Antipresuppositions

In A. Ueyama(ed.), Theoretical and Empirical Studies of
Reference and Anaphora: Toward the establishment of generative grammar as an empirical science (2006)
by Percus, Orin

Abstract

Some sentences come with an interesting kind of condition on their use: they require that a certain proposition p not be taken for granted. Recent work by Sauerland and Schlenker proposes an explanation: the sentences in question compete with other sentences that require that p be taken for granted, and win only when those other sentences are infelicitous. This paper is concerned with the precise nature of this competition, and with what can be learned from it.

Ugh... from our "Toward the establishment of generative grammar as an empirical science" Dept.

This thing here called Anti-presupposition is a decent observation about some interesting types of clauses in English. My problem is with the author's attributing some of these observations to what ultimately amounts to our language module.

One such case that results from the analysis is the "empirical evidence" that the quantifier 'all' is infelicitous if applied to a set that maximally contains two elements. So a sentence such as (1) sounds bad (is ungrammatical?) and is dispreferred to (2)

1. *The mafia broke all of his legs
2. The mafia broke both of his legs

This 'anti-duality' condition, which results from anti-presupposition triggered by the quantifier, is a result of the fact that English happens to have a special quantifier for exactly these cases ('both'). I think this is a fine hypothesis, which appears to be verified by its extension across other languages that have a 'both'-like quantifier... until you look at French, which seems to show this 'anti-duality' but doesn't have a quantifier that is 'both'-like enough. But I digress...

Time will tell if this hypothesis will live on. But my problem is with the underlying notion that this anti-duality condition, like the anti-presupposition notion, is entirely language bound and not a result of general cognitive constraints (or simple frequency issues). A lot of effort is spent covering all the instances of anti-presupposition and anti-duality, but underlying this is the unquestioned assumption that this phenomenon is a product of UG. This fault is going to affect our ability to, as the abstract suggests is the goal of the article, learn something from anti-presuppositions.

Internet search result probabilities: Heaps' Law and Word Associativity

Journal of Quantitative Linguistics (v.16-1)
by Lansey, Jonathan C & Bukiet, Bruce

Abstracts

We study the number of internet search results returned from multi-word queries based on the number of results returned when each word is searched for individually. We derive a model to describe search result values for multi-word queries using the total number of pages indexed by Google and by applying the Zipf power law to the words per page distribution on the internet and Heaps' law for unique word counts. Based on data from 351 word pairs each with exactly one hit when searched for together, and a Zipf law coefficient determined in other studies, we approximate the Heaps' law coefficient for the indexed worldwide web (about 8 billion pages) to be b = 0.52. Previous studies used under 20,000 pages. We demonstrate through examples how the model can be used to analyze automatically the relatedness of word pairs assigning each a value we call "strength of associativity'. We demonstrate the validity of our method with word triplets and through two experiments conducted 8 months apart. We then use our model to compare the index sizes of competing search giants Yahoo and Google.

This one is from the "applied computational google fight!" dept. I think it's awesome that you could accurately model the success of searching the internet using multiple key words. Awesomer still is the result that the model provides word associativity.

It's pretty crazy what can be done with this immense database we call 'the internet'. In the near future, we'll figure out ways in which this database can be mined for answers to all of life's questions. It will also gain sentience and become our overlord, and that's ok.

It seems unfortunate, however, that the results (as established in the abstract) are not provided with any suggestions for why anyone (except maybe big search engine designers) should care. I'm 100% sure that there is at least one reason, if not several, why I should care. But it isn't clear what that reason is, and that's a shame.

Discursive illusions in the American National Strategy for Combating Terrorism

Journal of Language and Politics (v.7-2)
by Bhatia, Aditi

Abstract:

Social realities are often negotiated and determined by elite groups of society, including political and religious leaders, the mass media, and even professional experts, who give meaning to complex, multifaceted constructs such as terrorism consistent with their individual socio-political agendas. The Bush Administration's National Strategy for Combating Terrorism (NSCT) (2003) defines what we the public and media understand by the term terrorism; who are terrorists; what constitutes terrorism; how we can fight terrorism, etc. In order to convince audiences that the version of reality that the NSCT is representing is the objective truth, particular themes such as the construction of religion, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), orientalism, and attack vs. self-defence, typically realised through the use of rhetorical resources such as category work, appeals to historicity, negative other-presentation, and the use of metaphor, are utilised. Metaphors are used to construct new and alternate realities. They allow a subjective conceptualisation of reality to appear more convincing through the invocation of emotions and ideologies. Drawing on a detailed analysis of NSCT, the paper investigates how metaphors are combined with other features of language and rhetoric to achieve the themes mentioned above enabling the discourse of illusion to take effect.

This one is from our "who is this analysis helping?" dept. This postmodern analysis probably has some very intelligent things to say about how language (metaphors and other rhetorical devices) is used in a political context, with respect to TERRORISM, to fool the populace into a state that the powers find more easily governable. It's too bad that the language is impenetrable to anyone who might actually do something about it.

I've harped on this point before, but:

I don't mean to invalidate this kind of research because I actually like the idea that someone is thinking critically about these kinds of issues. But in academic settings we ought to be more aware of who we want our audience to be. If you need an advanced degree in postmodern critical discourse analysis to follow these potentially insightful contents, then it feels to me like you're wasting your precious time.

Most of all the linguistics articles found in journals today suffers from this problem to some degree. It's impossible to avoid requiring that your reader share a technical vocabulary for discussing complex ideas (this drawback of advanced research exists in all fields, of course). But leave those complex ideas for the main article. Make your abstract accessible! It's the only way that the field of linguistics is going to get anywhere.

Los limites de la selecion natural y el evominimalismo. Antecedentes, actualidad y perspectivas del pensamiento chomskyano sobre los origenes...

Translated title: The limits of natural selection and Evo-Minimalism. Antecedents, State of the Art and Prospects of Chomsky's ideas on the evolutionary origins of languages.
Verba (v.35)
by Lorenzo, Guillermo

Abstracts

This paper argues, against the claims of several people, that understanding the evolutionary origins of language has always been within the chomskyan linguistic agenda. The paper explains Chomsky's traditional rejection of the Darwinian recipe of evolution by means of natural selection as an appropriate mechanism for the case of language & explores the possibilities of the Minimalism Program as an alternative framework in order to solve the question.

This one is from the "On the wrong path" dept. This short abstract masks a GIGANTIC argument that is brewing in some circles. The abstract translation is a little misleading (as is my total lack of spanish fluency) but I think the argument here is that Chomsky has broken evidence of how Darwinian Evolution does not explain the emergence of Language.

I would probably agree that traditional Darwinian Evolution does not, alone, explain the emergence of Language. But I am more than a little dubious that the Minimalist Program is on the right path toward an explanation of the appropriate mechanism.

I'm always happy to see articles of this nature, even if they are written in languages I can't understand well enough to read them in. What makes this article crazy isn't that I disagree with one of its premises, but that it's just so unlike the kind of argumentative articles you typically see in Linguistics journals (but in a good way).