March 27, 2008: Mats Rooth, Second occurrence focus and relativized stress F; Friederike Moltmann, Reference to Tropes

Stress-F is the constraint stated by Truckenbrodt 1995, according to which a focus-marked phrase is maximally prominent within its semantic scope. This constraint breaks down in certain second-occurrence configurations, because there are two F's taking different scopes out of the same phrase. Also, Stress-F in the standard formulation has an odd non-local character. I first develop a descriptive replacement, relativized stress F, which says that relative prominence of F's agrees with their semantic scope. That constraint is then derived using local operators which have both a semantic and a phonological interpretation.

A number of philosophers, both present and past, have argued in favor of tropes, an ontological category of particularized properties or concrete manifestations of properties in objects. The examples of tropes discussed are generally referents of nominalizations with adjectives such as 'John's happiness' or Socrates' wisdom'. This talk presents an exploration of various semantic applications of trope theory. The range of trope referring terms, I will argue, includes such expressions as 'the shape of the stone', 'the relation between John and Mary', 'John's height', as well as 'the degree of John's happiness' and 'the number of women'. I will also argue that a range of linguistic data require considerable modifications and refinements of the standard view of trope. Finally, I argue that events should be construed as complex tropes of a certain sort and show how this accounts for some fundamental differences between event-related expressions and expressions relating to simple tropes.