Copy Raising and Perception

ing away from certain complications that we explore in subsequent sections, we derive the meaning in (102b) for the the copy raising example in (102a) and the meaning in (103b) for the related perceptual resemblance example in (103a): (102) a. John seems to me like he’s upset. b. ∃s .seem(s , upset(john)) ∧ PSOURCE = john ∧ PGOAL = speaker (103) a. John sounds to me like he’s upset. b. ∃s .sound(s , john, upset(john)) ∧ PSOURCE = john ∧ PGOAL = speaker We thus have exactly the divisions that we have argued for. The complements of the raising verb and the perceptual resemblance verb are treated as arguments of the verbs, but they are not restricted by a thematic relation. The semantic role PSOURCE is filled by the subject’s meaning, john , in both examples. However, the subject is only a semantic argument in the second example, where it occupies a slot in the verbal relation. Thus, the subject is a semantic argument of the perceptual resemblance verb, but not of the copy raising verb. In both cases, though, John is occupying a syntactic argument position: subject. The other semantic role, PGOAL, picks out the speaker, where this information is contributed by the modifier to me, which is a syntactic adjunct and not a semantic argument. 5.4 Summary Previous sections argued that the notion of perceptual source is crucial for solving the puzzle of the absent cook and the på puzzle. The present section has concerned the status of the PSOURCE role and also the status of the PGOAL role. The copy raising PSOURCE in not an argument in the sense of the Theta Criterion. It is more similar to a Parsonian thematic relation, but the specifics of his theory do not readily capture perceptual sources and goals within the context of a semantics for copy raising and perceptual resemblance verbs. We therefore treat PSOURCE and PGOAL as more generalized roles, which we call semantic roles. All of this points to a potentially interesting conclusion. The copy raising verbs seem and appear and the perceptual resemblance verbs all crucially involve perception. Perception in turn must involve a perceiver (PGOAL) and something that is perceived (PSOURCE). However, these perceptual participants may not be encoded as thematic arguments, despite their central role in the semantics of perception. In the case of copy raising verbs, neither the perceiver nor the percept is an argument. In the case of perceptual resemblance verbs, the percept can be an argument, but the perceiver is still realized as an adjunct. It might, at first blush, be surprising that such core aspects of eventualities are not more tightly integrated into the semantics of the predicates that denote the eventualities. However, it is perhaps much less surprising when we think of temporal and locational aspects of eventualities. The semantics of the vast majority of predicates is such that they involve a time and place, but this information is typically purely implicit and is only realized explicitly in modifiers. The perceiver and percept in perception are similarly integral to these kinds of events and are similarly not necessarily tied to arguments and instead realizable as modifiers. Thus, PSOURCEs and PGOALs are entailed participants in perceptual states and there are parallels between perceptual sources/goals and temporal and locative modifiers of eventualities: eventualities in general entail a time and location, yet these entailments are only sometimes overtly realized. However, it was pointed out above that there are also differences between time and place adjuncts on the one hand and PSOURCE and PGOAL on the other. Specific verbs and classes of verbs can specify whether and how they express their perceptual sources and goals. This is captured in our analysis by reference to PSOURCE and PGOAL in the lexical entries of the verbs. Although we will not attempt to formalize it further, we assume that modifying expressions of time, place and manner are added by some more general mechanism and not included in the lexical entry of every verb. Copy Raising and Perception June 1, 2006 24