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From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
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References: <3gtu3i$rf3@mp.cs.niu.edu> <D3rGKG.16u@spss.com> <3hf0fa$7p@agate.berkeley.edu> <D3t179.633@spss.com>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 1995 09:29:25 GMT
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In article <D3t179.633@spss.com>, Mark Rosenfelder <markrose@spss.com> wrote:
>In article <3hf0fa$7p@agate.berkeley.edu>,
> <jerrybro@uclink2.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>>markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) wrote:
>>> John has the same syntactic role in
>>>    John flogged Mary.
>>>    John was flogged by Mary.
>>> (subject position; topic; case), but has a rather different semantic role,
>>> as I'm sure you'd agree if you were John.
>>
>>Consider:
>>John ate.  John drank.  John shat.  John flogged.  John was flogged.
>>
>>Surely the semantic roles of "John" in the above list of statements
>>have something important in common.  This remains even when objects
>>are introduced.  It allows the list to be unambiguously about John.
>
>Right; this is what I called "topic" in the citation above.
>
>>> John has the same semantic role in 
>>>    John flogged Mary.
>>>    Mary was flogged by John.
>>>    John's flogging of Mary (was abominable). 
>>
>>As I tried to show above, this takes a narrow view of semantics.
>
>No, it just uses "semantics" as most linguists do.  Topic (what you're
>talking about) and comment (what you're saying about it) is a matter of 
>pragmatics.

Whatever they are, they aren't grammar.  When people here are talking
about other explanations than UG, they are talking about other explanations
than grammar; if they say "semantics" when they "should" say "pragmatics",
it doesn't change the argument.

>>In fact, if rhetorically you want to direct attention away from
>>something, you can do this by keeping it from being the subject
>>of your sentences.  If you want to direct attention to it, make
>>it the subject.
>
>A linguist would say that the *syntactic* role of the subject normally
>coincides in English with the *pragmatic* role of the topic.  Such a
>distinction is useful because the subject *isn't* always the topic of
>the sentence; topic can be indicated by stress, for instance, or by
>position in the sentence irrespective of subject (nominative) status,
>or by explicit constructions ("What was happening to Mary was, John
>flogged her"), or (in some languages, such as Quechua or Japanese), by
>explicit morphemes.  
>
>>> For that matter, although we can't say "Who did you see and John?", we
>>> *can* say "You saw John and *who*?"  Yet the semantics have not changed;
>>
>>What semantics?  Surely, since the first example fails to ask
>>anything, it can't easily be said to have semantics, and certainly
>>it doesn't have the same semantics as the second example, which
>>actually does ask something.
>
>The cited paragraph was part of a response to the suggestion that something
>about the semantics of "You saw John and X", where X is an unknown person
>whose name we wanted, prevents our asking by saying "Who did you see John
>and?"  So far as I can see, this claim is refuted by the fact that we
>*can* ask "You saw John and *who*?"  

I think you have misconstrued the argument.  The claim was made that
"John and Mary" was semantically equivalent to "John with Mary".
Various arguments were given that that isn't so.  The relevance of the
semantics of "John and X" is that, since it differs from "John with X",
you cannot make the argument that, because "John with" is ok, "John and"
should be ok too.

>As you say, "the first example fails to ask anything".  The question is,
>why does it fail to do so?  Just asserting
>
>>The first one makes no sense, which is a fact about its semantics.
>
>is not an explanation; it's a restatement of the problem: people don't
>say that, and have trouble understanding it.  But *why* do people
>have trouble making sense of it?

First, if we do fail to explain why it doesn't make sense, how is that support
for UG?  There are many forms that don't make sense, such as "Who and did you
see John?".  Why is "Who did you see John and?"  particularly interesting?  It
is neither semantically nor syntactically parallel to "Who did you see John
with?", despite the contrary claim.  But it is semantically, but not
syntactically, parallel to "Who did you see John kissing?", which does make
sense.  Second, I think there is a ready explanation in the fact that "I saw
John and Mary", "I saw John and I left", "I saw John and touched Mary", and "I
saw John and Mary didn't" are all valid, but only "I saw John with Mary" is.
With "and" playing so many different possible roles, it becomes hard work to
determine its role when the cues are removed.  Third, despite comments by
others here, I think that, given proper stress, following a statement like "I
saw John and <mumble>", "*Who* did you you see John and?" does make sense and
would be readily parsed.  In fact, I speak that way occasionally with my geeky
formalistic friends.  Does UG posit that the language we speak isn't a
"natural" language?



Actuially
-- 
<J Q B>

