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European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information

ESSLLI 2018: At the Intersection of Language, Logic, and Information pp 42–61Cite as

Towards an Analysis of the Agent-Oriented Manner Adverbial sorgfältig (‘carefully’)

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 11667))

Abstract

The paper discusses the class of agent-oriented manner adverbials based on an investigation of the lexical meaning of the adverbial sorgfältig (‘carefully’). The analysis proposes that the adverbial specifies the content of the action-plan of the agent and with this imposes restrictions on the manner of the modified event. The combination of intentionality and manner aspects in the meaning contribution of the modifier is explained based on Goldman’s [9] theory of human action. The analysis is formalized in Frame Semantics as introduced in Löbner [14] and [15].

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Although sorgfältig is translated here primarily as carefully, there is no English adverb coinciding in meaning with the German modifier.

  2. 2.

    The two adverbials, sorgfältig and geschickt, are the cases, which are primarily used to discuss the class. In this paper, we concentrate on the meaning of sorgfältig, while geschickt is left for further work.

  3. 3.

    The * signals unacceptability, whereas the # symbol means oddness due to meaning.

  4. 4.

    Example (7b) can have two different interpretations: (i) the speaker is understood as having seen John working sorgfältig and therefore expects a good result, while (ii) it is seen in the result of the work that John has worked sorgfältig.

  5. 5.

    Hansson [12] questions the agent-orientedness of the modifier based on the following example:

    figure h

    Hansson [12] suggests that in such cases the modifier is used metaphorically. How such examples should be analyzed is not discussed in detail in this work, but a treatment that does not pose a problem for the view that sorgfältig is agent-oriented is proposed in Gabrovska [8].

  6. 6.

    The assumption is also made for mental-attitude adverbials (cf. Buscher [4]).

  7. 7.

    According to Löbner [15]:4 TTs (tokens-of-a-type) are “ordered pairs of an entity and a type such that the entity is of this type.” Löbner [15] sees the assumption of act-TTs as very natural: VPs provide descriptions of events by giving their types.

  8. 8.

    Adopting the notation in Löbner [15], in the pair a/A a is an act-token, whereas A is stands for the act-type.

  9. 9.

    See Buscher [4] for a discussion and supporting data.

  10. 10.

    We follow Van Valin and Wilkins [24] as far as these notions are concerned.

  11. 11.

    As noted above, Buscher [4] states that mental-attitude adverbials, like absichtlich (‘intentionally’), also specify the interpretation of verbs. We assume that this common feature between the two classes can be explained by the use of the same mechanisms (see Gabrovska and Geuder [7]).

  12. 12.

    It has to be noted that gute Ergebnisse (‘good results’) or having good results is not an act as required by Goldman ([9]: 52f); the corresponding desired act is to achieve/gain good results.

  13. 13.

    https://books.google.de/books?id=FXGXBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&dq=%22sorgf%C3%A4ltig+gereinigt,+indem%22&source=bl&ots=e_6WSP7pZ1&sig=JT1a1IywRLv4QFJTUqW7eapOwRU&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjo-KPH5o7ZAhXD1qQKHd3ACwQQ6AEIJzAA, last accessed 27.06.18.

  14. 14.

    Thanks to Wilhelm Geuder for the example.

  15. 15.

    Frames can also be translated into first-order predicate logic formulas. For one approach, see Löbner [14].

  16. 16.

    This assumption might be debatable, however we refrain from discussion of this topic here as this would lead us away from the goal set for the paper.

References

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Sebastian Löbner, Wilhelm Geuder, Curt Anderson, the anonymous reviewer as well as all my informants for the long discussions, the comments, the data, and all other kinds of help. The work is supported by DFG CRC 991 “The Structure of Representations in Language, Cognition, and Science,” project B09.

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  1. Heinrich Heine University, Universitätstr. 1, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Ekaterina Gabrovska

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  1. Ekaterina Gabrovska
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Correspondence to Ekaterina Gabrovska .

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  1. Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Jennifer Sikos

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Eric Pacuit

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Gabrovska, E. (2019). Towards an Analysis of the Agent-Oriented Manner Adverbial sorgfältig (‘carefully’). In: Sikos, J., Pacuit, E. (eds) At the Intersection of Language, Logic, and Information. ESSLLI 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11667. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-59620-3_3

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