Generativity and Explanation in Semantics: A Reply to Fodor and Lepore Author(s): James Pustejovsky Source: Linguistic Inquiry, Vol.

29, No. 2 (Spring, 1998), pp. 289-311 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4179019 Accessed: 30/10/2008 07:05
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and Explanationin Semantics:A Reply to Generativity Fodor and Lepore

James Pustejovsky
madein FodorandLepore'sarticle, In this articleI addressthe remarks "The Emptinessof the Lexicon: Reflections on James Pustejovsky's The GenerativeLexicon," regardingthe researchprogramoutlinedin Pustejovsky 1995. My responsefocuses on two themes,FL's misreadof ings and misinterpretations the substanceas well as the details of the theory, and the generally negative and unconstructiveview of the study of semantics and natural language meaning inherent in their approach. Keywords:Lexical Semantics,GenerativeLexicon Theory, compositionality, polysemy, qualia structure

1 Methodological Preliminaries I would like to addressthe remarksmade in Fodor and Lepore's (FL's) "The Emptinessof the Lexicon: Reflections on JamesPustejovsky'sThe GenerativeLexicon" (see this issue), regarding the researchprogramoutlined in Pustejovsky 1995. My response focuses on two themes, FL's of misreadingsand misinterpretations the substance as well as the details of the book, and the view of the studyof semanticsandnatural languagemeaning generallynegative andunconstructive inherentin their approach. In contrastto this approach,I have proposeda framework,GenerativeLexicon Theory, that faces the empiricallyhardproblemsof how words can have differentmeanings in differentcontexts, how new senses can emerge compositionally,and how semantic types predictablymap to syntacticforms in language.The theory accomplishesthis by means of a semantictyping system encoding generativefactors,called qualia structures,into each lexical item. Operatingover these structuresare compositional rules incorporatingspecific devices for capturingthe contextual determinationof an expression's meaning. in Perhapsthe biggest disappointment FL's critiqueof GenerativeLexicon Theory is to not even recognize the relevance of polysemy as a key aspect to linguistic creativity,and a window into the generative nature of thought. As a result of this, their discussions of what they call "compositionality" and "productivity"are beside the point, even if they were correct.The truth of the matteris that language meaning is dirty. Wittgenstein,Searle, and others have shown us that. But discovering what in a speech act is responsible for our ability to convey the richness and diversity of meaning with such finite lexical resources is a task both more deserving than

I would like to thank Noam Chomsky, Julius Moravcsik, Federica Busa, Peter Cariani,Nicholas Asher, Richard Alterman,Ray Jackendoff,Jens Allwood, Victor Poznanski,Michael Morreau,Paul Buitelaar,and Bob Ingria,for commenting on various draftsof this article and for help in framingthe argumentand refining specific points. All remaining errorsare, of course, my own.
Linguistic Inquiry,Volume 29, Number2, Spring 1998 289-3 11 ? 1998 by the MassachusettsInstituteof Technology

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the null hypothesis offered up by FL and more amenable to empirical investigation than they suggest. In the following discussion, let us not lose sight of our goal-namely, a theoreticallysound, empirical investigation of language meaning. To this end, mental representations justifiable are when postulatingthem provides us with a theory that connects to the observables(i.e., the data under investigation) in a superiorfashion, and satisfies some notion of simplicity to this end, when comparedwith othertheories.Hence, the unobservablesmust do more thaneam theirkeep; they have to be cheaperthanthe competition.In the restof this article,I will outlinewhatI thinkcan be said aboutnatural languagesemantics,andhow this position is both defensibleandpreferable to FL's silence over the many semantic phenomenademandingexplanation. 2 Generative Lexicon Theory and Knowledge of Language Before discussing the criticism presented in FL's article, I will articulatebriefly the goals of GenerativeLexicon Theory and relatedtheories of language semantics.In the study of meaning, I takeit as ouraim to provideas adequatea descriptionas possible of how ourlanguageexpressions have content, and how this content appearsto undergocontinuousmodificationand modulation in new contexts. Furthermore, when possible, we attemptto establishan explanationfor why this might be the case. Hence, along the way, we should adoptonly those theoreticalentities that are justified and justifiable in light of the data we examine. GenerativeLexicon Theory is in large partmotivatedby the desire to see what contribution lexical information makes towardthe overall semantic interpretation sentences. The importantquestions along the way are not so different of from those asked by many language researchers.These can be stated as follows: 1. Given our finite means, what is the natureof our knowledge that allows us to adaptto an unboundednumberof contexts, and successfully use our language to talk about the world in these contexts? 2. Is this knowledge associated with the linguistic representations themselves, which act as mediatorsbetween "meaning" and "referringpractices"? 3. By what standardscan we evaluate theories of linguistics and semantics? Should these standardsbe differentfrom those of other empirical sciences? The position adopted in Generative Lexicon Theory is that the human linguistic capacity is a reflectionof our ability to categorizeand representthe world in particular ways. What is uniquely human is not an extensional language per se so much as the generative ability to constructthe world as it is revealed throughlanguage and the categories it employs. Language is a natural manifestationof this facultyfor generativecategorization compositionalthought.In particular, and the ability to categorize "co-compositionally" is arguedto be characteristic humanbehavior of uniquely. This is the ability to take a category and refine or redefine its use in a novel way or a new context. The continuous refinement and redefinition of what roles an object plays in our environment,and how we conceptualize that object as having different propertiesin different contexts is the process of co-composition (e.g., as with the different meanings of the adjective

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fast in fast car, fast typist,fast waltz, or the verb open in open a door, open a box, or open a file; see Pustejovsky 1995 and references thereinfor discussion). Perhaps a useful comparison of the two approachesunder discussion can be seen in the attitudeto the following quotationfrom Davidson 1968:108: it "Languageis the instrument is because the same expression,with semanticfeatures(meanings) unchanged,can serve countless purposes." In spite of their major disagreementswith Davidson's holism, this is essentially the position FL adopt in their article. In my view, this has matterscompletely upside down. Rather,the situation is more fully stated as follows: "Language is the instrumentit is since the same expression can serve countless purposes because the semantic features (meanings) change in context." Yet the ability of linguistic expressions to "adapt" their meanings to fit a specific context is nothing mysteriousor inexplicable. The semanticpotentialof language is not to be explained in terms of ad hoc devices. Rather, it is the result of an appropriately expressive and adequately constrained generative system, devised essentially to this end. That is, the recursive devices underlyingsemantics remain unchanged,giving rise to new meanings. In fact, what makes language so uniquely expressive is the way it seems to embracemeaning shifts such as polysemy. FL try to deny that this is an issue or even a real phenomenon. Some examinationof the data will help demonstratemy point. What is polysemy, why is it so central to language, and why can it not be ignored? To answer these questions, let me review briefly three major themes in the study of polysemy and what has concernedandmotivatedeach tradition. The first systematicformaltreatment inherent of polysemy comes arguablyfrom the philosophy of language, in works such as Geach 1971 and Lambek 1958, where it was acknowledgedthat sententialoperatorssuch as not in English can be logically treatedas predicateoperators,througha type-changingoperation.Montague(1970) employs a different type-changingrule to allow for a uniform treatmentof noun phrases, and Gazdar(1980), Partee and Rooth (1983), and others extend the notion of type-shiftingto allow for polymorphicconjunction. The second traditionconcerns the formal treatmentof polyvalency phenomena in verbs. Klein and Sag (1985), for example, extend the range of type-shifting operationsto relate the multiple subcategorization possibilities for verbs such as believe and prefer. Seeing the formal applicabilityas well as the descriptiveutility of such type-shiftingoperations,semanticistsstarted providingfor more flexible interpretations types for a variety of phenomena(see Partee 1992 of for a review). Interestingly,one set of polysemy phenomenahas been largely ignored by the mainstream semantic community,yet it has had a long traditionof analysis within lexicographicand lexical semanticcircles. These phenomena,known as regular,systematic,or logical polysemy (see Weinreich 1964, 1972, Apresjan 1973, Nunberg 1979, Ostler and Atkins 1992, Pustejovsky 1991), appearto be qualitativelydifferentfromthe cases mentionedabove, andinvolve sense modulations

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and perspectival shifts over the meanings of words. For example, nouns such as newspaper, book, lunch, and exam are logically polysemous between differentaspects or facets of the noun's meaning. (1) a. Mary doesn't believe the book. b. John sold his books to Mary. (2) a. Eno the cat is sitting on yesterday's newspaper. b. Yesterday's newspaperreally got me upset. (3) a. Mary is in HarvardSquarelooking for the Bach sonatas. b. We won't get to the concert until after the Bach sonata. (4) a. I have my lunch in the backpack. b. Your lunch was longer today than it was yesterday. (5) a. The phone rang during my appointment. b. My next appointmentis John. In each of these cases, the same noun denotes in two ways: book refers to both propositional content and a physical object, lunch to both food and an event, appointment both an event and to an individual, and so forth. One of the goals of GenerativeLexicon Theory has been to unify these diverse conceptions of syntacticvariation,type shifting, and regularpolysemy within a systematicformulationof the generalnatureof semanticcompositionalityand, in particular, processes giving rise to creative the changes in meaning. It is interestingto speculateon why these concernshaven't been partof the logical tradition in naturallanguage semantics. It is fair to say that Russell and Frege (and the early analytic tradition)were not interestedin language as a purely linguistic phenomenon,but simply as the medium throughwhich judgmentscan be formed and expressed. Hence, there is little regardfor the relations between senses of words, when not affecting the natureof judgment,for example, withinintensionalcontexts.Nineteenth-century semanticistsandsemasiologists,on the otherhand, viewed polysemy as the life force of human language. Breal, for example, consideredit to be a necessary creative componentof language, and arguedthat this phenomenonbetterthan most in semantics illustrates the cognitive and conceptualizing force of the human species (see Breal 1897). For Erdmann,too, polysemy is a necessary part of the functioning of language itself. The "Vieldeutigkeit" of a word can refer either to a constructional ambiguity,such as inheres in the modal distinctionin the meaningof play in Maryplayed the violin (betweenthe activityof playing a violin and the ability to performthat action), or to the polysemy of an expressionthat alters its meaningin context, as with adjectivessuch as good andfast (see Erdmann1900 and Stern 1931). The early theories of semasiology attemptedto account for meaning shifts in language and in for particular how an expression (i.e., word or phrase)changes its meaning in context in definite and definable ways. Erdmann'sdiscussion of metonymy, for example, is similar to the view

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expounded here on how the meaning-and with it, the referential potential of an expression-changes in a context in specific ways. Whereas sense enumerationapproachesto meaning construct a Linnaeus-likemuseum of word senses, with genus and species neatly classified and separatedinto distinctcases, in Generathathave functive Lexicon Theory the methodologyhas been to constructdifferentialstructures tional behaviors.More specifically, (a) the semantics of lexical items are underspecifiedexpressions, (b) every element in a phrase may function "actively" in the composition of the phrase, and (c) the notion of word sense only emerges at the level of the sentence, namely, its "sense in context." GenerativeLexicon Theory is concernedwith the following problems: 1. 2. 3. 4. Explainingthe polymorphicnatureof language; Characterizing semanticalityof naturallanguage utterances; the Capturingthe creative use of words in novel contexts; Developing a richer, co-compositionalsemanticrepresentation.

One of the most crucial aspects of the theory is thatthe representation treatment polysemy and of is central to the way one structureslinguistic theory generally and one's theory of meaning in particular. Thus,the first step in examiningthe meaningof a word is to see the rangeof polysemies it exhibits. The point is that most currenttheories of lexical semantics-and, by virtue of their these theories, theories of compositionalsemantics-have been unable to account incorporating for the expressive and creative power of word sense. Words generally have fixed meanings in frameworksadoptingthis thesis. The ability to change the sense of a word in these systems arises only by virtue of creatinga new sense or lexical item, or by some sort of unconstrained meaning postulate. As argued in Pustejovsky 1995, something fundamentalis being missed in this approach: namely, the logical relationshipbetweenthe senses, which is tantamount explainingwhat sense to combinationsare possible in a language.This is directlyanalogousto the (descriptiveor theoretisuch as movementto accountfor syntacticvariation. cal) usefulnessof establishingtransformations The necessary first step is to observe the variation,but the interestingstep is establishing what the relationshipis between the forms (e.g., as with indicativeand wh-transformed constructions). The theory of movement, for example, however formulated,postulates the existence of empty categories or their formal equivalent, and with such entities comes the need to provide closure on their distribution.This methodology has been at the core of generative linguistics since the 1960s and is one of the general strategiesadoptedhere for modeling language meaning as well. Another crucial assumptionin GenerativeLexicon Theory is that, ratherthan assuming a fixed set of primitivesto describeword meaning,we assume a fixed numberof generativedevices that are used to constructsemantic expressions. Just as a formal language is describedmore in terms of the productionsin the grammarthan in terms of its accompanyingvocabulary, so a semanticlanguageis defined by the rules generatingthe structures expressionsratherthanby for the vocabularyof primitives itself. It is for this reason that the semantics is called a generative lexical theory.

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For the purpose of the following discussion, a generative lexicon can be characterized a as system involving at least four basic levels of linguistic representation (see Grimshaw1990, Williams 1981, Parsons 1985, and references in Pustejovsky 1995): 1. 2. 3. 4. Argumentstructure:Specification of numberand type of logical arguments. Eventstructure:Definitionof the event type of an expressionandits subeventualstructure. Qualia structure:A structural differentiationof the predicativeforce for a lexical item. Lexical inheritancestructure:Identificationof how a lexical structureis relatedto other structuresin the type lattice.

A set of generativedevices connects these four levels, providingfor the compositionalinterpretation of words in context (see Pustejovsky 1995). The exact natureof these devices determines the polymorphicexpressivenessof the semanticsin fairly restrictiveways. These devices include type coercion, subselection, and co-composition. Examiningthe theory in a bit more detail, I will assume that word meaning is structured on the basis of four generativefactors, or qualia roles, that capturehow humansunderstand objects and relations in the world and provide the minimal explanation for the linguistic behavior of lexical items (these are inspiredin largepartby Moravcsik's(1975, 1990) interpretation Aristoof telian aitia): the basic category that distinguishes an object within a largerdomain; the relation between an object and its constituentparts; TELIC: the object's purpose and function; AGENTIVE: factors involved in the object's origin or "coming into being."
FORMAL: CONSTITUTIVE:

The qualia structureis at the core of the generativepropertiesof the lexicon, since it provides a general strategy for creating increasingly specific concepts with conjunctive properties.As an illustrationof this view, consider the propertiesof nominals such as rock and chair. These nouns can first of all be distinguishedon the basis of semantic criteriathat classify them in terms of general categories such as natural_kind and artifact_object. Although very useful, this is not sufficient to discriminatesemantic types in a way that also accounts for their grammatical behavior.A crucial distinctionbetween rock and chair concerns the propertiesthat differentiate natural kinds from artifacts: functionalityplays a crucial role in the process of individuationof artifacts, but not of naturalkinds. This is reflected in grammaticalbehavior, whereby a good chair and enjoy the chair are well-formed expressions reflecting the specific purpose for which an artifactis designed, but good rock and enjoy a rock are semanticallyill formed since for rock the functionality(i.e., TELIC) is undefined. Exceptions arise when new concepts are referredto, such as when the object is construedrelative to a specific activity, as in The climberenjoyedthat rock; rock itself takes on a new meaning, by virtue of having telicity associated with it, and this is accomplishedby co-composition with the semantics of the subject NP. Although chair and rock are both physical object, they differ in their mode of coming into being (i.e., AGENTIVE): artifactsare made by humans,rocks develop in nature.Similarly, a concept such as food or cookie has a physical manifestationor denotation,but also a functional

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grounding,pertainingto the relation of "eating." These apparentlycontradictoryaspects of a category are orthogonallyrepresentedby the qualia structurefor that concept, which provides a for coherent structuring differentdimensions of meaning. for These facets make up the qualia structure a lexical item. A simple schematicdescription is of a lexical item, a, using this representation shown in (6). (6) -a
ARGSTR= [ARGl = X

CONST = QUALIA =

what x is made of
is

FORMAL = what x [TELIC = function LAGENTIVE =

of x
_

how x came into being

Adopting these assumptions,we are well positioned to addressthe question of what constitutes a well-formed concept from the perspective of conceptual acquisition, lexical semantics, and issues of computability.In turn, an answer to those questions relates directly to the following
issues:

1. Why do we learn the categories we do when we do? 2. Are there naturalconstraintson what we can in principle conceptualize? enableus to address Furthermore, specific formalproposalsfor how semanticsmight be structured a rangeof questionsin acquisition:how can earlypatternsof languageproductionandcomprehenof sion be used as evidence for the structuring concepts outlined above? Psychological studies can be devised, focusing on how factorssuch as lexical frequency,priming,and simple associative strengthfare, when pittedagainstthose inheritance principlesthatfollow from formaland computationaltheoriessuch as GenerativeLexicon Theory(see Keil 1989, Pustejovsky,Keil, andPollack 1997). 3 Underspecification in Semantics The most effective way of counteringFL's rejection of the position taken in Pustejovsky 1995 is to illustrate the scope and diversity of the phenomena they have failed to consider, and to review how these are addressedwithin GenerativeLexicon Theory. Over the past several years, there has been a resurgenceof interest in questions relatingto the messiness of word meaning.Inspiredby a few early researchers who admittedthe complexity of sense determinationand the fixing of reference (see Nunberg 1979, Fauconnier1985, Kayser 1988), much of the work in semantics and computationallinguistics is now expressly concerned with the representation and processing of polysemous lexical items and phrases. I believe the reasons for this resurgenceare twofold. First, there is now an appreciationof the fact thatsystematicor logical polysemy is formallyrelatedto the problemof semanticselection and polyvalency, making the treatmentof polysemy much more relevant to theoreticalwork on issues of syntacticform andpolymorphicbehavior.Second, formalmechanismsarenow available

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for the analysis of these constructions,which allow them to be viewed as an integralcomponent of the lexicon and the semantics, as opposed to off-line, noncompositionalprocesses of sense extension or metaphorical It interpretation. is these mechanismsthatform the backboneof compositional operationsin GenerativeLexicon Theory. 3.1 Nominal Polysemy In this section I argue that, given the appropriate machinery,we can in fact model the syntactic and semantic behavior of polysemous nominal types in naturallanguage. In particular,I study one class of nominals that has been particularly difficult to model formally, namely, nouns such as lecture,prize, book, and lunch. Membersof this class, I have argued,must be representedas complex structuresratherthan simple types, as they do not allow for simple conjunctivetyping or interpretation. I will first illustratewhy these nouns are formally problematicfor conventional semantic treatments,such as that assumed by FL. To begin, consider the semantic distinctionunderlying ourconceptionsoffood andlunch.How arethese nounsdistinguishedsemantically? obviously We understandthe concept of food as something paraphrasable dictionary definitions such as by 'edible substance or material'. All that seems to be requiredto minimally capturethe meaning of the nounfood is some characterization the relation between the propertyof "substance" of and that of "edible," relative to a class of certainindividuals(e.g., humans).Our conception of lunch, however, seems more complex, since it makes referenceto a specific period or event in the day as well. Unlike food, it may refer to either the substance or the event. For food, one might simply conjoin or unify these propertiesto give a specific intersectivepropertyof "edible substance."This assumesthatmodally subordinating propertiessuch as "edible" have no internal structure,a tenable position only if one is willing to make liberal use of meaning postulates as off-line inferences in the compositionalprocess of interpreting sentence meanings. to Contrary the ratherad hoc approach representation to brieflysuggestedabove, I will assume a mechanism employing significantly more machineryfor representingthe analytic knowledge associated with words. On this view, the modal subordination the predicateindicatingthe use of of the substanceis given an explicit representation, distinctfrom the materialaspect of food. This is accomplishedin the following manner.Assume thatfor a concept such asfood, we can separate the characteristic propertyfrom the functionalaspect. Let us associate these with the FORMAL and TELIC roles, respectively.Minimally,then,the notionfood is a conceptmakingreferenceto distinct and orthogonalfacets of knowledge, each expressing a differentexplanationof this concept. Continuingwith the example above, we can imagine thatfood as a concept is formed by conjoining or unifying "orthogonal" values from FORMAL and TELIC qualia roles, as illustrated schematicallyin (7).1
11 will assume the qualia are partialfunctionsover types, as presentedin Pustejovsky1998 and Asher and Pustejovsky, forthcoming-namely, from types to a specific mode of description,be it formal, material,an event description,or an individualevent (the FORMAL, CONST(uTIVE), TELIc, and AGENTIVE roles, respectively). Here, I defimethe qualia for a type a as follows:

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(7)

food
ARGSTR = [ARG F
=

X: substanCe]

= QUALIA

FORMAL = X TELIC =

eat(e,y,x)

Let us refer to such structuresas unified types, as representedin (8a), and analyze the orthogonal values of the qualia roles as logical conjunction, as in (8b), where PF and QT are the values associated with the FORMAL and TELIC qualia, respectively.2 (8) a. 01
ARGSTR = QUALIA [ARG1 = X] ORMA = P(x
LTELIC =

Q(X)

b.

Xx[PF(X) AQT(X)]

For the interpretation the nounfood, this would give the expression in (9). of (9) Xxl[substanceF A XyXe[eatAe,y,x)]] (x) The qualia can, in fact, be structured the conjunctionof propertiesfor many semanticclasses by of nominals. For example, we might view an artifact as something having an AGENTIVE quale value-that is, as "having been made."
(10) KxX\e3y3e[PF(x) A makeA(e,y,x)]

Puttingthe above concept togetherwith a specific FORMALvalue, such as a physical object, gives rise to the conceptof aphysical artifact,which can also be modeledas the conjunctionof predicates (or unificationof types). A propositionalartifact,such as a speech act, would be constructedin a like fashion (see Pustejovsky 1997 for discussion). This method, in fact, permits a general strategyfor creatingincreasinglyspecific concepts with conjunctive properties.Unified types can be seen as structuredby orthogonaldimensions or perspectives, rather than as inheriting properties from multiple parents in a homogeneous propertystructure. One would not want to allow the free structuring combinatoricsof conjuncor

(i) a. b. c. d.

Formal(Xx[a(x)]) = -x[Q(x)] - a : Q Const(Ax[a(x)]) = Xy[Q(y)] - Vx[a(x) - 3y[Q(y) A made-of(x,y)] Agentive(Xx[a(x)]) = Xe[o(e)] - Vx,e'[a(x,e') - 3e'3y[/(e') A e' < e A make(e',y,x)]] > Telic(Xx[a(x)]) = XyXe3x[q'(e,y,x)]- XyVxVeVy[ib,,(e,y,x) 3e'[(O(e',y,x) A e < e']

In the representation the TELIC, Vl'a of denotes the appropriate circumstancesof doing something to an x of type a, and > is the defaultconditionalof Asher and Morreau(1991). Intuitively,the qualiarelate modes of descriptionof an object. Whereas the FORMAL iS treatedas reference to the supertypeand CONST returnsthe materialmode of the object, notice that both AGENTIVE and TELIC make reference to events, but in very different ways. Whereas the AGENTIVE identifies a set of individualevents associated with the object, the TELIC refers to that event descriptionwhich under all appropriate circumstances(V/)is by default interpreted the object's purpose. See Busa 1996 and Pustejovsky 1998 for discussion. as 2 The event descriptionof "eating," which is the value of the TELIC role, is treatedformally as an analytic generic, describing a functional aspect of the major mode of predication,namely, the FORMAL. See Pustejovsky 1998 for more details.

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tive properties,however, since this would generate more nonsense than well-formed concepts. The questionof what constitutesa well-formedconcept is at the core of lexical semanticresearch, andit is necessaryfor any theoryto addressthis issue directlyin how representations structured are and generated.FL are silent on this issue and the phenomenagenerally. This is not surprising,however. Basic categorizationas well as how word meaningscombine to form complex structuresin a lattice of types is somethingthat neitherCarnapnor Quine ever imagined as part of the "linguistic" machinery available to a semantic theory. Both observed-positively and negatively, respectively-that meaningpostulateswill, with equal force, relate one expression to another(Camap 1956, Quine 1961). The discussion of the type system underlyinglinguistic expressions is relevant because FL assume that there is no such structure because there is no evidence for it. The data suggest otherwise, however, since the modes of inheritancefor concepts associated with linguistic expressions are not arbitrary. The model of inheritancewe constructis itself the means of overcomingthe arbitrariness meaningpostulates of or mentalese inferences. GenerativeLexicon Theory assumes, in fact, that there is no multiple inheritanceper se in naturallanguage semantics. What appearto be instances of concepts that inheritfrom multiple are superordinates in fact either typed orthogonal inheritance structuresor complex types. The qualia provide typed orthogonalinformationof the appropriate sort for the former class above. Let us assume that a concept is well formed only if it inherits from a single parent within a given quale. Under this assumption,then, the only way to form more complex lexical or phrasal expressions would be by unifying predicatesfrom distinct and orthogonalqualia. This is in fact what I proposed earlierfor the nounfood. Yet even the above logic is inadequateto allow words such as book and lunch to "denote" contradictory types, as the data in (1)-(5) seem to suggest. What is interestingabout these pairs is that the senses of the nominals are related to each other in a specific and nonarbitrary way. The apparently contradictory natureof the two senses for each pair actuallyreveals a deeper structurerelating these senses, called a complex type (or dot object; see Pustejovsky 1994). For each sense pair, there is a relation that "connects" the senses in a well-defined way. I will characterize structure a Cartesiantype productof n types, with some additionalconstraints, this as to be describedbelow. The product rl X r2,of types r1and r2, each denotingsets, is the ordered pair (ti, t2), where tI E ri, t2 E T2. There exists a relationR between the elements of rl and r2, namely, R(tI, t2). This relationmust be seen as part of the definition of the semanticsfor the dot object. Intuitively,the dot object can be thoughtof as an abstractionof the relationbetween the types, where the types are abstractedtogether. Hence, the dot operator,unlike the Cartesian product,is not a commutativeproduct.The set of relations,{Ri}, can be seen as specialized type productoperators,where the specific relation is built into the constructoritself. (11) {Ri}
*R1, *R2, ., *

Rn

For nouns such as book, disc, and record, the relationR is a species of "containment"and shares grammaticalbehaviorwith other container-likeconcepts. For example, we speak of information in a book, articles in the newspaper,and songs on a disc. This containmentrelation is encoded

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directly into the semantics of a concept such as book-that is, hold(x,y)-as the FORMAL quale value. For otherdot object nominals such as exam, sonata, and lunch, differentrelationsstructure the types in the Cartesianproduct(see Pustejovsky 1995 for discussion). Let us say that, for any dot object, a, defined as a Cartesianproduct, rl r2, the following must hold:

(12) Ax.y3R[a(x : ri.y : r2)A R(x,y) ...]

The lexical structurefor book as a dot object can then be representedas in (13). (13) book
ARGSTR =

FARGl = y:information1

= LARG2 x:phys

obj

QUALIA QUALIA =

= hold(x,y) FORM

information-phys

obj

TELIC read(e,w,x.y) =
= AGENT write(e,v,x.y)

This translatesroughly to the following logical expression:

A A (14) \x.y3e'3v[book(x:physobj.y:info) hold(x,y) XwXe[read(e,w,x.y)] A [write(e',v,x.y)]]

Nouns such as sonata, lunch, and appointment,on the other hand, are structuredby entirely differentrelations, as explored below. What is importantto note, however, is that the dot object construction(i.e., the type product)allows otherwise contradictory types to be combined into a single type. The notion of a complex type proves useful for explaining the polysemy associated with process-resultnominalizations,such as constructionand examination(cf. Grimshaw1990). Consider the senses of the noun constructionin (iSa-c). (15) a. The house's constructionwas finished in two months. b. The constructionwas arduousand tedious. c. The constructionis standingon the next street. In Pustejovsky 1995 it is suggested that a dot object actually allows us to capture all of these three senses. Informally,we can imagine this class of nominalizationsas a type product(i.e., a dot object) of the two subevents constitutingthe transitionevent denoted by the verb. In some sense, the only thingdifferentaboutthis dot objectis the typingon the dot elementsandthe specific relationthat structures them. Thus, whereasbook is a dot object composed of information and phys-obj andis structured the relationof containment, by constructionis a dot objectcomposed of process and state, related by the temporal relation in the event structureof exhaustive precedence, namely, <X. It is interestingto speculate briefly on the semantic contributionof the -ion nominalizing morphememore generally. For any verb with a complex event structure, applicationof the -ion nominalizerproduces a dot object nominal, with a polysemy reflecting the types of the subeventsfrom the verb's event structure. Hence, from the left-headedtransition

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verb examine,the nominalizationexaminationdenotes a dot object with process and state dot elements, as illustratedin (16) (see Pustejovsky 1995 for details). (16) examination
El=
EVENTSTR = E2 =

process state

REsTR =
ARGi

j
phys-obj

W EFEanimatejnd LFORML
PhSOb
[E

ARGSTR =
rARG2=
QUALIA =

LhFoRmAL= entity]
L
2 [__

event-event FORMAL = examine-result (e2,F21) = examine-act (el, LAGENTIVE

Anotherexample of a dot object is seen in the semanticsof the noun exam.Whatis interesting about exam is that it can refer either to the questions that compose the event of the examination or to the event of the examining itself, as illustratedin (17). (17) a. The exam lasted for several hours. b. Bill was confused by the exam. Questions,like any informationobjects, may also have physical manifestation,but need not (e.g., an oral exam). The ambiguity arises from the combinationof the inherentpolysemy possible in the type of informationobject of question, and the event of the examination.In this case the relation that structuresthe two dot elements in the type productrefers directly to the "asking" event. The rangeof complex types encountered naturallanguageis quitebroadandrich, including in the following type combinations: (18) a. b. c. d. e. phys-obj info: e.g., book, record event-event: e.g., construction,examination event-question: e.g., exam event-food: e.g., lunch, dinner event-human: e.g., appointment

For each of these type products,there is a uniquerelation,Ri, that structures types. Cases that the I have not examinedhere include nouns such as prize, sonata, and the more complicatedconcepts of city and organization. FL can avoid the empiricalandtechnicalproblemsassociatedwith accountingfor the nominal polysemy data examined above, since they deny there is any systematic observationto model. Yet the data speak for themselves, and we are left wondering what, in FL's view, constitutes regularityor systematicityin the domain of our investigations.

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3.2 Verbal Polysemy Lexical semanticists have traditionallytaken enumeratedsenses in different contexts or with different selected phrases as characterizingthe full range of meanings for a word. This is quite standardand is a descriptiviststartingpoint for doing the deeper work of semantic analysis. FL do not mention the considerableliterature this topic (see Atkins, Kegl, and Levin 1988, Ostler on and Atkins 1992, Apresjan1973, and Levin 1985, 1993). The fact is that sense distinctions,such as those pointed out by Levin and others, are real phenomena,but that is not the real issue.3 The interestingquestion is rather,How do the specific senses emerge and what is the relationship between them?The mannerin which a semantictheory accountsfor this I take to be one measure of its success. There are many ways in which a verb can be seen as exhibiting polysemous behavior. Intuitively, we might separatethese into syntactic and semantic polysemies. The former deals with polyvalency, object deletion, andthe generalpropertiesof argument expression,as illustrated by the following well-studied data (see Fillmore 1986, Jackendoff 1992, Levin 1993, Levin and RappaportHovav 1995).4 (19) a. Mary began to read the novel. b. Mary began readingthe novel. c. Mary began the novel. (20) a. Mary ate (her meal) quickly. b. Mary devoured *(her meal) quickly.
3 FL miss the point regardingthe polysemy of bake. Of course the phrase bake the cake can still refer to the "heating" or change-of-statesense. Co-compositionis not an obligatory semantic rule, and the expression is formally ambiguous,just as John drank two wines can refer to portions or kinds. Regardingthe bake data, French and Italian differ from English in an interestingway. Neither language allows this polysemy, andfaire andfare must be used in the "create" context.In Pustejovsky1989 it was suggestedthatthis sense alternation relatedto a largerset of crosslinguistic is differences and is apparentlylinked to the phenomena of resultatives as well as manner and motion conflations (see Talmy 1985, Levin 1985), owing to the presence or absence of event composition rules of a particularsort. 4 Conceming the distinctionbetween butterand kick:These data do not involve merely an appealto Grice. Rather, the reason to introducea notion such as semanticalityis of course to explain the many ways that a descriptive oracle such as Griceanmaxims accordswith the data.For example, one might supposethatthe Griceanmaxim "Be informative" would obviate the need to express the direct object in (i). (i) The murderer killed. Furthermore, operatingwith Gricean maxims alone, we could "explain" why redundancywould rule out the sentence in (ii), (ii) Mary began Mary to read the book. since we obviously know what "beginning" means, just as we know what "buttering" means. On this view, we could even study verbs such as wash in English (iiia) and sich waschen in German(iiib) to examine crosslinguisticinformativenessquotients in terms of FL's appeal to Grice. (iii) a. Mary washed. b. Mariahat sich gewaschen. We could then begin to study the associated inferences with verbs that carryuninformativecomplements,as in German, as comparedwith verbs whose complementsmay be dropped,by convention, as in English. As this smallexercise shows, anythingcan be explainedby appealto a generalenoughmechanism,with the subsequent lack of theroreticalinterest or scientific merit.

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(21) a. John carved a doll (out of the wood). b. John carved the wood (into a doll). The lattertype of polysemy can be seen as dealing with the differentbut relatedsenses of a verb, as shown in (22) and (23). (22) a. Mary enjoyed the movie last night. b. John enjoys his morningcoffee. c. Bill enjoyed Kundera'slast book. (23) a. John opened the door. b. Mary opened the letter. In (22) the specific meaning of the verb enjoy differs for each sentence, as does the meaning of open in (23). Accordingto GenerativeLexicon Theory,this distinctionbetween polysemy types is largely and arbitrary difficult to maintain,when the phenomenaare examinedin more detail, as illustrated in (24) and (25).5 (24) a. John gave a talk to the academy today. b. John gave a talk today. c. *John gave a book today. (25) a. Mary showed a movie to her guests. b. Mary showed a movie. c. *Mary showed a record. Unlike in the previous sentences, here two dimensionsof the linguistic behaviorof the verbs are being modulated:(a) the arityof the verb complex, and (b) the meaningof the verb itself. Hence, in these examples we see polysemy as both syntactic variationin the complement structureand semantic mutabilityeffects in the verb. I take it to be one of the goals of naturallanguage semantics to explain both the shifts in interpretations above and, when possible, the compositionalityinvolved in such cases.6 That is,

5 FL make reference to the "unconvincingness of the examples and the imprecision of the metalanguagethat is used." The examples in chapter2 of Pustejovsky1995 are in most cases simply the standard repertoire illustratingspecific alternationsor grammaticalphenomena. As far as the "imprecisions of the metalanguage" are concerned, where the example of devour is mentioned, chapter 2 doesn't even introducethe GenerativeLexicon-like formalism. FL don't distinguishthe metadiscussionfrom the specific formal proposalput forth later in the book. 6 The grammaticaldistinction raised between eat and devour points to several long discussions in the literature, none of which FL reference. The question is not whether the feature [+/-completive] adequatelydistinguishes the behaviorof the two verbs,butrather,whatknowledgeof ourlanguageis responsiblefor the inviolablelinguisticdistinctions that, however learned, appearto be as naturaland automaticas face recognition in visual processing. In other words, how much can be said about the phenomena,or about semantics in general? According to FL, not very much. We know by demonstrativeproof that the feature [+ -completive] fails to distinguishbetween the above-mentionedverb pair, so there is no systematic semanticdistinctionpossible. FL state (sec. 1.3) that "nobody knows what, if anything,it is for a word to denote a transition."This is, of course, incorrect,any way it's interpreted.First, as speakers we clearly and obviously make distinctions that are essentially classifications and

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303

whatis it aboutthe meaningof the nouns talkin (24b) andmovie in (25b) thatallows a reinterpretation of (i.e., a co-compositionwith) the verb meaningin each example? Such data are at the core of illustratingthe underlyingnatureof how naturallanguage meanings are construedand modulated in new contexts, yet FL offer no explanationfor such phenomena. Generative Lexicon Theory provides an explicit model for how such meaning shifts and polyvalency phenomenainteract.Fromthe discussion above, we can see how the qualia structure provides the structuraltemplate over which semantic transformationsmay apply to alter the meaningof a lexical item or phrase.7These transformations the generativedevices mentioned are above, such as type coercion, selective binding, and co-composition, which formally map the expression to a new meaning. For example, when we combine the qualia structure an NP with of that of a governing verb, a richernotion of compositionalityemerges (i.e., co-composition),one that capturesthe creative use of words. Consider,for example, how the NPs, both in subject and in complement position, contributetoward furtherspecifying the interpretation the verb use of in the following examples, taken from Pustejovsky 1995: (26) a. John used the new knife on the turkey. b. Mary has used soft contact lenses since college. c. This car uses unleaded gasoline. In (26a), ourknowledge of knives as tools thatcan cut permitsan economy of expression,whereby mention of the particularactivity of cutting may be ellipsed. Similarly, in (26b), contact lenses are visual aids, and the use of them refers to the act of wearing them. The utility of a verb such as use is that it is semantically light, or simply underspecified,with respect to the particular activity being performed.The factors allowing us to determinewhich sense is appropriate for any of these cases are twofold: (a) the qualia structuresfor each phrase in the construction,and (b) a richermode of composition,which is able to take advantageof this qualia information.The

subsequentjudgments about our constructionsof the world. From an intuitive point of view, "transition" in the basic sense seems to be one of the first things we learn (see Michotte 1954, Keil 1989, Carey 1985, Markman1989). We appearto know unconsciously how our grammarexpresses duration,completion, and the gradationsbetween the two, whetherthese distinctions are realized morphologically,syntactically,or semantically. Regardingthe observabledistinctionsbetween the verbs eat and devour, here are the facts: eat Object drop Imperative Object of force Aspectual particles Object depictives Resultatives
YES

devour
NO

YES
YES YES YES YES

NO
NO NO NO NO

One of the fundamentalanalyticaltools in linguistics and semantics is to group elements by the clusteringof properties they exhibit. The distinctionabove is ripe for the classic clusteringof data, suggesting that we have a lexical distinction on our hands. 7 Regardingthe discussion of the interpretation aspect:now FL accuse me of fabricating of the imperfectiveparadox. But it is neithermy own inventionnor a will-o'-the-wisp, but a cold hardfact of language (see Bach 1986 and references cited therein).

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mechanism of type coercion operates along similar lines, allowing us to account for how the contextualized meanings for the verb enjoy emerge as the result of qualia-basedinformation supplied by the different complements in (22a-c). Although there are certainly any numberof ways of enjoying something,ourunderstanding these sentencesis facilitatedby defaultinterpreof tations of propertiesand activities associated with objects. The qualia of an object can be seen as the initial points from which to constructinterpretations would otherwise be ill formed. that Hence, the TELIC roles for movie, coffee, and book somehow project the activities of watching the movie, drinking his morning coffee, and reading Kundera's last book, respectively, to the interpretation the VP. Although the specific interpretation what activity is being enjoyed is of of only suggestedby the complement,the typing of the complementas a controlledevent description is unavoidableand an inviolable part of our knowledge of the verb enjoy. As mentionedabove, it is the generativemechanismsthat allow us to model word meaning in a dynamic way, forming the backboneof the compositionaloperationsin GenerativeLexicon Theory. Although the lexical representationsare richer, they are motivated to account for the linguistic generalizations in the observable data. Introducingmore abstractand linguistically motivateddescriptionshas a numberof advantages: to allow for a correcttreatment argument (a) of selection, to limit the productionof unmotivatedambiguousparses;(b) to permita correct"reconstruction" of the full explicit metonymic constructions;and (c) to introducea clear distinction, wheneverpossible, between basic meaningsand derivedmeaningsthatareproducedgeneratively. It has been noted (as in FL's remarks)that the applicationof these generativemechanisms must be restrictedby semanticfactors(cf. Pustejovsky 1995, Godardand Jayez 1993, Jackendoff 1996), which arein turnreflectedin sensitivityto certainsense alternations well as to grammatias cal restrictionsthat could be conceived along similar lines as subjacencyviolations (e.g., a sort of metric to determine the relation and distance between constituentsin a syntactic tree; see Pustejovsky 1997 for discussion). Since GenerativeLexicon Theory adopts the view that polysemy is an essential propertyof naturallanguageand not a problemthatmust be avoided, in orderto constructa semantictheory, it is importantto account for the degree of polysemy of different lexical items as the result of their semantic type. Hence, it is an empiricalquestion as to how much of the syntacticbehavior of a lexical item is determinedby the semantictyping. As an illustrationof this point, consider, for instance,the verbs tell and read. A verb such as read permitscomplementsof type physical object (e.g., John read a book), as well as complementsof type information (e.g., John read a story). Conversely, tell uniquely selects for a complement that is of type information and does not allow bookas its complement(e.g., *Johntold a book).Similarly,certainverbsof transfer such as get or rent can referto both directionsof transfer,thus allowing multipleexpressionssuch as John got a bookfor Mary (give) and John got a bookfrom Mary (take). In contrast,verbs such as give and sell, which are fully specified for the directionalityof the transfer,do not allow the same range of prepositionalphrases that is licensed in the previous cases. Finally, a variety of verbal alternations,among which is the causative/unaccusative alternation,also fall into this set of phenomena.Verbs such as sink and break allow differentgrammaticalforms as the result of the polysemy thatthey carry.Accordingto the analysis given by Pustejovskyand Busa (1995),

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the causative form is expressed as a transitivesentence (e.g., The enemy sank the boat), and the unaccusativeform as an unaccusativesentence (e.g., The boat sank). This availabilityof multiple syntactic forms for underlyinglypolysemous lexical items contrastswith the unique expression of fully specified semanticforms such as the predicatearrive, which uniquelylicenses unaccusative forms (e.g., The children arrived). As discussed in Pustejovsky 1996, in order to properly capturethese distinctionsand treatthem as a propertyof the lexicon, it is necessaryto introduce new distinctionsconcerningthe propertiesof semantictypes. More specifically, verbs that allow a multiplicity of expressions, such as read, get, and sink, have a complex relationaltype (i.e., polymorphictype), and verbs such as tell and take have a simple semantic type (cf. Pustejovsky 1997). 4 Discussion The positionthatFL takein theirremarks my workcan be characterized a strongmethodologon as ical dualism, in Chomsky's (1995) sense, where the standardsfor any semantic theory are set unnaturally high and are unattainable any empiricallymotivatedframework-unlike the stanby dardsfor researchin chemistryor physics, for example, where observationand theoryfind some comfortablebalance. The alternativeto this view, as offered by FL, might be able to meet such since theirtheory,workingwithoutexplicit mechanismsand operatingover no particustandards, larly identifiablebody of data,satisfies, in theirview, at least two criteria:(a) rejectinganalyticity, and (b) maintainingcompositionality.I will not explore these issues here in any depth,but a few brief remarksare in order (see Pustejovsky 1997 for discussion). 4.1 Evaluating Semantic Theories First, why is the issue of analyticityrelevant to the discussion here? FL disagree with Quine's radicalholism and his position on conventionalizedmeaning,yet they accept his proposal-since there is little argumentto call it a conclusion-that thereis no viable distinctionbetween analytic and synthetic expressions. In fact, although we can evaluate the descriptive and explanatory powers of a semanticframeworkquite independentlyof this issue, it is interestingthat all of FL's recent criticisms of the representational hypothesis in naturallanguage semantics crucially rely on the impossibilityof such a distinction(see Lepore 1994, Fodor and Lepore 1992, 1996). What this view entails, among otherthings, is the following: thereis nothingin the form of the semantic representation associatedwith a word that can be identifiedinviolably as partof its meaning.But this is surely suspect. Consider the distinction illustratedin (27) and (28), between the English verbs enjoy and like. (27) a. Mary enjoys watching movies. b. Mary enjoys movies. (28) a. Mary likes to watch movies. b. Mary likes watching movies. c. Mary likes movies.

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d. Mary likes for John to watch movies with her. e. Mary likes that John watches movies with her. f. Mary likes it that John watches movies with her. As arguedin Pustejovsky 1995, it is our knowledge associated with the verb like that allows the syntactic variation seen in (28), ratherthan the limited complementationpatterns in (27). To understand verb is to know (in the sense employed in Chomsky 1986) that like expresses an this attitude toward any type, which, in Generative Lexicon Theory, enables it to appearwith the broadestsubcategorization variabilitypossible. The verb enjoyin (27), on the otherhand,expresses a more specific relation of how the subject participatesin an event descriptiondenoted by the complementphrase.This distinctionis not just a pragmaticone, revealing differentconventions of usage for the two verbs, but arises from the underlyinglydistinct types selected for by these verbs. When I understand what the "like"-relationis in contradistinction the "enjoy"-relation, to I manifesta conceptualandcategoricaldistinctionbetweenthe two intensions.Hence, for example, the only way for a speakerto understand (29a) is in relationto the inviolable conditions laid out by enjoy's semantics;in other words, there must be some controlledevent descriptionrelative to the room key such that I could enjoy it. (29) a. ?!I enjoyed the key to my room. b. I like the key to my room. Such a condition,however, is not presentin (29b) with the verb like, since it expresses a different attitudetoward its argument. Analyticity need not requirethe concepts of definition and substitution,as conventionally assumed (cf. Quine 1961).8 It does presuppose,however, a specific mode of identificationin the computationof the expression.In otherwords,computingcontainment relationsover the predicate relative to the subject in a sentence assumes a very impoverishednotion of how to calculate the meaning of an expression. The fact of the matteris that any descriptivelyadequateview on the semantics of naturallanguage requires computationsfar more involved than this. But how is analyticitydeterminedwhen richermodels of meaning (such as GenerativeLexicon Theory) are employed for descriptionand computation? This is answeredin partby saying that,in the process of determiningthe interpretation a sentence, we can identify subprocessesthat are analytic in of natureand those that are not. At best, FL's concernsfor avoiding the analyticitytrapare obviated by the developments in linguistic theory and semantic formalisms over the past few years.9 At worst, they stand in the way of clarifying real semanticdistinctionsin naturallanguages,which, in my opinion,areassociatedonly with the stronglypredictiveandtestablehypothesesof appropriately rich theories.

8 However, see Katz 1990. Katz does adopt this position, and furtherargues that Quine's thesis has never been substantiated linguistic data. by 9 One might argue that, independentof recent developmentsin semantic theory, Quine's proposal and FL's use of it are irrelevantto theory constructionfor language meanings (cf. Chomsky 1995).

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When we view the discussion of analyticity and underlying semantic knowledge in this light, FL's notion of compositionality,and how it fails in GenerativeLexicon Theory and other representational frameworks,becomes irrelevantto the evaluationof semantictheories. Consider the sentence in (30a). (30) a. That is a rattlingsnake. b. It is rattling. c. It is dangerous. Lepore (1994) raises the question of how (30c) is any less a part of the meaning of (30a) than (30b) is, since, if a theory has no principledview on how to distinguish the relations between the types of knowledge coming from words, then they are equally strong and relevantinferences in the computationof this sentence. Fodor and Lepore (1996) make the same argumentregarding compositionalityas thatgiven above. To hold the belief that "browncows" are dangerous,when neither brown nor cows contains hints of danger, is, they argue, devastating to the view that meanings are constructedcompositionallyfrom word meanings.'0The reasoninghere, however, is circular,since it assumesthatall inferencesassociatedwith the compositionof these expressions have equal force. This position confuses the set of possible, identifiable inferences with those in that are automaticand unsurprising this expression. By analogy to phonology, there are many possible inferences regardingthe word cat. By "composition" in this sense of the word, cat is associatedwith lots of propositionalknowledge; for example, it rhymes with bat, it has the same numberof syllables as ball, it ends with the same sound as permit and caught, and so forth (see Chomsky 1995). These are all inferences that we as speakersof English can associate with the word cat. But this does not representthe intrinsicpropertiesof cat, as modeled by the theory of phonology, any more than the above considerationsspeak to the concerns of compositionalityin semantics. of The interpretation compositionalityas merely "licensing an inference" has really very little to do with the standard notionof constrainedcompositionin any serioussemanticframework. Most workableviews on this topic do not includethe rangeof all implicatures invited inferences or of that may accompanyan expression, as containedin the part-structure an expression and determined by composition.This is perhapsone of the most exciting questionsin contemporary semantics, but is exciting and approachableonly by making semantic distinctions that FL claim are or arbitrary nonexistent. 4.2 Conclusion I have triedto clarify how FL's remarksboth distortthe views and facts presentedin Pustejovsky 1995 and convey an unfortunatelypessimistic message for how to conduct researchin natural languagesemantics.This is remarkably reminiscentof early attemptsto dismiss generativesyntac10This issue relates to the problem of inheritanceand the attribution default propertiesto individualsin a class. of The argumentas given has no force, without clarifying what is "typically" the case (or perhapseven "analytically" so) for cows.

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tic analyses for language, by reducing syntactic variation to mere "effects of semantics and pragmatics." Underlying any differences about what constitutes the data, the major distinction in ourpositions is this: GenerativeLexicon Theoryis concernedwith explainingwhatthe semantic propertiesof naturallanguage are.'1 On this matter,what have FL proposed? 1. Regardingsemanticdifferentiation structure objectdropphenomand involving argument FL deny that any generalizationsare possible and are silent on this question. ena, 2. Concerningthe conditionsfor and constraintson coercion, FL deny thatany systematicity or generalizationis possible, but are silent on what is responsible for the observable regularitiesof behavior. 3. For polysemy phenomenain verbs and nouns, FL claim to not understand relevant the examples and doubt that they are real phenomenain any case. Hence, even in the face of observable systematicity,they are silent on this issue. 4. Regardingthe qualiastructure how the generativefactorscontribute wordmeaning, and to FL provideno explanationfor how qualia-related inferencesand not arbitrarily others any are associatedwith the meanings of lexical items. Yet they provide no system predicting how interpretations should be performed. 5. Finally, regardingcrosslinguisticphenomena,their account is unable to say anythingof interestabouthow languagesvary systematicallyalong a numberof semanticparameters, including coercion and type selection, since such generalizationswould be arbitrary or conventionalizedat best. A theoreticalframeworkshould be evaluatedandjudged on the merit of the theory relative to how effectively it accountsfor the observables,in ourcase, languagemeanings.It is a theoretical questionwhetherlinguisticknowledgeplays any privilegedrole in the determination the content of of an utterance.It is also, however, empiricallytangiblein nature,as I have demonstrated, where for each phenomenonexamined,the knowledge associatedwith an expressionis clearly linguistic and not elsewhere. To paraphrase words of one philosopher,any serious competing theory the of languagemeaning "would appearto owe a detailed accountof these phenomenathat avoided [such] mentalistic postulations.The dignified silence that they have so far maintainedon such mattersdoes not really amountto an argument" (Fodor 1968:86). References
Apresjan, Jurij. 1973. Regular polysemy. Linguistics 142:5-32. Asher, Nicholas, and Michael Morreau. 1991. Common sense entailment: A modal theory of nonmonotonic

reasoning.In Proceedings of the 12th InternationalJoint Conferenceon ArtificialIntelligence. Sydney, Australia.

1 There are several other majorlacunae in FL's account of how languageconnects to the world, but space does not permitdiscussion of these questionshere. One serious problemconcerns the basic principlesof individuationand persistence thatthe languageprovidesto the referringindividual.Thatis, how does atomismdistinguishbetween the denotation of dog andall dogs or some dogs? Providingsome sortof mechanismto do just this leads us back to structured representations (see Moravcsik 1990 and Pustejovsky 1997 for discussion).

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Asher,Nicholas, andJamesPustejovsky.Forthcoming.The metaphysicsof words. Ms., BrandeisUniversity, Waltham,Mass., and University of Texas, Austin. Atkins, Beryl T., Judy Kegl, and Beth Levin. 1988. Anatomy of a verb entry: From linguistic theory to lexicographicpractice.InternationalJournal of Lexicography 1:84-126. Bach, Emmon. 1986. The algebraof events. Linguistics and Philosophy 9:5-16. Breal, Michel. 1897. Essai de se'mantique (Science des significations). Paris: Hachette. Busa, Federica. 1996. Compositionality and the semantics of nominals. Doctoral dissertation,Brandeis University, Waltham,Mass. Carey, Susan. 1985. Conceptualchange in childhood. Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press. Camap, Rudolph. 1956. Meaning and necessity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chomsky, Noam. 1975. Reflections on language. New York: Pantheon. Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Knowledge of language: Its nature, origin, and use. New York: Praeger. Chomsky, Noam. 1995. Language and nature.Mind 104:1-61. Davidson, Donald. 1968. On saying that.In Inquiriesinto truthand interpretation, 93-108. Oxford:Oxford University Press. Erdmann,Karl. 1900. Die Bedeutung des Wortes:Aufsdtzeaus dem Grenzgebietder Sprachpsychologie und Logik. Leipzig: Avenarius. Fauconnier,Gilles. 1985. Mental spaces. Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press. Fillmore, Charles. 1986. Pragmaticallycontrolled zero anaphora.In Proceedings of the TwelfthAnnual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 95-107. Berkeley Linguistics Society, University of California,Berkeley. Fodor, JerryA. 1968. Psychological explanation.New York: Random House. Fodor, JerryA., and Ernie Lepore. 1992. Holism: A shopper's guide. Oxford:Blackwell. Fodor, Jerry A., and Ernie Lepore. 1996. The red herring and the pet fish: Why concepts still can't be prototypes.Cognition 58:253-270. Fodor, JerryA., and Ernie Lepore. 1998. The emptiness of the lexicon: Reflections on James Pustejovsky's The GenerativeLexicon. LinguisticInquiry29.2 (this issue). Gazdar,Gerald. 1980. A cross-categorialsemanticsfor coordination. Linguisticsand Philosophy3:407-409. Geach, Peter T. 1971. A programfor syntax. Synthese 22:3-17. Godard,D., and J. Jayez. 1993. Towardsa propertreatmentof coercion phenomena.In Proceedings of the Sixth EuropeanACL Conference, 168-177. Somerset,N.J.: Association for Computational Linguistics. Grimshaw,Jane. 1990. Argumentstructure.Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press. Jackendoff,Ray. 1992. Babe Ruth homeredhis way into the heartsof America. In Syntaxand the lexicon, ed. Tim Stowell and Eric Wehrli, 155-178. San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press. Jackendoff,Ray. 1996. The architectureof the languagefaculty. Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press. Katz, JerroldJ. 1990. The metaphysicsof meaning. Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press. Kayser, Daniel. 1988. What kind of thing is a concept? Computational Intelligence 4:158-165. Keil, Frank. 1989. Concepts, kinds, and cognitive development.Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press. Klein, Ewan, and Ivan Sag. 1985. Type-driventranslation.Linguistics and Philosophy 8:163-202. Lambek,Jan. 1958. The mathematicsof sentence structure. AmericanMathematicalMonthly65:154-170. Also in Categorial Grammar,ed. Wojciech Buskowski, Witold Marciszewski,and J. F. A. K. van Benthem, 153-172. Amsterdam:John Benjamins. Lepore, Ernie. 1994. Conceptualrole semantics.In A companionto the philosophy of mind, ed. Samuel D. Guttenplan,193-200. Oxford:Blackwell. Levin, Beth. 1985. Introduction.In Lexical Semantics in review, ed. Beth Levin, 1-62. Lexicon Project WorkingPapers 1. MITWPL,Departmentof Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT, Cambridge,Mass.

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Children's Passive: A View from the By-Phrase Danny Fox and Yosef Grodzinsky Thisarticle argues children's that with difficulty passiveconstructions is related properties the by-phrase. to of we Specifically, arguethat children in full control all aspectsof the passiveconstruction are of exceptfor the abilityto transmit external the 0-roleof the predicate to the by-phrase; thus rejectBorerand Wexler's(1987) claim we regarding maturation A-chains. conclusion dictated the of Our is by the resultsof an experiment conducted, supported data we and by in already present the literature. Keywords: A-chains, acquisition, by-phrase, external 0-role,maturation,passive,0-transmission The development of the passive constructionhas long been the focus of considerableinterest, both theoreticaland experimental.The prevailingview has changedover the years. Until recently it was assumedthatchildrenare incapableof handlingpassive sentencesup to age 5. This assumption was proven to be incorrectby Maratsoset al. (1985). These authorsshowed that although 4-year-old childrenfail in comprehensiontasks involving "nonactional" passives, they are able to understand passive sentences that contain "actional" verbs. This finding promptedBorer and Wexler (1987) to develop a novel account of children's passive, which they call the MaturationHypothesis:they suggest that children do not represent the structureof passive sentences properly at the relevant age, that they fail with nonactional passives because they are unable to form A-chains, and that they succeed with actional passives because they interpretthese sentences as adjectivalpassives. The ability to form A-chains, Borer and Wexler argue, is innate and matures biologically. They also note that there are very few
We would like to thank several anonymousLI reviewers as well as Sergey Avrutin,Jen Balogh, Oren Beit-Aryeh, RuthBerman,Hagit Borer,CaroleTenny Boster, Na'ama Friedmann, Alec Marantz,KazumiMatsuoka,Jon Nissenbaum, David Pesetsky, Rozz Thornton,Ken Wexler, and Yoad Winter. Special thanksgo to StephenCrain.The preparation of this article was supportedby NIH grant DC-00081 awardedto the Aphasia Research Center, Boston University School of Medicine, and by the Research Training Grant "Language acquisition and computation" awardedby the National Science Foundation(U.S.) to the MassachusettsInstituteof Technology (DIR 9113607).
Linguistic Inquiry,Volume 29, Number 2, Spring 1998 311-332 ? 1998 by the MassachusettsInstituteof Technology