Linking wh-words to a specific event in the MRS
Participants
- Moderator: OlgaZamaraeva (OZ)
- Scribe: MichaelGoodman (MWG) (the scribe apologizes for not always keeping up with who said what when.)
- Other Participants (in order of appearance): Dan Flickinger (DPF), Guy Emerson (GE), Woodley Packard (WP), Ann Copestake (AAC), David Inman (DI), Francis Bond (FCB)
Minutes
- OZ: Problem is linking a wh word to a specific event when there’s
more than one in a sentence
- Do you know who Kim saw?
- OZ: Goal is to figure out how real the problem is, how it relates to the Matrix
- OZ: In Oslo we discussed these, but mostly about linguistic context; i want to know technical difficulties
- DPF: wh gives ARG0, in typical case it is deterministic
- DPF: but we may have more than one event where it’s applicable: Who tried to chase Kim
- Examples from slides
- (1b) Sandy said who saw *who*?
- (2b) Sandy said who *who* saw?
- DPF: 2b is a silly analysis, with the second *who* being a relative clause
- GE: With echo questions… from earlier discussion:
- GE: It doesn’t need to be a question: “Sandy said who saw who.”
- WP: What’s an echo question?
- DPF: When A says: “John saw a glarump…” and B says: “John saw what?”
- DPF: It’s interesting because the ERG doesn’t do well with polarity questions: “I wonder whether …”
- DPF: And these interact with echo questions
- WP: In the MRS for “John wondered whether Kim left.” the only difference between “John was amazed that Kim left” (besides wonder/amaze) is that _leave_v_1 has sf: ques
- GE: In Oslo it was suggested to use ICONS to link the wh word to the clauses
- DPF: Can we create an information-structure backstory for that? Currently ICONS is used for information-structure in the ERG.
- OZ: There is literature on focus with wh-questions. Many believe they are always focused (though there is disagreement)
- AAC: Back to the echo questions… The “who” of the echo question is not the same as the who in the actual question, but it’s a discourse thing; asking the speaker to clarify what they said.
- AAC: So we need to decide if the MRS should be underspecified here or if we can capture them somehow.
- DI: “John saw Mary and *mumble*”
- “John saw Mary and who?” Felicitous response is “John saw Mary and who?” not “John saw who?”
- DPF: And not “John saw who and Mary?”
- AAC/DPF: “John saw Mary and whom?” – do constraints on case persist in echo questions? general agreement that this sounds pedantic
- GE: Echo in yes/no questions: “Is Kim here?” “Is who here?”
- AAC: Coming back to an underspecified representation… If it is ambiguous between a polarity question and a wh-question, can this be underspecified?
- DPF: “Is who here?” is both a wh-question and also the original yes-know question
- WP: If you have a sentence with many wh-words and one becomes the focus of an echo question, the rest are invalidated… You’re really asking to clarify that one, the rest are background.
- AAC: Yes, let’s set aside echo questions, they’re a distraction.
- OZ: “Who do you know whether Kim saw”… In Russian it’s better with negation: “Who do you not know whether Kim saw”
- …. (couldn’t keep up here)
- OZ: If I want to model this in the Matrix, do I have a problem here?
- OZ: “Do you know who Kim saw” can be polar: literal answer “yes”, pragmatic answer may be “Sandy”
- WP: Can’t these have truth conditional effects? If the answer to the polar question depends on the answer to the wh, then we have a problem because ICONS should not change truth-conditions.
- GE: “I know whether you know who Kim saw.”
- GE: vs “I know who you know whether Kim saw.”
- … again, the scribe can’t keep up with these examples apologies abound.
- MWG: wait I thought ICONS *could* effect truth conditions
- DPF: In the current uses, passive, topic, I don’t think it does
- AAC: But if we use them for pronouns it could
- AAC: But in general they should not affect truth values… Although they could be used to disambiguate truth conditions
- DPF: Before we had ICONS between an event and an individual that did not affect truth, and between two individuals where it does, but this presents a third case between an event and an individual that does affect truth
- DI: Use focus to show what is the expected answer… “Who did Kim see?” “Do you know who Kim saw?”
- DPF: ..
- WP: What if both wh are individuals?
- DI: Who saw what?
- AAC: If we want lists of pairs for responses, then for “Do you know who Kim saw?” then “Yes, Sandy” is a valid answer.
- DI: But not “No, Sandy”
- GE: “What do you know who Kim gave?”
- FCB: In Japanese it’s fine, just answer all whs.
Last update: 2019-07-16 by MichaelGoodman [edit]