Inferable and Partitive Indefinites in Topic Position

2021-01-01
Von Heusinger, Klaus
Özge, Umut
Show full item record
369
views
0
downloads
The topic position in a sentence is reserved for familiar and/or referential arguments (Kuno, 1972; Reinhart, 1981; Portner & Yabushita, 2001). Thus, the typical topic is a definite expression such as a pronoun, a proper name or a definite noun phrase. However, indefinites can appear in topic position if they are referential, i.e. specific or generic. Following Prince (1981c) we argue that indefinite noun phrases can also be topics if they are weakly familiar, i.e. discourse-linked. We assume that there are (at least) two different ways to link an indefinite to the previous discourse: (i) partitive indefinites are linked to the discourse by a contextually established membership relation (Prince, 1981c; Enç, 1991); (ii) inferable indefinites (Prince, 1981b, 1992) are linked via the concepts associated with the descriptive part of the indefinite and the anchor expression. We present the results of acceptability rating studies that support the following claims: (i) indefinites as topics are in general acceptable, but less so than indefinites in non-topic position; (ii) indefinites in topic position are better rated if they are discourse-linked; (iii) inferable indefinites make better topics in comparison to partitive indefinites.
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/72571
Graduate School of Informatics, Book / Book chapter

Suggestions

Paracompositionality, MWEs and argument substitution
Bozşahin, Hüseyin Cem (2018-08-11)
Multi-word expressions, verb-particle constructions, idiomatically combining phrases, and phrasal idioms have something in common: not all of their elements contribute to the argument structure of the predicate implicated by the expression. Radically lexicalized theories of grammar that avoid string-, term-, logical form-, and tree-writing, and categorial grammars that avoid wrap operation, make predictions about the categories involved in verb-particles and phrasal idioms. They may require singleton types,...
Reformulation of the concept of understanding in Heidegger's and Gadamer's hermeneutic theories
Günok, Emrah; Ergüden, Akın; Department of Philosophy (2004)
The goal of the present dissertation is to display the reconstruction of the concept of understanding which has down through the history of philosophy been used as the synonym of knowing. Hence, my main intention is to focus on the Heidegger2s and Gadamer2s critique of epistemological conception of understanding and their reevaluation of this concept in terms of ontology. Finally, I will try to examine the similarities and dissimilarities between the philosophers and try to call attention to their emphasis ...
Automatic sense prediction of explicit discourse connectives in Turkish with the help of centering theory and morphosyntactic features
Çetin, Savaş; Zeyrek Bozşahin, Deniz; Department of Cognitive Sciences (2018)
Discourse connectives (and, but, however) are one of many means of keeping the discourse coherent. Discourse connectives are classified into groups based on their senses (expansion, contingency, etc.). They describe the semantic relationship of two discourse units. This study aims to build a machine learning system to predict the sense of explicit discourse connectives on the Turkish Discourse Bank data, which is manually gold-annotated. To do so, this study examines the effect of several features: i.e. tra...
Automatic sense prediction of implicit discourse relations in Turkish
Kurfalı, Murathan; Zeyrek Bozşahin, Deniz; Department of Cognitive Sciences (2016)
In discourse parsing, the sense prediction of the Implicit discourse relations poses the most significant challenge. The thesis aims to develop a supervised system to predict the sense of implicit discourse relations in Turkish Discourse Bank (TDB). In order to accomplish that goal, the discourse level annotations obtained from TDB are used. TDB follows the PDTB-2’s sense hierarchy and for all experiments within the current study, only CLASS senses are considered. As the primary experiment, the classifiers ...
On logic, syntax, and silence
Davoody Benı, Majıd (2015-01-01)
The relationship between Carnap's Logical Syntax of Language (hereafter LSL) ([1934] 1937) andWittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP) ([1921] 1922) has been interpreted in several ways during past decades. One of the interpretations has gained keen advocates among Carnap scholars. It was originally provoked by what Caranp said in LSL, and it consists of two parts. First, it indicates that in TLP the possibility of speaking about the logical form of a language within the same language (which happ...
Citation Formats
K. Von Heusinger and U. Özge, Inferable and Partitive Indefinites in Topic Position. 2021, p. 140.
METU IIS - Integrated Information Service open@metu.edu.tr