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Subjects that consist of a disjunction of singular noun phrases are compatible with singular and plural agreement on the verb (see Foppolo & Staub 2020). We test the hypothesis that singular agreement is only possible if the disjunction is interpreted as a disjunction of two full sentences. The prediction of this analysis is that singular agreement should only be possible if the disjunction takes widest scope.

RESUMO Para expressar individuação e cumulatividade, as línguas naturais apresentam uma significativa diversidade de mecanismos gramaticais que envolvem estratégias lexicais, morfológicas e sintáticas. Pretendemos demonstrar que, na língua Tenetehára (Tupí-Guaraní), a incorporação nominal constitui-se como um desses recursos. Para isso, será discutida essa operação sintática, que expressa baixo grau de individuação do termo incorporado, além de resultar ainda em nomes com uma interpretação cumulativa. Embora não haja, por exemplo, artigos nessa língua que possam denotar definitude ou especificidade, objetos não incorporados apresentam maior grau de individuação quando são contrastados com suas versões incorporadas. A análise aqui proposta se fundamenta em dados linguísticos elicitados que compreendem as duas estratégias de incorporação nominal nessa língua: (i) incorporação nominal com redução de valência, que envolve a incorporação do objeto de verbos transitivos; e (ii) incorporação sem diminuição de valência, que diz respeito à incorporação do termo possuído de sintagmas nominais na função sintática de sujeito de verbos intransitivos e objeto de transitivos. ABSTRACT To express individuation and cumulativity, natural languages present a significant diversity of grammatical mechanisms that involve lexical, morphological, and syntactic strategies. We intend to demonstrate that, in the Tenetehára language (Tupí-Guaraní), noun incorporation is one of these resources. In this regard, we discuss the syntactic operation of incorporation, which expresses a low degree of individuation of the incorporated term, in addition to resulting in nouns with a cumulative interpretation. Although, for example, there are no articles in this language that can denote definiteness or specificity, non-incorporated objects present a greater degree of individuation when they are contrasted with their incorporated versions. The analysis proposed here is based on elicited linguistic data that comprise the two strategies of noun incorporation in this language: (i) noun incorporation with valence reduction, which involves incorporation of the object of transitive verbs; and (ii) incorporation without valence reduction, which concerns the incorporation of the possessed constituent of noun phrases in the syntactic function of subject of intransitive verbs and object of transitive verbs.

Kawahara, Noto, and Kumagai (2018b) found that within the corpus of existing Pokémon names, the number of voiced obstruents in the characters’ names correlates positively with their weight, height, evolution levels and attack values. While later experimental studies to some extent confirmed the productivity of these sound symbolic relationships (e.g. Kawahara and Kumagai 2019a), they are limited, due to the fact that the visual images presented to the participants primarily differed with regard to evolution levels. The current experiments thus for the first time directly explored how each of these semantic dimensions—weight, height, evolution levels, and attack values—correlates with the number of voiced obstruents in nonce names. The results of two judgment experiments show that all of these parameters indeed correlate positively with the number of voiced obstruents in the names. Overall, the results show that a particular class of sounds—in our case, a set of voiced obstruents—can signal different semantic meanings within a single language, supporting the pluripotentiality of sound symbolism (Winter, Pérez-Sobrino, and Brown 2019). We also address another general issue that has been under-explored in the literature on sound symbolism; namely, its cumulative nature. In both of the experiments, we observe that two voiced obstruents evoke stronger images than one voiced obstruent, instantiating what is known as the counting cumulativity effect (Jäger and Rosenbach 2006).

A well-known generalization about bare numeral phrases (BNPs) in Mandarin is that they tend to require the existential verb you ‘have’ when in subject position, but there are some notable exceptions. This paper concentrates on the data cited by Li (1998) and proposes an Exhaustivity Condition according to which a subject BNP is felicitous if and only if it is interpreted exhaustively. It is shown how this condition generalizes to all the constructions under discussion, while at the same time they each belong to a particular type of quantificational construction or another (cumulativity, scalar focus, sufficiency, or conditional). I argue that the close relation between Mandarin subject BNPs and exhaustivity not only explains the restricted distribution of the former but also enables us to account for their so-called quantity readings in terms of exhaustive interpretation. Comparisons of the proposal with previous approaches will also be discussed.

This handbook article provides an overview of the major empirical phenomena discussed in connection with the theoretical concepts of distributivity, collectivity, and cumulativity. Topics include: an operational denition of distributivity; the dierence between lexical and phrasal distributivity; atomic vs. nonatomic distributivity; collectivity and thematic entailments; two classes of collective predicates (exemplied by be numerous vs. gather); how to distinguish between cumulative and collective readings; interactions of distributivity and collectivity; and a list of other relevant review papers and handbook articles. Typological generalizations and examples from a wide range of languages are discussed throughout the article.

An ongoing debate in phonology concerns the treatment of cumulative constraint interactions, or ‘gang effects’, and by extension the question of which phonological frameworks are suitable models of the grammar. This paper uses a series of artificial grammar learning experiments to examine the inferences that learners draw about cumulative constraint violations in phonotactics in the absence of a confounding natural-language lexicon. I find that learners consistently infer linear counting and ganging cumulativity across a range of phonotactic violations.

An experiment showed that Japanese speakers’ judgement of Pokémons’ evolution status on the basis of nonce names is affected both by mora count and by the presence of a voiced obstruent. The effects of mora count are a case of counting cumulativity, and the interaction between the two factors a case of ganging-up cumulativity. Together, the patterns result in what Hayes (2020) calls ‘wug-shaped curves’, a quantitative signature predicted by MaxEnt. I show in this paper that the experimental results can indeed be successfully modelled with MaxEnt, and also that Stochastic Optimality Theory faces an interesting set of challenges. The study was inspired by a proposal made within formal phonology, and reveals important previously understudied aspects of sound symbolism. In addition, it demonstrates how cumulativity is manifested in linguistic patterns. The work here shows that formal phonology and research on sound symbolism can be mutually beneficial.

Semantic theories of cumulativity vary in several respects, including (i) whether cumulativity is limited to lexical predicates and (ii) whether there are cumulation operators in the object language. We address the cross-linguistic predictions of different settings of these two parameters and evaluate them in light of a preliminary set of data from 22 languages, largely collected from native-speaker linguists. We submit that cumulative readings of non-lexical predicates are available cross-linguistically. We then address the question whether there are overt morphemes that behave like the cumulation operators **, ***, etc. Our data only give a partial answer, since there are different ways of integrating such operators into the grammar. No language in our sample had overt markers that were required for a cumulative reading, but absent in case of a distributive reading. Assuming that the LFs of distributive readings do not have to contain such cumulation operators, our data set does not provide evidence for their existence.

This paper proposes an extension of the class of plural expressions, a generalized analysis of the denotations of such expressions and a novel account of how they semantically combine with other elements in the sentence. The point of departure is the observation that definite plural DPs and and -coordinations with coordinates of several semantic categories share certain features — in particular cumulativity—in the context of other plural expressions. Existing analyses of conjunction fail to derive these parallels and I propose that and -coordinations should be analyzed as denoting pluralities (of whatever kind of semantic object their conjuncts denote). This, in turn, raises the question of how pluralities combine with other material in the sentence. I show that a simple expansion of the standard analysis thereof, which puts the workload onto the predicate, is insufficient. I propose an alternative which is based on the idea that all semantic domains contain pluralities and involves plural projection. In this system, the truth-conditions of sentences containing plurality-denoting expressions are not due to the semantic expansion of the predicate (as in existing analyses), but the result of a step-by-step process: Once a plurality enters the derivation, the node immediately dominating it will also denote a plurality, namely of the values obtained by a particular combination of the plurality and the denotation of its sister. EARLY ACCESS

Questions embedded under responsive predicates and definite descriptions both give rise to a variety of phenomena which can be grouped under the term plurality effects: quantificational variability, cumulativity, and homogeneity effects. This similarity has not gone unnoticed, and many proposals have taken inspiration in theories of definite plurals to account for these effects with embedded questions (Dayal in Locality in WH quantification: questions and relative clauses in Hindi, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1996; Lahiri in Questions and answers in embedded contexts, Oxford studies in theoretical linguistics 2, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002; a.o.). Recently these phenomena have received less attention, as the field has focused on the so-called intermediate exhaustive reading of embedded questions instead, after Spector (Exhaustive interpretations: what to say and what not to say, Presentation at LSA Workshop: ‘Context and Content’, 2005) called into question the traditional dichotomy between weak and strong exhaustive readings. As a result, the intermediate exhaustive reading has been accounted for at the expense of empirical coverage in other areas. In this paper, I propose a modular theory which derives the currently much discussed exhaustive readings without giving up the rich semantics necessary to account for plurality effects. My account of quantificational variability, cumulativity, and homogeneity effects builds on recent work on these phenomena in the nominal domain by adopting a categorial approach to embedded questions, while the strong and intermediate exhaustive readings are implemented using an independent strengthening mechanism suggested in Klinedinst and Rothschild (Semant Pragmat 4(2):1–23, 2011). The resulting theory not only recovers important results on plurality effects; it offers new, simple solutions for some puzzles presented in George (Question embedding and the semantics of answers, Ph.D. dissertation, UCLA, 2011; Thought J Philos 2(2):166–177, 2013) and Paillé and Schwarz (in: Stockwell (ed) Proceedings of WCCFL 36, vol 36, Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, 2018), naturally derives readings that had been postulated in previous literature (Preuss in Issues in the semantics of questions with quantifiers, Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University, 2001), makes correct predictions in many unexplored cases, and is compatible with recent results in psycholinguistics. In the last sections I justify my assumptions and show how possible limitations I inherit from the theories I build on can be accommodated under standard assumptions.

The integration of socioscientific issues (SSI) into science teaching requires that teachers manage classroom discussions in which various perspectives are considered and students’ contributions are recognized. The present study aimed to provide knowledge of how classroom discussions on SSI can be structured and implemented to pursue specific teaching purposes. In this study, two secondary science teachers’ employment of communicative approaches during four discussions on SSI was analysed. In the studied context, communicative approaches can be described as involving various or only a single perspective on SSI and as being either interactive or non-interactive. The results elucidate how teachers can make purposeful use of different communicative approaches to facilitate students’ decision-making while promoting complexity in their reasoning. The results also show how teachers can promote cumulativity, in terms of their recognition of students’ contributions to discussions. It is proposed that teachers can use the concept of communicative approaches as an analytical tool to reflect on and develop aspects of teaching practice in relation to the goals that they wish to achieve.

Most (if not all) nonmonotonic logics are assumed to be cumulative, which is often regarded as the minimum requirement for a logic. We argue that cumulativity, in particular, cumulative transitivity can be abandoned, in order to better characterize reasoning in uncertainty. But giving up cumulative transitivity makes it hard to obtain representation results for these logics. Borrowing the idea from strict-tolerant logics, we give some representation results for nonmonotonic logics that are not cumulatively transitive.

Quantification is one of the central topics in language and computation, and the interplay of collectivity, distributivity, cumulativity, and plurality is at the heart of the semantics of quantification expressions. However, its aspects are usually discussed piecemeal, distributed, and only from an interpretative perspective with selected linguistic examples, often blurring the overall picture. In this article, quantification phenomena are investigated from the perspective of natural language generation. Starting with a small-scale, but realistic scenario, the necessary steps toward generating quantifier expressions for a perceived situation are explained. Together with the automatically generated descriptions of the scenario, the observations made are shown to present new insights into the interplay, and the semantics of quantification expressions and plurals, in general. The results highlight the importance of taking different points of view in the field of language and computation.

We explore the interaction of two phonological factors that condition schwa–zero alternations in French: schwa is more likely after two consonants than a singleton; and schwa is more likely between stressed syllables than elsewhere. Using new data from a judgment study, we show that both factors play a role in schwa epenthesis and deletion, and that the two factors interact cumulatively: they have a stronger effect together than individually. Treating each factor as a constraint, we find that their cumulative interaction is better modeled with weighted than with ranked constraints. We provide a characterization of patterns of cumulativity in probability space in terms of the effect of constraint on its own versus its effect in a cumulative interaction with another constraint. Stochastic OT can model cumulative interactions, but only sublinear ones, where the effect of a constraint is weaker in the cumulative context than on its own. Weighted constraint models, MaxEnt and Noisy HG, can model the full range of cumulativity — sublinear, linear, and superlinear. In examining the ability of these models to fit our experimental data, we find that Stochastic OT is hampered by the fact that the data displays superlinear cumulativity. Noisy HG and MaxEnt fare better on this dataset, with MaxEnt yielding the best fit.

1. Introduction Questions Addressed, Why They Arise Arguments Advanced, Answers Offered Implications for Realism Methods Plan of the Book2. False Optimism: Illusions of the Coming War False Hope and War Illusions of Victory Illusions of Cheap War To Prevent War, Promote Transparency3. Jumping the Gun: First-Move Advantages and Crisis Instability First-Strike, First-Mobilization, and First-Move Advantages Hypotheses on the Effects of First-Move Advantages Tests of Stability Theory Causes of and Cures for First-Move Advantage4. Power Shifts: Windows of Opportunity and Vulnerability Types of Windows Hypotheses on the Effects of Windows Tests of Window Theory Causes and Cures of Windows5. Cumulative Resources What Is Cumulativity? Cumulativity and Conflict Types of Cumulativity Beliefs about Cumulativity and Their Implications The Future of Cumulativity6. Offense, Defense, and the Security Dilemma Hypotheses on the Effects of Offense Dominance Qualifications: When Offensive Doctrines and Capabilities Cause Peace Causes of Offense and Defense Dominance Predictions and Tests of Offense-Defense Theory How Much History Can Offense-Defense Theory Explain? Offense-Defense Theory in Perspective7. Offense-Defense Theory and the Outbreak of World War I The Rise of the Cult of the Offensive, 1890-1914 Predictions of Offense-Defense Theory about Europe, 1890-1914 Evidence on Offense-Defense Theory, 1890-1914 Offense-Defense Theory and the Test of 1914 Explaining World War I8. The Nuclear Revolution and the Causes of War MAD among Deterrable States MAD among Nondeterrable States MAD among Many States Alternatives to MAD: MARNE, BAD, WORSE, and USA The Janus-Faced RevolutionConclusionAppendix: Hypotheses on Power and the Causes of WarIndex -- Cornell University Press

This text aims to describe practices, enjoyment and production of online content, that is, the culture in TIC Domicílio 2017 preparing ground for possible dialogues with TIC Cultura, both performed by the Regional Center for Studies on the Development of the Information Society (Cetic.br), in order to contribute to the reflection on the internet's use and access to cultural goods and services. In order to do so, a survey of the historical context of the Internet's emergence and development was carried out, as well as the political-economic structuring that governs its organization and, consequently, the processes in the digital world. From data's analysis, the access of selected practices was socioeconomically characterized, as well as the accumulation of uses - the action of performing various practices on the internet and its different types of use. The analyzes were based on the understanding of the value inherent to the process of statistical construction based on Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar's notion of literary inscription; as well as Pierre Bourdieu's conception of structured field and instances of consecration and legitimation. As a result, it was verified a need to relativize the majority discourses that emphasize the supposedly democratizing character of the medium, once the Internet produces and reproduces hierarchies, exclusions and social inequalities. Regarding to the population's access to cultural equipment, it is necessary to understand the determinations of the practices, as well as the cultural dispositions' characteristics that organize the individual investments in the uses of the ICTs.

This chapter reviews and explores the use of demographic ideas, models and data in the study of organizations, products and corporations. The chapter discusses four different frameworks analysts use to study these topics, but concentrates on internal organizational demography and corporate demography, as these are more active areas. Within corporate demography, attention is focused on theoretical models of inertia/change, age-dependent mortality, density dependence, resource partitioning and competition. Contributions have been both theoretical and empirical and show notable cumulativity over time. The domains of organization, products and corporations show many opportunities for demographers to apply and extend their analyses of populations and life events.

This paper asks two questions: (i) In an ambiguous context, what is the interpretation of a sentence like The men wrote musicals? (ii) How can we succinctly characterize the differences between readings that a sentence has in an ambiguous context, versus readings made available in a specialized context, and those available only because of shared knowledge? While these questions have received much attention, e.g. [1, 9, 10, 11, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26] i.a., the number of readings such a sentence has in an ambiguous context remains controversial, as is the availability of additional readings, and the means by which speakers become attuned to readings in a given context. To answer the first question we conducted an online study where participants evaluated the truth value of sentences designed to test the meaning of those like The men wrote musicals. Results suggest that such sentences get a double cover interpretation (i.e. an interpretation in terms of a relation between sets of individuals, rather than a relation strictly between atomic individuals) in an ambiguous context. We couch these results and the discussion on the availability of other readings in terms of a bipartite Common Ground, where available readings are in the Immediate Common Ground, and other readings can be made available via knowledge in the General Common Ground, thereby answering the second question.

Human culture signifies the emergence of an entirely new domain of existence: an event in natural history that is paralleled only by the Cambrian Explosion in terms of creativity and scope. The question of how human culture—as opposed to its animal counterparts—came to become open-endedly creative and cumulative is therefore one of wide and general scientific importance. Several causal factors have been proposed to date to explain this unique quality, including population size, transmission fidelity, pedagogy, and creativity. Inquiries, however, tend to focus exclusively on one factor at a time, leaving us blind to important issues regarding their relative roles and combined action. We here combine two models, one focusing on population size and the other on imitation fidelity, as constraints and enablers of evolutionary cumulativity. We explore how these factors interact to promote and inhibit evolutionary cumulativity and how the synthetic model compares to the original models individually and to empirical and experimental data. We report several findings that do not emerge in the models that we combine individually. For example, group size is found to be important for small but not for larger groups, an observation that moreover substantially improves agreement with data.

In this article, we describe and attempt to solve a puzzle arising from the interpretation of modified numerals like less than five and between two and five. The puzzle is this: such modified numerals seem to mean different things depending on whether they combine with distributive or non-distributive predicates. When they combine with distributive predicates, they intuitively impose a kind of upper bound, whereas when they combine with non-distributive predicates, they do not (they sometimes even impose a lower bound). We propose and explore in detail four solutions to this puzzle, each involving some notion of maximality, but differing in the type of maximality involved (‘standard’ maximality versus ‘informativity-based’ maximality) and in the source of maximality (lexically encoded in the meaning of the numeral modifier versus non-lexical). While the full range of data we consider do not conclusively favor one theory over the other three, we do argue that overall the evidence (i) goes against the view that modified numerals lexically encode a ‘standard’ maximality operator, and (ii) suggests the need for a pragmatic blocking mechanism that filters out readings (logical forms) of sentences that are generated by the grammar but intuitively unavailable.

Attention to epistemology, theory use and citation practices are all issues which distinguish academic disciplines from other ways of knowing. Examples from construction research are used to outline and reflect on these issues. In doing so, the discussion provides an introduction to some key issues in social research as well as a reflection on the current state of construction research as a field. More specifically, differences between positivist and interpretivist epistemologies, the role of theory in each and their use by construction researchers are discussed. Philosophical differences are illustrated by appeal to two published construction research articles by Reichstein et al. and Harty on innovation (Reichstein, Salter and Gann, 2005; Harty, 2008). An analysis of citations for each highlights different cumulativity strategies. The potential contribution of mixed research programmes, combining positivist and interpretivist research, is evaluated. The paper should be of interest to early researchers and to scholars concerned with the ongoing development of construction research as an academic field.

Item does not contain fulltext We investigated whether structural priming of production latencies is sensitive to the same factors known to influence persistence of structural choices: structure preference, cumulativity and verb repetition. In two experiments, we found structural persistence only for passives (inverse preference effect) while priming effects on latencies were stronger for the actives (positive preference effect). We found structural persistence for passives to be influenced by immediate primes and long lasting cumulativity (all preceding primes) (Experiment 1), and to be boosted by verb repetition (Experiment 2). In latencies we found effects for actives were sensitive to long lasting cumulativity (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, in latencies we found priming for actives overall, while for passives the priming effects emerged as the cumulative exposure increased but only when also aided by verb repetition. These findings are consistent with the Two-stage Competition model, an integrated model of structural priming effects for sentence choice and latency. 22 p.

This article revives old descriptive data on Awa, a Papuan language of the Kainantu group. The tonal system was described in detail in a paper by Loving (1973), where he reports a series of toneless noun suffixes, falling into six classes depending on their tonal alternations when combined with a noun root. This article demonstrates that the suffixes are best understood as carrying lexical tone; the alternations in form arise from the interaction of typologically natural tonotactic constraints. While the system can be described in autosegmental terms without much difficulty, a formal constraint-based analysis is less straightforward. I show that strict ranking, as in optimality theory (Prince & Smolensky 2004 [1993]), fails to capture the data patterns due to cumulativity effects, some of which cannot be naturally captured even with local constraint conjunction (Smolensky 2006). The data are successfully modeled in harmonic grammar (Legendre et al. 1990).