Interface Strategies: Optimal and Costly Computations (Paperback)
Tanya Reinhart
- 出版商: MIT
- 出版日期: 2006-03-24
- 售價: $1,390
- 貴賓價: 9.5 折 $1,321
- 語言: 英文
- 頁數: 336
- 裝訂: Paperback
- ISBN: 0262681560
- ISBN-13: 9780262681568
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In this monograph Tanya Reinhart discusses strategies enabling the interface of different cognitive systems, which she identifies as the systems of concepts, inference, context, and sound. Her point of departure is Noam Chomsky's hypothesis that language is optimally designed--namely, that in many cases, the bare minimum needed for constructing syntactic derivations is sufficient for the full needs of the interface. Deviations from this principle are viewed as imperfections.
The book covers in depth four areas of the interface: quantifier scope, focus, anaphora resolution, and implicatures. The first question in each area is what makes the computational system (CS, syntax) legible to the other systems at the interface--how much of the information needed for the interface is coded already in the CS, and how it is coded. Next Reinhart argues that in each of these areas there are certain aspects of meaning and use that cannot be coded in the CS formal language, on both conceptual and empirical grounds. This residue is governed by interface strategies that can be viewed as repair of imperfections. They require constructing and comparing a reference set of alternative derivations to determine whether a repair operation is indeed the only way to meet the interface requirements.
Evidence that reference-set computation applies in these four areas comes from language acquisition. The required computation poses a severe load on working memory. While adults can cope with this load, children, whose working memory is less developed, fail in tasks requiring this computation.
Tanya Reinhart holds the Interface Chair at Utrecht University Language Institute (OTS) and as of Fall 2006 is a Global Distinguished Professor at NYU.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Optimal Design
1 Reference-Set Computation
1.1 The Minimal Link Condition 14
1.2 Interpretation-Dependent Reference Sets 25
1.3 The Interface Strategy: Repair of Imperfections 37
2 Scope Shift 47
2.1 Quantifier Scope: The State of the Art 48
2.1.1 The Optimistic QR View of the 1970s 48
2.1.2 The Syntactic Freedom of Existential Wide Scope 50
2.1.3 Can the Problem with Existentials Be Explained Away? 53
2.1.4 The "Realistic" QR View of the 1980s 60
2.1.5 Some Problems 61
2.2 The Alternative of Wide Scope In Situ 64
2.2.1 Wh-In Situ 64
2.2.2 Sluicing 69
2.3 The Interpretation Problem of Wide Scope In Situ 68
2.3.1 Wh-In Situ 69
2.3.2 Sluicing 71
2.3.3 Existential Wide Scope 73
2.4 The Semantic Problem with Island-Free QR 76
2.5 An Intermediate Summary 79
2.6 Where No QR Is Needed: Choice Functions for Existential Quantifiers 81
2.6.1 Choice Functions and Existential Closure 81
2.6.2 Deriving the Choice-Function Interpretation 85
2.6.3 The Collective-Distributive Distinction 88
2.6.4 Which Indefinites Are Interpretable by Choice Functions? 91
2.6.5 Some Choice-Functions Semantics 95
2.7 Scope-Shift: An Interface Repair Strategy 101
2.7.1 Minimize Interpretative Options 101
2.7.2 Applying the Illicit QR as a Repair Strategy 105
2.7.3 Processing Limitations on the Size of Reference Sets--Indefinite Numerals 110
3 Focus: The PF Interface 125
3.1 Sentence Main Stress 127
3.1.1 Cinque's Main-Stress System 127
3.1.2 Szendröi's Main-Stress System 131
3.2 How Focus Is Coded 134
3.2.1 Main Stress and Focus: The Basic View 134
3.2.2 PF-Coding: The Focus Set 135
3.3 Stress Operations 141
3.3.1 Focus and Anaphora 141
3.3.2 The Operations: Destressing and Main-Stress Shift 148
3.4 Reference-Set Computation 156
3.4.1 Focus Projection 156
3.4.2 Markedness 161
4 The Anaphora Reference-Set Strategy 165
4.1 Two Procedures of Anaphora Resolution 165
4.1.1 The Current Picture 166
4.1.2 What is Binding? 169
4.1.3 Covaluation 172
4.2 Anaphora Restrictions 173
4.2.1 Restrictions on Binding 173
4.2.2 Restrictions on Covaluation 178
4.3 The Interface Strategy Governing Covaluation (Rule I) 181
4.3.1 Minimize Interpretative Options 181
4.3.2 Reference-Set Computation 186
4.3.3 Further Details of the Computation 190
4.4 Covaluation in Ellipses Contexts 192
4.5 The Psychological Reality of Rule I 196
5 The Processing Cost of Reference-Set Computation 199
5.1 Acquisition of the Coreference Rule I 204
5.1.1 An Overview of Binding and Rule I 206
5.1.2 Thornton and Wexler's Arguments against the Processing Account 216
5.1.3 Questions of Learnability 227
5.1.4 Explaining Chance Performance 232
5.2 Acquisition of Main-Stress Shift 238
5.2.1 An Overview of Stress and Focus 238
5.2.2 Preliminaries 246
5.2.3 Switch-Reference Resolution 251
5.2.4 Guess and Default: Focus and Identification in the Scope of Only 259
5.2.5 Useful and Arbitrary Defaults 266
5.3 Acquisition of Scalar Implicatures 272
Notes 293
References
Author Index
Subject Index
