Causality Aspect And Modality In Actuality Inferences
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Causality Aspect And Modality In Actuality Inferences
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Author : Prerna Nadathur
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2019
Causality Aspect And Modality In Actuality Inferences written by Prerna Nadathur and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2019 with categories.
Crosslinguistically, expressions of ability exhibit a curious duality of interpretation, in some contexts describing the abilities and potential of an agent, and in others simply describing what the agent did on a particular occasion. In languages that mark grammatical aspect, the alternation between ability and action extends to abilitative uses of the possibility modal, and is governed by aspectual marking (Bhatt, 1999). For instance, imperfectively marked uses of the French modal 'pouvoir' ('can') are compatible with pure, potentially unrealized ability interpretations; by contrast, perfectively marked 'pouvoir' gives rise to actuality entailments, requiring the realization of its complement, and seemingly very little else. An influential line of work seeks to derive actuality entailments in the composition of modality and aspect, treating ability as a type of circumstantial possibility operator, and the perfective aspect as imposing temporal boundaries on eventualities in its scope (Hacquard, 2006, a.o.). This dissertation lays the groundwork for an account that links both the ability and actuality interpretations to a novel component in the semantics of ability: causal dependence. The main idea is that ability modals describe a complex causal structure, in which the (circumstantial) possibility that an agent S will realize an event A(S) obtains in view of the causal dependence of A(S) on an available choice or action for S. This proposal is motivated by philosophical work on ability, which suggests that abilitative possibilities have stronger truth conditions than pure circumstantial possibilities (Kenny, 1976; Brown, 1988). I develop the argument for a causal account of ability by comparing actuality inferences to the interpretation of two other types of complement-taking predicates: implicative verbs (e.g., 'manage'; Karttunen, 1971) and 'enough' and 'too' predicates (e.g., 'be fast enough'; Meier, 2003). I show that, in both cases, complement inferences follow from the combination of two things: (i) the presupposition that some prerequisite action for an agent is causally necessary and causally sufficient for the complement, and (ii) a determination of whether or not the prerequisite action occurred. Implicative verbs resolve the prerequisite as asserted content, deriving their characteristic complement entailments as causal consequences. 'Enough' and 'too' constructions, by contrast, simply indicate that the prerequisite action is available to the agent. Drawing on theories of aspectual coercion (Moens and Steedman, 1988, a.o.), I argue that perfective aspect interacts with this 'availability' assertion by systematically forcing an interpretation on which the agent instantiates the prerequisite. As a result, imperfectively marked 'enough' and 'too' constructions imply that their complements are possible, but perfectively marked constructions entail their complements as causal consequences of the prerequisite, in the same way as implicative verbs. 'Enough' and 'too' constructions thus represent a special type of ability attribution, which is specific about the nature of the causal prerequisite for the ability-complement. Pursuing this analysis, the actuality inferences of ability modals result not just from the composition of modality and aspect, but more specifically from the composition of aspect with the specific type of complex causal possibility conveyed by ability predicates. I formalize causal dependence relations over the structure of a causal model which represents causal connections between events as directed links in a graphical network (Pearl, 2000; Schulz, 2011; Kaufmann, 2013). In such a model, the felicity conditions imposed by causal necessity/sufficiency presuppositions depend crucially on the discourse background. Grammatical aspect then selects for a particular interpretation of the abilitative causal structure by selecting for a particular type of background. I argue that this view of ability is a natural extension of the standard modal theory, and suggest that formal models of causation are one way of representing reasoning about the 'normal' developments of situations ('stereotypicality'; Kratzer 1981).
Actuality Inferences
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Author : Prerna Nadathur
language : en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date : 2023-03-30
Actuality Inferences written by Prerna Nadathur and has been published by Oxford University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2023-03-30 with Psychology categories.
This book investigates the phenomenon of actuality inferences, in which claims of ability are-in certain temporal contexts-interpreted as descriptions of actual events, instead of as descriptions of potentialities or possibilities. Although actuality inferences evidently arise in the interaction between modality and aspect, they have long resisted compositional explication in standard treatments of these semantic categories. Prerna Nadathur here pursues a new approach, in which actuality inferences are linked to a novel component in the semantics of ability: causal dependence relations. The account is developed through a comparative, crosslinguistic semantic analysis of three predicate classes that license similar inferences: implicative verbs in Finnish and English, enough/too predicates in French and English, and (modal) ability predicates in French, Hindi, and English. Similarities in the inferential profiles of these predicates are tied to their shared causal background structure, while their differences-including in sensitivity to grammatical aspect-derive from differences in asserted content and associated aspectual class contrasts. The central argument is that a complex causal structure for ability interacts with the compositional requirements of aspect to derive the observed actuality-ability ambiguity. The volume shows that causal structure and causal relationships shape patterns of linguistic inference beyond the overtly causal domain, and thus contributes to a new and growing body of research in which formal, computational causal models are employed as an analytic tool for lexical and compositional semantics.
Agency And Intentions In Language
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Author :
language : en
Publisher: BRILL
Release Date : 2023-06-05
Agency And Intentions In Language written by and has been published by BRILL this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2023-06-05 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
Our sense of agency and ability to distinguish between intentional and accidental actions are fundamental for social interaction. They allow us to plan and perform joint actions and assign responsibility for our own actions and those of others. Research on the nature of agency and intentions has been very fruitful over the last few decades in philosophy, linguistics, and psychology. However, trully new discoveries could be made only when we engage in interdisciplinary discussions. This volume is the result of such discussions.
From Perception To Communication
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Author : Robin Cooper
language : en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date : 2023-03-16
From Perception To Communication written by Robin Cooper and has been published by Oxford University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2023-03-16 with Psychology categories.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book characterizes a notion of type that covers both linguistic and non-linguistic action, and lays the foundations for a theory of action based on a Theory of Types with Records (TTR). Robin Cooper argues that a theory of language based on action allows the adoption of a perspective on linguistic content that is centred on interaction in dialogue; this approach is crucially different to the traditional view of natural languages as essentially similar to formal languages such as logics developed by philosophers or mathematicians. At the same time, he claims that the substantial technical advantages made by the formal language view of semantics can be incorporated into the action-based view, and that this can lead to important improvements in both intuitive understanding and empirical coverage. This enterprise uses types rather than possible worlds as commonly employed in studies of the semantics of natural language. Types are more tractable than possible worlds and offer greater potential for understanding the implementation of semantics both on machines and in biological brains.
Signaling Without Saying
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Author : Robert Henderson
language : en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date : 2024-07-12
Signaling Without Saying written by Robert Henderson and has been published by Oxford University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2024-07-12 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
Signaling without Saying develops game-theoretic approaches to social meaning to model the phenomenon of dogwhistles, perhaps best known from political speech. These constructions involve language that sends one message to an out-group while at the same time sending a second-often taboo, controversial, or inflammatory-message to an in-group. Robert Henderson and Elin McCready show that dogwhistles should not be modeled in the same way as related language, like slurs, and nor should they be treated via standard Gricean implicatures computed over truth-conditional meaning; instead, they should be treated as primarily bearing social meaning, as understood by modern variationist sociolinguistic theories. The book identifies and models two different kinds of dogwhistle meaning, while also exploring a variety of related phenomena. The authors show how novel implicatures in the social meaning domain can arise when a listener detects a dogwhistle, and connect them to implicatures familiar in the truth-conditional domain. Social meaning, they argue, can be added to theories of trust in testimonial evidence, and dogwhistles can help to establish trust with an audience, even when expressing false propositions. The final chapter of the book looks at connections between dogwhistles and other issues important in epistemology and philosophy of language which might involve social meaning, such as standpoint theory.
Parenthetical Meaning
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Author : Todor Koev
language : en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date : 2022-06-30
Parenthetical Meaning written by Todor Koev and has been published by Oxford University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2022-06-30 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
This book investigates the semantics and pragmatics of a representative sample of parenthetical constructions. Todor Koev argues that these constructions fall into two major classes: pure and impure. Pure parentheticals comment on some part of the descriptive content of the root sentence but are otherwise relatively independent of it. Impure parentheticals modify components of the illocutionary force and affect the felicity or the truth of the root sentence. The book studies parentheticals from three theoretical viewpoints: illocutionary effects, scopal properties, and discourse status. It establishes and explicates the notion of parenthetical meaning in a formally precise and predictive dynamic-semantic model. As a result, parentheticality is brought to bear on linguistic phenomena such as entailment and presupposition, binding and anaphora, evidentiality and modality, illocutionary force, and polarity.
Aspect And Causal Inferences
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Author : Andreas Hans Schramm
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 1998
Aspect And Causal Inferences written by Andreas Hans Schramm and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1998 with categories.
Causality
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Author : Judea Pearl
language : en
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Release Date : 2000-03-13
Causality written by Judea Pearl and has been published by Cambridge University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2000-03-13 with Science categories.
Causality offers the first comprehensive coverage of causal analysis in many sciences, including recent advances using graphical methods. Pearl presents a unified account of the probabilistic, manipulative, counterfactual and structural approaches to causation, and devises simple mathematical tools for analyzing the relationships between causal connections and statistical associations. The book will facilitate the incorporation of causal analysis as an integral part of the standard curriculum in statistics, business, epidemiology, social science and economics. Causality will be of interest to professionals and students in the fields of statistics, artificial intelligence, philosophy, cognitive science, and the health and social sciences.
Time And Causality
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Author : Marc J. Buehner
language : en
Publisher: Frontiers E-books
Release Date : 2014-08-06
Time And Causality written by Marc J. Buehner and has been published by Frontiers E-books this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2014-08-06 with Causation categories.
The problem of how humans and other intelligent systems construct causal representations from non-causal perceptual evidence has occupied scholars in cognitive science for many decades. Most contemporary approaches agree with David Hume that patterns of covariation between two events of interest are the critical input to the causal induction engine, irrespective of whether this induction is believed to be grounded in the formation of associations (Shanks & Dickinson, 1987), rule-based evaluation (White, 2004), appraisal of causal powers (Cheng, 1997), or construction of Bayesian Causal Networks (Pearl, 2000). Recent research, however, has repeatedly demonstrated that an exclusive focus on covariation while neglecting contiguity (another of Hume’s cues) results in ecologically invalid models of causal inference. Temporal spacing, order, variability, predictability, and patterning all have profound influence on the type of causal representation that is constructed. The influence of time upon causal representations could be seen as a bottom-up constraint (though current bottom-up models cannot account for the full spectrum of effects). However, causal representations in turn also constrain the perception of time: Put simply, two causally related events appear closer in subjective time than two (equidistant) unrelated events. This reversal of Hume’s conjecture, referred to as Causal Binding (Buehner & Humphreys, 2009) is a top-down constraint, and suggests that our representations of time and causality are mutually influencing one another. At present, the theoretical implications of this phenomenon are not yet fully understood. Some accounts link it exclusively to human motor planning (appealing to mechanisms of cross-modal temporal adaptation, or forward learning models of motor control). However, recent demonstrations of causal binding in the absence of human action, and analogous binding effects in the visual spatial domain, challenge such accounts in favour of Bayesian Evidence Integration. This Research Topic reviews and further explores the nature of the mutual influence between time and causality, how causal knowledge is constructed in the context of time, and how it in turn shapes and alters our perception of time. We draw together literatures from the perception and cognitive science, as well as experimental and theoretical papers. Contributions investigate the neural bases of binding and causal learning/perception, methodological advances, and functional implications of causal learning and perception in real time.
Causal Inference
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Author : K. J. Rothman
language : en
Publisher: Kenneth Rothman
Release Date : 1988
Causal Inference written by K. J. Rothman and has been published by Kenneth Rothman this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1988 with Causation categories.