In formal semantics conservativity is a proposed linguistic universal which states that any

determiner Determiner, also called determinative ( abbreviated ), is a term used in some models of grammatical description to describe a word or affix belonging to a class of noun modifiers. A determiner combines with a noun to express its reference. Examp ...

D

must obey the equivalence

D(A,B) \leftrightarrow D(A, A\cap B)

. For instance, the English determiner "every" can be seen to be conservative by the equivalence of the following two sentences, schematized in generalized quantifier notation to the right. # Every aardvark bites.

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \rightsquigarrow every(A,B)

# Every aardvark is an aardvark that bites.

\ \ \rightsquigarrow every(A,A\cap B)

Conceptually, conservativity can be understood as saying that the elements of

B

which are not elements of

A

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, Head (linguistics), headed, in this case, by the determin ...

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

denotation In linguistics and philosophy, the denotation of a word or expression is its strictly literal meaning. For instance, the English word "warm" denotes the property of having high temperature. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of meaning in ...

s of natural language expressions. For instance, consider the imaginary determiner

shmore

defined so that

shmore(A,B)

is true iff

, A, >, B,

. If there are 50 biting aardvarks, 50 non-biting aardvarks, and millions of non-aardvark biters,

shmore(A,B)

will be false but

shmore(A, A\cap B)

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 syntax, syntactic unit composed of a verb and its argument (linguistics), arguments except the subject (grammar), subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause. Thus, in the sentence ''A fat man quic ...

s. # Only some aardvarks bite. # This aardvark will only small>VP bite playfully. Different analyses have treated conservativity as a constraint on the

lexicon A lexicon (plural: lexicons, rarely lexica) 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 Greek word () ...

, 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 ...

Notes

Semantics Formal semantics (natural language) {{semantics-stub

See also

Notes