Minimal Semantics by Emma Borg

Author:Emma Borg [Borg, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 0199270252

end p.141

disambiguating the structural properties of the utterance) it seems as if an appeal to the context is necessary. Yet the opponent of our segregated, modular picture (with its ascetic formal semantic theory) will object that this kind of appeal to context is not possible on the current account. So, given the existence of all these kinds of ambiguity, and the need to resolve ambiguity before semantic analysis takes place, how can the modular account possibly be right?

I think the first point to note here is that there may well be more than one response to be made to the issue of ambiguity. That is to say, there is no requirement for the advocate of the formal modular account of linguistic understanding to suggest just a single, univocal solution to all kinds of ambiguity; there may be a range of solutions, with different ones operative on different occasions. For instance, on some (perhaps relatively rare) occasions, ambiguous strings are heard as ambiguous. That is to say, two or more readings of the input string make it to the level of conscious awareness and the agent consciously considers which of the multiple interpretations to select. Alternatively, as seen above, disambiguation might be thought to occur prior to the input to the language faculty. For instance, resolution of the phonetic ambiguity which might arise due to a speaker's accent or age, might again be something which is settled or adjusted for before the reception of the input string by the language faculty. These kinds of ambiguity, then, cause no difficulties for the modular account, for an ambiguous string either has all its possible readings computed by the language faculty, leaving a choice between rival interpretations to post-linguistic procedures (e.g. by the agent's general intelligence), or the string has already been disambiguated before it reaches the language faculty. The genuine problem cases, then, come only when disambiguation occurs within the language faculty, for this might be thought to show true pragmatic intrusion into linguistic understanding.

Even here, though, a range of options for ambiguity resolution exist which are compatible with the modular approach. On the one hand, for instance, it might be that certain interpretations are habitualized. So that, in the absence of disambiguating features weighting the unusual or hard to recover reading, the system merely produces the standard interpretation. This kind of disambiguation would be a sort of performance effect: though the linguistic system would be capable of generating multiple interpretations of the given string, in practice only

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.