Alan Bale
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 1007101 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Alan Bale |
| PRENOMES | Alan |
| SOBRENOME | Bale |
| ASSINATURA | BALE A |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Concordia University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7522-3140 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 23 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 84 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 23 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2001 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
Conditional inference and access to alternatives
Conditional statements often imply meanings that extend beyond their literal content, influenced by contextual factors such as the Question Under Discussion (QUD) and a speaker’s epistemic state. One such inference is Conditional Perfection (CP), wherein a statement like, “If p then q,” is strengthened to imply that the antecedent p is the only contextually salient condition under which the consequent q holds (e.g. “p if and only if q”). While pr…
Object-mass nouns specify individuation lexically
In many languages, words in count syntax quantify over countable individuals (e.g., too many strings), while mass nouns often don’t (e.g., too much string). Theories differ in how they characterize nouns that violate this pattern, such as object-mass nouns (e.g. furniture, clothing). These nouns exhibit mass syntax, but often quantify by number (Barner & Snedeker, 2005). On one hypothesis, the individuation of object-mass nouns is lexically speci…
Natural language and external conventions
Competence by default
When engaged in conversation, do listeners make default assumptions about the epistemic states of speakers? According to some accounts, when listeners hear a sentence like “Sarah solved some of the math problems,” they infer by default that speakers believe that the stronger statement involving “all” is false (i.e. that Sarah did not solve all of the problems). However, drawing on tests of reading time, eye tracking, and manipulations of cognitiv…
The effect of online methods on epistemic inference and scalar implicature
Counting individuals and their halves
Monotonicity Revisited
Comparatives with more plus mass noun, like John has more milk than Bill, are naturally analyzed as referencing measure functions, functions like volume or weight that map individuals to degrees. Although such measure functions vary with context as well as the choice of mass noun, there are well known grammatical limitations on this variation. In particular, Schwarzschild (2006) proposes that only monotonic measure functions can enter into the in…
Do Children Interpret ‘or’ Conjunctively?
Preschoolers often struggle to compute scalar implicatures involving disjunction (or), in which they are required to strengthen an utterance by negating stronger alternatives, e.g. to infer that, ‘The girl has an apple or an orange’ likely means she does not have both. However, recent reports surprisingly find that a substantial subset of children interpret disjunction as conjunction, concluding instead that the girl must have both fruits. Accord…
Inverse Linking
In this chapter, we will consider a phenomenon known as inverse linking , a term coined by May (1977) to describe the most salient readings of sentences such as Someone from every city despises it . What is of interest about this sort of sentence is a particular “quirk” in its interpretation, in that the embedded quantifier phrase preferentially receives a wide‐scope interpretation. Our aim here is to explore the influence the inverse linking phe…
Ignorance and Inference
Unlike adults, children as old as 9 years of age often fail to infer that a sentence like, ‘Some of the children slept’ implies the falsity of its stronger alternative, ‘All of the children slept’—an inference referred to as a ‘scalar implicature’. Several explanations have been proposed to account for children’s failures with scalar implicature, including domain-general processing limitations, pragmatic deficits or an inability to access the rel…
The interaction of person and number in Mi'gmaq
This paper presents puzzles concerning the representation of features in the agreement system of the Eastern Algonquian language, Mi'gmaq. A growing body of research converges on the idea that φ-agreement should be separated into distinct person (π0), number (#0), and sometimes gender (γ0) probes (e.g. Anagnostopoulou 2003, Béjar 2003, Béjar and Rezac 2003, Laka 1993, Shlonsky 1989, Sigurðsson 1996, Sigurðsson and Holmberg 2008, Preminger 2012). …
Syntactic Complexity and Competition
There is much debate in the linguistic literature about what mechanisms are responsible for accessing, implementing, and restricting grammatical competition. Building on this line of research, this article explores competition between plural and singular marking in Western Armenian, a language where grammatical competition results in a restricted interpretation of singular nouns. Of interest to competition theories in general, this restriction on…
Classifiers Are for Numerals, Not for Nouns
In languages with numeral classifier systems, nouns must generally appear with one of a series of classifiers in order to be modified by a numeral. This squib presents new data from Mi’gmaq (Algonquian) and Chol (Mayan), arguing that numeral classifiers are required because of the syntactic and semantic properties of the numeral (as in Krifka 1995), rather than the noun (as in Chierchia 1998). The results are shown to have important consequences …
Targeting underspecified segments
Accessing the unsaid
The Ambiguous Oracle
This paper outlines the way in which a plot-device, which for the sake of convenience we shall call the ‘ambiguous oracle’ in Acts 1.6–8, controls and influences the narrative, creating coherence and enabling interpretation. The paper begins by looking at the current interpretation of the verses, and argues that it is not sufficient to explain the narrative configuration at various points, before going on to suggest an alternative interpretation,…
On the relationship between morphological and semantic markedness
Scales and comparison classes
The Interpretation of Functional Heads
Journal Article The Interpretation of Functional Heads: Using Comparatives to Explore the Mass/Count Distinction Get access Alan C. Bale, Alan C. Bale Concordia University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar David Barner David Barner University of California, San Diego Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Semantics, Volume 26, Issue 3, August 2009, Pages 217-252, …
Quantifiers and verb phrases
No nouns, no verbs? A rejoinder to Panagiotidis
No nouns, no verbs
Neural Network Simulation of Infant Familiarization to Artificial Sentences
A fundamental issue in cognitive science is whether human cognitive processing is better explained by symbolic rules or by subsymbolic neural networks. A recent study of infant familiarization to sentences in an artificial language seems to have produced data that can only be explained by symbolic rule learning and not by unstructured neural networks (Marcus, Vijayan, Bandi Rao, & Vishton, 1999). Here we present successful unstructured neural net…
The Interpretation of Functional Heads
Journal Article The Interpretation of Functional Heads: Using Comparatives to Explore the Mass/Count Distinction Get access Alan C. Bale, Alan C. Bale Concordia University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar David Barner David Barner University of California, San Diego Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Semantics, Volume 26, Issue 3, August 2009, Pages 217-252, …
Classifiers Are for Numerals, Not for Nouns
In languages with numeral classifier systems, nouns must generally appear with one of a series of classifiers in order to be modified by a numeral. This squib presents new data from Mi’gmaq (Algonquian) and Chol (Mayan), arguing that numeral classifiers are required because of the syntactic and semantic properties of the numeral (as in Krifka 1995), rather than the noun (as in Chierchia 1998). The results are shown to have important consequences …
The interaction of person and number in Mi'gmaq
This paper presents puzzles concerning the representation of features in the agreement system of the Eastern Algonquian language, Mi'gmaq. A growing body of research converges on the idea that φ-agreement should be separated into distinct person (π0), number (#0), and sometimes gender (γ0) probes (e.g. Anagnostopoulou 2003, Béjar 2003, Béjar and Rezac 2003, Laka 1993, Shlonsky 1989, Sigurðsson 1996, Sigurðsson and Holmberg 2008, Preminger 2012). …
On the relationship between morphological and semantic markedness
No nouns, no verbs
Syntactic Complexity and Competition
There is much debate in the linguistic literature about what mechanisms are responsible for accessing, implementing, and restricting grammatical competition. Building on this line of research, this article explores competition between plural and singular marking in Western Armenian, a language where grammatical competition results in a restricted interpretation of singular nouns. Of interest to competition theories in general, this restriction on…
Quantifiers and verb phrases
Scales and comparison classes
Targeting underspecified segments
No nouns, no verbs? A rejoinder to Panagiotidis
Neural Network Simulation of Infant Familiarization to Artificial Sentences
A fundamental issue in cognitive science is whether human cognitive processing is better explained by symbolic rules or by subsymbolic neural networks. A recent study of infant familiarization to sentences in an artificial language seems to have produced data that can only be explained by symbolic rule learning and not by unstructured neural networks (Marcus, Vijayan, Bandi Rao, & Vishton, 1999). Here we present successful unstructured neural net…
No nouns, no verbs
No nouns, no verbs? A rejoinder to Panagiotidis
Quantifiers and verb phrases
The Interpretation of Functional Heads
Journal Article The Interpretation of Functional Heads: Using Comparatives to Explore the Mass/Count Distinction Get access Alan C. Bale, Alan C. Bale Concordia University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar David Barner David Barner University of California, San Diego Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Semantics, Volume 26, Issue 3, August 2009, Pages 217-252, …
Accessing the unsaid
The Ambiguous Oracle
This paper outlines the way in which a plot-device, which for the sake of convenience we shall call the ‘ambiguous oracle’ in Acts 1.6–8, controls and influences the narrative, creating coherence and enabling interpretation. The paper begins by looking at the current interpretation of the verses, and argues that it is not sufficient to explain the narrative configuration at various points, before going on to suggest an alternative interpretation,…
On the relationship between morphological and semantic markedness
Scales and comparison classes
Ignorance and Inference
Unlike adults, children as old as 9 years of age often fail to infer that a sentence like, ‘Some of the children slept’ implies the falsity of its stronger alternative, ‘All of the children slept’—an inference referred to as a ‘scalar implicature’. Several explanations have been proposed to account for children’s failures with scalar implicature, including domain-general processing limitations, pragmatic deficits or an inability to access the rel…
The interaction of person and number in Mi'gmaq
This paper presents puzzles concerning the representation of features in the agreement system of the Eastern Algonquian language, Mi'gmaq. A growing body of research converges on the idea that φ-agreement should be separated into distinct person (π0), number (#0), and sometimes gender (γ0) probes (e.g. Anagnostopoulou 2003, Béjar 2003, Béjar and Rezac 2003, Laka 1993, Shlonsky 1989, Sigurðsson 1996, Sigurðsson and Holmberg 2008, Preminger 2012). …
Syntactic Complexity and Competition
There is much debate in the linguistic literature about what mechanisms are responsible for accessing, implementing, and restricting grammatical competition. Building on this line of research, this article explores competition between plural and singular marking in Western Armenian, a language where grammatical competition results in a restricted interpretation of singular nouns. Of interest to competition theories in general, this restriction on…
Classifiers Are for Numerals, Not for Nouns
In languages with numeral classifier systems, nouns must generally appear with one of a series of classifiers in order to be modified by a numeral. This squib presents new data from Mi’gmaq (Algonquian) and Chol (Mayan), arguing that numeral classifiers are required because of the syntactic and semantic properties of the numeral (as in Krifka 1995), rather than the noun (as in Chierchia 1998). The results are shown to have important consequences …
Targeting underspecified segments
Inverse Linking
In this chapter, we will consider a phenomenon known as inverse linking , a term coined by May (1977) to describe the most salient readings of sentences such as Someone from every city despises it . What is of interest about this sort of sentence is a particular “quirk” in its interpretation, in that the embedded quantifier phrase preferentially receives a wide‐scope interpretation. Our aim here is to explore the influence the inverse linking phe…
Do Children Interpret ‘or’ Conjunctively?
Preschoolers often struggle to compute scalar implicatures involving disjunction (or), in which they are required to strengthen an utterance by negating stronger alternatives, e.g. to infer that, ‘The girl has an apple or an orange’ likely means she does not have both. However, recent reports surprisingly find that a substantial subset of children interpret disjunction as conjunction, concluding instead that the girl must have both fruits. Accord…
Monotonicity Revisited
Comparatives with more plus mass noun, like John has more milk than Bill, are naturally analyzed as referencing measure functions, functions like volume or weight that map individuals to degrees. Although such measure functions vary with context as well as the choice of mass noun, there are well known grammatical limitations on this variation. In particular, Schwarzschild (2006) proposes that only monotonic measure functions can enter into the in…
Counting individuals and their halves
Competence by default
When engaged in conversation, do listeners make default assumptions about the epistemic states of speakers? According to some accounts, when listeners hear a sentence like “Sarah solved some of the math problems,” they infer by default that speakers believe that the stronger statement involving “all” is false (i.e. that Sarah did not solve all of the problems). However, drawing on tests of reading time, eye tracking, and manipulations of cognitiv…
The effect of online methods on epistemic inference and scalar implicature
Conditional inference and access to alternatives
Conditional statements often imply meanings that extend beyond their literal content, influenced by contextual factors such as the Question Under Discussion (QUD) and a speaker’s epistemic state. One such inference is Conditional Perfection (CP), wherein a statement like, “If p then q,” is strengthened to imply that the antecedent p is the only contextually salient condition under which the consequent q holds (e.g. “p if and only if q”). While pr…
Object-mass nouns specify individuation lexically
In many languages, words in count syntax quantify over countable individuals (e.g., too many strings), while mass nouns often don’t (e.g., too much string). Theories differ in how they characterize nouns that violate this pattern, such as object-mass nouns (e.g. furniture, clothing). These nouns exhibit mass syntax, but often quantify by number (Barner & Snedeker, 2005). On one hypothesis, the individuation of object-mass nouns is lexically speci…
Natural language and external conventions
Computer Science (18 obras) · Linguistics (16 obras) · Philosophy (16 obras) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (15 obras) · Mathematics (13 obras) · Psychology (10 obras) · Epistemology (8 obras) · Natural language processing (8 obras) · Noun (7 obras) · Artificial Intelligence (6 obras)