PLM 2005 ABSTRACTS VAULT
see http://elex.amu.edu.pl/ifa/plm
for further details
We will investigate the role of linguistic and pragmatic information in the
interpretation of temporal discourse in Polish. It appears that more specified
aspectual/temporal character of Polish verbal predicates overrides the pragmatic/world
knowledge inferences in narrative dicourse to a much greater extent than in
the identical fragments of English and that users of Polish need to apply obligatorily
additional linguistic devices (rhethorical tools) to obtain the same temporal
interpretation of discourse as in English counterparts. In order to account
for differences between semantic interpretation of temporal discourse in Polish
and English we will propose a Polish-specific ontology of aspectual categories
based on their contingency properties, dynamic aspectual network driven by aspectual
operations and coercion (context-sensitive aspectual shifts) along the lines
of Moens and Steedman (1984) and Caenepeel (1989). The strong argument for developing
such Polish-specific classification of aspectual categories arises for instance
from the difference in morphological realization of restricted states in contingent/non-contingent
discourse contexts in Polish and in English as well as the interesting ambiguity
displayed by secondary imperfectives in quantified contexts which distinguishes
them from primary imperfectives. Generally it has been assumed by researchers
such as Kamp and Reyle (1993), Partee (1984), Hinrichs (1986) that reference
time is anaphoric and events introduce new reference times into a temporal dicourse
and therefore create a temporal update whereas states do not and therefore introduce
background temporal information. Interestingly, it has been observed by Moens
and Steedman (1984), Caenepeel (1989) Lascarides and Asher (1993) that temporal
relations must be calculated on the basis of semantic content, knowledge of
causation and knowledge of language use, as well as sentential syntax and compositional
semantics, as it follows from examples in (1), (2) and (3):
(1) When John left, Mary was crying.
(2) When Mary was crying, her mother was upset.
(3) When John left, Mary’s mother was upset.
It is wrong to infer that Sue’s mother got upset because John left which means
that temporal ordering is not most directly related to linear dimensional conception
of time. Polish temporal discourse displays the same contingency dependance
in this context, however we are going to provide evidence that in many other
contexts the dynamic aspectual network in Polish needs further analysis. Moens
and Steedman (1984), Caenepeel (1989) and Lascarides and Asher (1993) observe
that sentences in (4) and (5), are problematic for the purely temporal analyses
of movement in narrative discourse in English.
(4) When they built the 39th Street bridge...
...a local architect drew up the plans
In English, the drawing up of the plans is for reasons to do with knowledge
of the world, situated in the preparatory phase of building. In Polish, aspectual
linguistic devices override the pragmatic inference in the analogical sentence
and the drawing up of the plans is interpreted within the asserted time of the
event of building, not before. We need to apply an additional linguistic device
namely the temporal connective before to obtain the same temporal interpretation
as the one derived by means of pragmatic reasoning in English. Similarly, Lascarides
and Asher observed that defeasable reasoning, causal knowledge underlies aspect-driven
interpretation of (5) in English.
(5) Max fell. John pushed him.
In Polish counterpart of this sentence, most informants claim that such order
is odd and the backward temporal movement is possible only if we apply either
rhethorical device bo-‘because’ or pause and strong explanatory prosodic contour.
Selected References:
Lascarides, Alex, 1990 Knowledge, Causality and Temporal Representation.
Research Report No. HCRC/RP-8, Human Communication Research Centre, University
of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, June 1990.
Marc Moens , Mark Steedman, 1988 Temporal Ontology and Temporal Reference, Computational
Linguistics, v.14 n.2, June, 15-18
Partee, Barbara, 1984 Nominal and Temporal Anaphora, Linguistics and Philosophy,
7, 243-286.
Hans Kamp and Uwe Reyle, 1993 From Discourse to Logic Introduction to Modeltheoretic
Semantics of Natural Language, Formal Logic and Discourse Representation Theory.
Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.
Henriette de Swart, 1991, Adverbs of Quantification: a Generalized Quantifier
Approach, dissertation, University of Groningen. Published (1993) by Garland,
New York.
Heinemakki, Orvokki, 1978 Semantics of English temporal connectives.
Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.
Caenepeel, Mimo. 1989 Aspect, Temporal Ordering, and Perspective in Narrative
Fiction. PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh.