SEMSUBSET · The Grammar of Inclusion: Exploring the Boundaries of Linguistic Competence

The combination of phrase-structure syntax and model-theoretic semantics have led to a powerful, general model oflanguage. However, previous research has not sufficiently explained how syntactic structure and structural differencesacross languages relate to mathematical operations on meaning: some constraints observed in the language implementationof these operations are a consequence of the language form, while others can come from human reasoning processes,beyond language. This project investigates this domain from the perspective of partitives and the formal subset relation.Nominal partitives as 'two of the beans' explicitly express the subset relation in English. Other Romance and Germaniclanguages have similar, but not identical forms: e.g. in German genitive case can be used. Pseudo-partitives like 'two cupsof beans' share many of the lexical items of partitives, so if structure and meaning are projected from lexical items, bothneed to be considered in parallel. Partitives are interestingly more constrained than the subset relation. For example, theyexpress only proper partitivity: 'Two of her parents' is odd. We explore the boundaries between linguistic competence andother cognitive systems, with one leading question: what is the source of these constraints? We adopt the methodology ofsyntax and semantics, with an experimental component. The issue is addressed pursuing three goals: i) on the basis ofsyntactic cross-linguistic variation, we build a syntax/semantics for partitives; ii) we establish which constraints come aboutfrom the format and from standard interpretation rules; iii) we specify pragmatic or other general cognitive limitations in theprocessing of the subset operation.The project contributes to integrate syntax and semantics with the cognitive sciences. Furthermore, it requires theacquisition of new skills by the researcher in formal and experimental semantics and pragmatics, fields of excellence of thehost institution.