Journal

Volume 15, Issue 3 (September 30, 2014)

4 articles

• Reconsideration of Event Structure in the Generative Lexicon: Event-Related Lexical Inferences
  by Seohyun Im
  J. CS. 2014, 15(3), 287-316;
  Abstract This paper proposes the addition of inferential relations – presupposition and entailment – between an event and its subevents to event structure in the Generative Lexicon (Pustejovsky, 1995). The inferential relations reflect the lexical semantic properties of verbs. For example, the verb kill is r... [Read more].
  Abstract This paper proposes the addition of inferential relations – presupposition and entailment – between an event and its subevents to event structure in the Generative Lexicon (Pustejovsky, 1995). The inferential relations reflect the lexical semantic properties of verbs. For example, the verb kill is related semantically with die by an inferential relation based on the event structure of the verb kill. That is, kill lexically entails die since the latter denotes a caused subevent in the event structure of the former. In this paper, I present various types of lexical inferences of verbs to support the proposal and suggest a modified event structure. [Collapse]
• Topicality and Modality in Null Subjects in Child Korean
  by Sook Whan Cho
  J. CS. 2014, 15(3), 317-347;
  Abstract The purpose of this study is two-fold. One purpose was to examine the pattern of change over time in the production of null subjects, in topic recoverability, and in subject-modal agreement in the speech of two Korean children at several time points. A second purpose was to investigate whether topic... [Read more].
  Abstract The purpose of this study is two-fold. One purpose was to examine the pattern of change over time in the production of null subjects, in topic recoverability, and in subject-modal agreement in the speech of two Korean children at several time points. A second purpose was to investigate whether topic recoverability and verb modality relate to null subject use in Korean children. While the major issue of this paper was change over time in child use of null subjects, I was also interested in looking into the development of the production of modals and sensitivity to topic recoverability, in light of the view that subject drop is potentially motivated by the grammatical and pragmatic conditions. For these purposes, it was hypothesized in this study that the frequency of null subjects will increase with age in cases where the referents are recoverable (old information) and predictable from the modals marked for particular person. Main findings indicated that at around 2;0 Korean children were able to distinguish old and new information, and drop or overtly report the subject accordingly. Our data also demonstrated a possibility that two-yearold Korean children gradually became sensitive to the connection between modal suffixes and the subjects that agree with them. Based on these findings, it is speculated that, along the lines suggested in Rispoli (1995, p. 345), Soracea et al. (2009), and Shin & Ecker (To appear in 2015), pragmatics on one hand, and speech act and inflectional morphemes on the other, are possible information sources for the construction of the relation between the meaning of predicates and the discourse-pragmatic and syntactic roles encoded by a subject.  [Collapse]
• The Effect of Role Predictability and Word Predictability on Sentence Comprehension
  by Hongoak Yun & Upyong Hong
  J. CS. 2014, 15(3), 349-390;
  Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the degree of difficulty in the integration of a word into a sentence could be determined by not only how likely the word would be for a given context but also how likely the thematic role associated with the word would be to occur. For our aim, w... [Read more].
  Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the degree of difficulty in the integration of a word into a sentence could be determined by not only how likely the word would be for a given context but also how likely the thematic role associated with the word would be to occur. For our aim, we used dative sentences in Korean in which three arguments (i.e., agent, recipient, and patient/theme) appeared prior to a sentence-final verb. We manipulated 1) the degree of role predictability corresponding to the third argument by scrambling the internal arguments that occurred after an agent and 2) the predictability of words corresponding to the third arguments that was either highly likely or unlikely for a given context. A self-paced moving window reading with a secondary judgment task was conducted. A linear mixed-effect regressions on the reading times of the words corresponding to the third arguments was run while controlling for the effects of lexical frequencies and lengths on the processing of target words. The results from the model revealed that the words were read faster when they were highly likely for given contexts than when they were unlikely, and importantly, that the words were read faster when the roles associated with the words were strongly expected than when they were weakly expected. Our results showed that both role predictability and word predictability had independent effects on the processing of a word in a sentence. We claim that a processing model should be loaded with at least two components that take into account role predictability as well as word predictability. [Collapse]
• Book Review: Jeff Buechner, Gödel, Putnam, and Functionalism: A New Reading of Representation and Reality, MIT 2008
  by Witold M. Hensel & Marcin Miłkowski
  J. CS. 2014, 15(3), 391-402;
  Abstract The paper is a critical review of the book Gödel, Putnam, and Functionalism: A New Reading of Representation and Reality by Jeff Buechner, which is a defense of computational functionalism against arguments formulated by Putnam, Searle, Fodor, Lucas and others. Buechner, after having meticulously an... [Read more].
  Abstract The paper is a critical review of the book Gödel, Putnam, and Functionalism: A New Reading of Representation and Reality by Jeff Buechner, which is a defense of computational functionalism against arguments formulated by Putnam, Searle, Fodor, Lucas and others. Buechner, after having meticulously analyzed these arguments, concludes that all of them fail to show that computational functionalism is not a viable strategy to model the mind in cognitive science. As such, it is a defense of a mathematically-informed version of computational functionalism. We discuss Beuchner’s strategy in quite a bit of detail and make some comments. [Collapse]