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University of Massachusetts - Amherst
ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst
Dissertations
9-2009
Two Types of Definites in Natural Language
Florian Schwarz
University of Massachusetts - Amherst, florentinoz@gmail.com
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Schwarz, Florian, "Two Types of Definites in Natural Language" (2009). Dissertations. 122.
http://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations/122
TWO TYPES OF DEFINITES IN NATURAL LANGUAGE
A Dissertation Presented
by
FLORIAN SCHWARZ
Submitted to the Graduate School of the
University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
September 2009
Linguistics
c
Copyright by Florian Schwarz 2009
All Rights Reserved
TWO TYPES OF DEFINITES IN NATURAL LANGUAGE
A Dissertation Presented
by
FLORIAN SCHWARZ
Approved as to style and content by:
Angelika Kratzer, Chair
Lyn Frazier, Member
Christopher Potts, Member
Charles E. Clifton, Jr., Member
Barbara H. Partee, Consultant
John McCarthy, Department Chair
Linguistics
For my fellow traveler,
who waited
on the other side.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing a dissertation is a humbling process. If it had not been for help and
support along the way from a number of people, the process of writing this particular
dissertation most certainly would have been even more humbling, and, moreover, less
enjoyable and instructive for its author and less successful overall (leaving entirely
aside the question of what its success might consist of).
My committee has been as helpful, supportive, enthusiastic, and enduring as I
only could have dreamed of. First and foremost, I would like to thank the chair
of my committee, Angelika Kratzer, for her dedication to advising her students in
general and my dissertation project in particular.
She had to suffer through an
endless seeming initial period of exploring German data while, at the same time,
trying to situate their impact within the vast literature on definites. In similarly
endless meetings (sometimes lasting through entire snow-storms), she guided me in
carving out the theoretical context of my analysis and pushed me ever so hard to
not take anything for granted. I can only wish that her immense ability of looking
at basic theoretical questions from a radically fresh perspective will stay with me in
spirit in the years to come.
Lyn Frazier’s enthusiasm and high-speed mind, as well as her ability to see con-
nections between detailed and technical linguistic issues and much larger questions
about the workings of the human mind, have made for many a long-lasting meeting
that greatly benefited various aspects of this dissertation. In particular, our discus-
sions of the bridging data that lead to the questionnaire study reported in chapter 2
and the analysis of larger situation uses (chapter 5) and relational anaphora (chap-
ter 6) have greatly affected the overall analysis that I propose. In addition to this
v
intellectual support, her guidance and advice on all kinds of practical matters was
always appreciated.
Chris Potts always had ready (and rapid!), straightforward, and extremely useful
advice on all levels, from big-picture theoretical issues to structuring the presentation
of the analysis all the way to technical issues with L
A
TEX. His ability to see bold and
simple generalizations in a mess of data clarified my view of things substantially at
numerous turns of this project. It turns out that we were at UMass for exactly the
same time, and I am glad not to have missed out on a moment of his presence there.
I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Chuck Clifton in various
contexts throughout the years at UMass, and am grateful for his generous ways of
sharing his vast resources in the domain of experimental psycholinguistics, from the
theoretical and conceptual levels to the nuts and bolts. I only wish I had been able to
include more experimental work here, but the theoretical part had to take the lead for
the moment. I certainly intend to make up for this in the future. Chuck’s insightful
questions and comments always were on the spot (even though he’ll tell you he barely
understands any of the semantics) and highly useful.
Barbara Partee, who would have been a member of the committee but only could
be a consultant because she wasn’t able to be at the defense, has been a rich source of
advice and criticisms, more often than not packaged within an entertaining anecdote
from the history of modern semantics. I had the pleasure of working with her in
various capacities over the years, and am grateful for all the things I have learned
from her.
I’ve had the opportunity to present parts of this work on various occasions and
very much appreciate the discussions that arose there, as well as in other contexts.
In particular, I’d like to thank Luis Alonso-Ovalle, Pranav Anand, Jan Anderssen,
Rajesh Bhatt, Emmanuel Chemla, Shai Cohen, Amy-Rose Deal, Karen Ebert, Paul
Elbourne, Dave Embick, Donka Farkas, Ilaria Frana, Patrick Grosz, Irene Heim,
vi
Stefan Hinterwimmer, Kyle Johnson, Tony Kroch, Bill Labov, Andrew McKenzie,
Paula Menendez-Benito, Keir Moulton, Lance Nathan, Pritty Patel, Kyle Rawlins,
Craige Roberts, Aynat Rubinstein, Magdalena Schwager, Roger Schwarzschild, E.
Allyn Smith, Tom Wasow, Lynsey Wolter, and Arnold Zwicky, as well as audiences
at the OSU Workshop on Presupposition and Accommodation in 2006, the LSA
meeting 2008, UC Santa Cruz, the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University
for interesting discussions and helpful suggestions. (Apologies to anyone I may have
forgotten!)
Special thanks are due to Greg Carlson for getting me started on this work by ask-
ing a seemingly simple question about how preposition-article contraction in German
relates to his work on ‘weak definites’ (Carlson, Sussman, Klein and Tanenhaus 2006).
I’d also like to thank Paula Menendez-Benito and Luis Alonso-Ovalle for our inter-
esting discussions in connection with a joint project that related directly to parts of
this thesis.
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