Dual Content Semantics, privative adjectives, and dynamic compositionality

Abstract

This paper defends the view that common nouns have a dual semantic structure that includes extension-determining and non-extensiondetermining components. I argue that the non-extension-determining components are part of linguistic meaning because they play a key compositional role in certain constructions, especially in privative noun phrases such as fake gun and counterfeit document. Furthermore, I show that if we modify the compositional interpretation rules in certain simple ways, this dual content account of noun phrase modification can be implemented in a type-driven formal semantic framework. In addition, I also argue against traditional accounts of privative noun phrases which can be paired with the assumption that nouns do not have a dual semantic structure. At the most general level, this paper presents a proposal for how we can begin to integrate a psychologically realistic account of lexical semantics with a linguistically plausible compositional semantic framework.

Meaning composition in minimal phrasal contexts: distinct ERP effects of intensionality and denotation

“…This may be intuitively unsurprising, but it does not sit well with formal semantic theories that emphasise the underlying similarity between modal and temporal adjectives, such as their behaviour vis-à-vis entailment (Partee, 2009). Our behavioural and ERP data are more consistent with analyses that emphasise differences between modal and temporal adjectives in the specific ways they encode privativity (Del Pinal, 2015).…”

“…a subset of) the denotation of the noun (e.g. a fake diamond is not a diamond), privative temporal adjectives, like "former", or "future" etc., modify a noun's meaning by restricting the times at which the modified noun gets the default denotation (a former president was a president in the past; for discussion, see Coulson & Fauconnier, 1999;Del Pinal, 2015;Kamp & Partee, 1995;McNally & Boleda, 2004;Partee, 2009Partee, , 2010. We refer to the first class as "modal" because, in intensional semantics, the meaning of these adjectives is captured in terms of possible worlds, or some other equivalent modal notions: a "fake president" is necessarily not a president, i.e.…”

Dual Character Concepts in Social Cognition: Commitments and the Normative Dimension of Conceptual Representation

“…When that happens, the aim of the commitment changes from function d to function c , but, crucially, it continues to be represented as an end in itself. The DCCs which represent social roles likely include other dimensions (Del Pinal, ; Pustejovsky, ), which for simplicity we ignore here…”

“…When that happens, the aim of the commitment changes from function d to function c , but, crucially, it continues to be represented as an end in itself. The DCCs which represent social roles likely include other dimensions (Del Pinal, 2015;Pustejovsky, 1995), which for simplicity we ignore here. 8 As we mentioned above, we assume that conceptual representations can encode the relative weights of, and the dependency relations between, features and dimensions (Hampton, 2006;Hampton et al, 2009;Sloman et al, 1998).…”

“…If this is correct, conceptions will do some of the job that concepts traditionally are thought to do. For a detailed defense of this position, see Del Pinal (2015). 9.…”