In
formal semantics conservativity is a proposed
linguistic universal
A linguistic universal is a pattern that occurs systematically across natural languages, potentially true for all of them. For example, ''All languages have nouns and verbs'', or ''If a language is spoken, it has consonants and vowels.'' Research ...
which states that any
determiner
A determiner, also called determinative (abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner m ...
must obey the equivalence
. For instance, the
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
determiner "every" can be seen to be conservative by the
equivalence of the following two sentences, schematized in
generalized quantifier In formal semantics, a generalized quantifier (GQ) is an expression that denotes a set of sets. This is the standard semantics assigned to quantified noun phrases. For example, the generalized quantifier ''every boy'' denotes the set of sets of ...
notation to the right.
# Every aardvark bites.
# Every aardvark is an aardvark that bites.
Conceptually, conservativity can be understood as saying that the
elements of
which are not elements of
are not relevant for evaluating the truth of the
determiner phrase In linguistics, a determiner phrase (DP) is a type of phrase headed by a determiner such as ''many''. Controversially, many approaches, take a phrase like ''not very many apples'' to be a DP, headed, in this case, by the determiner ''many''. This i ...
as a whole. For instance, truth of the first sentence above does not depend on which biting non-aardvarks exist.
Conservativity is significant to semantic theory because there are many logically possible determiners which are not attested as
denotations of natural language expressions. For instance, consider the imaginary determiner
defined so that
is true iff
. If there are 50 biting aardvarks, 50 non-biting aardvarks, and millions of non-aardvark biters,
will be false but
will be true.
Some potential counterexamples to conservativity have been observed, notably, the English expression "only". This expression has been argued to not be a determiner since it can stack with bona fide determiners and can combine with non-nominal constituents such as
verb phrase
In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntactic unit composed of a verb and its arguments except the subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause. Thus, in the sentence ''A fat man quickly put the money into the box'', the words ''quic ...
s.
# Only some aardvarks bite.
# This aardvark will only
VP bite playfully.">small>VP bite playfully.
Different analyses have treated conservativity as a constraint on the
lexicon
A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Koine Greek language, Greek word (), neuter of () ...
, a structural constraint arising from the architecture of the
syntax-semantics interface, as well as constraint on
learnability Learnability is a quality of products and interfaces that allows users to quickly become familiar with them and able to make good use of all their features and capabilities.
Software testing
In software testing learnability, according to ISO/IEC 9 ...
.
See also
*
Jon Barwise
Kenneth Jon Barwise (; June 29, 1942 – March 5, 2000) was an American mathematician, philosopher and logician who proposed some fundamental revisions to the way that logic is understood and used.
Education and career
Born in Independence, ...
*
Lindström quantifier In mathematical logic, a Lindström quantifier is a generalized polyadic quantifier. Lindström quantifiers generalize first-order quantifiers, such as the existential quantifier, the universal quantifier, and the counting quantifiers. They were ...
*
Universal grammar
Universal grammar (UG), in modern linguistics, is the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on what the grammar of a possible hum ...
Notes
Semantics
Formal semantics (natural language)
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