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The syntax and processing of relative clauses in Mandarin Chinese
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003)
This thesis investigates relative clauses (henceforth RCs) in Mandarin Chinese as spoken in Taiwan from both syntactic and processing perspectives. I also explore the interaction between these two areas, for example, how ...
Moral Status
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003)
Chapters One through Three present the following view: (i) I explain moral status as follows: something has moral status just in case we have reasons not to cause harms to it simply in virtue of the badness of the harms ...
The autonomy of the political
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003)
This thesis examines and critically assesses five arguments for the autonomy of the political. The arguments I examine are those of Niccol6 Machiavelli, Jean Bodin, Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt, and John Rawls. After ...
Conventionalism
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003)
Certain fundamental philosophical disputes, in contrast to disputes in the empirical sciences, are characterized by the persistence of disagreement. This has led some to endorse conventionalism, the view that the 'facts ...
Elements of number theory
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003)
The dissertation argues for the necessity of a morphosemantic theory of number, that is, a theory of number serviceable both to semantics and morphology. The basis for this position, and the empirical core of the dissertation, ...
Skepticism avoided
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003)
I evaluate three replies to skepticism, drawing conclusions about the meaning of "justified", the viability of foundationalism, the value of knowledge, and the role of belief in rational action. In the first chapter, I ...
Why even ask? : on the pragmatics of questions and the semantics of answers
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003)
This work investigates the semantics-pragmatics and syntax-pragmatics interface of interrogatives, focusing on the effect of presupposition-triggering expressions like even and Negative Polarity Items (NPIs). In exploring ...
Understanding language
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003)
My dissertation concerns the nature of linguistic understanding. A standard view about linguistic understanding is that it is a propositional knowledge state. The following is an instance of this view: given a speaker S ...
Intonation and interface conditions
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003)
The thesis presents a theoretical and experimental investigation of the interaction between focus intonation pattern (FIP) and certain syntactic phenomena-especially those involving wh-questions-in Japanese. A phonological ...
The causal and the moral
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003)
My dissertation is about the following two questions: The causal question: When is something a cause of something else? The moral question: When is someone morally responsible for something? I examine the way in which these ...