In the semantics reading group at Brown we were going over this paper by Joost Zwarts and Yoad Winter. It has lots of interesting ideas about the nature of locative prepositions in natural languages, including some neat hypotheses about why we have just the hypotheses we do. But it seems that it contains at least one false claim. Consider the attached picture. The picture seems to refute one or other of Zwarts and Winter’s claim. But I wasn’t entirely sure which one. So I was wondering what you thought about this picture. Here are some questions about the picture.
- Is the small circle above the square A?
- Is the small circle above the rectangle B?
- Is the small circle above the square C?
If you want to answer the questions before you read what Zwarts and Winter say, you might want to answer before reading on.
Got an answer yet?
Good.
The example, by the way, was mostly due to Polly Jacobson. I came up with the picture to try and prove a separate point, but managed to not notice that it had just this consequence. Things could be worse, I might have contributed nothing at all, but I also might have noticed the consequences of my own example…
The problem for Zwarts and Winter is that they say the following four things. First, the circle is above A. Secondly, the circle is not above B, it is to the left of it. Thirdly, the circle is above A. Fourthly, if something is above A and C, and B is between A and C, then it is above B. So these can’t all be true. Everyone in the reading group (except perhaps me) was convinced the first three claims were true and the generalisation was false. Does everyone here agree?
UPDATE: Sadly I used a Windows-only format for the picture. I’ve now changed it to be a GIF, which I hope is readable on all computers. Apologies for that. Some days I fear it is people like me that make some non Windows users dislike Windows so much.