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Given any set E of expressions freely generated from a set of atoms by syntactic operations, there exist trivially compositional functions on E (to wit, the injective and the constant functions), but also plenty of non-trivially compositional functions. Here we show that within the space of non-injective functions (and so a fortiori within the space of non-injective and non-constant functions), compositional functions are not sufficiently abundant in order to generate the consequence relation of every propositional logic. Logical consequence relations thus impose substantive constraints on the existence of compositional functions when coupled with the condition of non-injectivity (though not without it). We ask how the apriori exclusion of injective functions from the search space might be justified, and we discuss the prospects of claims to the effect that any function can be "encoded" in a compositional one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bulletin of Ablai Khan KazUIRandWL: Series 'Philological sciences' is the property of Kazakh Ablai Khan University of International Relations & World Languages and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Sentences φ and ψ are cognitive synonyms for one when they play the same role in one's cognitive life. The notion is pervasive (Sect. 1), but elusive: it is bound to be hyperintensional (Sect. 2), but excessive fine-graining would trivialize it and there are reasons for some coarse-graining (Sect. 2.1). Conceptual limitations stand in the way of a natural algebra (Sect. 2.2), and it should be sensitive to subject matters (Sect. 2.3). A cognitively adequate individuation of content may be intransitive (Sect. 3) due to 'dead parrot' series: sequences of sentences φ 1 , ... , φ n where adjacent φ i and φ i + 1 are cognitive synonyms while φ 1 and φ n are not (Sect. 3.1). Finding an intransitive account is hard: Fregean equipollence won't do (Sect. 3.2) and a result by Leitgeb shows that it wouldn't satisfy a minimal compositionality principle (Sect. 3.3).Sed contra, there are reasons for transitivity, too (Sect. 3.4). In Sect. 4, we come up with a formal semantics capturing this jumble of desiderata, thereby showing that the notion is coherent. In Sect. 5, we re-assess the desiderata in its light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expression of future time in the English language seems to lack uniformity. The lack of consistency is influenced by speakers' intentions, so these various ways of marking future time in English pose a challenge to second-language (L2) learners. Therefore, this article investigates first-language (L1) Sesotho speakers' ways of expressing English future time within the basic linguistic theory framework. It further seeks to identify factors influencing the students' formation of future-time expressions. In this qualitative study, data was collected through 30 written compositions by third-year Linguistics students at the National University of Lesotho. The study reveals that L1 Sesotho speakers mark English future time through will and shall. They also use the phrasal markers such as want to, have to, hope to, be going to, be supposed to, be about to, will + be + PROGRESSIVE, will + have + PERFECT PARTICIPLE and will + have + been, which they use appropriately. Would + be, would + progressive, would + have + PERFECT PARTICIPLE are also used but incorrectly. The article further demonstrates that they use would erroneously to express English future time. In addition, Sesotho, by virtue of having equivalents of some of these markers, influenced the students' formation of future-time expressions. Therefore, L1 interference plays a great part in L2 learning. The study concludes that the use of will is more dominant than shall because even British English, which was known for the common use of shall has started to shift and to lose this distinction like American English has done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives a uniform account of the meaning of generalizations with explicit exceptions that employ the prepositions "but", "except", and "except for". Our theory is that exceptives depend on generalizations, which can but need not be universal, whose generality they limit, and some of whose exceptions they comment on. Every generalization intrinsically partitions its domain of applicability into regular cases, which are as it says to expect, and exceptions, which are not. A generalization's exceptions are instances that falsify it if sufficiently prevalent. These two facts underpin the meaning of exceptives as combining a generality claim with an exception claim, giving correct truth conditions for the several ways the three exceptive prepositions are used, and significantly improving on existing semantic accounts in the literature. We support this by analyzing a wide range of examples. The analysis applies whether or not the phrase following the exceptive preposition is a DP, and whether or not the generalization is expressed with a quantifier. We further argue that these exceptive prepositions are synonymous, contrary to the widely held view that a difference in meaning explains their different syntactic distributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research over the last 20 years has investigated the processing costs for sentences such as John began the book. Much of this work has conflated sentences with aspectual verbs, like start or finish, with psychological verbs, like enjoy or tolerate. However, recent studies have reported greater costs for aspectual verbs compared to psychological verbs (e.g., Katsika et al. in Ment Lex 7:58–76, 2012; Lai et al. in Compositionality and concepts in linguistics and psychology, 2017). The present paper reports an eye-tracking study that examined the costs of processing both verb types in Mandarin Chinese. The results revealed greater costs both for aspectual verbs compared to controls (John read the book) and for aspectual verbs compared to psychological verbs, reinforcing the claims of the Structured Individual Hypothesis (Piñango and Deo in J Semant 33:359–408, 2016). Strikingly, there was an early effect at the verb for aspectual verbs but not for psychological verbs. We argue that this result, together with previous findings and other conceptual issues, necessitates a conservative modification of the SIH: aspectual verbs are semantically more complex than psychological verbs. This modification retains the core analysis underlying the SIH, but reconciles the SIH with experimental findings by bringing it in line with the view that lexical semantic complexity has immediate consequences in processing (e.g., Brennan and Pylkkänen in Lang Cogn Process 25:777–807, 2010). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of TESL Canada Journal / Revue TESL du Canada is the property of TESL Canada Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Differential object marking (DOM) interacts with nominal structure in complex ways across Romance languages. For example, in Spanish, it has been claimed to ban bare nominals. For Romanian, in turn, two main restrictions have been discussed: (i) ban on overt definiteness on unmodified nominals; and (ii) ban on bare nominals, if the structure contains an overt modification. This paper has two main goals. First, it examines some contexts where these types of restrictions can be lifted for some speakers; such contexts allow us to grasp a better understanding of the limits of variation permitted by DOM in its interaction with nominal structure and determiner systems. Secondly, it proposes that a theory under which DOM signals a licensing strategy beyond Case can derive the variation patterns observed in the data. Subsequently, various parameters are examined, which encode (i) how specifications responsible for DOM interact with other features in the composition of nominals; and (ii) how the resulting complex containing DOM as well as other features is resolved at PF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ESL learners often show great variation in article use. This study proposes that article use can be improved if the semantic feature (non)boundedness is introduced into ELT. This study argues that articles carry highly relevant information that is crucial, together with a number of other elements, for the signalling of aspectual values in English. It is argued that the signalling of aspectual values is the primary role of articles and that if ESL learners receive instruction on this role, they may learn how to signal aspectual values correctly, but also improve their article use thanks to a greater awareness of articles. The paper reports on an experiment conducted to test ESL learners' response to such instruction and concludes that incorporating (non)boundedness into ESL instruction is both reasonable and necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay presents a methodological commitment to rethink the presuppositions about compositional practices with respect to the assembly and production of what we have come to call the Pentateuch. Throughout the article the authors present an account of the ancient biblical writers and readers as committed to producing difference—not to produce an overall seamless linear narrative. The textual example focuses on the blood plague but considers the composition of the Pentateuch and biblical composition more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a parallel corpus study on the expression of the temporal construction 'not...until' in a sample of European languages. We use data from the Europarl corpus and create semantic maps by multidimensional scaling, in order to analyze cross-linguistic and language-internal variation. This paper builds on formal semantic and typological work, extending it by including conditional constructions, as well as connectives of the type as long as. In an investigation of 7 languages, we find that (i) languages use many more different constructions to convey this meaning than was expected from the literature; and (ii) the combination of polarity marking (negation/assertion) strongly correlates with the type of connective. We corroborate our results in a larger sample of 21 European languages. An analysis of clusters and dimensions of the semantic maps based on the enlarged dataset shows that connectives are not randomly distributed across the semantic space of the 'not...until'-domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that there are three reasons why we should regard Wittgenstein's Tractatus as a forerunner of formal semantics: Wittgenstein is convinced that we can apply formal notions to natural languages, that the meaning of a sentence is to be explained in terms of its truth-conditions and that language is compositional. These claims are also defended against the following three objections. First, the formal semantics defines truth-conditions using the language-metalanguage distinction, while Wittgenstein doesn't. He relies on the picture theory, which is not a formal notion. Secondly, the formal semanticists' 'compositionality principle' presupposes that the truth-conditions of complex sentences should be understood in terms of the truth-conditions of elementary ones, whereas Wittgenstein applies the notion of truth-conditions only to complex sentences. And, finally, that differently from the formal semanticists, Wittgenstein doesn't envisage recursive rules for the combination of the semantic primitives. The claim of this paper is that the first objection can be overcome by relating the picture theory to the pre-Tractarian principle of bipolarity, the second by relying on the famous distinction between what a sentence says and what it shows and the third by acknowledging that Wittgenstein, differently from the formal semanticists, works with propositional logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two contrasting portraits of exorcism in the Roman period for patients with symptoms consistent with epilepsy, drawn by Josephus (A.J. 8.45–47) and Lucian (Philops. §16), illustrate a substantial albeit contested diffusion of that ancient technique from the Jewish tradition to a wider Mediterranean public. The process is reflected in a similarly complex traditional background and textual composition of a group of inscribed Greek amulets for epilepsy. A sidelight on attitudes towards the practice of exorcism, on its way to wider popularity, and the conception of epilepsy is cast by these amulets, which have not yet been studied as a group. Their texts witness the application of precise Greek medical terminology, yet to an end, and in a compositional company, that authors in the Hippocratic tradition would have rejected. More generally, the artifacts offer a cross-section of amuletic practice and its diversity in the Roman and late ancient periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to determine narrative moments in comics, both from an analytical and a didactic perspective, the main focus is usually on its sequentiality. In doing so, it is easy to overlook the fact that the comic page itself is structured by its layout like a coherent picture. In this coherent pictoral unit the panels are designed and composed in a distinct way. This article delivers a poietic perspective on conventionalized ways of page design as well as the compositional knowledge and skills that go along with it. From this point of view further conclusions are drawn with regard to comics as a subject in art classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Estudios de Filosofía is the property of Universidad de Antioquia, Instituto de Filosofia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)