Browsing by Author "Alberti, Gábor"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
  • Item
    Compositional analysis of interrogative imperatives in Hungarian
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2017) Kleiber, Judit; Alberti, Gábor
    The paper investigates utterances which combine imperative and interrogative elements in Hungarian. We intend to explore the scope of the hypothesis that the pragmatico-semantic content of mixed-type sentences can be obtained compositionally. We present four types of interrogative imperative. The imperative factor is indicated by subjunctive morphology on the verb. The interrogative character is represented by (1) rise-fall intonation which marks polar questions, (2) the discourse marker ugye expressing bias, (3) the particle vajon expressing self-reflection or hesitation, and (4) wavy intonation which indicates surprise. We claim that such sentences are primarily questions with their main function being ‘request for instruction’. For the analysis, we take a formal pragmatico-semantic point of view. Our goal is to demonstrate how these sentences can be analyzed compositionally within a belief–desire–intention frame. We apply the formal dynamic discourse- and mind-representation theory ReALIS. We have found that the pragmatico-semantic content (intensional profile) of each type can be constructed via using two formal operations: concatenation and pragmasemantic blending. The composition produces the required output, namely that the interrogation / bias / speculation / surprise which pertains to an eventuality in the case of a simple question, pertains to the “commanding” of this eventuality in the case of interrogative imperatives.
  • Item
    Intensional profiles and different kinds of human minds. “Case studies” about Hungarian imperative-like sentence types
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2016) Alberti, Gábor; Kleiber, Judit; Schnell, Zsuzsanna; Szabó, Veronika
    The paper offers such description of some imperative-like sentence types in potential well-formed Hungarian utterances which includes a parallel representation of the linguistically encoded intensional profiles of the sentence types and actual information states in potential interlocutors’ minds. In our representational dynamic pragmasemantics framework ReALIS, we demonstrate the intensional profiles of the five basic and two “fine-tuned” sentence types as members of a system enabling addressers’ of utterances to express their beliefs, desires and intentions concerning the propositional content of the given utterances as well as the addressees’ and other people’s certain beliefs, desires and intentions (concerning the propositional content, too, or each other’s thoughts). We also provide “case studies” in which actual beliefs, desires and intentions in potential interlocutors’ minds are compared to the linguistically encoded intensional profiles of Hungarian imperative-like sentence types. In this context, the listener’s task is to calculate the speaker’s intentions (and hidden motives) on the basis of the mismatches that this comparison reveals. The paper concludes with an insight into our attempts to model the mind of individuals living with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This latter subproject is relevant since our framework provides solutions to pragmaticosemantic phenomena “at the cost” of undertaking the complex task of actually representing the structure of the human mind itself – which is not impossible but requires an adequate decision of the level of abstraction and the components to be used.
  • Item
    Recalculating: The atlas of pragmatic parameters of developmental disorders
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2019) Viszket, Anita; Hoss, Alexandra; Kárpáti, Eszter; Alberti, Gábor
    The paper demonstrates how pragmatic features of certain developmental disorders, including Autism Spectrum Disorder, can be described in a formal pragmasemantic framework. We apply ÂeALIS, the pragmasemantic system (Alberti, Kleiber, Schnell, & Szabó 2016) which offers a formal representation for linguistically encoded speech acts and for the beliefs, desires and intentions that are present in the minds of potential interlocutors. It defines worldlets which include the BDI states of the speaker, as well as BDI states that the speaker assumes the hearer has, in an unlimited recursive pattern. The model is built upon the idea that the worldlets are organized in a system of multi-level tree-structures and are easily processable and accessible in communication for the intact human mind. In this formally defined system, the intensity of the different BDIs (e.g. strong/weak belief) belonging to the worldlets must be signaled by the interlocutors, using pragmatic tools. We found that pragmatic inaccuracy is detectable in ÂeALIS when it is related to inappropriate presentation of BDIs (e.g. inability to identify the illocutionary goals), poor reciprocity (e.g. ToM1 and ToM2 problems), impairment of coding/decoding (e.g. incorrect semantical and syntactical coding of the information structure) and insensitivity to intensity (e.g. the misuse of discourse markers). These symptoms can be present in any of the aforementioned disorders. Our “atlas” can illustrate that the so-called “pragmatic deficit” has a formally definable structure.
  • Item
    Similarities and differences between two Hungarian particles for also: szintén and is
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2020) Farkas, Judit; Futó, Bettina; Huszics, Aliz; Kleiber, Judit; Dóla, Mónika; Alberti, Gábor
    The paper provides a comparative analysis of the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of two Hungarian particles with the same logical core meaning also: is and szintén. The analysis yields important theoretical implications since it demonstrates how two particles sharing the same logical-propositional/truth-functional core meaning can expand into two different markers. In discourse, is acts as an intensional/metacognitive pragmatic marker in the sense as proposed by Aijmer et al. (2006), while szintén functions as a coherence-signaling discourse marker. The two particles share certain syntactic-semantic properties: neither of them can be followed by a topic, they both have distributive meaning, and both of them can pertain to the noun phrase that they immediately follow, as well as to ordered n-tuples of noun phrases. However, there are also syntactic and pragmasemantic differences between them. Namely, their ordered n-tuples have different word orders; is can function as a pragmatic marker while szintén cannot; szintén can appear as a separate clause, while is cannot (this is presumably related to the fact that szintén can be stressed, while is is obligatorily unstressed); and finally, szintén can have a peculiar discourse-preserving function. We explain the syntactic differences between the two particles using the partial spell-out technique of minimalist generative syntacticians (first applied to Hungarian by Surányi 2009), and the Cinque-hierarchy-based approach to Hungarian sentence- and predicate-adverbials (Surányi 2008). We account for the pragmasemantic properties of the pragmatic-marker variant of is in the formal representational dynamic theory of interpretation called ReALIS, already presented in the LingBaW series (Alberti et al. 2016, Kleiber and Alberti 2017, Viszket et al. 2019).
  • Item
    Spelling out of scope taking arguments in (de-)verbal constructions in Hungarian
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2022) Farkas, Judit; Alberti, Gábor
    The paper systematically investigates operators in post-head positions within the three constructions referring to states of affairs in Hungarian, that is, within verbal, deverbal nominal and infinitival phrases. Hungarian is well-known to be a language in which all types of operator can be, and are usually, spelt out in the pre-head zone. However, it has not been discussed in a systematic and comprehensive way earlier whether operators can appear in post-head positions. The paper points out that this is partially possible via a systematic overview of six basic operator types. It also illustrates that while spelling out operators in the pre-head zone results in unambiguous constructions, placing them in post-head positions yields different types of ambiguity. As for the acceptability of scope taking arguments, finite verbal constructions show a black-and-white picture while infinitival and deverbal nominal constructions can be characterized by gray zones in respect of the readiness of arguments to take scope from post-head position. In these “gray zones”, a somewhat speaker-dependent variation can be observed, presumably with underlying microvariation. To represent and interpret our findings, we use Grohmann’s (2000, 2003) phase-theoretic approach with its pragmasemantics-based three Spell-Out domains per cycle.
  • Item
    The interaction between relevant-set based operators and a topic–predicate dimension
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2018) Szeteli, Anna; Alberti, Gábor
    Hungarian relevant-set based operators, such as universally quantified noun-phrases and the also-quantifier, signal a logico-pragmatic relation between their explicit meaning and a broader implicit set of relevant participants which property can be mentioned as “double referentiality” of the operator. Furthermore, they indicate the new or correcting information in a topic–predicate dimension which belongs to the broader world of the discourse. Our research aims to identify the differences by investigating the suprasegmental features of each-quantifiers and also-quantifiers on the Hungarian left-periphery indicating the two functions in the topic–predicate dimension. Short sentences in which quantifiers functioning either as the main (new/correcting) information or as a topic (anchor of relevant information) were read by 41 non-linguist native Hungarian subjects. The pitch, intensity and duration properties were analyzed by Praat. On the basis of paired t‑tests of the data, it can be stated that a two-dimension model of information structure is required to capture the phenomenon.