Indefinites and beyond

Poster Presentations

Solt, S and Gotzner, N. 2012. “Experimenting with Degree.” SALT 22, University of Chicago

[pdf]

@unpublished{SoltGotzner2012,
  author = {Solt, Stephanie and Gotzner, Nicole},
  note = {SALT 22, University of Chicago},
  title = {Experimenting with Degree},
  year = {2012}
}

Aloni, M, Cranenburgh, A van, Fernandez, R, and Sznajder, M. 2012. “Building a Corpus of Indefinite uses Annotate with fine-grained Semantic Functions.” LREC 2012

[pdf]

@unpublished{AloniEtAl2012a,
  author = {Aloni, Maria and van Cranenburgh, Andreas and Fernandez, Raquel and Sznajder, Marta},
  note = {LREC 2012},
  title = {Building a Corpus of Indefinite uses Annotate with fine-grained Semantic Functions},
  year = {2012}
}

Port, A. 2011. “German *irgendein* - contrastive and diachronic.” WS Indefinites in diachronic and comparative perspective, 44th SLE, 8 September 2011.

[pdf]

@unpublished{Port2011,
  author = {Port, Angelika},
  note = {WS Indefinites in diachronic and comparative perspective, 44th SLE, 8 September 2011.},
  title = {German *irgendein* - contrastive and diachronic},
  year = {2011}
}

Guevara, A A, Aloni, M, Port, A, Simik, R, Vos, M de, and Zeijlstra, H. 2011. “Semantics and pragmatics of indefinites: methodology for a synchronic and diachronic corpus study.” Beyond Semantics - Corpus-based investigations of pragmatic and discourse phenomena (DGfS). Goettingen

[pdf]

@unpublished{AguilarEtAl2011a,
  author = {Guevara, Ana Aguilar and Aloni, Maria and Port, Angelika and Simik, Radek and de Vos, Machteld and Zeijlstra, Hedde},
  note = {Beyond Semantics - Corpus-based investigations of pragmatic and discourse phenomena (DGfS). Goettingen},
  title = {Semantics and pragmatics of indefinites: methodology for a synchronic and diachronic corpus study},
  year = {2011}
}

Guevara, A A, Aloni, M, Simik, R, Vos, M de, and Zeijlstra, H. 2011. “Emerging indefinites.” WS Indefinites in diachronic and comparative perspective, 44th SLE

[pdf]

@unpublished{AguilarEtAl2011b,
  author = {Guevara, Ana Aguilar and Aloni, Maria and Simik, Radek and de Vos, Machteld and Zeijlstra, Hedde},
  note = {WS Indefinites in diachronic and comparative perspective, 44th SLE},
  title = {Emerging indefinites},
  year = {2011}
}

Aloni, M and Port, A. 2010. “Epistemic indefinites crosslinguistically.” NELS, Philadelphia

[pdf]

@unpublished{AloniPort2010a,
  author = {Aloni, Maria and Port, Angelika},
  note = {NELS, Philadelphia},
  title = {Epistemic indefinites crosslinguistically},
  year = {2010}
}

Guevara, A A, Aloni, M, Port, A, Schulz, K, and Simik, R. 2010. “Free choice items as fossils.” Workshop on Indefiniteness Crosslinguistically (DGfS) Berlin

[pdf]

@unpublished{AguilarEtAl2010,
  author = {Guevara, Ana Aguilar and Aloni, Maria and Port, Angelika and Schulz, Katrin and Simik, Radek},
  note = {Workshop on Indefiniteness Crosslinguistically (DGfS) Berlin},
  title = {Free choice items as fossils},
  year = {2010}
}

Articles

Aloni, M, Égré, P, and Jager, T de. 2013. “Knowing whether A or B.” Synthese 190.4, 2595–2621.
[pdf] [doi]
The paper examines the logic and semantics of knowledge attributions of the form “s knows whether A or B”. We analyze these constructions in an epistemic logic with alternative questions, and propose an account of the context-sensitivity of the corresponding sentences and of their presuppositions.
```
@article{AloniEtAl2013,
  author = {Aloni, Maria and \'Egr\'e, Paul and de Jager, Tikitu},
  journal = {Synthese},
  number = {4},
  pages = {2595-2621},
  title = {Knowing whether {A} or {B}},
  volume = {190},
  year = {2013},
  doi = {10.1007/s11229-009-9646-1}
}
```
Aloni, M, Cranenburgh, A van, Fernandez, R, and Sznajder, M. 2012. “Building a Corpus of Indefinite Uses Annotated with Fine-grained Semantic Functions.” In Proceedings of the Eight International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC’12). European Language Resources Association (ELRA).
[pdf]
Natural languages possess a wealth of indefinite forms that typically differ in distribution and interpretation. Although formal semanticists have strived to develop precise meaning representations for different indefinite functions, to date there has hardly been any corpus work on the topic. In this paper, we present the results of a small corpus study where English indefinite forms any and some were labelled with fine-grained semantic functions well-motivated by typological studies. We developed annotation guidelines that could be used by non-expert annotators and calculated inter-annotator agreement amongst several coders. The results show that the annotation task is hard, with agreement scores ranging from 52% to 62% depending on the number of functions considered, but also that each of the independent annotations is in accordance with theoretical predictions regarding the possible distributions of indefinite functions. The resulting annotated corpus is available upon request and can be accessed through a searchable online database.
```
@inproceedings{AloniEtAl2012,
  author = {Aloni, Maria and van Cranenburgh, Andreas and Fernandez, Raquel and Sznajder, Marta},
  title = {Building a Corpus of Indefinite Uses Annotated with Fine-grained Semantic Functions},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Eight International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'12)},
  year = {2012},
  publisher = {European Language Resources Association (ELRA)}
}
```
Aloni, M and Roelofsen, F. 2011. “Indefinites in comparatives.” In Proceedings of SALT 21.
[pdf] [slides]
The goal of this paper is to explain the meaning and distribution of indefinites in comparatives, focusing on the case of English some and any and German irgend-indefinites. We combine three competing theories of comparatives with an alternative semantics of some and any, and a novel account of stressed irgend-indefinites. One of the resulting theories, based on Heim’s (2006) analysis of comparatives, predicts all the relevant differences in quantificational force, and explains why free choice indefinites are licensed in comparatives.
```
@inproceedings{AloniRoelofsen2011a,
  author = {Aloni, Maria and Roelofsen, Floris},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of SALT 21},
  title = {Indefinites in comparatives},
  year = {2011},
  slides = {AloniRoelofsen2011b.pdf}
}
```

Aloni, M and Port, A. 2010. “Epistemic indefinites crosslinguistically.” In Proceedings of NELS 41.

[pdf] [slides]

@inproceedings{AloniPort2010,
  author = {Aloni, Maria and Port, Angelika},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of NELS 41},
  title = {Epistemic indefinites crosslinguistically},
  year = {2010},
  slides = {AloniPort2010a.pdf}
}

Aloni, M and Ciardelli, I. 2011. “A semantics for imperatives.” Manuscript, University of Amsterdam

[pdf]

@unpublished{AloniCiardelli2011,
  author = {Aloni, Maria and Ciardelli, Ivano},
  note = {Manuscript, University of Amsterdam},
  title = {A semantics for imperatives},
  year = {2011}
}

Ciardelli, I. 2010. “A first-order inquisitive semantics.” In Logic, Language and Meaning LNAI 6042

Corpus

A Corpus of Indefinite Uses annotated with semantic information

Activities

Assessing the Reliability of an Annotation Scheme for Indefinites: Master of Logic Project, January 2011, ILLC, University of Amsterdam
Implicatures and Grammar: Workshop hosted during the 17th Amsterdam Colloquium, December 2009, University of Amsterdam
Indefinites and beyond: Master of Logic Project, January 2009, ILLC, University of Amsterdam