Corpus Investigation and Annotation

Author	Title	Year	Journal/Proceedings	Reftype	DOI/URL
Anand, P. and Martell, C.	Annotating the Focus of Negation in terms of Questions Under Discussion [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2012	School: Defense Technical Information Center	techreport	URL
Abstract: Blanco & Moldovan (Blanco and Moldovan 2011) have empirically demonstrated that negated sentences often convey implicit positive inferences, or focus, and that these inferences are both human annotatable and machine learnable. Concentrating on their annotation process, this paper argues that the focus based implicit positivity should be separated from concepts of scalar implicature and negraising as well as the placement of stress. We show that a model making these distinctions clear and which incorporates the pragmatic notion of question under discussion yields κ rates above .80, but that it substantially deflates the rates of focus of negation in text.
BibTeX: @techreport{Anand2012, author = {Pranav Anand and Craig Martell}, title = {Annotating the Focus of Negation in terms of Questions Under Discussion}, school = {Defense Technical Information Center}, year = {2012}, url = {https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA590555.pdf} }
Borthen, K. and Karagjosova, E.	Pronominal right-dislocation in Norwegian [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2021	Glossa: a journal of general linguistics	article	DOI
Abstract: The goal of the paper is to propose a holistic analysis of the discourse properties and the interpretational effects of pronominal right-dislocation in Norwegian. Previous research has suggested that this is a topic construction, and it has been shown that the right-dislocated pronoun may affect reference assignment, is sometimes used in cases of discourse breaks, is associated with contrastiveness, and may lead to interpretational effects such as “emphasis” and “mitigation”. Based on Norwegian authentic corpus material, Givón’s (1983a) notion of marked constructions, and Sperber and Wilson’s (1986/1995) relevance theory, we present a novel analysis that connects the various properties of the construction together. A central aspect of our analysis is the assumption that marked constructions increase the accessibility of contrastive interpretations, which in turn may trigger the derivation of certain types of implicatures. Since the analysis is mainly based on assumptions about human cognition, the study makes cross-linguistic predictions despite its focus on one language.
BibTeX: @article{Borthen2021, author = {Kaja Borthen and Elena Karagjosova}, title = {Pronominal right-dislocation in Norwegian}, journal = {Glossa: a journal of general linguistics}, year = {2021}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.1025} }
Degen, J.	Alternatives in Pragmatic Reasoning [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2013	School: University of Rochester	phdthesis	URL
Abstract: In the face of underspecified utterances, listeners routinely and without much apparent effort make the right kinds of pragmatic inferences about a speaker's intended meaning. This dissertation investigates the processing of scalar implicatures as a way of addressing how listeners perform this remarkable feat. In particular, the role of context in the processing of scalar implicatures from "some" to "not all" is explored. Contrary to the widely held assumption that scalar implicatures are highly regularized, frequent, and relatively context-independent, this dissertation suggests that they are in fact relatively infrequent and highly context-dependent; both the robustness and the speed with which scalar implicatures from "some" to "not all" are computed are modulated by the probabilistic support that the implicature receives from multiple contextual cues. Scalar implicatures are found to be especially sensitive to the naturalness or expectedness of both scalar and non-scalar alternative utterances the speaker could have produced, but didn't. A novel contextualist account of scalar implicature processing that has roots in both constraint-based and information-theoretic accounts of language processing is proposed that provides a unifying explanation for a) the varying robustness of scalar implicatures across different contexts, b) the varying speed of scalar implicatures across different contexts, and c) the speed and efficiency of communication.
BibTeX: @phdthesis{Degen2013, author = {Judith Degen}, title = {Alternatives in Pragmatic Reasoning}, school = {University of Rochester}, year = {2013}, url = {https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/alternatives-pragmatic-reasoning/docview/1465060224/se-2?accountid=9783} }
De Kuthy, K. and Meurers, D.	Focus projection between theory and evidence [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2012	Empirical Approaches to Linguistic Theory, pp. 207-240	incollection	DOI
Abstract: In this paper, we want to bring together and compare the predictions of traditional focus projection on the one hand and the more recent pragmatics-only approaches (Roberts, 2006; Kadmon, 2006) on the other with two sources of empirical evidence, experimental and corpus-based. In essence, the paper is an empirical exploration of the evidence for focus projection, working out the empirical challenge that a pragmatics-only approach needs to find an alternative explanation for.
BibTeX: @incollection{DeKuthy2012, author = {De Kuthy, Kordula and Detmar Meurers}, title = {Focus projection between theory and evidence}, booktitle = {Empirical Approaches to Linguistic Theory}, publisher = {De Gruyter Mouton}, year = {2012}, pages = {207-240}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614510888.207} }
De Kuthy, K., Reiter, N. and Riester, A.	QUD-based annotation of discourse structure and information structure: Tool and evaluation [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2018	Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2018)	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: We discuss and evaluate a new annotation scheme and discourse-analytic method, the QUD-tree framework. We present an annotation study, in which the framework, based on the concept of Questions under Discussion, is applied to English and German interview data, using TreeAnno, an annotation tool specially developed for this new kind of discourse annotation. The results of an inter-annotator agreement study show that the new annotation method allows for reasonable agreement with regard to discourse structure and good agreement with regard to the annotation of information structure, which covers focus, background, contrastive topic and non-at-issue material.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{DeKuthy2018, author = {De Kuthy, Kordula and Reiter, Nils and Riester, Arndt}, title = {QUD-based annotation of discourse structure and information structure: Tool and evaluation}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2018)}, year = {2018}, url = {https://aclanthology.org/L18-1304.pdf} }
De Kuthy, K., Brunetti, L. and Berardi, M.	Annotating Information Structure in Italian: Characteristics and Cross-Linguistic Applicability of a QUD-Based Approach [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2019	Proceedings of the 13th Linguistic Annotation Workshop, pp. 113-123	inproceedings	DOI URL
Abstract: We present a discourse annotation study, in which an annotation method based on Questions under Discussion (QuD) is applied to Italian data. The results of our inter-annotator agreement analysis show that the QUD-based approach, originally spelled out for English and German, can successfully be transferred cross-linguistically, supporting good agreement for the annotation of central information structure notions such as focus and non-at-issueness. Our annotation and interannotator agreement study on Italian authentic data confirms the cross-linguistic applicability of the QuD-based approach.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{DeKuthy2019, author = {De Kuthy, Kordula and Brunetti, Lisa and Berardi, Marta}, title = {Annotating Information Structure in Italian: Characteristics and Cross-Linguistic Applicability of a QUD-Based Approach}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 13th Linguistic Annotation Workshop}, publisher = {Association for Computational Linguistics}, year = {2019}, pages = {113--123}, url = {https://aclanthology.org/W19-4014}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/W19-4014} }
Djalali, A., Clausen, D., Lauer, S., Schultz, K. and Potts, C.	Modeling Expert and Effects and Common and Ground Using and Questions Under and Discussion [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2011	Building Representations of Common Ground with Intelligent Agents: Papers from the 2011 AAAI Fall Symposium (FS-11-02)	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: We present a graph-theoretic model of discourse based on the Questions Under Discussion (QUD) framework. Questions and assertions are treated as edges connecting discourse states in a rooted graph, modeling the introduction and resolution of various QUDs as paths through this graph. The amount of common ground presupposed by interlocutors at any given point in a discourse corresponds to graphical depth. We introduce a new task-oriented dialogue corpus and show that experts, presuming a richer common ground, initiate discourse at a deeper level than novices. The QUD-graph model thus enables us to quantify the experthood of a speaker relative to a fixed domain and to characterize the ways in which rich common ground facilitates more efficient communication.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Djalali2011, author = {Alex Djalali and David Clausen and Sven Lauer and Karl Schultz and Christopher Potts}, title = {Modeling Expert and Effects and Common and Ground Using and Questions Under and Discussion}, booktitle = {Building Representations of Common Ground with Intelligent Agents: Papers from the 2011 AAAI Fall Symposium (FS-11-02)}, year = {2011}, url = {https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/FSS/FSS11/paper/view/4186/4502} }
Frazier, L. and Clifton, C.	Ellipsis and discourse coherence [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2006	Linguistics and Philosophy Vol. 29(3), pp. 315-346	article	DOI
Abstract: VP ellipsis generally requires a syntactically matching antecedent. However, many documented examples exist where the antecedent is not appropriate. Kehler (2000, Linguistics and philosophy 23(6), 533–575. 2002, Coherence, Reference and the Theory of Grammer, CSLI Publications. Stanford.) proposed an elegant theory which predicts a syntactic antecedent for an elided VP is required only for a certain discourse coherence relation (resemblance), not for cause-effect relations. Most of the data Kehler used to motivate his theory come from corpus studies and thus do not consist of true minimal pairs. We report five experiments testing predictions of the coherence theory, using standard minimal pair materials. The results raise questions about the empirical basis for coherence theory because a syntactically-matching antecedent is preferred for all coherence relations, not just resemblance relations. Further, strict identity readings, which should not be available when a syntactic antecedent is required, are influenced by parallelism per se, holding the discourse coherence relation constant. This draws into question the causal role of coherence relations in processing VP ellipsis.
BibTeX: @article{Frazier2006, author = {Lyn Frazier and Charles Clifton}, title = {Ellipsis and discourse coherence}, journal = {Linguistics and Philosophy}, year = {2006}, volume = {29}, number = {3}, pages = {315-346}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-006-0002-3} }
Gast, V. and Rzymski, C.	Towards a corpus-based analysis of evaluative scales associated with even [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2015	Linguistik Online Vol. 71(2)	article	DOI
Abstract: Scalar focus operators like even, only, etc. interact with scales, i. e., ordered sets of alternatives that are referenced by focus structure. The scaling dimensions interacting with focus operators have been argued to be semantic (e. g. entailment relations, probability) in earlier work, but it has been shown that purely semantic analyses are too restrictive, and that the specific scale that a given operator interacts with is often pragmatic, in the sense of being a function of the context. If that is true, the question arises what exactly determines the (types of) scales interacting with focus operators. The present study addresses this question by investigating the distributional behaviour of the additive scalar particle even relative to scales whose focus alternatives are ordered in terms of evaluative attitudes (positive, negative). Our hypothesis is that such evaluative attitudinal scales are at least partially functions of the lexical material in the sentential environment. This hypothesis is tested by determining correlations between sentence-level attitudes and lexically encoded attitudes in the relevant sentences. We use data from the Europarl corpus, a corpus of scripted and highly elaborated political speech, which is rich in argumentative discourse and thus lends itself to the study of attitudes in context. Our results show that there are in fact significant correlations between (manual) sentence-level evaluations and lexical evaluations (determined through machine learning) in the textual environment of the relevant operators. We conclude with an outlook on possible extensions of the method applied in the present study by identifying attitudinal patterns beyond the sentence, showing that positively and negatively connotated instances of even differ in terms of their argumentative function, with positive even often marking the climax and endpoint of an argument, while negative even often occurs in qualifying insertions like concessive parentheses. While we regard our results as valid, some refinements and extensions of the method are pointed out as necessary steps towards the establishment of an empirical sentence semantics, in the domain of scalar additive operators as well as more generally speaking.
BibTeX: @article{Gast2015, author = {Volker Gast and Christoph Rzymski}, title = {Towards a corpus-based analysis of evaluative scales associated with even}, journal = {Linguistik Online}, publisher = {University of Bern}, year = {2015}, volume = {71}, number = {2}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.13092/lo.71.1782} }
Gega, P., Liu, M. and Bechberger, L.	Numerical Concepts in Context [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2021	Language, Cognition, and Mind, pp. 93-119	incollection	DOI
Abstract: Numerical concepts are an integral part of everyday conversation and communication. Expressions relating to numbers in natural language can have precise or imprecise interpretations. While the precise interpretation most prominently appears in mathematical contexts, the imprecise interpretation seems to arise when numbers (as quantities) are applied to real world contexts (e.g., the rope is 50 m long). Earlier literature shows that the (im)precise interpretation can depend on different factors, e.g., the kind of approximator a numeral appears with (precise vs. imprecise, e.g., exactly vs. roughly) or the kind of numeral itself (round vs. non-round, e.g., 50 vs. 47). We report on a corpus-linguistic study and a rating experiment of English numerical expressions. The results confirm the effects of both factors and additionally an effect of the kind of unit (discrete vs. continuous, e.g., people vs. meters). This shows the contextual variability in the interpretation of numerical concepts in natural language.
BibTeX: @incollection{Gega2021, author = {Paola Gega and Mingya Liu and Lucas Bechberger}, title = {Numerical Concepts in Context}, booktitle = {Language, Cognition, and Mind}, publisher = {Springer International Publishing}, year = {2021}, pages = {93--119}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69823-2_5} }
Ginzburg, J.	Abstraction and Ontology: questions as propositional abstracts in type theory with records [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2005	Journal of Logic and Computation Vol. 15(2), pp. 113-130	article	URL
Abstract: The paper considers how to scale up dialogue protocols to multilogue, settings with multiple conversationalists. We extract two benchmarks to evaluate scaled up protocols based on the long distance resolution possibilities of nonsentential utterances in dialogue and multilogue in the British National Corpus. In light of these benchmarks, we then consider three possible transformations to dialogue protocols, inspired by Goffman’s audience taxonomy and formulated within an issue-based approach to dialogue management. We show that one such transformation yields protocols for querying and assertion that fulfill these benchmarks. We indicate how these protocols can be implemented in terms of conversational update rules.
BibTeX: @article{Ginzburg2005, author = {Jonathan Ginzburg}, title = {Abstraction and Ontology: questions as propositional abstracts in type theory with records}, journal = {Journal of Logic and Computation}, year = {2005}, volume = {15}, number = {2}, pages = {113-130}, url = {https://sites.google.com/site/jonathanginzburgswebsite/publications/jg-jolc05.pdf?attredirects=0} }
Ginzburg, J.	Questions and internalizing relevance [BibTeX]	2009	Fall 2009 Workshop in Philosophy and Linguistics, University of Michigan	inproceedings	URL
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Ginzburg2009, author = {Ginzburg, Jonathan}, title = {Questions and internalizing relevance}, booktitle = {Fall 2009 Workshop in Philosophy and Linguistics, University of Michigan}, year = {2009}, url = {http://web.eecs.umich.edu/ rthomaso/lpw09/ginzburg.pdf} }
Ginzburg, J. and Kolliakou, D.	Answers without questions: The emergence of fragments in child language [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2009	Journal of Linguistics Vol. 45(3), pp. 641-673	article	DOI
Abstract: Non-sentential utterances (NSUs), utterances that lack an overt verbal (more generally predicative) constituent, are common in adult speech. This paper presents the results of a corpus study of the emergence of certain classes of NSUs in child language, based primarily on data from the Manchester Corpus from CHILDES. Our principal finding is the late short query effect: the main classes of non-sentential queries (NSQs) are acquired much later than non-sentential answers (NSAs). At a stage when the child has productive use of sentential queries, and has mastered elliptical declaratives and the polar lexemes 'yes' and 'no', non-sentential questions are virtually absent. This happens despite the fact that such questions are common in the speech of the child's caregivers and that the contexts are ones which should facilitate the production of such NSUs. We argue that these results are intrinsically problematic for analyses of NSUs in terms of a single, generalized mechanism of phonological reduction, as standard in generative grammar. We show how to model this effect within an approach of dialogue-oriented constructionism, wherein NSUs are grammatical words or constructions whose main predicate is a contextual parameter resolved in a manner akin to indexical terms, the relevant aspect of context being the discourse topic. We sketch an explanation for the order of acquisition of NSUs, based on a notion which combines accessibility of contextual parameters and complexity of content construction.
BibTeX: @article{Ginzburg2009a, author = {Jonathan Ginzburg and Dimitra Kolliakou}, title = {Answers without questions: The emergence of fragments in child language}, journal = {Journal of Linguistics}, year = {2009}, volume = {45}, number = {3}, pages = {641-673}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226709990053} }
Ginzburg, J.	The Interactive Stance: Meaning for Conversation [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2012		book	DOI
Abstract: This book presents one of the first attempts at developing a precise, grammatically rooted, theory of conversation motivated by data from real conversations. The theory has descriptive reach from the micro-conversational -- e.g. self-repair at the word level -- to macro-level phenomena such as multi-party conversation and the characterization of distinct conversational genres. It draws on extensive corpus studies of the British National Corpus, on evidence from language acquisition, and on computer simulations of language evolution. The theory provides accounts of the opening, middle game, and closing stages of conversation. It also offers a new perspective on traditional semantic concerns such as quantification and anaphora. The Interactive Stance challenges orthodox views of grammar by arguing that, unless we wish to exclude from analysis a large body of frequently occurring words and constructions, the right way to construe grammar is as a system that characterizes types of talk in interaction.
BibTeX: @book{Ginzburg2012, author = {Jonathan Ginzburg}, title = {The Interactive Stance: Meaning for Conversation}, publisher = {Oxford University Press}, year = {2012}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199697922.001.0001} }
Ginzburg, J. and Moradlou, S.	The Earliest Utterances in Dialogue: Towards a Formal Theory of Parent/Child Talk in Interaction [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2013	Proceedings of SemDial 2013 (DialDam)	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: Early, initial utterances by children have received relatively little attention from researchers on language acquisition and almost no attempts to describe them using a formal grammar. In this paper we develop a taxonomy for such utterances, inspired by a study of the Providence corpus from CHILDES and driven by the need to describe how the contents of early child utterances arise from an interaction of form and dialogical context. The results of our corpus study demonstrate that even at this early stage quite intricate semantic mechanisms are in play, including non-referential meaning, akin to non–specific readings of quantifiers. We sketch a formal framework for describing the dialogue context and grammar that underlies such utterances. We consider very briefly and informally how some such utterances emerge from parent/child interaction.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Ginzburg2013a, author = {Jonathan Ginzburg and Sara Moradlou}, title = {The Earliest Utterances in Dialogue: Towards a Formal Theory of Parent/Child Talk in Interaction}, booktitle = {Proceedings of SemDial 2013 (DialDam)}, year = {2013}, url = {http://www.illc.uva.nl/semdial/dialdam/papers/GinzburgMoradlou_dialdam.pdf} }
Grisot, C.	Experimentally assessing the roles of grammatical aspect, lexical aspect and coreference patterns for the inference of temporal relations in English [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2021	Journal of Pragmatics Vol. 184, pp. 122-139	article	DOI
Abstract: The question of the roles of grammatical aspect and of lexical aspect for the inference of temporal relations has richly been investigated from a theoretical point of view in various fields of languages sciences. Nevertheless, previous studies do not formulate similar conclusions, and thus they trigger different predictions for experimental testing. In contrast, the role of coreference patterns did not receive as much attention as grammatical and lexical aspect have received. As such, in this study we experimentally assess the roles of grammatical aspect (perfective vs. imperfective), lexical aspect (activities vs. accomplishments) and coreference patterns (same vs. different agents) in English. By means of an annotation study, we establish that fewer chronological relations emerge in passages with the imperfective aspect and coreference of agents (i.e. the actions are performed by the same agent). Then, by means of a temporal evaluation task, we show that synchronous relations are favoured in narrative passages that describe activities and lack of coreference of agents (i.e. the actions are performed by different agents). To interpret the results, we suggest that the comprehenders’ inference of temporal relations is influenced on the one hand by linguistic biases and on the other hand by their expectations of coherence. We discuss the findings from a cross-linguistic perspective.
BibTeX: @article{Grisot2021, author = {Cristina Grisot}, title = {Experimentally assessing the roles of grammatical aspect, lexical aspect and coreference patterns for the inference of temporal relations in English}, journal = {Journal of Pragmatics}, publisher = {Elsevier BV}, year = {2021}, volume = {184}, pages = {122--139}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.08.007} }
Harris, J.A. and Potts, C.	Perspective-shifting with appositives and expressives [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2009	Linguistics and Philosophy Vol. 32(6), pp. 523-552	article	DOI
Abstract: Much earlier work claims that appositives and expressives are invariably speaker-oriented. These claims have recently been challenged, most extensively by Amaral et al. (Linguist and Philos 30(6): 707–749, 2007). We are convinced by this new evidence. The questions we address are (i) how widespread are non-speaker-oriented readings of appositives and expressives, and (ii) what are the underlying linguistic factors that make such readings available? We present two experiments and novel corpus work that bear directly on this issue. We find that non-speaker-oriented readings, while rare in actual language use, are systematic. We also find that non-speaker-oriented readings occur even outside of attitude predications, which leads us to favor an account based in pragmatically-mediated perspective shifting over one that relies on semantic binding by attitude predicates.
BibTeX: @article{Harris2009, author = {Jesse A. Harris and Christopher Potts}, title = {Perspective-shifting with appositives and expressives}, journal = {Linguistics and Philosophy}, year = {2009}, volume = {32}, number = {6}, pages = {523-552}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-010-9070-5} }
Harris, J.	Interjective ‘what' [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2013	Proceedings of SALT 23	inproceedings
Abstract: Discourse particles and interjectives allow a speaker to signal how information presented in an utterance relates to her epistemic or emotive state. I present a semantics for one such interjective: the English particle what. In addition, I provide evidence that it carries multiple discourse functions, and propose that these distinct uses are best captured by their relation to the central discourse topic.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Harris2013, author = {Jesse Harris}, title = {Interjective ‘what'}, booktitle = {Proceedings of SALT 23}, year = {2013} }
Hesse, C., Benz, A., Langner, M., Theodor, F. and Klabunde, R.	Annotating QUDs for generating pragmatically rich texts [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2020	Proceedings of the Workshop on Discourse Theories for Text Planning, pp. 10–16	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: We describe our work on QUD-oriented annotation of driving reports for the generation of corresponding texts – texts that are a mix of technical details of the new vehicle that has been put on the market together with the impressions of the test driver on driving characteristics. Generating these texts pose a challenge since they express non-at-issue and expressive content that cannot be retrieved from a database. Instead these subjective meanings must be justified by comparisons with attributes of other vehicles. We describe our current annotation task for the extraction of the relevant information for generating these driving reports.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Hesse2020, author = {Christoph Hesse and Anton Benz and Maurice Langner and Felix Theodor and Ralf Klabunde}, title = {Annotating QUDs for generating pragmatically rich texts}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Workshop on Discourse Theories for Text Planning}, publisher = {Association for Computational Linguistics}, year = {2020}, pages = {10–16}, url = {https://aclanthology.org/2020.dt4tp-1.3} }
Jiang, N. and de Marneffe, M.-C.	He Thinks He Knows Better than the Doctors: BERT for Event Factuality Fails on Pragmatics [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2021		unpublished	URL
Abstract: We investigate how well BERT performs on predicting factuality in several existing English datasets, encompassing various linguistic constructions. Although BERT obtains a strong performance on most datasets, it does so by exploiting common surface patterns that correlate with certain factuality labels, and it fails on instances where pragmatic reasoning is necessary. Contrary to what the high performance suggests, we are still far from having a robust system for factuality prediction.
BibTeX: @unpublished{Jiang2021, author = {Nanjiang Jiang and Marie-Catherine de Marneffe}, title = {He Thinks He Knows Better than the Doctors: BERT for Event Factuality Fails on Pragmatics}, year = {2021}, note = {to be published in TACL, pre-MIT Press publication version}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.00807} }
Lai, C.	Rises all the way up: The interpretation of prosody, discourse attitudes and dialogue structure [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2012	School: University of Pennsylvania	phdthesis
Abstract: This dissertation is about what prosody contributes to dialogue interpretation. The view of prosody developed in this account is based on detailed quantitative investigations of the prosodic forms and interpretations of cue word and declarative responses, specifically with respect to the distribution and interpretation of terminal pitch rises. Drawing on results from corpus, production and perception studies, I argue that the underlying contribution of terminal rises is to signal that the dialogue has not come to a viable stopping point with respect to the task at hand. This approach enables us to explain previously incongruent findings about the connection between rises and attitudes like uncertainty. From this perspective, the perception of such attitudes does not arise directly from prosodic form, but instead depends upon a range of contextual factors. The experimental results indicate that the most important of these is how an utterance relates to the current question under discussion, rather than sentence or dialogue act type. However, variation in prosodic form is also affected by higher level factors like dialect, task, and speaker role: rises become more frequent on non-questioning moves as the need to co-ordinate becomes greater. The experimental results allows us to make significant headway in clarifying the relationship between the prosodic, semantic and information structural properties of responses. This, in turn, sheds light on several outstanding questions about the contribution of the rise in fall-rise accents and its relationship to information structural categories like contrastive topic. Overall, we see that rises don't act on the proposition that carries them, nor do they mark out specific IS categories. Instead they reveal the state of the discourse from the speaker's perspective. From a methodological point of view, I show that to gain a robust understanding the contribution of prosody on a particular meaning dimension, we need to take into account the baseline induced by the discourse configuration itself. These studies show the utility of using functional data analysis techniques to give more direct view of prosodic variation in larger datasets without manual prosodic annotation.
BibTeX: @phdthesis{Lai2012, author = {Catherine Lai}, title = {Rises all the way up: The interpretation of prosody, discourse attitudes and dialogue structure}, school = {University of Pennsylvania}, year = {2012} }
Lassiter, D.	The weakness of must In and defense of a Mantra [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2014	Proceedings of SALT 24	inproceedings	DOI
Abstract: Many linguist have claimed that must’s meaning is weaker than epistemic necessity—a claim dubbed “the Mantra” in an influential recent paper by von Fintel and Gillies (2008). von Fintel and Gillies argue that the Mantra is false, and that the intuitions that have driven it can be accounted for by appealing to evidential meaning: must requires that the proposition it embeds is true and maximally certain, but also known only by indirect means. I show that von Fintel and Gillies do not provide a compelling argument against the Mantra, and that their theory of evidential meaning, while promising in certain respects, also has serious empirical and conceptual problems. In addition, a variety of corpus examples indicate that speakers who assert must p are not always maximally confident in the truth of p. As an alternative, I re-implement von Fintel and Gillies’ theory of indirect evidentiality in a probabilistic, Mantra-compatible framework. Ultimately, both sides of the debate are partly right: must is weak in several respects, but it also encodes an indirect evidential meaning.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Lassiter2014, author = {Daniel Lassiter}, title = {The weakness of must In and defense of a Mantra}, booktitle = {Proceedings of SALT 24}, year = {2014}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v24i0.2985} }
Liu, M.	Multidimensional Semantics of Evaluative Adverbs [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2012		book
Abstract: Multidimensional Semantics of Evaluative Adverbs provides a multidimensional analysis for the lexical semantics of evaluative adverbs: nonfactive evaluative adverbs trigger a conventional implicature, whereas factive evaluative adverbs not only trigger a conventional implicature but also a conventional presupposition. This analysis proves to be more advantageous than existing analysis in terms of empirical coverage and explanatory power. With the case of evaluative adverbs, the book demonstrates how secondary meanings (e.g. conventional presuppositions, conventional implicatures) interact with primary meanings (i.e. main assertion, or at-issue content). For the first time, a three-dimensional formal language of conventional implicatures and conventional presuppositions is implemented and applied to derive the right truth conditions of sentences with evaluative adverbs and predict their projection behaviors. With a cross-linguistic perspective (focusing on German, English and Mandarin Chinese) and using corpus- and psycholinguistic methods, the book also offers new perspectives on the syntax/semantics/pragmatics of adverbials.
BibTeX: @book{Liu2012, author = {Mingya Liu}, title = {Multidimensional Semantics of Evaluative Adverbs}, publisher = {Brill}, year = {2012} }
Lupkowski, P. and Ginzburg, J.	A Corpus-based Taxonomy of Question Responses [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2013	Proceedings of IWCS 2013	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: In this paper we consider the issue of answering a query with a query. Although these are common, with the exception of Clarification Requests, they have not been studied empirically. After briefly reviewing different theoretical approaches on this subject, we present a corpus study of query responses in the British National Corpus and develop a taxonomy for query responses. We sketch a formal analysis of the response categories in the framework of KoS.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Lupkowski2013, author = {Pawel Lupkowski and Jonathan Ginzburg}, title = {A Corpus-based Taxonomy of Question Responses}, booktitle = {Proceedings of IWCS 2013}, year = {2013}, url = {https://aclanthology.org/W13-0209.pdf} }
Moradlou, S. and Ginzburg, J.	Learning to Understand Questions [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2014	Proceedings of SemDial 2014 (DialWatt)	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: Our aim in this paper is to characterise the learning process by means of which children get to understand questions. In contrast to the acquisition of production of questions, an area which has a long history, the emergence of question comprehension is largely uncharted territory. We limit our attention in this paper to wh–interrogatives, since generally there is overt evidence for their understanding before other types of questions such as polar questions. The general idea we follow is that the child learns to understand questions interactively, as there is a long period of “training” during which the carer asks questions and answers them himself. Since the answers can be understood by the child, given sufficient exposure the child deduces an association between the pre-answer utterance and a question. Nonetheless, the process as we describe it here assumes a number of very strong priors. In particular, we will be assuming for some stages of the process that the child is attuned to a very simple erotetic logic—a logic which given certain assumptions allows one to deduce questions. We provide evidence for our model based on classifying interactions between a child and her parents in the multimodal Providence corpus from CHILDES.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Moradlou2014, author = {Sara Moradlou and Jonathan Ginzburg}, title = {Learning to Understand Questions}, booktitle = {Proceedings of SemDial 2014 (DialWatt)}, year = {2014}, url = {https://sites.google.com/site/jonathanginzburgswebsite/publications/semdial14-mg.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1} }
Pankratz, E. and Van Tiel, B.	The role of relevance for scalar diversity: a usage-based approach [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2021	Language and Cognition	article	DOI
Abstract: Scalar inferences occur when a weaker statement like It’s warm is used when a stronger one like It’s hot could have been used instead, resulting in the inference that whoever produced the weaker statement believes that the stronger statement does not hold. The rate at which this inference is drawn varies across scalar words, a result termed ‘scalar diversity’. Here, we study scalar diversity in adjectival scalar words from a usage-based perspective. We introduce novel operationalisations of several previously observed predictors of scalar diversity using computational tools based on usage data, allowing us to move away from existing judgment-based methods. In addition, we show in two experiments that, above and beyond these previously observed predictors, scalar diversity is predicted in part by the relevance of the scalar inference at hand. We introduce a corpus-based measure of relevance based on the idea that scalar inferences that are more relevant are more likely to occur in scalar constructions that draw an explicit contrast between scalar words (e.g., It’s warm but not hot). We conclude that usage has an important role to play in the establishment of common ground, a requirement for pragmatic inferencing.
BibTeX: @article{Pankratz2021, author = {Elizabeth Pankratz and Bob Van Tiel}, title = {The role of relevance for scalar diversity: a usage-based approach}, journal = {Language and Cognition}, year = {2021}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2021.13} }
Purver, M., Healey, P., King, J., Ginzburg, J. and Mills, G.	Answering Clarification Questions [Abstract] [Comment] [BibTeX]	2003	Proceedings of the 4th SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue, pp. 23-33	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: This paper describes the results of corpus and experimental investigation into the factors that affect the way clarification questions in dialogue are interpreted, and the way they are responded to. We present some results from an investigation using the BNC which show some general correlations between clarification request type, likelihood of answering, answer type and distance between question and answer. We then describe a new experimental technique for integrating manipulations into text-based synchronous dialogue, and give more specific results concerning the effect of word category and level of grounding on interpretation and response type.
Comment: Describes what later became the Dialogue Experimental Tool (DiET)
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Purver2003, author = {Matthew Purver and Patrick Healey and James King and Jonathan Ginzburg and Greg Mills}, title = {Answering Clarification Questions}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 4th SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue}, year = {2003}, pages = {23-33}, url = {https://aclanthology.org/W03-2103.pdf} }
De Kuthy, K., Ziai, R. and Meurers, D.	Focus Annotation of Task-based Data: A Comparison of Expert and Crowd-Sourced Annotation in a Reading and Comprehension Corpus [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2016	Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'16), pp. 3928-3935	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: While the formal pragmatic concepts in information structure, such as the focus of an utterance, are precisely defined in theoretical linguistics and potentially very useful in conceptual and practical terms, it has turned out to be difficult to reliably annotate such notions in corpus data (Ritz et al., 2008; Calhoun et al., 2010). We present a large-scale focus annotation effort designed to overcome this problem. Our annotation study is based on the tasked-based corpus CREG (Ott et al., 2012), which consists of answers to explicitly given reading comprehension questions. We compare focus annotation by trained annotators with a crowd-sourcing setup making use of untrained native speakers. Given the task context and an annotation process incrementally making the question form and answer type explicit, the trained annotators reach substantial agreement for focus annotation. Interestingly, the crowd-sourcing setup also supports high-quality annotation – for specific subtypes of data. Finally, we turn to the question whether the relevance of focus annotation can be extrinsically evaluated. We show that automatic short-answer assessment significantly improves for focus annotated data. The focus annotated CREG corpus is freely available and constitutes the largest such resource for German.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Reading3928, author = {Kordula De Kuthy and Ramon Ziai and Detmar Meurers}, title = {Focus Annotation of Task-based Data: A Comparison of Expert and Crowd-Sourced Annotation in a Reading and Comprehension Corpus}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'16)}, year = {2016}, pages = {3928--3935}, url = {https://aclanthology.org/L16-1621} }
Recht, T.	Verb-Initial Clauses in Ancient Greek Prose: A Discourse-Pragmatic Study [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2015	School: University of California, Berkeley	phdthesis	URL
Abstract: Word order in Ancient Greek, a ‘free word order’ or discourse-configurational language, depends largely on pragmatic and information-structural factors, but the precise nature of these factors is still a matter of some controversy (Dik 1995, Matić 2003). In this dissertation, I examine the set of constructions in which a verb appears in first position in its clause, and consider the conditions under which such constructions appear and the roles they play in structuring Greek discourse. I distinguish between topical and focal initial verbs, and show that the former class (which are the main concern of the study) in fact occur as part of larger units definable in terms of both prosody and pragmatics. The function of such units, I argue, is to mark specific kinds of transitions between the implicit questions that structure discourse (Questions Under Discussion [QUDs], Roberts 1996). I describe and categorize the types of QUD transitions marked by verb-initial units in a corpus of five fifth-and fourth-century Greek prose authors, and relate these to transitions marked by other classes of constructions, including a newly identified contrastive-topic construction. My account improves on preceding models by unifying a number of phenomena previously treated as disparate. It also represents the first large-scale application of the QUD model to real discourse.
BibTeX: @phdthesis{Recht2015, author = {Tom Recht}, title = {Verb-Initial Clauses in Ancient Greek Prose: A Discourse-Pragmatic Study}, school = {University of California, Berkeley}, year = {2015}, url = {https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/etd/ucb/text/Recht_berkeley_0028E_15275.pdf} }
Riester, A. and Baumann, S.	Focus Triggers and Focus Types from a Corpus Perspective [BibTeX]	2013	Dialogue & Discourse Vol. 4(2), pp. 215-248	article	DOI
BibTeX: @article{Riester2013, author = {Arndt Riester and Stefan Baumann}, title = {Focus Triggers and Focus Types from a Corpus Perspective}, journal = {Dialogue & Discourse}, publisher = {University of Illinois Libraries}, year = {2013}, volume = {4}, number = {2}, pages = {215--248}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.5087/dad.2013.210} }
Riester, A.	Analyzing questions under discussion and information structure in a Balinese narrative [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2015	Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Information Structure ofAustronesian Languages	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: I argue against the skepticism recently expressed by Matić and Wedgwood (2013) regarding the possibility of defining a cross-linguistic category of focus. I sketch an interpretation-based and cross-linguistically applicable method of information-structural analysis, which makes use of Questions under Discussion. The method is demonstrated on a Balinese narrative text.
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Riester2015, author = {Arndt Riester}, title = {Analyzing questions under discussion and information structure in a Balinese narrative}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Information Structure ofAustronesian Languages}, year = {2015}, url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10108/84506} }
Riester, A. and Piontek, J.	Anarchy in the NP. When new nouns get deaccented and given nouns don't [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2015	Lingua Vol. 165, pp. 230-253	article	DOI
Abstract: We investigate a semantic–pragmatic hypothesis (relative givenness, Wagner, 2006) on an annotated corpus of German speech data. We show that nominal deaccentuation in an [A N] (adjective–noun) combination neither requires the givenness of N nor the availability of a different [A′ N] sequence in the overt discourse context but results from the fact that a referentially distinct alternative is either explicitly or implicitly under discussion. If no such alternative is under discussion, given nouns typically receive main prominence.
BibTeX: @article{Riester2015a, author = {Arndt Riester and Jörn Piontek}, title = {Anarchy in the NP. When new nouns get deaccented and given nouns don't}, journal = {Lingua}, publisher = {Elsevier}, year = {2015}, volume = {165}, pages = {230--253}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2015.03.006} }
Riester, A., Brunetti, L. and De Kuthy, K.	Annotation guidelines for Questions under Discussion and information structure [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2018	Information structure in lesser-described languages. Studies in prosody and syntax, pp. 403-443	incollection	URL
Abstract: We present a detailed manual for a pragmatic, i.e. meaning-based, method for the information-structural analysis of naturally attested data, which is built on the idea that for any assertion contained in a text (or transcript of spoken discourse) there is an implicit Question under Discussion (QUD) that determines which parts of the assertion are focused or backgrounded (and which ones are non-at-issue, i.e. not part of the assertion at all). We formulate a number of constraints, which allow the analyst/annotator to derive QUDs from the previous or upcoming discourse context, and demonstrate the method using corpus examples (of French, German, and English). Since we avoid making reference to language-specific morphosyntactic or prosodic properties, we claim that our method is also cross-linguistically applicable beyond our example languages.
BibTeX: @incollection{Riester2018, author = {Riester, Arndt and Brunetti, Lisa and De Kuthy, Kordula}, title = {Annotation guidelines for Questions under Discussion and information structure}, booktitle = {Information structure in lesser-described languages. Studies in prosody and syntax}, publisher = {John Benjamins}, year = {2018}, pages = {403--443}, url = {https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01794160/document} }
Riester, A. and Shiohara, A.	Information structure in Sumbawa: A QUD analysis. [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2018	(21)Studies in Diversity Linguistics	incollection	URL
Abstract: This paper describes the constituent ordering and other basic morphosyntactic properties of Sumbawa and their relation to information structure. Our study is based on conversational corpus data and makes use of a novel method of information-structural discourse analysis, which is based on the reconstruction of implicit questions under discussion (QUDs).
BibTeX: @incollection{Riester2018a, author = {Riester, Arndt and Shiohara, Asako}, title = {Information structure in Sumbawa: A QUD analysis.}, booktitle = {Studies in Diversity Linguistics}, publisher = {Language Science Press}, year = {2018}, number = {21}, url = {https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/28281/1001681.pdf?sequence=1#page=293} }
Riester, A.	Constructing QUD Trees [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2019	Questions in Discourse, pp. 164 - 193	incollection	DOI URL
Abstract: We discuss and combine representation formats for discourse structure, in particular ‘d-trees’ from QUD theory and SDRT graphs. QUD trees are derived from SDRT graphs, while changes must apply to QUD theory in order to allow for representations of naturalistic data. We discuss whether QUD s can replace discourse relations. We apply a new method for the identification of implicit Questions under Discussion (QUD s) to examples from an interview, and we address the status of non-at-issue content within our framework.
BibTeX: @incollection{Riester2019, author = {Arndt Riester}, title = {Constructing QUD Trees}, booktitle = {Questions in Discourse}, publisher = {Brill}, year = {2019}, pages = {164 - 193}, url = {https://brill.com/view/book/9789004378322/BP000006.xml}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004378322_007} }
Rosemeyer, M.	Las funciones discursivas de las interrogativas parciales en castellano: [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2018	Romanistisches Jahrbuch Vol. 69(1), pp. 275-314	article	DOI URL
Abstract: This paper develops a corpus-driven analysis of wh-interrogatives in Castilian Spanish. Combining methods from variationist and interactional linguistics, it is demonstrated that both the distribution of the variants and their discourse functions can be described in terms of the degree of mental accessibility of the interrogative proposition (P) and the referent of the interrogative pronoun/ adverb (X). In contexts in which both P and X have a low degree of accessibility, wh-interrogatives establish a new Question under Discussion; in contexts in which P has a high and X a low degree of accessibility, wh-interrogatives are used to elaborate a current Question under Discussion; in contexts in which both P and X have a high degree of accessibility, wh-interrogatives are used to repeat, clarify or challenge a previous utterance. Given that the wh-interrogative variants differ in their restrictions regarding the accessibility of P and X, they typically also fulfil different discourse functions. The analysis moreover demonstrates that due to these functional differences, the type of response to the interrogatives produced by the listeners differs systematically depending on the wh-interrogative type.
BibTeX: @article{Rosemeyer2018, author = {Malte Rosemeyer}, title = {Las funciones discursivas de las interrogativas parciales en castellano:}, journal = {Romanistisches Jahrbuch}, year = {2018}, volume = {69}, number = {1}, pages = {275--314}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1515/roja-2018-0017}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1515/roja-2018-0017} }
Rosemeyer, M.	Brazilian Portuguese in-situ wh-interrogatives between rhetoric and change [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2019	Glossa: a journal of general linguistics Vol. 4(1), pp. 80	article	DOI
Abstract: Previous studies of the historical development of partial interrogatives have postulated a change from contexts in which the proposition of the interrogative has been explicitly mentioned in the previous discourse, to contexts in which the proposition is discourse-new. The present paper explores whether the historical increase in the usage frequency of Brazilian Portuguese in-situ wh-interrogatives represents the same process. Using data from a large corpus of BP theater texts dated between the 19th and 21st century, several discourse functions of InSituWh are identified, the most frequent of which are cataphorical questions, which serve to either open up a question unrelated to the current question under discussion, or raise further questions about the current question under discussion, and rhetorical questions, which question the validity or relevance of a previously mentioned proposition. Rhetorical questions typically do not trigger a response by the interlocutor and are used with psychological verbs and morphologically simple interrogative pronouns. A statistical analysis of the diachronic distribution of InSituWh in the data reveals an increase in the usage frequency of InSituWh especially in contexts in which the proposition is discourse-new. However, the results also indicate that this increase is not due to a grammatical change of InSituWh but rather reflects a consolidation of the rhetorical question function of InSituWh within the genre of theater plays.
BibTeX: @article{Rosemeyer2019, author = {Malte Rosemeyer}, title = {Brazilian Portuguese in-situ wh-interrogatives between rhetoric and change}, journal = {Glossa: a journal of general linguistics}, publisher = {Open Library of the Humanities}, year = {2019}, volume = {4}, number = {1}, pages = {80}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.900} }
Soares, E.C.	Yes-No Answers, Partial Pro-drop Languages and Machine Translation [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2016	Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences Vol. 231, pp. 135-142	article	DOI URL
Abstract: This paper addresses the automatic translations of verbal answers to yes-no questions from partial pro-drop languages (Brazilian Portuguese and Russian) into a non-pro-drop language (English). The outputs provided by standard statistical machine translations are mostly grammatically inaccurate or semantic-pragmatically inadequate. This paper proposes a question under discussion based annotation to improve the statistical correspondence. The results show the accuracy of the outputs was significantly increased as regards fidelity, adequacy and grammaticality.
BibTeX: @article{Soares2016, author = {Eduardo Correa Soares}, title = {Yes-No Answers, Partial Pro-drop Languages and Machine Translation}, journal = {Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences}, year = {2016}, volume = {231}, pages = {135-142}, note = {International Conference; Meaning in Translation: Illusion of Precision, MTIP2016, 11-13 May 2016, Riga, Latvia}, url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042816311934}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.09.082} }
Soares, E.C.	Anaphors in discourse : anaphoric subjects in Brazilian Portuguese [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2017	School: Université Sorbonne Paris Cité	phdthesis	URL
Abstract: The present dissertation is concerned with the use and interpretation of null and pronominal subjects in Brazilian Portuguese. This investigation examines these phenomena in an attempt to disentangle the semantic and discursive factors that can be relevant for choice between these anaphoric expressions in Brazilian Portuguese and the way in which this choice is articulated with the general theory of anaphora resolution. The starting point of this dissertation was the research looking into null and overt subjects from the perspective of Generative Grammar, specially the Parametric Theory. Throughout the present work, however, the analyses proposed in this perspective were shown not to account for the data at stake. The generalization that poor verbal morphology is directly related to the absence or reduced frequency of null subjects, for example, is challenged through experimental data and an investigation of the relative frequency of null subjects across discourse persons in corpora. An alternative explanation presented in the previous literature, namely the importance of the antecedents’ features of Animacy and Specificity, seems to better account for the attested distribution. However, this explanation is not sufficient for understanding the choice between null and overt subjects in Brazilian Portuguese, since the number of animate and specific null subjects is still relatively higher than in languages with obligatory expression of subjects. Therefore, it is argued that discourse factors seem to play a crucial role in the use of null and overt subjects in Brazilian Portuguese. The main factors identified here are Obviousness and Contrast. The first is a standard feature in the literature about anaphora resolution (expressed by a variety of terms, such as Salience, Familiarity, Accessibility, etc.), which is part of the reverse mapping hypothesis according to which the more obvious the subject is, the less explicit the co-referential form is allowed to be. The second factor, Contrast, is the main finding of the present dissertation: as is the case for other levels of linguistic analyses and other phenomena in language, the choice of anaphoric expression in Brazilian Portuguese seems to be driven by efficiency. In the present case, this means that, when the backgrounded information and the asserted (focused) in- formation in an utterance contrast the most, it is more likely that a null subject will be used. The design of a grammar that deals with these multiple features is sketched, specifically, a multi-layered scalar probabilistic grammar is proposed, whose semantic and discourse constraints act in parallel through a probabilistic mapping. It is, thus, shown that null subjects are likely in discursive co- reference, since in these contexts their antecedents are more obvious and the focused information contrasts the most with the background. An apparent counter-example to the proposal sketched here is analyzed: the generic interpretation of null subjects. However, it is shown that the same semantic constraints cross-linguistically applied to other generic constructions can produce generic null subjects in Brazilian Portuguese, given the failure to be grounded predicted by the approach proposed here. Finally, on-line evidence for the analysis of the use and interpretation of null and pronominal subjects is provided. The results found in three eye-tracking while reading experiments provide striking evidence in favor of the proposal put forward here, according to which null and overt subjects and their interpretation can be accounted for in terms of constraints on interpretation rather than licensing.
BibTeX: @phdthesis{Soares2017, author = {Eduardo Correa Soares}, title = {Anaphors in discourse : anaphoric subjects in Brazilian Portuguese}, school = {Université Sorbonne Paris Cité}, year = {2017}, url = {https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01984623} }
Solt, S. and Waldon, B.	Numerals under negation: Empirical findings [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2019	Glossa: a journal of general linguistics Vol. 4(1), pp. 113	article	DOI
Abstract: Despite a vast literature on the semantics and pragmatics of cardinal numerals, it has gone largely unnoticed that they exhibit a variety of polarity sensitivity, in that they require contextual support to occur felicitously in the scope of sentential negation. We present the results of a corpus analysis and two experiments that demonstrate that negated cardinals are acceptable when the negated value has been asserted or otherwise explicitly mentioned in the preceding discourse context, but unacceptable when such a value is neither mentioned nor inferable from that context. In this, bare cardinals exhibit both similarities to and differences from other types of numerical expressions. We propose an account of our findings based on the notion of convexity of linguistic meanings (Gärdenfors 2004) and discuss the implications for the semantics of numerical expressions more generally.
BibTeX: @article{Solt2019, author = {Stephanie Solt and Brandon Waldon}, title = {Numerals under negation: Empirical findings}, journal = {Glossa: a journal of general linguistics}, publisher = {Open Library of the Humanities}, year = {2019}, volume = {4}, number = {1}, pages = {113}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.736} }
Stevens, J. and Light, C.	The Pragmatics of Direct Object Fronting in Historical English [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2013	Vol. 19(1)University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: Speyer (2008) finds an overall decline in the rate of topicalization in historical English, which we refer to pre-theoretically as direct object fronting. He attributes it to two separate phenomena: 1) the early loss of unaccented pronominal and demonstrative fronting, and 2) a gradient decline in the use of accented, contrastive fronting due to prosodic well-formedness conditions imposed by the loss of the V2 constraint. In this paper we present a prima facie problem with Speyer's account. While personal pronouns exhibit the expected behavior, the rate at which demonstrative pronouns front is more stable. We propose that, contrary to expectation, unaccented demonstratives in Old English behaved syntactically as if they were contrastive. The reason for this lies in a special information-structural function for demonstrative pronouns across Germanic, for which our corpus study provides independent evidence. Specifically, demonstratives in Germanic tend to refer anaphorically to elements whose meanings, like the meanings of contrastive elements, are not in every possible answer to the Question Under Discussion (see Roberts 1996, Buring 2003 and Schwarz to appear).
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Stevens2013, author = {Jon Stevens and Caitlin Light}, title = {The Pragmatics of Direct Object Fronting in Historical English}, booktitle = {University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics}, year = {2013}, volume = {19}, number = {1}, url = {https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol19/iss1/23} }
Versley, Y. and Gastel, A.	Linguistic Tests for Discourse Relations [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2013	Dialogue & Discourse Vol. 4(2), pp. 142-173	article	DOI
Abstract: Discourse structure and discourse relations are an important ingredient in systems for the analysis of text that go beyond the boundary of single clauses. Discourse relations often indicate important additional information about the connection between two clauses, such as causality, and are widely believed to have an influence on aspects of reference resolution. More so than for referential annotation, discourse relation annotation is rendered difficult by the absence of a general consensus on the underlying linguistic phenomena that should be targeted, as well as by a lack of strong predictions on the possible or permissible interactions between these phenomena. While it is sometimes claimed that the structuring of discourse is only weakly constrained and as a result capturing discourse structure and discourse relations will always result in poor reproducibility of the annotation task, we want to argue in this paper that an explicit notion of the relata of discourse relations allows to delimit annotation scope and to make use of theoretical accounts of the linguistic phenomena involved without giving up the goal of theory-neutrality that is essential in making sure that a given resource stays useful to a large community of users. In this article, we first present the general design choices that are to be made in the design of an annotation scheme for discourse structure and discourse relations. In a second part, we present the scheme used in our annotation of selected articles from the TüBa-D/Z treebank of German (Telljohann et al., 2009). The scheme used in the annotation is theory-neutral, but informed by more detailed linguistic knowledge in the way of linguistic tests that can help disambiguate between several plausible relations.
BibTeX: @article{Versley2013, author = {Yannick Versley and Anna Gastel}, title = {Linguistic Tests for Discourse Relations}, journal = {Dialogue & Discourse}, year = {2013}, volume = {4}, number = {2}, pages = {142--173}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.5087/dad.2013.207} }
Viesel, Y.	Discourse particles “embedded”: German ja in adjectival phrases [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2016	Discourse Particles: Formal Approaches to their Syntax and Semantics, pp. 173-202	incollection	DOI URL
Abstract: The article is concerned with the German discourse particle ja (lit. ‘yes’) in adjectival phrases. Data shows that ja may appear embedded even if its host construction does not comprise an independent illocutionary force domain, e.g. in restrictive adnominal modifiers in indefinite DPs with specific interpretation. As in main clauses, ja signals that information in its scope supplements related information, thus being indirectly Relevant to the Question under Discussion. Corresponding to this discourse function, corpus evidence suggests that the particle requires a clear indication of focus in its scope even in non-restrictive modifiers which are associated with root properties.
BibTeX: @incollection{Viesel2016, author = {Yvonne Viesel}, title = {Discourse particles “embedded”: German ja in adjectival phrases}, booktitle = {Discourse Particles: Formal Approaches to their Syntax and Semantics}, publisher = {De Gruyter}, year = {2016}, pages = {173--202}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110497151-008}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110497151-008} }
Westera, M. and Rohde, H.	Asking between the lines: Elicitation of evoked questions in text [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2019	Proceedings of the Amsterdam Colloquium	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: We introduce a novel, scalable method aimed at annotating potential and actual Questions Under Discussion (QUDs) in naturalistic discourse. It consists of asking naive participants first what questions a certain portion of the discourse evokes for them and subsequently which of those end up being answered as the discourse proceeds. This paper outlines the method and design decisions that went into it and on characterizing highlevel properties of the resulting data. We highlight ways in which the data gathered via our method could inform our understanding of QUD-driven phenomena and QUD models themselves. We also provide access to a visualization tool for viewing the evoked questions we gathered using this method (N=4765 from 111 crowdsourced annotators).
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Westera2019, author = {Westera, Matthijs and Rohde, Hannah}, title = {Asking between the lines: Elicitation of evoked questions in text}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Amsterdam Colloquium}, year = {2019}, url = {https://archive.illc.uva.nl/AC/AC2019/uploaded_files/inlineitem/Westera_and_Rohde_Asking_between_the_lines_elicitat.pdf} }
Westera, M., Mayol, L. and Rohde, H.	TED-Q: TED Talks and the Questions they Evoke [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2020	Proceedings of the 12th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: We present a new dataset of TED-talks annotated with the questions they evoke and, where available, the answers to these questions. Evoked questions represent a hitherto mostly unexplored type of linguistic data, which promises to open up important new lines of research, especially related to the Question Under Discussion (QUD)-based approach to discourse structure. In this paper we introduce the method and open the first installment of our data to the public. We summarize and explore the current dataset, illustrate its potential by providing new evidence for the relation between predictability and implicitness – capitalizing on the already existing PDTB-style annotations for the texts we use – and outline its potential for future research. The dataset should be of interest, at its current scale, to researchers on formal and experimental pragmatics, discourse coherence, information structure, discourse expectations and processing. Our data-gathering procedure is designed to scale up, relying on crowdsourcing by non-expert annotators, with its utility for Natural Language Processing in mind (e.g., dialogue systems, conversational question answering).
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Westera2020, author = {Matthijs Westera and Laia Mayol and Hannah Rohde}, title = {TED-Q: TED Talks and the Questions they Evoke}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 12th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference}, year = {2020}, url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10230/46320} }
Ziai, R. and Meurers, D.	Focus Annotation in Reading Comprehension Data [Abstract] [BibTeX]	2014	LAW VIII - The 8th Linguistic Annotation Workshop, pp. 159-168	inproceedings	URL
Abstract: When characterizing the information structure of sentences, the so-called focus identifies the part of a sentence addressing the current question under discussion in the discourse. While this notion is precisely defined in formal semantics and potentially very useful in theoretical and practical terms, it has turned out to be difficult to reliably annotate focus in corpus data. We present a new focus annotation effort designed to overcome this problem. On the one hand, it is based on a task-based corpus providing more explicit context. The annotation study is based on the CREG corpus (Ott et al., 2012), which consists of answers to explicitly given reading comprehension questions. On the other hand, we operationalize focus annotation as an incremental process including several substeps which provide guidance, such as explicit answer typing. We evaluate the focus annotation both intrinsically by calculating agreement between annotators and extrinsically by showing that the focus information substantially improves the automatic meaning assessment of answers in the CoMiC system (Meurers et al., 2011).
BibTeX: @inproceedings{Ziai2014, author = {Ramon Ziai ; Detmar Meurers}, title = {Focus Annotation in Reading Comprehension Data}, booktitle = {LAW VIII - The 8th Linguistic Annotation Workshop}, year = {2014}, pages = {159-168}, url = {http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.675.715} }