Manfred Krifka
Biographic Data
| ID | 600893 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Manfred Krifka |
| GIVEN NAMES | Manfred |
| FAMILY NAME | Krifka |
| SIGNATURE | KRIFKA M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9610-8352 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 300 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The Persian Tense-Aspect System: The Interplay Between Perfective Stem and Durative Prefix
The core of the Persian tense-aspect system revolves around two verbal stem forms and the so-called durative prefix mi-. We argue that Stem II encodes a perfective meaning, requiring that the event time is contained in the topic time, whereas the prefix mi- encodes that a viewpoint is temporally contained in the event time. Temporal operators, in turn, relate the viewpoint time and the topic time to the utterance time, thus relating the event tim…
Managing the reputation of trustworthiness in face-to-face communication
One prominent account of the speech act of assertion assumes that by asserting a proposition, the speaker commits to the proposition, that is, vouches for its truth. This predicts negative social effects on the reputation of the speaker, in particular, trustworthiness, or credibility, if the proposition turns out to be false (and conversely, positive effects if it is true). In this paper, I will show that there are modifications to assertive comm…
Self-talk and syntactic structure
This commentary addresses syntactic aspects of self-talk, as well as the relevance of literary sources and theories of the self
Performative updates and the modeling of speech acts
This paper develops a way to model performative speech acts within a framework of dynamic semantics. It introduces a distinction between performative and informative updates, where informative updates filter out indices of context sets (cf. Stalnaker, Cole (ed), Pragmatics, Academic Press, 1978), whereas performative updates change their indices (cf. Szabolcsi, Kiefer (ed), Hungarian linguistics, John Benjamins, 1982). The notion of index change …
Structure and interpretation of declarative sentences
Declarative sentences are known to be compatible with a wide range of different speech acts. The paper develops, for German, a proposal in which declarative sentences that express assertions, declarations (including explicit performatives), exclamations, wishes, commands, observations (or miratives), reminders and questions have slightly distinct syntactic representations and, consequently, semantic interpretations. The syntactic representation a…
Certainly but not certain: The expression of subjective and objective probability
This paper investigates the interpretation of the epistemic modal adjectives possible, certain and their adverbial counterparts possibly, certainly, taking the perspective that the former express objective modality, whereas the latter express subjective modality. In support of this view, we report on two experiments that assess speakers’ acceptance of possible, certain, possibly, certainly in different contexts. Our results extend those of Lassit…
A note on the gifted mathematician that you claim to be
Irrealis is real: Supplementary Material
Irrealis is real
The question of whether Irrealis is a meaningful concept in crosslinguistic comparison has been the subject of long-standing controversy. In this article, we argue that the semantic domain of irreality is split into two domains—the possible and the counterfactual—and that an ‘irrealis’ marker in a given language may refer either to only one of these domains or to both. A significant part of the crosslinguistic variation in what is referred to by …
Pseudo Incorporation and Anaphoricity: Evidence from Persian
The paper investigates the discourse effects of bare nominal pseudo-incorporated objects in Persian. Contrary to claims that such nominals cannot be antecedents to anaphora, experimental results show that that their anaphoric potential is only somewhat reduced, compared to indefinites. This is consonant with Krifka & Modarresi (2016), according to which they are interpreted like functional definites that are dependent on the event denoted by the …
Focus and contrastive topic in questions and answers, with particular reference to Turkish
Much recent research has recognized the importance of focus and contrastive topic in assertions for discourse coherence. However, with few exceptions, it has been neglected that focus and contrastive topic also occur in questions, and have a similar role in establishing coherence. We propose a framework of dynamic interpretation based on the notion of Commitment Spaces that show that a uniform interpretation of focus and contrastive topic is poss…
Focus and contrastive topic: More questions, and answers
Kamali B, Krifka M. Focus and contrastive topic: More questions, and answers. Theoretical Linguistics . 2020;46(1-2):141-157
Antonym adjective pairs and prosodic iconicity: Evidence from letter replications in an English blogger corpus
While the general assumption has long been that natural languages exhibit an arbitrary pairing of form and meaning, there is increasing empirical evidence that iconicity in language is not uncommon. One example from spoken language involves iconic prosodic modulation, i.e. the changing of prosodic features such as duration and fundamental frequency to express meanings such as size and speed. In this paper, we use data from an English social media…
Commitments and beyond
This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively
Grammatiktheorie und Empirie in der germanistischen Linguistik
Puzzling response particles: An experimental study on the German answering system
This paper addresses the use and interpretation of the German response particles ja, nein, and doch. In four experiments, we collected acceptability-judgement data for the full paradigm of standard German particles in responses to positive and negative assertions. The experiments were designed to test the empirical validity of two recent accounts of response particles, Roelofsen & Farkas (2015) and Krifka (2013), which view response particles as …
On the interplay of object animacy and verb type during sentence comprehension in German: ERP evidence from the processing of transitive dative and accusative constructions
Comprehension of transitive sentences relies on different kinds of information, like word order, case marking, and animacy contrasts between arguments. When no formal cues like case marking or number congruency are available, a contrast in animacy helps the parser to decide which argument is the grammatical subject and which the object. Processing costs are enhanced when neither formal cues nor animacy contrasts are available in a transitive sent…
Bias in commitment space semantics: Declarative questions, negated quetions, and question tags
The paper introduces a formal framework for communication that captures not only information that is agreed upon by the interlocutors, but also the possible legal continuations of the communicative exchange. It allows for modeling conjunction, disjunction and denegation of speech acts. Assertions are analyzed as commitments of interlocutors for the truth of propositions. Questions are conversational moves that restrict the legal continuations to …
Response particles as propositional anaphors
The paper explains response particles like yes and no as anaphoric elements that pick up propositional discourse referents that are introduced by preceding sentences. It is argued that negated antecedent clauses introduce two propositional discourse referents, which results in ambiguities of answers that is partly resolved by pragmatic optimization. The paper also discusses response particles like okay, right and uh-huh and uh-uh, and German ja, …
Some remarks on event structure, conceptual spaces and the semantics of verbs
The target paper by Massimo Warglien, Peter Gardenfors and Matthijs Westera (henceforward, WGW) sketches a promising approach to what is perhaps the greatest lacuna in linguistic semantics. On the one hand, the Frege/Montague research program, based on the idea that truth-conditions are the core ingredient of clause meaning and that meanings of complex expressions are computed from the meanings of the parts, has been extremely successful. On the …
In defense of idealizations: A commentary on Stokhof and van Lambalgen
How to Interpret “Expletive” Negation under bevor in German
There are other well-known examples of non-interpreted negation, viz. cases of so-called negative concord in Slavic and Romance languages, but also in dialects of German and English. But arguably, in those cases the “superfluous” negation has to be present for grammatical reasons, which is not the case here. I will show that the negation is in fact interpreted, and that, due to a complex interplay of semantic and pragmatic factors, we do get trut…
Before and After without coercion: Comment on the paper by Cleo Condoravdi
On Inflection
Basic notions of information structure
This article takes stock of the basic notions of Information Structure (IS).It first provides a general characterization of IS -following Chafe (1976) -within a communicative model of Common Ground (CG), which distinguishes between CG content and CG management.IS is concerned with those features of language that affect the local CG.Second, this paper defines and discusses the notions of Focus (as indicating alternatives) and its various uses, Giv…
Basic notions of information structure
This article takes stock of the basic notions of Information Structure (IS).It first provides a general characterization of IS -following Chafe (1976) -within a communicative model of Common Ground (CG), which distinguishes between CG content and CG management.IS is concerned with those features of language that affect the local CG.Second, this paper defines and discusses the notions of Focus (as indicating alternatives) and its various uses, Giv…
The Meaning of Focus Particles: A Comparative Perspective
The Meaning of Focus ParticlesFocus particles (even, only, also, merely) play an important role in English in various syntactic and semantic domains such as coordination, focusing, emphatic reflexives, concessive constructions, and quantification.The syntactic properties of these expressions pose numerous problems for current syntactic frameworks and the highly context-dependent and subjective nature of their meaning presents a challenge for sema…
Quantifying into Question Acts
Scope Inversion under the Rise-Fall Contour in German
A well-known but ill-explained fact about German is scope inversion under a rise-fall accent contour. The scope inversion in this reading can be derived from general principles of scope assignment and focus marking in German. In particular, focus is assigned to preverbal constituents, leading to syntactic configurations that result in ambiguous interpretations. This explanation must be couched in a framework of derivational economy that favors sh…
Bare NPs: Kind-referring, Indefinites, Both, or Neither
No abstract
Structure and interpretation of declarative sentences
Declarative sentences are known to be compatible with a wide range of different speech acts. The paper develops, for German, a proposal in which declarative sentences that express assertions, declarations (including explicit performatives), exclamations, wishes, commands, observations (or miratives), reminders and questions have slightly distinct syntactic representations and, consequently, semantic interpretations. The syntactic representation a…
Irrealis is real
The question of whether Irrealis is a meaningful concept in crosslinguistic comparison has been the subject of long-standing controversy. In this article, we argue that the semantic domain of irreality is split into two domains—the possible and the counterfactual—and that an ‘irrealis’ marker in a given language may refer either to only one of these domains or to both. A significant part of the crosslinguistic variation in what is referred to by …
Performative updates and the modeling of speech acts
This paper develops a way to model performative speech acts within a framework of dynamic semantics. It introduces a distinction between performative and informative updates, where informative updates filter out indices of context sets (cf. Stalnaker, Cole (ed), Pragmatics, Academic Press, 1978), whereas performative updates change their indices (cf. Szabolcsi, Kiefer (ed), Hungarian linguistics, John Benjamins, 1982). The notion of index change …
Focus and secondary predication. Studies in Generative Grammar 43
Harmony or Consistency
Nominal Reference, Temporal Constitution and Quantification in Event Semantics
It is by now a weIl-known topic in semantics that there are striking similarities between the meanings of nominal and verbal expressions, insofar as the mass:count distinction in the nominal domain is reflected in the atelic:telic distinction in the verbal domain (cf. Leisi 1953, Taylor 1977, Bach 1986, to cite just a few authors). However, these supposed similarities have not be made explicit in formal representations.
Zur Renzension angeboten
Nominalreferenz und Zeitkonstitution: Zur Semantik von Massentermen, Pluraltermen und Aspektklassen
Focus and Presupposition in Dynamic Interpretation
Structured meanings have evolved as a well-suited tool to describe the semantics of focus constructions (cf. von Stechow 1990; Jacobs 1991; Krifka 1992). In this paper, I will show how structured meanings can be combined with a framework of dynamic interpretation that allows for a cogent expression of anaphoric relations and presuppositions. I will concentrate in particular on the semantics of the focusing particle only and discuss several phenom…
Rezensionsteil
Fragesätze und Fragen
The Meaning of Focus Particles: A Comparative Perspective
The Meaning of Focus ParticlesFocus particles (even, only, also, merely) play an important role in English in various syntactic and semantic domains such as coordination, focusing, emphatic reflexives, concessive constructions, and quantification.The syntactic properties of these expressions pose numerous problems for current syntactic frameworks and the highly context-dependent and subjective nature of their meaning presents a challenge for sema…
Kasusrelationen und semantische Emphase
The Origins of Telicity
Scope Inversion under the Rise-Fall Contour in German
A well-known but ill-explained fact about German is scope inversion under a rise-fall accent contour. The scope inversion in this reading can be derived from general principles of scope assignment and focus marking in German. In particular, focus is assigned to preverbal constituents, leading to syntactic configurations that result in ambiguous interpretations. This explanation must be couched in a framework of derivational economy that favors sh…
Focus and secondary predication. Studies in Generative Grammar 43
Alternatives for Aspectual Particles: Semantics of still and already
Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Aspect (2000)
Quantifying into Question Acts
Bare NPs: Kind-referring, Indefinites, Both, or Neither
No abstract
The Semantics of Questions and the Focusation of Answers
Basic notions of information structure
This article takes stock of the basic notions of Information Structure (IS).It first provides a general characterization of IS -following Chafe (1976) -within a communicative model of Common Ground (CG), which distinguishes between CG content and CG management.IS is concerned with those features of language that affect the local CG.Second, this paper defines and discusses the notions of Focus (as indicating alternatives) and its various uses, Giv…
On Inflection
How to Interpret “Expletive” Negation under bevor in German
There are other well-known examples of non-interpreted negation, viz. cases of so-called negative concord in Slavic and Romance languages, but also in dialects of German and English. But arguably, in those cases the “superfluous” negation has to be present for grammatical reasons, which is not the case here. I will show that the negation is in fact interpreted, and that, due to a complex interplay of semantic and pragmatic factors, we do get trut…
Before and After without coercion: Comment on the paper by Cleo Condoravdi
In defense of idealizations: A commentary on Stokhof and van Lambalgen
Some remarks on event structure, conceptual spaces and the semantics of verbs
The target paper by Massimo Warglien, Peter Gardenfors and Matthijs Westera (henceforward, WGW) sketches a promising approach to what is perhaps the greatest lacuna in linguistic semantics. On the one hand, the Frege/Montague research program, based on the idea that truth-conditions are the core ingredient of clause meaning and that meanings of complex expressions are computed from the meanings of the parts, has been extremely successful. On the …
Bias in commitment space semantics: Declarative questions, negated quetions, and question tags
The paper introduces a formal framework for communication that captures not only information that is agreed upon by the interlocutors, but also the possible legal continuations of the communicative exchange. It allows for modeling conjunction, disjunction and denegation of speech acts. Assertions are analyzed as commitments of interlocutors for the truth of propositions. Questions are conversational moves that restrict the legal continuations to …
Response particles as propositional anaphors
The paper explains response particles like yes and no as anaphoric elements that pick up propositional discourse referents that are introduced by preceding sentences. It is argued that negated antecedent clauses introduce two propositional discourse referents, which results in ambiguities of answers that is partly resolved by pragmatic optimization. The paper also discusses response particles like okay, right and uh-huh and uh-uh, and German ja, …
Puzzling response particles: An experimental study on the German answering system
This paper addresses the use and interpretation of the German response particles ja, nein, and doch. In four experiments, we collected acceptability-judgement data for the full paradigm of standard German particles in responses to positive and negative assertions. The experiments were designed to test the empirical validity of two recent accounts of response particles, Roelofsen & Farkas (2015) and Krifka (2013), which view response particles as …
Computer Science (27 works) · Linguistics (24 works) · Philosophy (24 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (24 works) · Psychology (17 works) · Natural Language Processing Techniques (12 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Mathematics (8 works) · Programming language (8 works) · Natural language processing (7 works)