LINGUIST List 13.1138

Wed Apr 24 2002

Qs: Sensation Predicates, Intersentential Anaphora

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

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Directory

  1. Daniela Caluianu, sensation and related physical property predicates
  2. Daniel Hardt, Semantics and cross sentential binding

Message 1: sensation and related physical property predicates

 Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 20:51:06 +0900
From: Daniela Caluianu <danielacrest.ocn.ne.jp>
Subject: sensation and related physical property predicates

Dear collegues,

I would be extremely grateful if you could suggest any 
bibliographical material dealing with the semantic 
alternation in (1) below.

(1) a. This tea is hot
 b. I am hot

Whereas the predicate in (1a) refers to a physical 
property, the one in (1b) refers to a sensation. Sentence 
(1b) can be paraphrased as 'I feel hot'. 

In some languages, such as my native Romanian, the 
semantic distinction is associated with a formal 
distinction. The NP in (1a) is nominative whereas the one 
in (1b) is dative. 

I am particularly interested in: 

(a) accounts of this semantic distinction in languages 
 where it is not associated with any formal marking.
(b) whether there are any languages that use distinct 
 predicates to express (1a) and (1b).

I thank you in advance. I will post a summary.

Daniela Caluianu
danielacrest.ocn.ne.jp
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Message 2: Semantics and cross sentential binding

 Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 06:01:29 +0000
From: Daniel Hardt <dhid.cbs.dk>
Subject: Semantics and cross sentential binding



I am preparing a course comparing Etype and DRT approaches to
intersentential anaphora, and I am looking for literature discussing
the general issue of binding across sentences. Before DRT, semantics
dealt with sentence meanings individually, and the Etype account makes
it possible to retain that traditional approach. It is suggested in
Stephen Neale's book (Descriptions, 1990) that this is in fact
preferable on general grounds: he says, about a proposal for
inter-sentential binding (p 170), "This seems to conflict with our
intuitions that each utterance of a complete indicative sentence in a
discourse typically expresses some proposition or other (relative to
the context of utterance) and hence ought to be evaluable for truth or
falsity." This is a side remark that Neale doesn't pursue. Are there
other arguments in the literature that semantics ought to treat
sentence meanings individually? Please respond by email to
dhid.cbs.dk.

thanks

Dan Hardt
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