Confessions of a Lapsed Neo-Davidsonian: Events and Arguments in Compositional Semantics

311 Pages·1997·16.911 MB·English

by  Samuel L. Bayer

OUTSTANDING DISSERTATIONS IN
LINGUISTICS
edited by
LAURENCE H O RN
YALE UNIVERSITY

CONFESSIONS OF
A LAPSED
N E O - D A V I D S O N I AN
EVENTS AND ARGUMENTS IN
COMPOSITIONAL SEMANTICS
SAMUEL LOUIS BAYER
First published by Garland Publishing, Inc.
This edition by Routledge:
Routledge Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group
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270 Madison Avenue
Milton Park, Abingdon
New York, NY 10016
Oxon OX14 4RN
Copyright © 1997 Samuel Louis Bayer
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bayer, Samuel Louis, 1962-
Confessions of a lapsed neo-Davidsonian : events and argu­
ments in compositional semantics.
p. cm. — (Outstanding dissertations in linguistics)
Revision of thesis (Ph. D.)—Brown University, 1996.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8153-2846-X (alk. paper)

1. Semantics. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general. 3.
Davidson, Donald, 1917- . I. Title. II. Series.
P325.B3748 1997
40Γ.43—dc21
97-12385
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Notes xv
List of abbreviations xvi
1 Introduction 3
1.1 Flavors of event semantics 5
1.2 Evaluating event semantics 5
Notes 8
2 Events: An Initial Justification 9
2.1 The Davidsonian element 9
2.2 Modification of events and parallelism 10
2.3 Frequency adverbials 14
2.4 Quantification over events 16
2.5 The type of the Davidsonian element 24
2.6 Conclusion 28
Notes 29
3 Events, Quantification and Plurality 35
3.1 Generalized quantifiers 35
3.2 Generalized conjunction 36
3.3 Coordinated individuals 38
3.4 Plurals 59
3.5 Putti ng the pieces together 44
3.6 Generalized sum conjunction 47
3.7 Distributivity, collectivity and events: a final motivation . 55
V
3.8 Conclusion 59
Notes 60
4 Davidsonian Semantics 63
4.1 Background 63
4.2 The syntax/semantics interface 64
4.3 Event Categorial Grammar 73
Notes 79
5 The Devil in the Davidsonian Details 81
5.1 Existential closure 81
5.2 Existential closure and dynamic semantics 86
5.3 The size of events 97
5.4 Conclusion 109
Notes 110
6 Neo-Davidsonian Semantics 113
6.1 Preliminaries 114
6.2 Argument indexing and thematic role ontology 116
6.3 Thematic roles in sentence semantics 124
Notes 137
7 Attempting to Justify Neo-Davidsonian Composition 139
1.1 Cumulativity and telicity 139
12 Obligatoriness and the argument/adjunct distinction . . . 145
7.3 Scope and distributivity 169
1.4 Events and participation revisited 196
7.5 Conclusion 203
Notes 204
8 Argument Accessibility and Events 207
8.1 Backg round 208
8.2 Modifiers 209
8.3 Against thematic roles for argument construal 217
8.4 The order-based alternative 224
8.5 Global argument mapping 234
8.6 Conclusion 244
Notes 245
vi
9 Conclusion 251
Notes 254
A Neo-Davidsonian VP Coordination 255
A.l The first problem 255
A.2 The second problem 263
A3 Conclusion 268
Notes 269
Bibliography 271
Index 283

vii

Preface
A doctoral dissertation is an odd beast. It is, for many people, the largest
single project ever to be undertaken, but it is produced at the very begin
ning of one's scholarly career. It is implicitly formulated as an answer,
but by its very size and scope it raises more questions than it can ever
hope to address, and documents the authoritative opinion of an academic
babe in the woods. So it is more likely, it seems to me, that dissertations
will be demonstrably flawed than other, subsequent work, and so it is
with the dissertation you hold in your hand.
In this dissertation, I addressed the properties of thematic roles in the
context of an event semantics. I was specifically interested in whether it
was possible to show that thematic roles were indispensable objects in
compositional semantics, and what a syntax/semantics map which incor
porated such objects might look like. In the course of this investigation,
I reached three major conclusions. First, I concluded that the evidence
presented in the literature so far clearly favors a semantics which incor
porates events (as opposed to one which has no such extended valence
for predicates), and that such a semantics is straightforwardly compatible
with well-known generalizations about coordination and quantification.
Second, I concluded that while previous versions of the syntax/semantics
map which necessarily involved thematic roles were not adequate, it was
possible to improve on existing models, although difficult problems re
mained. Third, and most important, I concluded that, while it might be
possible to construct such a model, the available evidence could not jus
tify the incorporation of thematic roles in semantic composition.
The first and second conclusions, I believe, are fundamentally right.

The first, of course, was not particularly original; I followed many per
suasive researchers (including Landman, Lasersohn, etc.) in reaching
this conclusion. The second conclusion is more interesting: I believe the
thematically-based grammar fragment I presented here is a noticeable
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