C: And that aside from some terminology , that 's basically it .
F: Right .
C: I just want to b I 'm I 'm asking .
F: Yep .
E: Mm - hmm .
E: Yeah .
F: Yeah ,
F: um , the un sort of the un - addressed questions in this , um , definitely would for instance be semantic constraints we talked about .
C: Yeah .
F: Here are just bindings
F: but ,
F: right ?
F: we might want to introduce mental spaces F: You know , there 's all these things that we don't C: The whole the mental space thing is clearly not here .
F: Right ?
F: So there 's going to be some extra you know , definitely other notation we 'll need for that which we skip for now .
E: Mm - hmm .
C: By the way , I do want to get on that as soon as Robert gets back .
F: Uh
F: Yeah .
F: OK .
C: So , uh , the the mental space thing .
E: Mm - hmm .
C: Um , obviously , construal is a b is a b is a big component of that
C: so this probably not worth trying to do anything till he gets back .
C: But sort of as soon as he gets back I think um , we ought to F: Mm - hmm .
F: Mm - hmm .
E: So what 's the what 's the time frame ?
E: I forgot again when
E: you 're going away for how long ?
A: Just , uh , as a sort of a mental bridge , I 'm not I 'm skipping fourth of July .
E: OK .
A: So , uh , right afterwards I 'm back .
E: OK .
F: What ?
F: You 're missing like the premier American holiday ?
F: What 's the point of spending a year here ?
A: Uh , I 've had it often enough .
F: So , anyway .
B: Well he w he went to college here .
F: Oh , yeah , I forgot .
F: Oops . <comment> Sorry .
C: Yeah .
F: OK .
C: And furthermore it 's well worth missing .
F: Not in California .
F: Yeah , that 's true .
E: Yes .
F: I like I I like spending fourth of July in other countries , whenever I can .
C: Right .
F: Um C: OK , so that 's great .
F: Construal ,
F: OK , so F: Oh , so there was one question that came out .
F: I hate this thing .
F: Sorry .
F: Um , which is ,
F: so something like " past " which i you know , we think is a very simple uh , we 've often just stuck it in as a feature ,
C: Right .
F: you know , " oh , this event takes place before speech time " , <comment> OK , is what this means .
C: Right .
F: Um , it 's often thought of as it is also considered a mental space ,
C: Right .
F: you know , by , you know , lots of people around here .
C: Right .
F: So there 's this issue of well sometimes there are really exotic explicit space builders that say " in France , blah - blah - blah " ,
E: Mm - hmm .
F: and you have to build up you ha you would imagine that would require you , you know , to be very specific about the machinery ,
F: whereas past is a very conventionalized one
F: and we sort of know what it means
F: but it we doesn't don't necessarily want to , you know , unload all the notation every time we see that it 's past tense .
C: Right .
F: So , you know , we could think of our uh , just like X - schema " walk " refers to this complicated structure , past refers to , you know , a certain configuration of this thing with respect to it .
C: I think that 's exactly right .
F: So so we 're kind of like having our cake and eating it F: you know , having it both ways , right ?
C: Yeah .
F: So , i i
C: Yeah . No , I think I think that i we 'll have to see how it works out when we do the details
F: Mm - hmm .
C: but my intuition would be that that 's right .
F: Mm - hmm .
F: Yeah , OK .
A: Do you want to do the same for space ?
F: Wha - sorry ?
A: Space ?
F: Space ?
A: Here ?
A: Now ?
F: Oh , oh , oh , oh , instead of just time ?
F: Yeah , yeah , yeah .
A: Mm - hmm .
F: Same thing .
F: So there are very conventionalized like deictic ones , right ?
F: And then I think for other spaces that you introduce , you could just attach y
F: whatever F: You could build up an appropriately uh , appropriate structure according to the l the sentence .
A: Hmm .
C: Yeah .
A: Hmm ,
A: well this this basically would involve everything you can imagine to fit under your C dot something E: N
F: Yeah .
A: you know , where where it 's contextually dependent ,
F: Right .
F: Mm - hmm .
A: " what is now ,
A: what was past ,
A: what is in the future ,
A: where is this ,
A: what is here ,
A: what is there ,
A: what is "
F: Mm - hmm .
F: Yeah .
F: So time and space .
F: Um , we 'll we 'll get that on the other side a little , like very minimally .
F: There 's a sort of there 's a slot for setting time and setting place .
C: Good .
F: And
F: you know , you could imagine for both of those are absolute things you could say about the time and place ,
F: and then there are many in more interestingly , linguistically anyway , <comment> there are relative things that , you know , you relate the event in time and space to where you are now .
F: If there 's something a lot more complicated like , or so hypothetical or whatever , then you have to do your job ,
E: Mm - hmm .
F: like or somebody 's job anyway .
E: Yeah .
F: I 'm gonna point to at random .
E: Yeah .
E: I mean , I 'm I 'm s curious about how much of the mental E: I mean , I 'm not sure that the formalism , sort of the grammatical side of things , <comment> is gonna have that much going on in terms of the mental space stuff .
E: You know , um , basically all of these so - called space builders that are in the sentence are going to sort of E: I think of it as , sort of giving you the coordinates of , you know E: assuming that at any point in discourse there 's the possibility that we could be sort of talking about a bunch of different world scenarios , whatever , and the speaker 's supposed to be keeping track of those . The , um the construction that you actually get is just gonna sort of give you a cue as to which one of those that you 've already got going , um , you 're supposed to add structure to .
F: Mm - hmm .
E: So " in France , uh , Watergate wouldn't have hurt Nixon " or something like that .
E: Um , well , you say , " alright , I 'm supposed to add some structure to my model of this hypothetical past France universe " or something like that .
E: The information in the sentence tells you that much
E: but it doesn't tell you like exactly what it what the point of doing so is .
E: So for example , depending on the linguistic con uh , context it could be E: like the question is for example , what does " Watergate " refer to there ?
E: Does it , you know does it refer to , um E: if you just hear that sentence cold , the assumption is that when you say " Watergate " you 're referring to " a Watergate - like scandal as we might imagine it happening in France " .
E: But in a different context , " oh , you know , if Nixon had apologized right away it wouldn't you know , Watergate wouldn't have hurt him so badly in the US
E: and in France it wouldn't have hurt him at all " .
E: Now we 're s now that " Watergate " we 're now talking about the real one ,
F: They 're real , right .
E: and the " would " sort of it 's a sort of different dimension of hypothe - theticality , right ?
F: I see right .
E: We 're not saying What 's hypothetical about this world .
E: In the first case , hypothetically we 're imagining that Watergate happened in France .
F: Hmm .
E: In the second case we 're imagining hypothetically that Nixon had apologized right away
F: Mm - hmm .
F: Right .
E: or something . Right ?
E: So a lot of this isn't happening at the grammatical level .
E: Uh , um , and so C: Correct .
F: Mm - hmm .
E: I don't know where that sits then ,
A: Hmm .
E: sort of the idea of sorting out what the person meant .
F: It seems like , um , the grammatical things such as the auxiliaries that you know introduce these conditionals , whatever , give you sort of the the most basi
E: Mm - hmm .
F: th those we I think we can figure out what the possibilities are , right ?
E: Mm - hmm .
F: There are sort of a relatively limited number .
F: And then how they interact with some extra thing like " in France " or " if such - and - such " , that 's like there are certain ways that they c they can E: Yeah .
F: You know , one is a more specific version of the general pattern that the grammat grammar gives you .
F: I think .
E: Yeah .
F: But , you know , whatever ,
F: we we 're C: Yeah , in the short run all we need is a enough mechanism on the form side to get things going .
E: Mm - hmm .
E: Yeah .
C: Uh , I uh , you you E: But the whole point of the whole point of what Fauconnier and Turner have to say about , uh , mental spaces , and blending , and all that stuff is that you don't really get that much out of the sentence .
E: You know , there 's not that much information contained in the sentence .
E: It just says , " Here .
E: Add this structure to this space . "
E: and exactly what that means for the overall ongoing interpretation is quite open .
E: An individual sentence could mean a hundred different things depending on , quote , " what the space configuration is at the time of utterance " .
F: Mm - hmm .
F: Mm - hmm .
E: And so somebody 's gonna have to be doing a whole lot of work but not me , I think .
C: Well C: I think that 's right .
C: Oh , I yeah , I , uh , uh I think that 's Not k I th
C: I don't think it 's completely right .
C: I mean , in fact a sentence examples you gave in f did constrain the meaning b
C: the form did constrain the meaning ,
E: Yeah .
C: and so , um , it isn't , uh E: Sure , but like what what was the point of saying that sentence about Nixon and France ?
E: That is not there is nothing about that in the in the sentence really .
F: That 's OK .
F: We usually don't know the point of the sentence at all .
E: Yeah .
F: But we know what it 's trying to say .
F: We we know that it 's what predication it 's setting up .
E: Y yeah .
C: Yeah .
C: But but bottom line , I agree with you ,
E: Yeah .
F: That 's all .
E: Yeah .
C: that that that we 're not expecting much out of the , uh f
F: Purely linguistic cues , right ?
C: uh , the purely form cues , yeah .
F: So .
F: Mmm .
C: And , um I mean , you 're you 're the linguist
C: but , uh , it seems to me that th these we we you know , we 've talked about maybe a half a dozen linguistics theses in the last few minutes or something .
E: Yeah , yeah .
C: Yeah , I mean E: Yeah .
E: Oh , yeah .
C: uh , I I mean , that that 's my feeling that that these are really hard uh , problems that decide exactly what what 's going on .
E: Mm - hmm .
E: Yeah .
E: Yeah .
C: OK .
F: OK , so , um , one other thing I just want to point out is there 's a lot of confusion about the terms like " profile , designate , focus " , et cetera , et cetera .
E: Mm - hmm .
C: Uh , right , right , right .
F: Um , for now I 'm gonna say like " profile " 's often used F: like two uses that come to mind immediately .
F: One is in the traditional like semantic highlight of one element with respect to everything else .
F: So " hypotenuse " , you profiled this guy against the background of the right t right triangle .
E: Mm - hmm .
F: OK .
F: And the second use , um , is in FrameNet. It 's
F: slightly different .
F: Oh , I was asking Hans about this .
F: They use it to really mean , um , this in a frame th this is the profiles on the these are the ones that are required .
F: So they have to be there or expressed in some way .
F: Which which I 'm not saying one and two are mutually exclusive
F: but they 're they 're different meanings .
C: Right .
E: Mm - hmm .
F: So the closest thing F: so I was thinking about how it relates to this notation .
F: For us , um F: OK , so how is it F: so " designate " FrameNet ?
C: Does that Is that really what they mean in in F: FrameNet ?
C: I didn't know that .
F: Yeah , yeah .
F: I I mean , I I was a little bit surprised about it too .
F: I knew that C: Yeah .
F: I thought that that would be something like F: there 's another term that I 've heard for that thing
C: Right , OK .
F: but they I mean uh , well , at least Hans says they use it that way .
F: And C: Well , I 'll check .
F: and may maybe he 's wrong .
F: Anyway , so
F: I think the the " designate " that we have in terms of meaning is really the " highlight this thing with respect to everything else " . OK ?
C: Right .
F: So this is what what it means .
F: But the second one seems to be useful
F: but we might not need a notation for it ?
F: We don't have a notation for it
F: but we might want one .
F: So for example we 've talked about if you 're talking about the lexical item " walk " ,
F: you know it 's an action .
F: Well , it also has this idea it carries along with it the idea of an actor
F: or somebody 's gonna do the walking .
F: Or if you talk about an adjective " red " , it carries along the idea of the thing that has the property of having color red .
F: So we used to use the notation " with " for this
F: and I think that 's closest to their second one .
C: Right .
F: So I d don't yet know , I have no commitment , as to whether we need it .
F: It might be F: it 's the kind of thing that w a parser might want to think about whether we require F: you know , these things are like it 's semantically part of it C: N no , no .
C: Well , uh , th critically they 're not required syntactically .
C: Often they 're pres presu presupposed and all that sort of stuff .
F: Right .
F: Right , right . Yeah , um , definitely .
F: So , um ,
F: " in " was a good example .
F: If you walk " in " , like well , in what ?
F: You know , like you have to have the <comment> So so it 's only semantically is it C: Right , there 's F: it is still required , say , by simulation time though
F: to have something .
C: Right .
F: So it 's that I meant the idea of like that the semantic value is filled in by sim simulation .
F: I don't know if that 's something we need to spa to to like say ever as part of the requirement ? F: or the construction ?
F: or not .
F: We 'll we 'll again defer .
C: Or I mean , or or , uh
C: so the F: Have it construed ,
F: is that the idea ?
C: Yeah , yeah .
F: Just point at Robert .
F: Whenever I 'm confused just point to him .
C: Right .
F: You tell me .
C: It 's it 's his thesis , right ?
F: OK .
C: Anyway ,
C: right , yeah , w this is gonna be a b
C: you 're right , this is a bit of in a mess
C: and we still have emphasis as well , or stress , or whatever .
F: OK , well we 'll get , uh uh , I we have thoughts about those as well .
C: Yeah .
C: Great .
F: Um ,
F: the I w I would just
F: s some of this is just like my you know , by fiat .
F: I 'm going to say , this is how we use these terms .
F: I don't - you know , there 's lots of different ways in the world that people use it .
E: Yeah .
C: I that 's fine .
F: I think that , um , the other terms that are related are like focus and stress .
F: So , s
C: Mm - hmm .
F: I think that the way I we would like to think , uh , I think is focus is something that comes up in , I mean , lots of F: basically this is the information structure .
F: OK , it 's like uh , it 's not it might be that there 's a syntactic , uh , device that you use to indicate focus
C: Mm - hmm .
F: or that there are things like , you know ,
F: I think Keith was telling me , <comment> things toward the end of the sentence , post - verbal , tend to be the focused focused element ,
E: Mmm .
F: the new information .
F: You know , if I " I walked into the room " , you tend to think that , whatever , " into the room " is sort of like the more focused kind of thing .
E: Mm - hmm .
E: Yeah .
F: And when you , uh , uh , you have stress on something that might be , you know , a cue that the stressed element , or for instance , the negated element is kind of related to information structure .
F: So that 's like the new the sort of like import or whatever of of this thing .
F: Uh , so so I think that 's kind of nice to keep " focus " being an information structure term .
F: " Stress " F: I th and then there are different kinds of focus that you can bring to it .
F: So , um , like " stress " , th stress is kind of a pun on you might have like whatever , like , um , accent kind of stress .
E: Mm - hmm .
F: And that 's just a F: uh , w we 'll want to distinguish stress as a form device .
F: You know , like , oh , high volume or whatever .
E: Yeah .
F: Um ,
F: t uh , and distinguish that from it 's effect
F: which is , " Oh , the kind of focus we have is we 're emphasizing this value often as opposed to other values " , right ?
F: So focus carries along a scope .
F: Like if you 're gonna focus on this thing and you wanna know it sort of evokes all the other possibilities that it wasn't .
F: Um , so my classic my now - classic example of saying , " Oh , he did go to the meeting ? " ,
E: Mm - hmm .
E: Yeah .
F: that was my way of saying as opposed to , you know , " Oh , he didn't g " or " There was a meeting ? "
F: I think that was the example that was caught on by the linguists immediately .
E: Yeah .
E: Yeah .
F: And so , um , the like if you said he F: you know , there 's all these different things that if you put stress on a different part of it then you 're , c focusing , whatever , on , uh E: Mm - hmm .
F: " he walked to the meeting " as opposed to " he ran " ,
F: or " he did walk to the meeting " as opposed to " he didn't walk " . You know ,
E: Mm - hmm .
F: so we need to have a notation for that
F: which , um ,
F: I think that 's still in progress .
F: So , sort of I 'm still working it out .
F: But it did one one implication it does f have for the other side , which we 'll get to in a minute is that I couldn't think of a good way to say " here are the possible things that you could focus on " ,
F: cuz it seems like any entity in any sentence , you know , or any meaning component of anyth you know all the possible meanings you could have , any of them could be the subject of focus .
C: Mmm .
F: But I think one the one thing you can schematize is the kind of focus , right ?
F: So for instance , you could say it 's the the tense on this as opposed to , um , the the action . OK .
F: Or it 's uh , it 's an identity thing or a contrast with other things ,
F: or stress this value as opposed to other things .
F: So , um ,
F: it 's it is kind of like a profile profile - background thing
F: but I I can't think of like the limited set of possible meanings that you would that you would focu
E: Light up with focus , yeah .
F: light highlight
F: as opposed to other ones .
F: So it has some certain complications for the , uh , uh later on .
F: Li - I mean , uh , the best thing I can come up with is that information has a list of focused elements .
F: For instance , you Oh , one other type that I forgot to mention is like query elements
F: and that 's probably relevant for the like " where is " , you know , " the castle " kind of thing ?
E: Mm - hmm .
F: Because you might want to say that , um , location or cert certain WH words bring you know , sort of automatically focus in a , you know , " I don't know the identity of this thing " kind of way on certain elements .
F: So .
F: OK . Anyway . So that 's onl there are there are many more things that are uncl that are sort of like a little bit unstable about the notation
F: but it 's most I think it 's this is , you know , the current current form .
F: Other things we didn't totally deal with , um ,
F: well , we 've had a lot of other stuff that Keith and I have them working on in terms of like how you deal with like an adjective .
E: Oh , there 's a bunch .
E: Yeah .
F: You know , a a nominal expression .
F: And , um ,
E: Yeah .
F: I mean , we should have put an example of this