This would have been a better book if Sampson had argued his main point, the usefulness of the Simonian principle as an explanation of the evolution, structure, and acquisition of language, on its own merits, instead of making it subsidiary to his attack on ‘limited-minders’ (e.g., Noam Chomsky). The energy he has spent on the attack he might then have been willing and able to employ in developing his argument at reasonable length and detail. He might then have found that (...) argument faulty, or even wrong. Underdeveloped as it is, however, his point about the Simonian principle does seem to have thepossibility of some significance in understanding the empirical issues of this book (and the dichotomy of ‘limited’ and ‘creative’ minds is certainly not one of these).What Sampson has done inMaking Sense has the appearance of science, and theoretical linguistics, and therefore it is somewhat puzzling to find the conclusions that the human mind cannot be scientifically studied (p. 10), and that theoretical linguistics is a “mirage” (p. 210). His statement that It may still seem worthwhile to some to work out the exact implications for present-day linguistic structure of the fact that languages are evolved systems, but I cannot see that there is much glamour or, indeed, much substance in this task (p. 210) would surely be surprising to a geneticist or ethologist. We hope his apparent misunderstanding on this point will not lead him to give up his profession, in which he seems willing and able to make a significant contribution.What in particular is required is a clear indication of how the Simonian principle imposes itself in the ontogenesis of language. Consider Chomsky's example of the rule for forming questions in English. For sentence (1) below, children able to deal with such examples would give (2) but not (3) as the corresponding question (Chomsky, 1975, p. 31).The man who is tall is in the room.Is the man who is tall in the room?*Is the man who tall is in the room?Now compare Sampson's evolutionary explanation for the structure-dependence of rules which is illustrated in (1)-(3): “once a behavior-pattern has become thoroughly established, it will tend to be treated as a fixed given when used as a constituent of a more complex, later-learned behavior-pattern” (p. 183). In order for this to account for Chomsky's example it would have to be the case that children learn relative clauses before they learn questions, which simply isn't true.In conclusion, we wish not to seem unaware of the problems with the position Sampson is attacking, or unaware of the sometimes dogmatic way it too has been presented. Chomsky's hypothesis of innate linguistic ideas seems, fundamentally, to derive from the claimed rapidity and uniformity of language acquisition in the face of limited and degenerate data. Chomsky appears to have been unwilling to argue these points directly or to show their relation to others, for which he has argued, for example, the implausibility of some abstract constraint's having been learned (cf. 1971, pp. 22–44; 1975, pp. 30–33; 1980, pp. 35–52). And almost from his first invoking of rationalism in support of his linguistic method, Chomsky has himself resorted to an unnecessarily polemical attack on empiricism (cf. 1965, p. 58, n. 33). The innateness issue is just not clear or simple enough to justify so much animus, or even conviction. (shrink)

Some presuppositions seem to be weaker than others in the sense that they can be more easily neutralized in some contexts. For example some factive verbs, most notably epistemic factives like know, be aware, and discover, are known to shed their factivity fairly easily in contexts such as are found in (1). (1) a. …if anyone discovers that the method is also wombat-proof, I’d really like to know! b. Mrs. London is not aware that there have ever been signs erected (...) to stop use of the route… c. Perhaps God knows that we will never reach the stars…. (The examples in (1) are all naturally occurring ones, discovered by David Beaver with the aid of Google; cf. Beaver 2002, exx. 32, 43, and 51, respectively.) On the other hand some other factives, e.g. regret, matter, and be surprised, do not exhibit the same type of behavior: (2) a. If any of the students regrets behaving badly, they’ll let us know. b. It doesn’t matter that the chimpanzees escaped. c. Was Bill surprised that spinach was included? Unlike the examples in (1), those in (2) could not be used appropriately in contexts where the speaker was not assuming that the complement clause was true. Our main concern will be trying to find the cause of this difference. However, before we get to that, we will look more closely at the concept “presupposition” itself, as well as its close neighbor in the linguistic literature, “conventional implicature” (section 2), and also at various ways of getting rid of presuppositions (section 3). In section 4 we will investigate two possible explanations for differences in presupposition triggering – the “lexical alternative” approach of Abusch (2002, 2005), and a suggestion of Ladusaw’s involving detachability of presuppositions. The final section contains concluding remarks. (shrink)

Partee (1973) discussed quotation from the perspective of the then relatively new theory of transformational grammar.2 As she pointed out, the phenomenon presents many curious puzzles. In some ways quotes seem quite separate from their surrounding text; they may be in a different dialect, as in her example in (1), (1) ‘I talk better English than the both of youse!’ shouted Charles, thereby convincing me that he didn’t. [Partee (1973):ex. 20] or even in a different language, as in (2): (2) (...) Louise said ‘Je voudrais un auto-da-f´e’, but I didn’t know what she meant. (shrink)

Last year (2005) marked the 100th anniversary of the publication of Russell’s classic ‘On denoting’. It should not cast any shadow on that great work to note that the problems it provided solutions to are still the subject of controversy. Two of those problems involved noun phrases (NPs) which fail to denote. Russell’s examples (1a) and (1b) (1) a. The king of France is bald. b. The king of France is not bald. are puzzling because they have the form of (...) simple contradictories, and yet we are not inclined to say either one is true. Example (2) (2) Pegasus does not exist. is even more problematic; the lack of denotation for Pegasus, which makes the sentence true, also seems to rob it of a meaningful constituent. Once the king of France is unpacked according to Russell’s analysis, (1b) is revealed to be ambiguous. It’s logical forms are given in (3). (3) a. ∃x[Kx ∧ ∀y[Ky ↔ y=x] ∧ ¬Bx] b. ¬∃x[Kx ∧ ∀y[Ky ↔ y=x] ∧ Bx] (3a) says that there is a unique (French) king who is not bald (obviously false), but (3b), the logical contradictory of (1a) says that it is not the case that there is a unique king who is bald (which is true). We can apply the analysis to sentence (2) once we recognize Pegasus as a concealed definite description, e.g. the winged horse of Greek mythology. (2) can then be unpacked as (4) (4) ¬∃x[Wx ∧ ∀y[Wy ↔ y=x]] which seems both meaningful and true, as required. Problems solved. Well, not quite. Strawson (1950) challenged the first solution above, arguing that neither (1a) nor (1b) could be used to assert the existence of a king of France. Rather, use of such sentences presupposes the existence of a king of France, and failing that existence, neither of (1a) or (1b) could be used to make either a true or a false statement – in Strawson’s words, “the question of whether it’s true or false simply doesn’t arise” (Strawson 1950, 330).1 In an extended series of essays, and one book, Jay Atlas (1977, 1978, 1979, 1989, 2004) has taken issue with the work of both Russell and Strawson.. (shrink)

Laland and colleagues have sought to challenge the proximate–ultimate distinction claiming that it imposes a unidirectional model of causation, is limited in its capacity to account for complex biological phenomena, and hinders progress in biology. In this article the core of their argument is critically analyzed. It is claimed that contrary to their claims Laland et al. rely upon the proximate–ultimate distinction to make their points and that their alternative conception of reciprocal causation refers to phenomena that were already accounted (...) for by standard theory. (shrink)

. Ill BERGSONS THEORY OF ART . . .141 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INTENSIVE MANIFOLDS I I CINDERS ..... 215 APPENDICES A. REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE . . 249 B. PLAN FOR A ...

In poem 64 Catullus, as Fordyce points out in his edition , often has lines enclosed by a noun and its adjective, e.g.: 5 auratam optantes Colchis avertere pellem Very often, but not always, a syntactical unit is enclosed as well as the line. This is perhaps not surprising, considering the prevalence of punctuation at the end of the line in this poem. Nevertheless, an examination of the lines will show that when a noun and adjective1 enclose both line and (...) syntactical unit the fact that they enclose a syntactical unit can be regarded as a determinant of the word order. (shrink)

We consider the relation between versions of Ramsey’s Theorem and König’s Infinity Lemma, in the absence of the axiom of choice.

In preceding parts of this paper the possibility was examined of accomplishing the entirety of physical description by means of mechanics, without help from field-theoretical ideas. Apart from some easily obtained qualitative agreements with general descriptive features of nuclei and elementary particles, we were balked in this program by an inability to handle in purely mechanical terms the relativistic many-body problem. The present paper is addressed directly to the latter problem. No quantitative calculations are attempted, but three suggestions are made (...) — each of a quite radical nature — concerning the reformulation that will be necessary to restore mechanics to the mainstream of physics. (shrink)

Cognitive Development and Acquisition of Language.

It was a generally accepted tenet of ancient literary criticism that an excess of sibilants was cacophonous. To discover if and to what extent this antipathy is discernible in the actual practice of the main Latin poets, random samples of 50 lines from each were analysed. The results of this analysis are set out in Table I.

Vitruvius has something interesting to say at De architectura 2.8.8: Non enim quae sunt e molli caemento subtili facie venustatis, non eae possunt esse in vetustate non ruinosae. itaque cum arbitrio communium parietum sumuntur, non aestimant eos quanti facti fuerint, sed cum ex tabulis inveniunt eorum locationes, pretia praeteritorum annorum singulorum deducunt octogesimas et ita – ex reliqua summa parte reddi pro his parietibus – sententiam pronuntiant eos non posse plus quam annos LXXX durare.Those structures made of soft rubble, for (...) all their subtle attractiveness, are not the ones that will resist ruin as time passes. And thus when assessors are appointed to evaluate party walls, they never assess soft rubble walls according to their initial cost, but rather, when they look at the price recorded in the original contracts, they deduct 1/80th of that sum for each subsequent year, and the remaining amount is fixed as the current value of the walls. They have rendered judgement, in effect, that such walls cannot last more than 80 years.By contrast, mud-brick walls were not depreciated at all if they were standing when assessed. The calculation performed for concrete walls demonstrates clear understanding of what we call ‘depreciation’ or ‘amortization’ in ancient Roman thought. It appears to have been overlooked to date. (shrink)

Of the capital manuscripts R and V have nexantem, M and P nixantem. The good minuscules favour nexantem on the whole, though Paris lat. 7906 has nixantem. nexantem is found in the Latin grammarians , v. 485 ), who quote the line because it contains this verb in its first conjugation form. Editors vary, and recently R. D. Williams, in his commentary on A. 5 , has preferred nixantem. So it seems worth restating the case for nexantem, especially as its (...) defenders have not used all the arguments open to them. (shrink)