Is Conflation of Individuals possible?

Let me now briefly address the phenomenon of ‘conceptual shift’ that was important in the first chapter in the discussion of two-level semantics (section 1.1.3). There I mentioned the phenomenon that the verbschlagencan be used intransitively when it expresses emission of sound, as in:

(172) a. Die

Does this mean that schlagen changes its arity under conceptual shift? Con-sider the following three examples:

(173) a. Ich A broom can be considered as a thing that produces a beating or slamming sound, when it hits against something solid. However, this noun cannot be used intransitively with schlagen. The reason becomes quite obvious, when we compare (173–b) and (173–c): in (173–c) we have both a moving entity M (i.e. the broom) and a still-standing target S (i.e. the wall), in (173–b) we only have the former, not the latter. In the case of the door in (173–a) we can infer S from our knowledge about doors: if the door is M then S is either the door frame or the wall surrounding the door. If the door is S, however, we get no idea about M, so this interpretation is predicted to be quite unlikely – which is correct for (173–a).

These observations suggest that even under conceptual shift the standard schematic DRS of SCHLAGEN remains ‘active’. Let us turn now to (172-c).

How does the bell fulfil these constraints? A bell can be seen as a kind of

‘machine’ that has the functions described by the concept of SCHLAGEN built into it. The clapper of the bell is M and the bell’s side is S.

If this is the correct interpretation then we have a very interesting sit-uation: the individual introduced by the subject die Glocke (‘the bell’) is linked to neither of the two roles of SCHLAGEN. Rather, the two parts of

CHAPTER 2 2.5 Syntactic and Semantic arguments

the bell are. The two individual roles of SCHLAGEN are conflated into the one individual introduced by the subject of the clause.

The possibility of such a situation calls traditional approaches to thematic interpretation into question. If a verb has two or three individual roles to

‘assign’, it is not necessary to have the same number of verbal complements in the clause to ‘link’ all these roles. Two (or more) individual roles of the verb might be clustered together within one individual introduced by a verbal complement.

I know of no theory of thematic interpretation that discusses such a possi-bility. The complements that function syntactically as arguments of the verb are always mapped as atomic entities into semantic representations and have to be assigned exactly one thematic role by the verb. And, vice versa, the entities that can be assigned thematic roles are those represented by a verbal complement, or implicit arguments (which also are atomic entities).

The problem discussed above can be seen as a kind of metonymic relation:

a property predicated of an individual in fact only holds of a part of that individual. The only difference with the above examples is that the property in question is a two-place relation that holds of two parts of an individual.

Metonymic relations with monadic predicates are quite common, and well-discussed (e.g., by Pustejovsky 1995). Consider the following example:

(174) Das the

Auto car

rollte rolled

Strictly speaking, it is not the car itself that is rolling, but only a part of it, i.e., its wheels. In this case of metonymic relation, the semantic and syntactic arity of the verb still are equal. But as we saw in the case of (172), this need not necessarily be the case. As soon as we have a semantically multi-place predicate, we get different options for its syntactic arity. The most important consequence of this insight is that the syntactic arity of a predicate cannot be predicted from its semantic arity. Thematic interpretation and linking cannot be modeled as an incremental process of ‘stepwise saturation of the verb’s open slots with constituents’. Instead, whether in a clause a verb’s roles are ‘assigned’ is a matter of interpretation and has to be decided case-wise.

It cannot be decided only by counting the verbal complements. Thematic interpretation has to be seen as an inferential interpretative process on the clause as a whole.

The treatment I am proposing is of this kind and can deal with these data. Let us first take a look at the simpler example (174). We start with a DRS that contains the discourse referent introduced by the car, and with the conditions introduced by the predicate rollen. A car as such cannot roll,

except in an accident, when it ‘rolls’ down a slope, overturning – but as long as we do not have evidence for this interpretation, we consider it as unlikely.

So, thus far we do not have a satisfactory conceptual interpretation. However, our (world) knowledge about cars tells us that they all have wheels, and that these can roll, and their rolling causes that the car is moving:

(175) ∀x.CAR(x) −→ ∃y.WHEELS OF(y,x) ∧ (ROLL(y) −→

MOVE(x))

This is part of our world knowledge and thus can be a condition of our DRS.

If we further add the discourse referent of the wheels into that DRS and make the appropriate unifications, we get the result that conforms to the desired interpretation. The car is ‘totally involved’, because it is moving, when its wheels are rolling. So the condition for nominative case reduction is also met.

(176) The car was rolling e x y

car(x)

wheels of(y,x) e: ROLL(y)

MOVE(x)

hROLL(y) −→MOVE(x)i

Things change only slightly when we turn to (172-c). We have different world knowledge rules, but that is all. The most important rule is that if the clapper of a bell performs a strike against the side of the same bell, then that bell rings:

(177) ∀x,y,z.bell(x) ∧ clapper of(y,x)∧ side of(z,x) −→

CAUSE(SCHLAG(y,z),RING(x))

This legitimates the following DRS as a possible interpretation of (172-c), in the same way as above:

(178) Die the

Glocke bell

schlug tolled

CHAPTER 2 2.5 Syntactic and Semantic arguments

In the final section I will briefly address the opposite problem: Can a single individual be referred to by more than one constituent? The answer will again be ‘yes’, but only under certain assumptions.