The On-Line Processing of Verb-Phrase Ellipsis in Aphasia

We investigate the on-line processing of verb-phrase ellipsis (VPE) constructions in two brain injured populations: Broca’s and Anomic aphasics. VPE constructions are built from two simple clauses; the first is the antecedent clause and the second is the ellipsis clause. The ellipsis clause is missing its verb and object (i.e., its verb phrase (VP)), which receives its reference from the fully specified VP in the antecedent clause. VPE constructions are unlike other sentence types that require displacement of an argument NP; these latter constructions (e.g., object-relatives, wh-questions) yield either on-time or delayed antecedent reactivation. Our results demonstrate that Anomics, like unimpaired individuals, evince reactivation of the direct object NP (within the VP) at the elided position. Broca’s patients, on the other hand, do not show reactivation of the antecedent. We consider several interpretations for our data, including explanations focusing on the larger ‘grain size’ of the reconstructed material in the ellipsis clause, the properties of the auxiliary that carries tense and agreement features, and the possibility that the cost-free syntactic copy procedure claimed to underlie VPE may be modulated by the functional deficit in Broca’s aphasia.     

Keep it local (and final): Remnant preferences in “let alone” ellipsis

The let alone construction (John can't run a mile, let alone a marathon) differs from standard coordination structures (with and or but) by requiring ellipsis of the second conjunct—for example, a marathon is the remnant of an elided clause [ John run a marathon]. In support of an ellipsis account, a corpus study of British and American English finds that let alone exhibits a Locality bias, as the second conjunct preferentially contrasts with the nearest lexical item of the same syntactic type. Two self-paced reading studies show that the Locality bias is active during online processing, but must be reconciled with indicators of semantic contrast and discourse information. Further, a sentence-rating study shows that the Locality bias interacts with a Finality bias that favours placing the let alone phrase at the end of a clause, which sometimes necessitates a nonlocal contrast. Together, the results show how a general bias in ellipsis for local contrasts is affected by discourse demands, such as the need for scalar contrast imposed by let alone, thereby offering a window into how possibly divergent syntactic and discourse constraints impact sentence processing.     

Children’s Knowledge of Ellipsis Constructions in Mandarin Chinese

This study investigated 4-year-old children’s knowledge of the structural constraints on ellipsis constructions in Mandarin Chinese, focusing on the structural difference between verb phrase (VP) ellipsis and null object constructions. In Mandarin Chinese, if the antecedent clause of a VP-ellipsis structure contains an adverbial modifier, this adverbial modifier must be recovered at the elided site in the second clause. However, if the antecedent clause of a null object construction contains an adverbial modifier, the reconstruction of this adverbial modifier at the elided site is not necessary. Two experiments were conducted to examine whether young Mandarin-speaking children are sensitive to this structural difference between the two ellipsis constructions. The results show that children exhibited adult-like performance in both experiments. This is evidence that young Mandarin-speaking children have knowledge of the structural difference between VP-ellipsis and null object constructions with regard to adverbial recovery. We interpreted the findings in conjunction with previous research as evidence that children’s knowledge of the structural constraints on ellipsis constructions is innately specified.     

A Defense of the Principle of Indifference

The principle of indifference (hereafter ‘Poi’) says that if one has no more reason to believe A than B (and vice versa), then one ought not to believe A more than B (nor vice versa). Many think it’s demonstrably false despite its intuitive plausibility, because of a particular style of thought experiment that generates counterexamples. Roger White (2008) defends Poi by arguing that its antecedent is false in these thought experiments. Like White I believe Poi, but I find his defense unsatisfactory for two reasons: it appeals to false premises, and it saves Poi only at the expense of something that Poi’s believers likely find just as important. So in this essay I defend Poi by arguing that its antecedent does hold in the relevant thought experiments, and that the further propositions needed to reject Poi are false. I play only defense in this essay; I don’t argue that Poi is true (even though I think it is), but rather that one popular refutation is faulty. In showing this, I also note something that has to my knowledge gone unnoticed: given some innocuous-looking assumptions the denial of Poi is equivalent to a version of epistemic permissivism, and Poi itself is equivalent to a version of epistemic uniqueness.     

Is the conjunction fallacy tied to probabilistic confirmation?

Crupi et al. (2008) offer a confirmation-theoretic, Bayesian account of the conjunction fallacy—an error in reasoning that occurs when subjects judge that Pr(h ₁ & h ₂|e) > Pr(h ₁|e). They introduce three formal conditions that are satisfied by classical conjunction fallacy cases, and they show that these same conditions imply that h ₁ & h ₂ is confirmed by e to a greater extent than is h ₁ alone. Consequently, they suggest that people are tracking this confirmation relation when they commit conjunction fallacies. I offer three experiments testing the merits of Crupi et al.’s account specifically and confirmation-theoretic accounts of the conjunction fallacy more generally. The results of Experiment 1 show that, although Crupi et al.’s conditions do seem to be causally linked to the conjunction fallacy, they are not necessary for it; there exist cases that do not meet their three conditions in which subjects still tend to commit the fallacy. The results of Experiments 2 and 3 show that Crupi et al.’s conditions, and those offered by other confirmation-theoretic accounts of the fallacy, are not sufficient for the fallacy either; there exist cases that meet all three of CFT’s conditions in which subjects do not tend to commit the fallacy. Additionally, these latter experiments show that such confirmation-theoretic conditions are at best only weakly causally relevant to the presence of the conjunction fallacy. Given these findings, CFT’s account specifically, and any general confirmation-theoretic account more broadly, falls short of offering a satisfying explanation of the presence of the conjunction fallacy.     

On Permutation in Simplified Semantics

This note explains an error in Restall’s ‘Simplified Semantics for Relevant Logics (and some of their rivals)’ (Restall, J Philos Logic 22(5):481–511, 1993) concerning the modelling conditions for the axioms of assertion A → ((A → B) → B) (there called c6) and permutation (A → (B → C)) → (B → (A → C)) (there called c7). We show that the modelling conditions for assertion and permutation proposed in ‘Simplified Semantics’ overgenerate. In fact, they overgenerate so badly that the proposed semantics for the relevant logic R validate the rule of disjunctive syllogism. The semantics provides for no models of R in which the “base point” is inconsistent. This problem is not restricted to ‘Simplified Semantics.’ The techniques of that paper are used in Graham Priest’s textbook An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic (Priest, 2001), which is in wide circulation: it is important to find a solution. In this article, we explain this result, diagnose the mistake in ‘Simplified Semantics’ and propose two different corrections.     

Antecedent Priming at Trace Positions in Children’s Sentence Processing

The present study examines whether children reactivate a moved constituent at its gap position and how children’s more limited working memory span affects the way they process filler-gap dependencies. 46 5–7 year-old children and 54 adult controls participated in a cross-modal picture priming experiment and underwent a standardized working memory test. The results revealed a statistically significant interaction between the participants’ working memory span and antecedent reactivation: High-span children (n = 19) and high-span adults (n = 22) showed evidence of antecedent priming at the gap site, while for low-span children and adults, there was no such effect. The antecedent priming effect in the high-span participants indicates that in both children and adults, dislocated arguments access their antecedents at gap positions. The absence of an antecedent reactivation effect in the low-span participants could mean that these participants required more time to integrate the dislocated constituent and reactivated the filler later during the sentence.     

Local contexts and local meanings

Stalnaker (1978) made two seminal claims about presuppositions. The most influential one was that presupposition projection is computed by a pragmatic mechanism based on a notion of ‘local context’. Due to conceptual and technical difficulties, however, the latter notion was reinterpreted in purely semantic terms within ‘dynamic semantics’ (Heim 1983). The second claim was that some instances of presupposition generation should also be explained in pragmatic terms. But despite various attempts, the definition of a precise ‘triggering algorithm’ has remained somewhat elusive. We discuss possible extensions of both claims. First, we offer a reconstruction of ‘local contexts’ which circumvents some of the difficulties faced by Stalnaker’s original analysis. We preserve the idea that local contexts are computed by a pragmatic mechanism that aggregates the information that follows from an incomplete sentence given the global context; but we crucially rely on a modified notion of entailment (‘R-entailment’), whose plausibility should be assessed on independent grounds. Second, we speculate that local contexts might prove necessary (though by no means sufficient) to understand how some presuppositions are triggered. In a nutshell, we suggest that a presupposition is triggered when the semantic contribution of an expression to its local context is in some sense ‘heterogeneous’. Without giving an analysis of the latter notion, we note that this architecture implies that presuppositions should be triggered on the basis of the meaning that an expression has relative to its local context (what we call its ‘local meaning’); we sketch some possible consequences of this analysis.     

Dream Skepticism and the Conditionality Problem

Recently, Ernest Sosa (2007) has proposed two novel solutions to the problem of dream skepticism. In the present paper, I argue that Sosa’s first solution falls prey to what I will refer to as the conditionality problem, i.e., the problem of only establishing a conditional—in this case, “if x, then I am awake,” x being a placeholder for a condition incompatible with dreaming—in a context where it also needs to be established that we can know that the antecedent holds, and as such can infer the consequent, i.e., “I am awake.” Sosa’s second solution, in terms of so-called reflective knowledge, is shown to land him in the dilemma of either facing yet another conditionality problem, or violating an internalist constraint that he explicitly grants the skeptic with respect to what kind of factors can be legitimately invoked in our account of how we may know the relevant antecedent. For these reasons, I conclude that Sosa has not solved the problem of dream skepticism.     

The Tense Logic for Master Argument in Prior’s Reconstruction

In this paper we examine Prior’s reconstruction of Master Argument [4] in some modal-tense logic. This logic consists of a purely tense part and Diodorean definitions of modal alethic operators. Next we study this tense logic in the pure tense language. It is the logic K _t 4 plus a new axiom (P): ‘p Λ G p ⊃ P G p’. This formula was used by Prior in his original analysis of Master Argument. (P) is usually added as an extra axiom to an axiomatization of the logic of linear time. In that case the set of moments is a total order and must be left-discrete without the least moment. However, the logic of Master Argument does not require linear time. We show what properties of the set of moments are exactly forced by (P) in the reconstruction of Prior. We make also some philosophical remarks on the analyzed reconstruction. Presented by Jacek Malinowski     

Selective Retention of Information about the Superficial Form of Text: Ellipses W ith Antecedents in Main and Subordinate Clauses

Elliptical verb phrases must be interpreted indirectly, using a representation of the surface form of nearby (usually preceding) text. We used this fact to demonstrate the different availability of superficial representations of the two clauses in main-subordinate pairs. The acceptability of a later ellipsis was reduced when it took its meaning from a main clause that was followed by a subordinate clause, as compared with other combinations. In addition, positive acceptability judgements were made more quickly (1) when the antecedent clause was subordinate, rather than main, suggesting that the superficial form of a subordinate clause is more important, and (2) when the antecedent was in the immediately preceding clause, rather than two clauses back. These results support the idea that the surface form of subordinate clauses is selectively retained until the corresponding main clause has been read, but the surface form of a main clause is not retained after it has been interpreted.     

A group-theoretical invariant for elementary equivalence and its role in representations of elementary classes

There is a natural map which assigns to every modelU of typeτ, (U ε St^τ) a groupG (U) in such a way that elementarily equivalent models are mapped into isomorphic groups.G(U) is a subset of a collection whose members are called Fraisse arrows (they are decreasing sequences of sets of partial isomorphisms) and which arise in connection with the Fraisse characterization of elementary equivalence. LetEC _λ ^U be defined as {U εStr ^τ: ℬ ≡U and |ℬ|=λ; thenEG _λ ^U can be faithfully (i.e. 1-1) represented onto G(U) ×π ^*, whereπ ^*, is a collection of partitions over λ∪λ²∪....     

On Categorical Equivalences of Commutative BCK-algebras

A commutative BCK-algebra with the relative cancellation property is a commutative BCK-algebra (X;*,0) which satisfies the condition: if a ≤ x, a ≤ y and x * a = y * a, then x = y. Such BCK-algebras form a variety, and the category of these BCK-algebras is categorically equivalent to the category of Abelian ℓ-groups whose objects are pairs (G, G ₀), where G is an Abelian ℓ-group, G ₀ is a subset of the positive cone generating G ⁺ such that if u, v ∈ G ₀, then 0 ∨ (u - v) ∈ G ₀, and morphisms are ℓ-group homomorphisms h: (G, G ₀) → (G′,G′₀) with f(G ₀) ⫅ G′₀. Our methods in particular cases give known categorical equivalences of Cornish for conical BCK-algebras and of Mundici for bounded commutative BCK-algebras (= MV-algebras). This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A Hierarchical Linear Modeling Analysis of Working Memory and Implicit Prosody in the Resolution of Adjunct Attachment Ambiguity

An eye-movement monitoring experiment investigated readers’ response to temporarily ambiguous sentences. The sentences were ambiguous because a relative clause could attach to one of two preceding nouns. Semantic information disambiguated the sentences. Working memory considerations predict an overall preference for the second of the two nouns, as does the late closure principle (Frazier, On comprehending sentences: Syntactic parsing strategies. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut. West Bend, IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club, 1979). Previous studies assessing preferences for such items have obtained mixed results. On-line assessments show that working memory affects the degree of preference for the first noun, with lower capacity readers having a greater preference for the second noun (Felser et al., Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 11, 127–163, 2003; Traxler, Memory & Cognition, 35, 1107–1121, 2007). Off-line assessments indicate the opposite pattern of preferences when the test sentences are displayed on a single line (Swets et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136, 64–81, 2007). However, when implicit prosody is manipulated by displaying the sentences with a break between the second noun and the relative clause, the off-line assessments indicate that readers prefer to attach the relative clause to the first noun. In this experiment, readers’ undertook a working memory assessment and then read test sentences that were displayed across two lines, with a break appearing after the second noun and before the relative clause. The eye-tracking data indicated an overall preference to attach the relative clause to the first noun, and there was little indication that working memory moderated the degree of preference for this configuration. Hence, it appears that readers’ implicit prosodic contours rapidly affect resolution of adjunct attachment ambiguities.     

Behind Our I’s: Grief and Loss in the Poetry of Li-Young Lee

This article uses Kenneth R. Mitchell and Herbert Anderson’s (1983) six modalities of grieving as presented in Donald Capps’ (1993) The Poet’s Gift to bring a pastoral theological perspective to bear on Li-Young Lee’s Behind My Eyes (2008), a collection of thirty-nine poems. In specifically focusing on Lee’s poem “To Hold,” it makes the case for a seventh grieving modality, that of preemptive loss. Employing Mitchell and Anderson’s distinction between faithful and unfaithful grieving, it argues that preemptive loss is an unfaithful form or expression of grieving, and notes the irony and sadness in this regard, as this unfaithful response to grief is informed by what is widely considered to be a faithful Judeo–Christian perspective, rooted in the inescapable sinfulness of humanity.     

Forced confabulation affects memory sensitivity as well as response bias

A signal detection analysis assessed the extent to which forced confabulation results from a change in memory sensitivity (d _a ), as well as response criterion (β). After viewing a crime video, participants answered 14 answerable and 6 unanswerable questions. Those in the voluntary guess condition had a “don’t know” response option; those in the forced guess condition did not. One week later, the same questions were answered using a recognition memory test that included each participant’s initial responses. As was predicted, on both answerable and unanswerable questions, participants in the forced guess condition had significantly lower response criteria than did those who voluntarily guessed. Furthermore, on both answerable and unanswerable questions, d _a scores were also significantly lower in the forced than in the voluntary guess condition. Thus, the forced confabulation effect is a real memory effect above and beyond the effects of response bias; forcing eyewitnesses to guess or speculate can actually change their memory.     

Room for a view: on the metaphysical subject of personal identity

Sydney Shoemaker leads today’s “neo-Lockean” liberation of persons from the conservative animalist charge of “neo-Aristotelians” such as Eric Olson, according to whom persons are biological entities and who challenge all neo-Lockean views on grounds that abstracting from strictly physical, or bodily, criteria plays fast and loose with our identities. There is a fundamental mistake on both sides: a false dichotomy between bodily continuity versus psychological continuity theories of personal identity. Neo-Lockeans, like everyone else today who relies on Locke’s analysis of personal identity, including Derek Parfit, have either completely distorted or not understood Locke’s actual view. Shoemaker’s defense, which uses a “package deal” definition that relies on internal relations of synchronic and diachronic unity and employs the Ramsey–Lewis account to define personal identity, leaves far less room for psychological continuity views than for my own view, which, independently of its radical implications, is that (a) consciousness makes personal identity, and (b) in consciousness alone personal identity consists—which happens to be also Locke’s actual view. Moreover, the ubiquitous Fregean conception of borders and the so-called “ambiguity of is” collapse in the light of what Hintikka has called the “Frege trichotomy.” The Ramsey–Lewis account, due to the problematic way Shoemaker tries to bind the variables, makes it impossible for the neo-Lockean ala Shoemaker to fulfill the uniqueness clause required by all such Lewis style definitions; such attempts avoid circularity only at the expense of mistaking isomorphism with identity. Contrary to what virtually all philosophers writing on the topic assume, fission does not destroy personal identity. A proper analysis of public versus perspectival identification, derived using actual case studies from neuropsychiatry, provides the scientific, mathematical and logical frameworks for a new theory of self-reference, wherein “consciousness,” “self-consciousness,” and the “I,” can be precisely defined in terms of the subject and the subject-in-itself.     

Does the Modality Effect Exist? and if So, Which Modality Effect?

The modality effect is a central issue in multimedia learning [see Mayer (Cambridge University Press, 2005a), for a review]. Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), for example, presumes that an illustrated text is better understood when presented visually rather than orally. The predictive power of CLT lies in how it links in to Baddeley’s (1986) model of working memory and Penney’s (Mem Cognit 17:398–442, 1989) Separate-Streams Hypothesis. Ginns’s (Learn Instr 4:313–331, 2005) recent meta-analysis also supports the modality effect (d = 0.72, based on 43 independent effects). This article replicates the meta-analysis of the modality effect based on 86 independent effects (with within-study subgroups as the unit of analysis and with mean of the outcomes as the dependent measure), with results showing a reduction of the overall effect size by almost half (d = 0.38), and even more when Duval and Tweedie’s Trim and Fill method is used to correct publication bias (d = 0.20). This article also widens the scope of the analysis of moderator variables (e.g. Pace of presentation, Type of visualization, Research group) as well as their potentially confounded effects. Finally, it is argued that, for theoretical reasons, the so-called modality effect cannot be based on Penney’s or Baddeley’s theories and must be explained in a different way.     

The concept of the simulacrum: Deleuze and the overturning of Platonism

This article examines Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the simulacrum, which Deleuze formulated in the context of his reading of Nietzsche’s project of “overturning Platonism.” The essential Platonic distinction, Deleuze argues, is more profound than the speculative distinction between model and copy, original and image. The deeper, practical distinction moves between two kinds of images or eidolon, for which the Platonic Idea is meant to provide a concrete criterion of selection “Copies” or icons (eikones) are well-grounded claimants to the transcendent Idea, authenticated by their internal resemblance to the Idea, whereas “simulacra” (phantasmata) are like false claimants, built on a dissimilarity and implying an essential perversion or deviation from the Idea. If the goal of Platonism is the triumph of icons over simulacra, the inversion of Platonism would entail an affirmation of the simulacrum as such, which must thus be given its own concept. Deleuze consequently defines the simulacrum in terms of an internal dissimilitude or “disparateness,” which in turn implies a new conception of Ideas, no longer as self-identical qualities (the auto kath’hauto), but rather as constituting a pure concept of difference. An inverted Platonism would necessarily be based on a purely immanent and differential conception of Ideas. Starting from this new conception of the Idea, Deleuze proposes to take up the Platonic project anew, rethinking the fundamental figures of Platonism (selection, repetition, ungrounding, the question-problem complex) on a purely differential basis. In this sense, Deleuze’s inverted Platonism can at the same time be seen as a rejuvenated Platonism and even a completed Platonism.     

From Desire to Civility: Is Xunzi a Hobbesian?

This article argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Xunzi’s and Hobbes’s understandings of human nature are qualitatively different, which is responsible for the difference in their respective normative political theory of a civil polity. This article has two main theses: first, where Hobbes’s deepest concern was with human beings’ unsocial passions, Xunzi was most concerned with human beings’ appetitive desires (yu 欲), material self-interest, and resulting social strife; second, as a result, where Hobbes strove to transform the pathological (anti-)politics of resentment into the politics of recognition by creating rational egalitarian citizenship under the all-encompassing constitutional sovereign power, Xunzi attempted to nourish human beings’ basic appetitive desires (yu 欲) by instituting a li 禮 ordered civil entity. This article concludes by showing how Confucian civility that Xunzi reconstructed by means of the li 禮 can effectively deal with unsocial passions.