Abstract
Experiments on the online processing of linguistic utterances provide information about language processing in the first instance, and only indirectly about linguistic knowledge, while it has been linguistic knowl edge, and not linguistic processing, that has been the subject matter of theoretical linguistics. So how can such evidence be relevant to theoretical linguistics? Or how can linguistic theory inform a theory of language processing? – This issue is discussed here with respect to the processing and the formal semantics of the English definite determiner. I argue that the meaning of the definite determiner, as it shows up in experiments on online comprehension, can actually be accounted for in an incremental variant of current formal semantics.
Keywords
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Allopenna, P., Magnuson, J.S., Tanenhaus, M.K.: Tracking the time course of spoken word recognition using eye-movements. Journal of Memory and Language 38, 419–439 (1998)
Altmann, G.T.M., Kamide, Y.: Incremental interpretation at verbs: Restricting the domain of subsequent reference. Cognition 73, 247–264 (1999)
Altmann, G.T.M., Steedman, M.J.: Interaction with context during human sentence processing. Cognition 30, 191–238 (1988)
Boland, J.E.: Visual arguments. Cognition 95, 237–274 (2005)
Chambers, C.G., Tanenhaus, M.K., Eberhard, K.M., Carlson, G.N., Filip, H.: Words and worlds: The construction of context for definite reference. In: Gernsbacher, M.A., Derry, S.J. (eds.) Proc. of the 20th Ann. Conf. of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 220–225. Erlbaum, Mahwah (1998)
Cieschinger, M.: Constraints on the Contraction of Preposition and Definite Article in German. BSc Thesis, Univ. of Osnabrück, CogSci. (2006), http://www.cogsci.uos.de/~CL/download/BSc_thesis_Cieschinger.pdf
Carlson, G., Sussman, R., Klein, N., Tanenhaus, M.: Weak definite NPs. In: Davis, C., Deal, A.R., Zabbal, Y. (eds.) Proceedings of NELS 36. UMass/Amherst. GLSA/Chicago (2006)
Dahan, D., Swingley, D., Tanenhaus, M.K., Magnuson, J.S.: Linguistic Gender and Spoken-Word Recognition in French. J. Mem. & Lang. 42, 465–480 (2000)
Eisenband, A.J., Brown-Schmidt, S., Trueswell, J.: The Rapid Use of Gender Information. Cognition 76, B13–B26 (2000)
Garfield, J.L. (ed.): Modularity in Knowledge Representation and Natural Language Understanding. MIT Press, Cambridge (1987)
Haddock, N.J.: Incremental interpretation and combinatora categorial grammar. In: Proceedings of IJCAI 1987, vol. 2, pp. 661–663 (1987)
Hagoort, P., van Berkum, J.: Beyond the sentence given. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 362, 801–811 (2007)
Hartmann, N.: Processing Grammatical Gender in German - An Eye-Tracking Study on Spoken-Word Recognition. BSc Thesis. Univ. of Osnabrück, Cognitive Science (2004), http://www.cogsci.uni-osnabrueck.de/~CL/download/Hartmann_GramGender.pdf
Heim, I., Kratzer, A.: Semantics in Generative Grammar. Blackwell, Oxford (1997)
Karabanov, A., Bosch, P., König, P.: Eye Tracking as a Tool to Investigate the Comprehension of Referential Expressions. In: Featherston, S., Sternefeld, W. (eds.) Roots. Linguistics in Search of its Evidential Base, pp. 207–226. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin (2007)
Marslen-Wilson, W.D., Tyler, L.K.: The temporal structure of spoken language understanding. Cognition 8, 1–71 (1980)
Meier, C.: Embedded Definites. In: van Rooy, R. (ed.) Proceedings of the Fourteenth Amsterdam Colloquium, pp. 163–168. ILLC, Amsterdam (2003)
Poesio, M.: Weak Definites. In: Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Semantic und Linguistic Theory. SALT-4 (1994)
Tanenhaus, M.K., Spivey-Knowlton, M.-J., Eberhard, K.M., Sedivy, J.C.: Integration of visual and linguistic information in spoken language-comprehension. Science 268, 1632–1634 (1995)
Trueswell, J.C., Tanenhaus, M.K. (eds.): Approaches to Studying World-Situated Language Use. MIT Press, Cambridge (2005)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Bosch, P. (2009). Processing Definite Determiners: Formal Semantics Meets Experimental Results. In: Bosch, P., Gabelaia, D., Lang, J. (eds) Logic, Language, and Computation. TbiLLC 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 5422. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00665-4_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00665-4_20
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-00664-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-00665-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)