Lexical and Nonlexical Contributions to Sentence Meaning

本研究将探讨人类概念的微观结构，重点研究句子表达的概念是如何由词汇意义和结构原则构成的。在Jackendoff概念语义学框架的基础上，结合Pustejovsky在事件结构和生成词汇方面的研究成果，本项目将研究一系列相互关联的问题，包括词义如何在语言使用者的脑海中形成内部结构：由句子中的句法位置描述的事件中的字符连接；名词含义的内部组织，包括名词所描述的形式、功能和物体起源的性质；将对象和事件概念分解为独立的维度；以及权利和义务的语义。此外，该项目还将研究“强制原则”，其效果是为句子添加某些无法用语言公开表达的意义元素。这些原则在简化词语中明显的歧义以及在语境中理解语言方面有着重要作用。//

This study will investigate the microstructure of human concepts, with a focus on how concepts expressed by sentences are constructed from lexical meanings plus structural principles. Building of Jackendoff's framework of Conceptual Semantics plus Pustejovsky's work on event structure and the generative lexicon, the project will investigate a number of interrelated problems concerning how word meanings are internally structured in the minds of language users: the linking of characters in an event described by a sentence syntactic positions in the sentence; the internal organization of noun meanings, including properties of form, function, and origin of objects described by nouns; the factoring of object and event concepts into independent dimensions; and the semantics of rights and obligation. In addition, the project will investigate "principles of coercion," whose effects are to add to sentences certain elements of meaning that are not overtly expressed in words. Such principles are heavily involved in simplifying apparent ambiguities in words, as well as in understanding language in context.//