Christopher Kennedy

Christopher Kennedy
University of Chicago | UC · Department of Linguistics

Ph.D.

About

74
Publications
19,216
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5,716
Citations
Introduction
Additional affiliations
September 1997 - August 2005
Northwestern University
Position
  • Professor (Associate)
May 2005 - present
University of Chicago
Position
  • Professor (Full)

Publications

Publications (74)
Article
Full-text available
Subjective predicates have two interpretive and distributional characteristics that have resisted a comprehensive analysis. First, the use of a subjective predicate to describe an object is in general felicitous only when the speaker has a particular kind of familiarity with relevant features of the object; characterizing an object as tasty, for ex...
Chapter
A large body of work in both the theoretical and experimental literature suggests that upper bound implications in simple sentences with bare numerals are entailments arising from the semantics of the numeral, rather than implicatures of the sort associated with other scalar terms. However, not all semantic analyses of numerals make the same predic...
Article
It has been frequently observed in the literature that assertions of plain sentences containing predicates like fun and frightening give rise to an acquaintance inference: they imply that the speaker has first-hand knowledge of the item under consideration. The goal of this paper is to develop and defend a broadly expressivist explanation of this p...
Chapter
Referential Effects of Contrast (RECs) involving reference resolution of adjectivally modified NPs (e.g., the tall glass) have been attributed to pragmatic reasoning based on the informativity of modification (Sedivy et al. Cognition, 71(2):109–147, 1999; Sedivy, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 32(1):3–23, 2003; Sedivy, Approaches to studying...
Article
Full-text available
Previous work has largely agreed that the verbal anaphors do it/this/that can freely be resolved with respect to information in either the linguistic or nonlinguistic context, whereas there has been more debate regarding the resolution strategy for verb phrase ellipsis. We present an experiment that confirms the intuition that interpretations of do...
Article
Across languages, SUBJECTIVE ATTITUDE VERBS (SAVs), such as English find, differ from ordinary doxastic attitude verbs (such as English believe) in that they require their complement to be subjective in a particular way. The goal of this paper is to develop a semantics for SAVs that predicts this fact but also captures the finer-grained differences...
Article
Gradable adjectives (GAs) provide an ideal domain for evaluating theories of the interface betwen semantic interpretation and context: relative and absolute GAs are both context dependent, but absolute adjectives can have precise meanings in a way that relative adjectives cannot. We provide processing evidence for the hypothesis that imprecision in...
Article
Both relative adjectives (RAs) like ‘big’ and absolute adjectives (AAs) like ‘empty’ are sensitive to the context: in the former case, the context determines how much size is required to count as big; in the latter, the context determines how much deviation from total emptiness is allowed to count as empty. Whereas it is generally agreed that the r...
Article
Full-text available
A challenge for the semantic and pragmatic analysis of modified numerals is how to account for ignorance implications about exact quantity. Superlative-modified numerals (at least/most six) systematically give rise to such implications while their comparative-modified counterparts (more/fewer than sixggy) do not, but the distribution of ignorance i...
Article
It is well known that the interpretation of quantificational expressions in the comparative clause poses a serious challenge for semantic analyses of the English comparative. In this paper, we develop a new analysis of the comparative clause designed to meet this challenge, in which a silent occurrence of the negative degree quantifier no (observed...
Chapter
We present a semantic analysis of the adverb well which captures its degree and manner readings in a principled fashion via the Generative Lexicon Selective Binding composition rule. The analysis integrates Kennedy and McNally's (2005) treatment of scale structure with Generative Lexicon theory, and embeds the resulting semantics in HPSG.
Article
This paper examines the use of scalar adjectives in two contexts that have played a role in discussions of the subjective/objective distinction: ‘faultless disagreement’ discourses and the nonfinite complement position of the subjective attitude verb find. I argue that the pattern of distribution and interpretation of scalar adjectives in these con...
Book
First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Article
Mandarin Chinese has two strategies for forming comparatives of superiority: one in which the standard of comparison is introduced by the morpheme bi, and one that resembles a transitive verb construction, in which the standard of comparison directly follows a gradable adjective. The ‘transitive comparative’ exhibits two special restrictions: the p...
Chapter
Focusing on the analysis of degree achievements, Kennedy and Levin (2008) suggest that it is possible to provide a unified analysis of verbs of variable telicity in which aspect is determined by a function that measures the degree to which an object changes relative to some scalar dimension over the course of an event, which they refer to as a meas...
Article
Full-text available
different structures used for the expression of comparison. A cross-linguistic study of comparative structure, therefore, helps to provide a clear picture of the diversity in the expression of comparison as well as shed light on the internal structure of the syntactic constituents that comparative structures are composed of in each language studied...
Chapter
Number words have played a central role in debates about the relation between context and meaning for decades. While current analyses of these terms and the sentences in which they appear differ in their details, they typically agree that interpretations of sentences containing number words crucially involve pragmatic enrichment of a more basic mea...
Chapter
Vagueness and comparison are linked in a number of different ways. The most obvious is that, at least when they are expressed by adjectives (in English), vague predicates have morphosyntactically comparative forms. These forms are often invoked in formulations of the inductive premise of the sorites paradox:
Article
Full-text available
Color adjectives have played a central role in work on language typology and variation, but there has been relatively little investigation of their meanings by researchers in formal semantics. This is particularly surprising given the fact that color terms have been at the center of debates in the philosophy of language over foundational questions,...
Article
Full-text available
This article investigates the semantics of sentences that express numerical averages, focusing initially on cases such as ‘The average American has 2.3 children’. Such sentences have been used both by linguists and philosophers to argue for a disjuncture between semantics and ontology. For example, Noam Chomsky and Norbert Hornstein have used them...
Article
Full-text available
This paper explores what children and adults know about three specific ways that meaning and context interact: the interpretation of expressions whose extensions vary in different contexts (semantic context dependence); conditions on the felicitous use of expressions in a discourse context (presupposition accommodation) and informative uses of expr...
Article
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This paper investigates the way that linguistic expressions influence vagueness, focusing on the interpretation of the positive (unmarked) form of gradable adjectives. I begin by developing a semantic analysis of the positive form of ‘relative’ gradable adjectives, expanding on previous proposals by further motivating a semantic basis for vagueness...
Article
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Article
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Norwegian dialects, including Northern Norwegian (NN), make use of degree questions with no overt degree operator (Null Degree Questions, NDQs). These questions have a grad- able adjective in situ and subject-verb inversion, for exam ple Er du gammel?, literally 'Are you old?', has the interpretation "How old are you?" In this pape r we provide a d...
Article
The processing of ellipsis sentences can provide clues to their structure, as their structure can influence their processing. We present two studies examining the processing of a previously unexplored subclass of ellipsis sentence, gapping sentences in which one of the remnants is a preposed PP (PPGs). Like some other gapping structures, PPGs are a...
Article
Full-text available
Focusing on the examples of multiple degree modification, this paper argues that the class of degree expressions in English is syntactically and semantically diverse, subdivided both according to the semantic effects of its members and according to the extent to which they permit, and participate in, multiple layers of modification. We argue that t...
Article
Full-text available
In this article we develop a semantic typology of gradable predicates, with special emphasis on deverbal adjectives. We argue for the linguistic relevance of this typology by demonstrating that the distribution and interpretation of degree modifiers is sensitive to its twomajor classificatory parameters: (1) whether a gradable predicate is associat...
Article
Comparative constructions are used to express explicit orderings between two objects with respect to the degree or amount to which they pos-sess some gradable property. The semantic analysis of comparatives is built on top of a more general analysis of gradable predicates, which makes cru-cial uses of abstract representations of measurement (scales...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Two studies demonstrate that children have knowledge of scalar distinctions between three sub-classes of gradable adjectives: relative (big, long), absolute with a maximal standard (full), and absolute with a minimal standard (spotted). Performance on these adjectives is compared with controls (shape, color, mood). Children appropriately shift the...
Article
Full-text available
This paper investigates an unusual identity constraint on English verb phrase ellipsis which imposes the following requirement: when an elliptical relation holds between two verb phrases A and B such that A is contained in an argument b of B, then the corresponding argument a of A must be identical to b. The paper argues that this is due to two fac...
Article
Full-text available
We present an algorithm for anaphora resolution which is a modified and extended version of that developed by (Lappin and Leass, 1994). In contrast to that work, our algorithm does not require in-depth, full, syntactic parsing of text. Instead, with minimal compromise in output quality, the modifications enable the resolution process to work from t...
Article
Full-text available
This paper addresses a question that has been of interest to researchers on ellipsis since the very early days of work in generative grammar: do constituents targeted by various types of ellipsis operations have syntac-tic structure at some level (or levels) of representation, or can the various properties of ellipsis constructions be accounted for...
Article
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Tradiiaonally, the document summansahon task has been tackled other as a natural language processmg problem, with an mstanhated meanrag tnplate being rndeocl mto cohent prose, or as a passage xiractlon problem, where cetam fragments 0ypcally sentences) of the source document am deemed to be highly represeniative'of its content, and thus dehverod as...
Article
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This paper investigates the syntax of comparative deletion and comparative subdeletion in English and argues that the apparently paradoxical behavior of these two types of clausal comparative constructions is due to a derivational distinction between them: comparative deletion involves overt movement plus deletion of a compared phrase, while compar...
Article
Linguistics Department (2016 Sheridan Rd.), Rm. 19 491-8054 (t); 491-3770 (f) Office hours by appointment Course Description This course provides an introduction to issues and problems in the syntax of so-called "A-movement constructions" and presents a general picture of the fundamental role that these constructions have played in shaping and defi...
Article
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This paper uses the distribution and interpretation of antonymous adjectives in comparative constructions as an empirical basis to argue that abstract representations of measurement, or degrees, must be modeled as intervals on a scale, rather than as points, as commonly assumed. I begin by demonstrating that the facts in this domain must be account...
Article
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The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
Article
reference to abstract representations of measurement, or "scales". A question that has not been seriously addressed, however, is whether scalar representations underlie the semantic properties of categories other than gradable adjectives. This question is important because gradability is not just a property of adjectives, but of nouns, verbs, and p...
Article
Full-text available
We present an algorithm for anaphora resolution which is a modified and extended version of that developed by (Lappin and Leass, 1994). In contrast to that work, our algorithm does not require in-depth, full, syntactic parsing of text. Instead, with minimal compromise in output quality, the modifications enable the resolution process to work from t...
Article
Full-text available
Present day summarisation technologies are imperfect. At a certain level of abstraction, they all work by performing data reduction over the original document source. In order for such summaries to be useful, it is necessary to be able to know how they relate to the documents. In order for such summaries to be usable, it is necessary for them to fu...
Article
Full-text available
Summarisation is poised to become a generally accepted solution to the larger problem of content analysis. We offer an alternative perspective on this problem, by tackling the complementary task of content characterisation; our motivation for doing so is to avoid some of the fundamental shortcomings of summarisation technologies today. Traditionall...
Article
Full-text available
The identification and extraction of technical terms is one of the better understood and most robust natural language processing (NLP) technologies within the current state of the art of language engineering. In generic information management contexts, terms have been used primarily for procedures seeking to identify a set of phrases that is useful...
Article
Full-text available
This chapter investigates an unusual identity constraint on English Verb Phrase Ellipsis which imposes the following requirement: when an elliptical relation holds between two verb phrases A and B such that A is contained in an argument b of B, then the corresponding argument a of A must be identical to b. The paper argues that this is due to two f...
Article
Full-text available
Comparatives are among the most extensively investigatedconstructions in generative grammar, yet comparativesinvolving attributive adjectives have received a relativelysmall amount of attention. This paper investigates a complexarray of facts in this domain that shows that attributivecomparatives, unlike other comparatives, are well-formed onlyif s...
Article
Full-text available
this paper is three puzzles involving the acceptability of degree modification of deverbal gradable adjectives by well, very, and much. First, why do the participles in (1) accept degree modification by well but not very? (1) a. Martin Beck is well/??very acquainted with the facts of the case.
Conference Paper
Summarisation technologies today work, in essence, by performing data reduction over the original document source. Document fragments, identified as particularly representative of content, are extracted and offered to the user. Typically, such fragments are sentence-sized, and the summary is nothing more than a concatenation of these sentences. We...
Conference Paper
We describe a dynamic document genre for online news, specifically designed to support end users in both easily skimming news stories as well as reading them in-depth. Through careful analysis of the needs of online news readers, and understanding the opportunities and constraints of the computational medium, we set out to define characteristics of...
Article
Full-text available
published or submitted for publication is peer reviewed
Conference Paper
The identification and extraction of technical terms is one of the better understood and most robust natural language processing (NLP) technologies within the current state of the art of language engineering. What is particularly interesting here is the clear understanding how to derive, from their linguistic properties, computational procedures fo...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
A number of linguistic and stylistic devices are employed in text-based discourse for the purposes of introducing, defining,re- fining,and re-introducing discourse entities. This paper looks at one of the most pervasive of these mechanisms, anaphora, and addresses the question of how current computational approaches to anaphora scale up to building...
Article
Full-text available
1 Introduction * Sentences (1)-(3) illustrate an ellipsis operation that permits a constituent in the clausal complement of than (henceforth the 'comparative clause') in attributive AP comparatives to be phonologically null in the surface form. (1) Rex wrote a more interesting abstract than I thought he wrote. (2) Rex wrote a more interesting abstr...
Article
Full-text available
This paper investigates the grammatical principles governing the interpre-tation of a class of vague predicates — gradable adjectives — focusing on the context dependence of the 'standard of comparison' with respect to which these predicates are judged to be true. I show that the range of variability in interpretation of the standard of comparison...
Article
reference to abstract representations of measurement, or “scales”. A question that has not been seriously addressed, however, is whether scalar representations underlie the semantic properties of categories other than gradable adjectives. This question is important because gradability is not just a property of adjectives, but of nouns, verbs, and p...
Article
This paper investigates the grammatical principles governing the inter­ pretation of vague predicates, focusing on the context dependence of the 'standard of comparison' with respect to which gradable predicates are judged to be true. I argue that the range of variability in interpretation of the standard is larger than has generally been assumed,...
Article
Full-text available
Recent work in Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993, McCarthy and Prince 1993, to appear) has suggested that phonological regularities can be explained without reference to phonological rules, strictly in terms of constraints on representational well- formedness. A unique aspect of Optimality Theory (OT) is that candidates are evaluated in...
Article
Full-text available
Focusing on the case of deverbal gradable adjectives such as acquainted, we show that the selective behavior of degree modifiers such as very and well provides an important prove on the semantic typology of adjectives. Specifically, we demonstrate that the distribution of degree modifiers is closely tied to the scalar structure of the adjectives th...

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