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סמינר מחלקתי | החוג לבלשנות

סמינר מחלקתי

תאריך: 
ג', 20/11/201814:30-16:00
מיקום: 
חדר הסמינרים של ה-LLCC
מרצה: 
אליצור בר-אשר סיגל, האוניברסיטה העברית

 

 

A new proposal for the interpretation of sentences with the anaphor "each-other"

It is well-known that sentences with expressions such as each-another in English, exad et-haSeni in Hebrew, and un-l'autre in French can have various the interpretations with different logical strengths (in terms of entailments). This state-of-affairs has repeatedly raised the following questions, using Dougherty's (1974: 18-19) words: "How is a specific input linked to a specific output? That is, what is the rule of semantic interpretation for each other sentences?… how a specific interpretation (or range of interpretations) is assigned to an arbitrary sentence?" 

Naturally, there are at least two competing directions for answering these questions:

Strongest Meaning Hypothesis (SMH) (Dalrymple et al. 1998; Sabato & Winter 2012): The meaning of the reciprocal sentences varies from one sentence to another and is taken from a small inventory of meanings. It is possible to predict a context-sensitive meaning of every reciprocal sentence: in a given context, a sentence takes the strongest meaning that is consistent with known facts about the specific context.

The Unspecified Constructions Hypothesis (UCH): The relevant constructions are ‘unspecified constructions’, described by the following definition: expressions used in relations between two (defined) sets (or more) without specifying which set occupies which position. Accordingly, the basic meaning of these constructions has a much weaker meaning than what SMH argues for, because it only necessitates that each member of the set stands in a single relation to another member. Although this is necessarily true for all sentences with these expressions, these are not sufficient conditions to capture only true sentences in many cases. 

The paper will take the second approach and will aim at proposing a mechanism for how the semantics of such sentences interacts with their context.