5 - Long-Distance Meaning Relationships

Summary

This chapter addresses challenges for the composition of meanings in more complex syntactic constructions than those we have treated so far. As we will see, the framework of Chapters 3–4 systematically fails in analyzing meaning relations between expressions that are not adjacent to each other. One such case is sentences where multiple noun phrases are in semantic relations with the same verb.We solve this problem by adding to the system of Chapter 3 a compositional principle of hypothetical reasoning, or function abstraction, which acts as a dual to function application. Our use of hypothetical reasoning motivates a revision of one of our foundational assumptions in Chapter 3. Instead of interpreting pre-generated binary trees over strings, as we have done so far, our revised grammar architecture derives semantic denotations simultaneously with the derivation of syntactic forms. Forms and meanings are paired together in integrative linguistic resources called linguistic signs. In the ensuing grammatical framework, Abstract Categorial Grammar, the composition of meanings is only one of the two dimensions within the derivation of complex linguistic signs.

In the framework laid out in Chapter 3 we have interpreted binary syntactic structures by using functional types and denotations. Function application was our semantic tool for deriving denotations of complex expressions from the denotations of their parts. The semantic system only allowed denotations of constituents to combine when they are analyzed as sisters in the syntactic structure. Sisters in the binary tree correspond to two strings that are linearly adjacent to each other. Consequently, only denotations of adjacent expressions could be glued together. For instance, consider the generalized quantifier for the noun phrase every tall student. Under our assumptions so far, when deriving a meaning for this expression, we first combine the denotation of the adjective tall with the denotation of the noun student, and then combine the result with the denotation of the determiner every. In an alternative analysis, which is syntactically dubious but analytically possible, we might let every and tall be sisters.