomic formulas and some operators. They are not passed on by connectives. The language TP1 is extended in the article Simple Present Tense and Progressive Periphrases in German by J. Ballweg. Subsequent to the definition of a language TP 2 containing a present tense operator, he discusses various proposals for the semantics of such an operator. Although there are many different uses of the present tense in German, all of them can be treated uniformly by taking three time intervals into account: the interval of the event, a reference interval and a speech interval. The reference interval is either provided by the context or taken as overlapping the speech interval by default. In the formal semantics for TP 2 this is achieved by a family of models which differ from a model for TP 1 only in having different designated intervals where the expressions are evaluated, namely the reference interval. The formulas of TP2 can now be related to actual German sentences. Moreover, the formal language expressions allow exactly those inferences accepted as valid for their natural language counterparts by natural speakers of German. In this connection J. Ballweg can account for the fact that people infer X schläft from X schläft ein by treating double-indexed models for TP 2. He can even prove a metatheorem which so to speak explains the readiness of speakers for such inferences. Wolfgang Wildgen's approach differs considerably from the logic-oriented track taken in the last three papers. In his contribution Archetypal Dynamics in Word Semantics: An Application of Catastrophe Theory ,he combines results from the mathematical field of differential topology on the one hand with those from the fields of psychology and neuro-physiology to gain insight into

Word Semantics from Different Points of View

9

some problems of word semantics. The author starts from the assumption that semantic phenomena can be explained using the structure of human perception and the organization of human memory. He cites results from research on the perception of processes, objects and quality which allow for the formulation of some crucial problems for word semantics. Among them are the description of events, colour terms and gradable adjectives. The mathematical formalism of catastrophe theory is introduced in the next step. This theory provides facilities for talking about such concepts as stability and catastrophe in a precise way. Here the term 'catastrophe' refers to a mathematical construct modelling natural catastrophes where continuous and slow processes cause a sudden dramatic effect. The mathematical results of catastrophe theory cannot be applied directly to word semantics. Nevertheless, this theory and its results may serve as a descriptive tool for word semantics: A finite list of elementary process types can be derived from the finite mathematical classification of the elementary catastrophes. A subsequent interpretation of these types according to certain principles stated by the author then yields so-called semantic archetypes. With these at hand, one can finally use the mathematical results in word semantics in an indirect way. This indirect application is demonstrated by W. Wildgen for the crucial problems stated earlier. He uses the semantic archetypes for a classification of verbs as well as for the description of the rôles nomináis play in a propositional frame. Older results in the fields of word semantics and lexicology can be reconfirmed by this method. It has clearly advantages to traditional ones in that it avoids recourse to arbitrarily chosen class labels for verbs (such as e.g. stative and non-stative) as well as recourse to distributional and/or syntactic features of nomináis in sentences. A natural continuation of these results will be — as forecasted by the author — a dynamical theory of lexical fields. Consequently obvious connections of this contribution to those in the third part of this volume become apparent. But W. Wildgen notes also an unsolved problem in the application of catastrophe theory to word semantics: aspects of the combination of meanings cannot be handled due to the present lack of a perspicious mathematical classification of non-elementary catastrophes. At the present time one can only hope for future progress of mathematics in this field. During the last years frame conceptions have become rather popular devices used in different language-related disciplines to model procedures connected with cognition, perception and verbal or non-verbal interaction. If we look at frame conceptions from a more theoretical point of view, we notice at least three interrelated problems at first sight: Which discovery procedures yield frames? How can frames be delimited and how many are of them? Which relations exist among frames? On second thought even more intricate questions might ensue: Are some frames to be considered more basic than others? Is there a certain number of basic frames which might be used for the purpose of reduction? Can frames be combined to form larger units, super-

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frames, macrostructures or what not? Are there types of internal structures which can be used to arrive at a typology of frames? Although the last question is probably among the most important for linguists, more metaphysically oriented people might even venture the question whether the frame of all frames exists. Since current frame literature does not contain much information providing an answer to these questions, it is no surprise that Ballmer and Brennenstuhl can start their paper An Empirical Approach to Frame Theory: Verb Thesaurus Organization with the observation that a coherent research program aiming at a systematic and empirical investigation of frames is needed. Their article is intended as a first step in this direction. They try to give a linguistic base for frame theory and consider the lexicon of a natural language as an ideal starting point for setting up frames. Frame theory in turn should provide the fundamentals for a thorough analysis of context structures. As far as we have been able to scan the literature in the field, the idea of connecting frames (viewed as cognitive entities) with the structure of natural language léxica and the set-up of contexts (regarded as perceptual and interactional units) is quite new and seems to be promising or at least inspiring. To add some plausibility to their claim, Ballmer and Brennenstuhl first develop the lexical analysis they favour in considerable detail. The goal of the lexical analysis proposed is to achieve a semantic structuring of the whole "verb thesaurus" (as they call the verb lexicon) of German. Roughly, they proceed as follows: Verbs (with their case rôles) are collected into categories, categories in turn are incorporated into models, models are arranged into model groups and, finally, model groups are combined to model systems. The examples they provide show that each verb in a category can be paraphrased quite naturally by using the title verb of the category and some additional expressions (which do not contain verbs). The same holds true of the categories grouped together into models by a so-called presupposition relation. The paraphrases indicate that the whole verb thesaurus can be reduced to a set of basic verbs which in turn cannot be decomposed into other verbs without subscribing to rather special ontological assumptions. In order to group categories into models, two semantic relations are used: meaning adjacency (i.e. meaning similarity) and presupposition. These relations provide the basis for setting up model groups and, finally, the model system. The model system is the ultimate goal of the heuristic procedure, since it serves as a precondition for collecting all the verbs considered into a few large categories. The resulting typology of verbs is a well-motivated alternative to the traditional partition into state verbs, process verbs, and action verbs. Besides giving a description of the heuristic method, the article under discussion reports about research carried out with respect to the empirical validation of the thesaurus structure arrived at. Ballmer and Brennenstuhl first tried to record minutely the notions used in the heuristic investigations. We already mentioned two of them: meaning adjacency and presupposition. Some of the more extravagant are, e. g. prototypicality of verb meanings, prototypic-

Word Semantics from Different Points of View

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ality of situations, and homogeneity of verb groups. Subsequently, they checked on the one hand, whether other language users were able to apply these notions successfully, on the other hand they tried to get a post festum justification of the thesaurus structure by a series of rather involved indirect tests. In the final section of their paper the authors try to answer the question which relations in fact exist between the thesaurus structure established and frames. As could be expected, they consider the verb models set-up as procedural frames. These are then called model frames. The model frames are taken to form the basis of all other procedural frames, even of very complex ones. Because of the modelling strategy used for establishing verb models, above all the method of paraphrasing, model frames meet the desired condition of decomposeability and reduceability into more fundamental units. The verb thesaurus structure is regarded as a master frame which captures relevant aspects of linguistic and many other processes. Subsequently, Ballmer and Brennenstuhl indicate how the master frame can be applied in obtaining an analysis of the well-known restaurant frame. They conclude their article by suggesting how their approach might be applied by scholars and scientists concerned with the meaning of words. As indicated by the title, Frame Representations and Lexical Semantics, D. Metzing treats topics quite similar to those discussed by Ballmer and Brennenstuhl. The essays differ considerably in point of view, however: Whereas Ballmer and Brennenstuhl investigate possible foundations for frame theories, D. Metzing explains why the (or at least some) frame conception should be used in word semantics and which properties of frames may be employed to represent semantic relations among lexical items. Since frames were devised to model natural reasoning and the understanding of sentences, utterances or even discourses, the author compares the frame conception with approaches to word semantics subscribing to similar goals (but not necessarily all of them), thus e.g. with J. S. Petöfi's lexical theory, possible world semantics, and stereotype and prototype semantics. Frame semantics is depicted as being less structurally inclined than Petöfian word semantics, and hence more on the side of empirical and formal pragmatics. However, inasmuch as it is not restricted to the use of definitions, meaning postulates and similar devices, it is considerably nearer in spirit to traditional lexicology than possible world semantics ever could be. Although it shares some central intuitions with Putnam's stereotype approach and the kind of prototype semantics developed recently in some branches of cognitive and experimental psychology, it is more concerned about questions related to the set-up of semantic units, their decomposition into still smaller units, matching and insertion procedures and the like than the latter directions of semantic research happen to be. This becomes even clearer if the adequacy conditions for the entities called "lexical frames" are considered: They are understood "as a device to represent lexical items in terms of speaker-dependent constructs", where emphasis is put on "'speaker-dependent'". Lexical frames should

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correspond to the intuition of natural language speakers, provide a sound basis for the definition of terms and approximate aspects of common sense reasoning, including such phenomena as shifts of focus, relevance, perspective, emphasis etc. H o w these aims may be put into practice is demonstrated by several examples, using mainly common nouns. D. Metzing's final suggestion is that on the one hand central topics of structural word semantics should be studied by using the frame concept, and that on the other hand frame semantics could profit from discussions going on within philosophical logic, concerning e.g. descriptions, names, and natural kinds. Finally, the author briefly indicates how frame semantics could provide some interesting solutions for old puzzles. In their essay Word Semantics, Lexicon Systems, and Text Interpretation F. Neubauer and J. S. Petöfi develop a lexicon system that is integrated into a framework to be used for text analysis and text interpretation. This rather ambitious aim determines the amount of linguistic and encyclopaedic knowledge that has to go into the lexicon system. It consists of three types of léxica, the lexicon of the canonical language (i.e. a regimented part of a natural language or a formal language), léxica which map natural language elements onto units of the canonical language and finally, léxica which translate canonical-language units into natural language expressions. Since the basic tools used in the various léxica are definitions and explications, their wellformedness has to be given due consideration. Well-formedness with respect to the canonical language is secured by fixing up a system of syntactic categories and specifying the rules which generate expressions of various complexity. As regards the second type of léxica which mediate between natural languages and the canonical language, syntactic information specific to the natural language in question has to be assigned to the explicandum, e. g. information concerning inflectional morphology or the case frame. Many examples are provided which show the consequences of the solutions proposed. Subsequent to the syntactic issues questions of semantic wellformedness are discussed. These questions arise in connection with the expressions used in the canonical language. They are solved by techniques similar to those applied in sortal logics. Since the léxica have to model the preconditions for empirical interpretation processes, difficult problems arise with respect to the structure of the canonical language, e. g. whether primitive units should be used in the definitions, which schema for setting up definitions should be applied and how chains of definitions should best be established. In connection with the semantic structure of the explicantia further empirical issues are discussed. They concern the amount of knowledge to be included in the explicans, the categories to be used for structuring and describing this knowledge and the overall structure of the individual explications. Finally the authors describe how the lexicon system can be used to model interpretation processes. The functional rôle of the lexicon system is based on the close parallel between ex-

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plications in the lexicon and semantic representations constructed in the course of the interpretation process. F. Neubauer's and J. S. Petöfi's contribution may be considered as a methodological alternative to the hypotheses in H . Geckeler's essay and — in some respect — (e.g. as far as the modelling techniques applied are concerned) to the solutions suggested by Th. Ballmer and W. Brennenstuhl.

III. Semantic fields and their extensions. It is well known that there exists a close historical and methodological connection between the theory of semantic fields as it has been developed by J. Trier, L. Weisgerber and others and structural semantics. Structural semantics inherited some of its guiding principles, such as e. g. the idea that the vocabulary of a natural language exhibits some sort of global structure or the hypothesis that the meaning of a word is given by its position in a structured whole, from the theory of semantic fields. It must be stressed, however, that the structural semanticists did a lot to add more plausibility to these ideas and to develop analytical tools which can be used to corroborate these claims. We just want to mention Lyons' theory of sense relations in this connection. It is interesting to note that many scholars, working nowadays in the domain of word semantics, consider themselves as following the tradition of semantic field theory and structural semantics. Some contributors to this volume explicitly refer to it (see the articles by Geckeler or Ballmer and Brennenstuhl), others use the key terms coined by field theoreticians and structural semanticists for purposes of reconstruction, as heuristic tools or simply as terminological devices (see e.g. the contributions by Edmondson, König, Lutzeier, Petöfi, Pinkal, Rieger, or Ballweg-Schramm). Besides text linguistic research, structural semantics in a broader sense can be considered one of the main trends of European, especially of German linguistics since the 1930s. It has survived despite the many mainstream paradigms that have been established since, although it grew quite unpopular during the late 1960s and the early 1970s, as word semantics and lexicology were then in general. In our opinion, the essays grouped together in this section show that the tradition is carried on, modified, extended and made more powerful by the introduction of new semantic distinctions and methodological foundations (see e. g. the article of H . Geckeler) or by the application of new empirical and formal methods as the papers of König, Lutzeier and Wildgen demonstrate. The articles of Edmondson and Pinkal show that the heuristic procedures tied up with structural semantics may with profit be used in handling semantic problems whose discovery is of relatively recent origin. In his paper Structural Semantics Horst Geckeler characterizes one variant (perhaps one of the most lively and active ones) of structural semantics as it has

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been developed by E. Coseriu and his students, including Geckeler himself. This direction of structural semantics, also called the "Tübingen School of Semantics", maintains the hypothesis that word semantics should be regarded as the foundation block of every type of semantics based on a principle of compositionality. (For similar ideas cf. the papers of Lutzeier and Ballmer and Brennenstuhl). The Tübingen School uses "structural" in the sense of "structuring of the content-level by means of functional lexical oppositions". It favours a decompositional approach, i. e. the meanings of lexical elements are analysed into smaller units by meaning-differentiating features. If we compare Tübingen Structural Semantics with other current semantic theories, especially those belonging to philosophical semantics (see e.g. the papers of Bigelow, Cresswell and Kratzer), its most salient feature is its attitude towards the object of semantic investigation itself. The adherents of the Tübingen School try to delimit this object by a series of heuristic principles. These principles, according to Geckeler, have been set up mainly by E. Coseriu. Among other things, the principles demand, e.g. that we should carefully distinguish between linguistic meaning and our knowledge of the world. Other important distinctions adhered to are those between signification and designation, and synchrony and diachrony. Word semantics is carried out within one single descriptive system comprising paradigmatic and syntagmatic structures. Among the paradigmatic structures primary and secondary ones are distinguished. The primary structures include such things as lexical fields and lexical classes. Hence they cover relations existing among the meanings of words. The syntagmatic structures in turn deal with those compositional properties of meanings which have become widely known under Coseriu's label of "lexical solidarities". This direction of structural semantics developed, refined, and investigated several semantic notions which also turned out to be useful within different semantic models and theories, above all, the notions of lexical field and of lexical opposition. One of the most impressing facts of structural semantics (including the Tübingen School) is that its main hypotheses have been used for the description of many and, above all, typologically different languages. How the fundamental ideas of structural semantics can be developed and put into practice in order to describe large portions of the lexicon of one natural language is shown in the following study by Ballmer and Brennenstuhl. In their paper Lexical Analysis and Language Theory Ballmer and Brennenstuhl discuss the rôle lexical analysis should play in grammar and within the theory of language. They first state reasons why linguistic investigations should start at the level of word meaning. The authors try to show that the most prominent of the current approaches to word semantics such as e.g. semantic feature analysis, meaning postulates or semantic interpretation in the style of logical (or more general, philosophical) semantics will not be successful in the long run, since all of them do not investigate large natural language data and usually consider just a few semantic facts. According to their opinion, the

Word Semantics from Different Points of View

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current approaches are restricted to strictly local areas of the vocabulary of a natural language and subscribe usually (either explicitly or implicitly) to some sort of meaning atomism. The narrow range of data analysed, the methodological restrictions sticked to, and the adherence to the few semantic relations sanctioned by linguistic tradition hardly allow for new insights concerning the global structure of the whole vocabulary of a natural language or at least of large parts such as e.g. the verb lexicon or the set of adverbs. -Ballmer and Brennenstuhl are interested in the global structure of parts of the vocabulary as well as in the analysis of local semantic relations (like hyponymy, for example), which however have to be justified by and related to the global structure. As far as we know, the authors are the only linguists who have worked out a fullfledged holistic alternative to the delicate but restricted methods of semantic analysis available so far. They call their approach "Holistic Meaning Analysis". This method is carried out as follows: By making use of a few semantic relations like similarity, dissimilarity, implication and presupposition they assign a structure to a large body of data. In the article under discussion they focussed on the German verb thesaurus, which seems to be the optimal starting point, if empirical and methodological standards are taken into consideration, but they did some pilot studies on German nouns and adverbs as well. If Ballmer and Brennenstuhl's findings are looked upon from the point of view of structural semantics or possible world semantics, the most conspicuous fact is that they develop new semantic notions. Such notions are, e. g. verb categories and verb models of different sorts. A verb category is simply a group of verbs similar in meaning and headed by a title verb, which is, so to speak, prototypically related to every verb of the group. A verb model is the result of grouping together the title verbs of the verb categories with respect to similarity. The ordering of the categories in the verb models provides the central structural unit of the verb thesaurus. The semantic notions developed, above all the title verbs chosen, yield the starting point for a decomposition of arbitraty verbs into basic semantic expressions. Once the global structure of the thesaurus is fixed, so it is argued, meaning decomposition becomes feasible again. The verb models are shown to correlate with a lot of well-known syntactic and semantic facts. They make up the overall structure of the verb thesaurus. Ballmer and Brennenstuhl regard the lexical analysis proposed as the core of a theory of language and not syntactic description as almost anybody else. They demonstrate that the structure of the verb thesaurus (imposed by the verb models) is of central importance for the solution of problems and puzzles in syntax, as well as in semantics and pragmatics. The authors consider their approach as a natural extension of the theory of lexical fields. It allows for new semantic relations like possible consequence, prototypical consequence or intended consequence. All of these seem to be justified from an intuitive point of view. Ballmer and Brennenstuhl regard the verb thesaurus developed as the core of an entire thesaurus of German and as some sort of cognitive frame

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which serves as a kind of master frame for all other procedural frames. Seen from the point of view of cognition and perception, the verb thesaurus is considered to provide the basis for frame construction, frame extension and frame modification. The approach is essentially based on the idea of a context-free lexicon (one taking account of so-called "typical cases"). For an entirely different metaphysical attitude see our article, which, however, necessarily lacks the impressing width of data analysis referred to above. In both their articles, Ballmer and Brennenstuhl argue for a natural classification of their data, using mainly two semantic relations. That matters of classification are still controversial as far as large data are considered, is shown by the article of Angelika Ballweg-Schramm, Some Comments on Lexical Fields and their Use in Lexicography which hopefully will bridge the enormous gap between theoretically oriented structural (and formal) word semantics and lexicology aiming at task-oriented solutions. Angelika Ballweg-Schramm defends the hypothesis that semantic classifications depend on the lexical structure of the vocabulary, the aim of the dictionary to be compiled, and the specific lexicological or lexicographic interests of the compiler. According to her arguments there is no single natural coherent classification. Her definition of the notion of lexical field shows impressively that practical lexicology has not remained untouched by techniques used in formal, especially in philosophical semantics: The items collected into a lexical field have to be related by a common concept, they have to occur essentially in the utterances considered, and between the utterances the lexical items-to-be-related are constituents of the relation of consequence has to exist. Thus A. Ballweg-Schramm intentionally rules out objects like the Ballmer—Brennenstuhl verb models of model frames. The lexical fields set up by her are narrower than verb models and easier to motivate by the traditional semantic relations. This attitude is nearer to the metheodological maxims stated in Geckeler's article than to the principles put forward in the papers of Ballmer and Brennenstuhl or the rules observed in the analyses of Edmondson, Lutzeier, König and Pinkal. Similar to Ballmer and Brennenstuhl, Ballweg-Schramm allows for combinations of lexical fields to so-called higher-order fields. She also discusses an internal structure of lexical fields which is set up using two types of relations between verbs. The present volume contains several papers which show how the semantic analysis of words can be carried out within some particular pre-set framework, see e.g. the contributions by Cresswell, König, Kratzer or Lutzeier. Two essays however, are concerned with discussing the meanings of words on an heuristic level, where the decision which formal theory to choose for representing them is felt to be premature. The first, Some semantic and pragmatic properties of German "glauben", written by M. Pinkal, analyses different uses of the German propositional attitude verb glauben. The second, Illocutionary Verbs, Illocutionary Acts, and Conversational Behaviour is

Word Semantics from Different Points of View

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written by W. J. Edmondson, who investigates the relationship holding between illocutionary verbs, illocutionary acts, and conversational behaviour. M. Pinkal takes account of different syntactic environments of glauben. He considers some of its contexts and the pragmatic principles governing its use. A first result obtained is that variations in the meaning of glauben coincide with variations of its syntactic frame. Because of the alleged variations in meaning, Pinkal distinguishes several types of glauben und two readings for the most conspicuous type, glauben with ¿«^-complement. He then sets out to propose a semantic interpretation for glauben, daß by use of the notion of epistemic states and the concept of subjective probability. This interpretation is then gradually improved, first by taking into consideration conversational maxims and secondly by observing the regular connections obtaining between actions and beliefs. Finally a coherent semantic interpretation is provided for all the types of glauben considered. It turns out that glauben has to be considered "a pretty complex, multilayered semantic entity the different components of which are kept together only by virtue of weak, inductive correlations". The findings of M. Pinkal seem to be quite symptomatic for propositional attitude verbs in general. As far as we can tell, his discussion of the concepts to be used in an adequate formal representation is of general interest for the handling of hyperintensional contexts, literal and non-literal quotations and similar problems. M. Pinkals heuristic analysis of German glauben is implicitly guided by formal semantics, especially by the discussion about vagueness, ambiguity, ambivalence, context-dependence, and subjective probability. The background of W. J. Edmondson's paper is quite different, namely speech act theory and discourse analysis. The fact that both authors refer to maxims of verbal behaviour seems to indicate that topics like these become more and more relevant even for vastly differing approaches to word semantics. Edmondson first establishes a terminological frame. He wants to distinguish between lexical item, the concept evoked by a lexical item, and the denotation of a lexical item. A corresponding distinction is established between lexical field, conceptual '"map"', and segments of reality. The first part of the paper is concerned with performative utterance, where a descriptivist analysis of illocutionary verbs is defended against a performative approach or a mixed theory as the one proposed by Katz. The second chapter deals with the dictinction between illocutionary verbs and illocutionary acts on the one hand, and with the relation between types of speech acts in conversational behaviour and the corresponding conceptual distinctions on the other hand. Edmondson defends the hypothesis that Searle's taxonomy of illocutionary acts is strongly influenced by the speech-act verbs of English. In opposition to the Searlean procedure, Edmondson suggests to develop a set of technical terms for the designation of illocutionary acts. This set should be based on an empirical analysis of speech acts. The idea behind this proposal is that such a set of terms would not fall victim to the arbitrary categorization of reality as it is made

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manifest in the English vocabulary. Subsequently, Edmondson sets up a classification of types of events as they are subjectively perceived by a speaker. He then asks by which English illocutionary verbs these events can be referred to. The following five features are used for classificatory purposes: non-future, speaker or hearer involvement, responsibility, good or bad for either speaker or hearer. The property mentioned last is made up of two features. Every feature may be plus or minus. T o the resulting feature constellations which characterize events, sets of English illocutionary verbs are assigned, if possible. The results obtained are then evaluated and interpreted in terms of social maxims. Some of the approaches in this volume described and compared so far discuss word semantics in relation to more general tasks such as e. g. discourse or context analysis or the set up of frames and inference systems. None of these, however, explicitly deals with the attibution, control and stabilization of word meanings by the participants of conversation. This is done in Walter Kindt's essay Word Semantics and Conversational Analysis. It turns out that his point of view challenges both structural and contextual notions of word semantics. This holds true even for theories regarding word meanings and meaning relations as flexible, fuzzy entities open to modification by contexts and other parameters. W. Kindt proposes ten theses which indicate something like a program with the headline "word semantics-for-conversation". Looked upon from the course ethnomethodological research, above all analysis of naturally occurring conversation, was taking during recent years, such an approach to word semantics was to be expected. Conversationalists and scholars interested in the analysis of natural data developed similar points of view with respect to syntax and, to some lesser extent, with respect to phonetics and phonology. Our own impression is that the analysis of natural data, including dynamic processes, shakes the very foundations of structuralist grammar and its generative or logico-oriented variants, whatever levels are looked at. W. Kindt inter alia calls into question the usually used standard or lexically fixed meanings. He suggests to investigate the meanings resulting from interactions in communication instead. These investigations might, according to his opinion, yield real standard meanings with respect to standard contexts. Standard meanings result, so to speak, from standard presupposition and negotiation procedures in standard contexts. One of the main obstacles of such a theory is the poor state of current context theory. Other interesting hypotheses of Kindt's are: the status of meanings with respect to continuity and discreteness, meaning selection and context-dependent preference relations, liberalizations of the famous (Cresswellian) Frege principle and their empirical justifications, and meaning construction and meaning stabilization procedures under standard and nonstandard conditions. We consider the ten theses presented an Herausforderung to the approaches collected in this volume, even if their consequences with respect to semantic relations, semantic fields, normal lexicology, and the mechanisms of the acquisition of word meanings still remain to be clarified and worked out.

Chapter I : Possible Worlds

M. J. CRESSWELL

Adverbs of Causation 1.

Introduction

Some logicians, and some linguists, too, have appeared to disparage wordsemantics, or at least have described it as lexicography rather than semantics.1 It should be obvious, however, that even if one's aim is the construction of a general framework for semantic theory, such a framework can only be justified if it can be applied to actual sentences of natural language; and that means to actual words of natural language. In some cases it is unnecessary to consider more than a few words in a given class. For instance, if we have an adequate semantics for Arabella, we should not expect to have to agonize over Bramwell, Catherine, Dean, Evangeline, Fred, Guinevere, Howard, Isolde, Jeremy, Kiri, Ludwig, Miriam, Nathaniel, Olga, Percival, Quilla, Ralf, Stephanie, Trevor, Ursula, Vernon, Wilhelmina, Xerxes, Yvonne, or Zane. But one class of words where it does seem necessary to consider many examples is the class of adverbs. Maybe this shows that adverbs do not form a genuine semantic class, but if so, then that gives even more reason for looking at many examples. Semantically, and also syntactically, as far as I can judge, adverbs seem the least understood large class of words in natural language. There have been few studies of their semantics at all, and those that there have been are at least superficially pretty divergent.2 In this paper I want to consider adverbs whose meaning contains a causal element. The formal framework I shall use will be that of what I have called in 1

The distinction is explicitly drawn and defended by Richmond Thomason on p. 48 of his introduction to [16], Bartsch and Venneman in [2, p. 39] separate what they call sentence semantics from word semantics; though their aim is not to disparage word semantics but principally to argue against lexical decomposition. Mostly, I am in thorough agreement with them on this. Word semantics has however been defended by David Dowty in his forthcoming book on that topic.

2

A linguistic account is given by Greenbaum in [10] and in his chapters in [17]. The most sustained "logical" account is given by Bartch [1] who adopts an approach which is in the tradition of Davidson's [9]. Other references will be found in [6, η 5], For the purpose of this study I have tried to select as wide a range as possible, from the lists given in [11], of those adverbs which seem to have a causal semantics. As far as I know causality has not often been a principle for the classification of adverbs, though there is a brief discussion of causative adverbials in [1, pp. 1 0 3 - 1 0 5 ] .

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[4] λ-categorial languages3. For present purposes all we need note is that they are based on a set of syntactic categories which are either basic categories or functor categories. The two basic categories are the category 0 of sentence and 1 of name. An example of a functor category is the category (0,1) of one-place predicate. The notation reveals that a one-place predicate is something which makes a sentence (category 0) out of a name (category 1). Another important category is ( ( 0 , 1 ) , ( 0 , 1 ) ) , the category of predicate modifier. Expressions in this category make more complex predicates out of simpler predicates. There are simple and complex expressions of the various categories and semantic values operate in the obvious function-and-argument way. λ-categorial languages also have an abstraction operator λ. {λ, χ, α) can often be read intuitively as 'is an χ such that a ' . It does, though, have a precise formal semantics. The semantic values for the functor categories depend on the values for expressions in the basic categories. The domain of semantic values for expressions in category σ is called D 0 . If σ is the category (τ, Oj, . . . , σ η ) then D 0 contains functions which have as arguments things in D 0 | , . . ., D0n and have values in D x . The semantic domain D] of the category of names is the class of everything that can be named, which is everything that there is. D 0 is the domain of values for sentences; these values are sometimes called propositions, and it will be one of the purposes of this paper to see how far we can go by treating propositions as sets of pairs of the form ( w , t) where w is a possible world and t is a time-interval. I and others have written elsewhere about the motivation for this notion of proposition. 4 I hope this paper will give even more reasons for the fruitfulness of the notion. It is likely that other indices may be needed as well, e.g. a spatial index; but it is obviously undesirable to contemplate the possibility that there is no end to the number of indices required. In a recent series of articles ([6], [7], and [8]) I have taken the view that the most convenient syntactic treatment of adverbs and adverbial phrases is to regard them as predicate modifiers; i.e., to place them in category ( ( 0 , 1 ) , ( 0 , 1 ) ) . Further, I have tried to show how the semantics of many adverbials can be captured in a semantical framework in which the values of sentences are sets of pairs consisting of a possible world and a time interval. For this reason it has been my aim to extend, as far as possible, the class of adverbials which can be dealt with in this way. These studies have been restricted to words of English, so that precise details may not always apply to adverbs in other languages. Yet in broad outline the problems faced by the English adverbs I shall consider seem to me likely to be parallelled by analogous problems in 3 4

Vide [4, pp. 73 f, 85 f], and the appendices to [6], [7] and [8]. In particular in [6], [7] and [8]. For more elaborate purposes it might be that the theory of context-dependence presented in chapter eight of [4], in terms of context properties and open propositions, is more flexible. But I have found it wisest, in studying the semantics of adverbials, to keep D„ as simple as possible, compatibly with the tasks in hand.

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other languages. Methodologically, at any rate, I have always believed it best to get the semantics of particular languages as clear as one can before proceeding to the more universal questions. This may be why I am so sympathetic to word semantics. The reasons I want to look at adverbs with a causal meaning is because, thanks to David Lewis [14], there exists a possible-world analysis of causation. I do not try to defend Lewis's analysis of causation because it seems to me that its only questionable features might concern exactly what kind of account whould be given of its basic notion of world-similarity, rather than there being any question about that fact that there is some such suitable relation. So my paper will try to show that if Lewis's account of causality is basically sound, then we can apply it to the analysis of a large class of adverbs. As in [6] and [7] the semantics here proposed will be very crude and unsubtle. Nevertheless, I continue to believe that only from such crude beginnings can semantics progress.

2. Simple Cases of Causal Adverbs In this section I shall discuss the semantics of some relatively straightforward causal adverbs. Apart from the intrinsic interest which these words may have I hope the discussion will help to set the scene for the more complex cases. An adverb which clearly expresses the result of an action is fatally. In the sentence (1) Arabella fatally wounded Bramwell. we mean that Arabella's action in wounding Bramwell caused him to die. Obviously no conjunctive analysis will work because it is clearly possible for Arabella to wound Bramwell and for Arabella to cause Bramwell to die (say, by poisoning him) without fatally wounding him. In (1) it is of course Bramwell who dies, and this suggests that fatally would have to be a modifier or transitive verbs only; in other words, that it is a two-place predicate modifier. However, there seem to be some cases in which fatally can be interpreted in such a way that it is the subject who dies. E.g., (2) Catherine fatally slipped. (2) seems to me to be the simplest kind of sentence involving fatally, and so I shall consider it first. The λ-deep structure 5 of (2), on the predicate-modifier view of adverbs, is (ignoring tense), (3) (Catherine, {fatally, 5

slip))

This is the word used in [4, p. 127] for the sentences of the λ-categorial language which represent the surface sentences of the natural language.

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slip is in category (0,1) and fatally in category ( ( 0 , 1 ) , (0,1)) so that (fatally, slip) is in category (0,1) also. We can assume here that Catherine is in category 1 and so (3) is a sentence. As suggested at the beginning of this section we are assuming that the addition of the adverb fatally has the implication that the action caused death, and in section 1 I said that I would use the analysis of causality introduced by Lewis in [14]. I would like to stress again that an analysis of causality is not my aim in this paper, merely an application of this notion in the semantics of certain adverbs. I am also going to assume that the adverb fatally does mean just that death was caused. Possibly it has some other implications, but I would like to think of them as subtleties which are to be attended to when the analysis is refined. Lewis's account of causation depends upon what he calls a relation of causal dependence. To say that q depends causally on ρ is to say that if p had not happened, then q would not have happened; in symbols: ~p •—> ~q where •—* is the counterfactual conditional such that α •—* β is true in a world w if β is true in the nearest world to w in which α is true. Put more explicitly, α •—* β is true in a world w iff there is a world w' such that α and β are true in w' and there is no world more similar to w than w' in which α is true but β is not 6 . Let us then apply this to the case in hand, fatally is in category ( ( 0 , 1 ) , ( 0 , 1 ) ) . This means that where we have a value assignment V based on a system of semantic domains D, V {fatally) is a member of D^ 0 ,j>, >· Members of this domain are functions which take as arguments members of D there will be some which represent what might be called events. These will be functions ω such that any a is in the domain of ω iff λ is a physical object (animate or inanimate), and for any ( w , t) ε W, (w, t) ε ω (a) iff w is a world and t a time-interval with respect to which something is happening to a, where this is to be understood liberally to include things a does, processes a undergoes, or, in short, anything that can be represented by a verb. Notice that we leave the precise nature of an event function undefined. This is in the tradition of Montague [16, p. 152] and is perfectly legitimate where the purpose is merely to show the ontological status of the kind of entity an event function is. In the same spirit, we are not going to define world similarity and will simply help ourselves to the notion of the nearest world which has a certain property. 0

6

Vide [13, p. 49]. There is an extra clause for the case of impossible antecedents. A more or less equivalent version is given by Stalnaker in [19].

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25

W e can n o w state the s e m a n t i c s f o r fatally : V ( f a t a l l y ) is the f u n c t i o n ζ in D ^ o . i ) , < o , i ) > such that a n y ω e D ^ j ) is in the d o m a i n of ζ iff ω represents an event, a n d , f o r any s u c h ω, a n d any a e D [ w h i c h is in the d o m a i n of ω, a n d a n y ( w , t ) e W ; (w, t) e (ζ(ω)) (a) iff ( w , t ) e 0)(Λ) and a dies at s o m e t i m e t' in w (where t' d o e s not p r e c e d e t) a n d , w h e r e w' is the nearest w o r l d to w in w h i c h ( w ' , t) $ ω(α) then a d o e s not die at t'. T h i s l o o k s v e r y c o m p l i c a t e d , b u t w h a t it a m o u n t s t o can b e seen b y g o i n g t h r o u g h (3). In this case ω is the m e a n i n g o f slip a n d (w, t) e ω (a) iff t is an interval at w h i c h a slips in w o r l d w1. T h i s m e a n s that V { { f a t a l l y , slips)) will b e in ζ ( ω ) , a n d s o will b e true in (w, t) o f a, i.e., a will fatally slip in w at t, iff (w, t) e ω {a), i. e . , iff a slips at t in w, a n d a dies at t' s u b s e q u e n t to t, and if a h a d n o t s l i p p e d at t, a w o u l d n o t have died at t'. T h e c o u n t e r f a c t u a l is explained b y s a y i n g that in the nearest w o r l d in w h i c h a did n o t slip at the time he in fact d i d slip, then in that w o r l d he d i d not die at the t i m e at w h i c h he in fact did die. W h e r e V {Catherine) is C a t h e r i n e w e have the c a s e w h e r e a is C a t h e r i n e , a n d {3) t h e r e f o r e m e a n s that C a t h e r i n e s u f f e r e d this fate. I trust that e x p l a n a t i o n will b e s u f f i c i e n t to indicate h o w a causal s e m a n t i c s f o r fatally can b e given in w h i c h it is treated as a p r e d i c a t e m o d i f i e r . W e n o w c o m e to (1), a n d h e r e w e can m a k e u s e of λ - a b s t r a c t i o n in the s a m e w a y as in [8, section 7] to e n s u r e that it is B r a m w e l l w h o dies. T h e λ - d e e p s t r u c t u r e o f (1), again i g n o r i n g t e n s e , is: (4) { { f a t a l l y , ( λ , χ, {wound, Arabella, x ) ) ) , Bramwell) (Here a λ - c o n v e r s i o n , o r a t r a n s f o r m a t i o n , can be u s e d to get the w o r d s in their right order.) In (4) the a b s t r a c t ( λ , χ, (wound, Arabella, x)) can b e r e a d as 'is an χ s u c h that A r a b e l l a w o u n d s x'; in other w o r d s , it m e a n s the p r o p e r t y o f being w o u n d e d b y A r a b e l l a , a n d the s e m a n t i c s p r e v i o u s l y given f o r fatally ensure that it is this p r o p e r t y w h i c h l e a d s to the death o f the thing w h i c h p o s s e s s e s the p r o p e r t y , viz. B r a m w e l l .

3. Adverbs

of

Perception

In this section w e shall l o o k at the s e m a n t i c s of w o r d s like audibly, visibly and the like. In these cases the activity has an e f f e c t o n o t h e r s b e s i d e s o n e o r other of the p a r t i c i p a n t s . T h e s e a d v e r b s also have causal e f f e c t s in t e r m s of perception. T h e analysis of p e r c e p t i o n that I f a v o u r will b e b a s e d o n the n o t i o n of a perceptual alternative8. W e s u p p o s e that f o r a n y p e r s o n a, w o r l d w, a n d time 7

8

This means that slip is the semantically basic simple present. Perhaps no surface tense corresponds to this symbol, but all tenses will have to be based on it. [4, p. 193]. I am in essence here following the view of perception argued for by Hintikka in [12]. Hintikka's main application of the view is to problems about replacement of co-referring

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t, there is a set of worlds w' which are all the perceptual alternatives for a at (w, t), in the sense that as far as as perceptions at t in w are concerned then w' is a way the world could be at t. There is a different set of alternatives for each perceptual sense; thus we speak of visual alternatives, auditory alternatives etc. T o say that Dean seems to hear Evangeline singing is to say that all the ways the world could be, as far as Dean's auditory perceptions go at ( w , t), i. e. all his auditory alternatives at (w, t), are worlds in which Evangeline is singing at t. T o say that Dean actually does hear Evangeline singing is to say that his state of affairs in seeming to hear her singing is actually caused by her singing. So that Dean hears Evangeline singing at ( w , t ) iff he seems to hear her singing at (w,t), and in the nearest world w' to w in which she is not singing at t Dean does not seem to hear her singing at t. (And this last just means that there is at least one auditory alternative to w' for Dean at t in which Evangeline is not singing at t.) The modal analysis of seeming to hear means that Dean must be said to hear all the logical consequences of what he hears 9 . We can, if we wish, avoid this consequence if we go in for what are called neighbourhood semantics10. Basically this means that a perceives the proposition ρ in ( w,t ) iff ρ is one of the propositions in the perceptual neighbourhood of a at ( w , t ) . Such an account however is still not sensitive to distinct but logically equivalent propositions. But that is a problem for all propositional attitudes, and when its solution is found then will be the time to apply it to perception. We can now consider the sentence (1) {Fred,

(sings,

audibly))

We suppose that audibly means that someone can hear it, and make this explicit in the following semantics: V ( a u d i b l y ) is the function ζ in D such that for any ω e D( 0 > i), (w, t) e W and a e Όχ·. (i) ω is in the domain of ζ iff ω is an event function, (ii) a is in the domain of ζ (ω) iff a is in the domain of ω, (iii) (w, t) e (ζ(ω)) (a) iff (iiia) there is some persan b e D] such that all the auditory alternatives, w', to b at ( w , t) are such that ( w ' , t) e ω (a), and; descriptions. I am assuming that Hintikka's account is adequate for the " n o n - s u c c e s s " senses of perception. (Hintikka says on p . 153; " A success presupposition is to be read into my use of perceptual terms only when an explicit statement is made to this effect.") The success presupposition will be accounted for by using a causal analysis. (I got the general idea of this account from a lecture David Lewis gave when he was in Wellington in 1976, Lewis [15].) 9

10

Hintikka [12, p. 156] claims that this consequence can be avoided by using a notion of what he calls "analytic consequence." This use of the term 'neighbourhood' seems due to Scott [18, p. 160], Vide also [4, pp. 23—27].

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(iib) where w" is the nearest world to w such that (w", t) $ ω (a) then the auditory alternatives for b at (w", t) include at least one in which ω (a) is false. When (1) is evaluated using Ν {audibly) we can see that it has the meaning attributed to it in the preceding informal discussion. Obviously a similar semantics will do for visibly and perhaps for some other words and phrases. The semantics given for audibly makes (1) true provided that at least one person actually hears the singer. This means that no singing is audible unless someone was actually there to hear it, and that makes (1) false in the absence of witnesses. I think this is right for audibly though at the end of the next section I shall briefly consider what to do about those perceptual adverbs for which it does not seem to be right.

4. Degrees of Comparison The semantics given for audibly did not allow for degrees of audibility. Whether or not this is a defect there are certainly some perceptual adverbs which do admit of degrees. In this section I want to give a causal analysis of loudly along the same lines as audibly except that I want to link it with the semantics of degree which is found in [5]. In [5, ρ 266] the notion was introduced of a degree of comparison which was identified as a pair (u, > ) where > was a scale (formally just a relation) and u a point on it, i.e. a member of its field. On p. 280 f it was shown how to define an appropriate scale for any case in which comparative sentences had definite truth values. (And it was stressed on p. 281 that the task of formal semantics is not to account for principles by which we make such judgements as this, but only for the way in which such judgements are given linguistic expression.) In any situation in which we have truth values for sentences of the form (1) χ is more F than y is G then we can define the scale > as follows: if we let φ {χ, y) mean that χ is more F than y is G then we can define an equivalence relation « based on φ as: a « b iff for all c, φ {a, c) iff φ (b, c) and φ (c, a) iff φ (c, b). We can then define a scale > φ such that where à and Β are equivalence classes based on » we can define ä > φ Β iff φ {a, b). In [5, p. 281] it is shown that this is a consistent definition. It might be thought that this account of degrees of comparison automatically takes care of the semantics of loudly, but unfortunately it does not. For that account depends on two features which need to be independently established in the present case. First it depends on the fact that we know what the things are which are the subjects of comparison, and this, though easy in the case of adjectives, is just what is at issue in the case of adverbs. And second

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it depends on the assumption that statements of comparative loudness always have a determinate truth value; and while I want to argue that this is indeed in the end so, I want to argue that this truth value is always context dependent. The problem is this. Suppose that a band is playing in the distance and a bird is chirping close by. It seems to me that the sentence (2) The band is playing more loudly than the bird is chirping. can have different truth values depending on the position, relative to the two sources, of some particular hearer, or might even depend somehow on the position of a standard hearer placed in some hypothetical situation which is supposed to favour neither the bird nor the band. The solution I shall advocate uses context-dependence in a way which follows the work of John Bigelow, in [3] and this context-dependence explains how the difference in truth value can arise without there being any actual structural or lexical ambiguity. Bigelow's context theory is ingenious, but there is not room to give a full exposition here. Suffice it to say that it consists of adding features of the context to the sentence as if they were words of the language, and using them to be more or less names of themselves. Thus a word like I might be a surface indicator that the speaker was being added to the language. Bigelow's context theory can be used to simplify the account of adjectives given in [5], O n p. 267 of [5] it was suggested that the semantic primitive underlying the adjectival phrase tall man is the two-place predicate (3) Λ: is a man who is tall to degree y and that was reflected in the formal semantics of tall, which emerged as a symbol in category ( ( 0 , 1 , 1 ) , ( 0 , 1 ) ) . This caused complications in a sentence like (4) Percival is a tall man which were resolved by an operator pos which took tall into an expression of category ( 0 , 1 ) by interpreting {{pos, tall), man) as meaning a taller than average man. However even in [5, p. 272, n. 12] (and also see [6, n. 26]) it is stressed that the level of tallness which is to count as tall is heavily context dependent. A neat way out of the problem then is to let the appropriate degree be put in by "Bigelow quotation". This will probably go more easily if tall man means a man who is tall to at least a certain degree rather than one who is tall to exactly that degree, for then, by " q u o t i n g " some particular degree, say ( « , > ) , we can form (5) (λ, x ( 0 ) i>, {tall, x))))

When X(cu) is a variable in category ( 0 , 1 ) the whole abstract (5) will be in category ( ( 0 , 1 ) , ( 0 , 1 ) ) and will mean something which is tall to degree at least {u, > ) . The possibility of expressions like (5), whether, as here, the

Adverbs of Causation

29

second argument of tall is a Bigelow quotation, or whether it is a variable which is available for binding, is syntactically important as a way of getting us back to a one-place predicate which may be the subject of further modification. This allows us to have iterated adverbials. In the case of loudly however, the context seems to have to supply not only the point on the scale, but also the scale itself, and perhaps the person whose scale it is, since even relative loudness may differ from observer to observer. (It is interesting to see here how another general fact about the semantic framework, in this case the analysis of degree, is affected by the attempt to do word semantics. A further instance of the general theme of this paper.) I want now to show how to apply to the degrees-of-loudness case a notion analogous to that of a perceptual alternative. We suppose a listener a in a world w over a time interval t. We assume that the sounds that a can hear at (w, t) can be ordered according to their loudness and that we can therefore use the method of equivalence classes in the manner described at the beginning of this section to form a scale > such that (u, > ) will be a degree of loudness for a at (w, t). We now introduce a series of analogues R„ (strictly R(„, >)) to the various relations of perceptual alternativeness. Essentially a world w* is related by R„ to a at (w, t) iff, as far as a's auditory perceptions at t in w of sounds with degree of loudness as great as {u, > ) is concerned, w'·' is a way the world could be at t. Notice that no attempt has been made to define the primitive relation of loudness amoung sounds as they appear to a at ( w , t ) , just as earlier no attempt was made to define the relation of auditory or visual alternativeness. R„ then provides the analysis of what it is for something to seem to have a certain degree of loudness. Intuitively we want to say that a sings with degree of loudness {u, > ) according to an observer b at ( w , t ) iff a sings in all the worlds related to b at ( w , t ) by R„ and this is caused by a's singing at (w,t). The reference to an observer means that (sings, loudly) will have to be in category (0,1,1,1) rather than (0,1,1) and so loudly will have to be in category ( ( 0 , 1 , 1 , 1 ) , ( 0 , 1 ) ) V {loudly) is the function ζ in D