Interface Strategies

by Reinhart, Tanya

• ISBN13: 9780262681568
• ISBN10: 0262681560
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-04-07
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: Optimal Design	p. 1
Reference-Set Computation	p. 13
The Minimal Link Condition	p. 14
Interpretation-Dependent Reference Sets	p. 25
The Interface Strategy: Repair of Imperfections	p. 37
Scope Shift	p. 47
Quantifier Scope: The State of the Art	p. 48
The Optimistic QR View of the 1970s	p. 48
The Syntactic Freedom of Existential Wide Scope	p. 50
Can the Problem with Existentials Be Explained Away?	p. 53
The "Realistic" QR View of the 1980s	p. 60
Some Problems	p. 61
The Alternative of Wide Scope In Situ	p. 64
Wh-In Situ	p. 64
Sluicing	p. 69
The Interpretation Problem of Wide Scope In Situ	p. 68
Wh-In Situ	p. 69
Sluicing	p. 71
Existential Wide Scope	p. 73
The Semantic Problem with Island-Free QR	p. 76
An Intermediate Summary	p. 79
Where No QR Is Needed: Choice Functions for Existential Quantifiers	p. 81
Choice Functions and Existential Closure	p. 81
Deriving the Choice-Function Interpretation	p. 85
The Collective-Distributive Distinction	p. 88
Which Indefinites Are Interpretable by Choice Functions?	p. 91
Some Choice-Functions Semantics	p. 95
Scope-Shift: An Interface Repair Strategy	p. 101
Minimize Interpretative Options	p. 101
Applying the Illicit QR as a Repair Strategy	p. 105
Processing Limitations on the Size of Reference Sets--Indefinite Numerals	p. 110
Focus: The PF Interface	p. 125
Sentence Main Stress	p. 127
Cinque's Main-Stress System	p. 127
Szendroi's Main-Stress System	p. 131
How Focus Is Coded	p. 134
Main Stress and Focus: The Basic View	p. 134
PF-Coding: The Focus Set	p. 135
Stress Operations	p. 141
Focus and Anaphora	p. 141
The Operations: Destressing and Main-Stress Shift	p. 148
Reference-Set Computation	p. 156
Focus Projection	p. 156
Markedness	p. 161
The Anaphora Reference-Set Strategy	p. 165
Two Procedures of Anaphora Resolution	p. 165
The Current Picture	p. 166
What is Binding?	p. 169
Covaluation	p. 172
Anaphora Restrictions	p. 173
Restrictions on Binding	p. 173
Restrictions on Covaluation	p. 178
The Interface Strategy Governing Covaluation (Rule I)	p. 181
Minimize Interpretative Options	p. 181
Reference-Set Computation	p. 186
Further Details of the Computation	p. 190
Covaluation in Ellipses Contexts	p. 192
The Psychological Reality of Rule I	p. 196
The Processing Cost of Reference-Set Computation	p. 199
Acquisition of the Coreference Rule I	p. 204
An Overview of Binding and Rule I	p. 206
Thornton and Wexler's Arguments against the Processing Account	p. 216
Questions of Learnability	p. 227
Explaining Chance Performance	p. 232
Acquisition of Main-Stress Shift	p. 238
An Overview of Stress and Focus	p. 238
Preliminaries	p. 246
Switch-Reference Resolution	p. 251
Guess and Default: Focus and Identification in the Scope of Only	p. 259
Useful and Arbitrary Defaults	p. 266
Acquisition of Scalar Implicatures	p. 272
Notes	p. 293
References	p. 315
Author Index	p. 331
Subject Index	p. 335
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