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Referential and Quantificational Indefinites
Abstract
The formal semantics that we have proposed for definite and indefinite descriptions analyzes them both as variable-binding operators and as referring terms. It is the referential analysis which makes it possible to account for the facts outlined in Section 2, e.g. for the purely instrumental role of the descriptive content; for the appearance of unusually wide scope readings relative to other quantifiers, higher predicates, and island boundaries; for the fact that the island-escaping readings are always equivalent to maximally wide scope quantifiers; and for the appearance of violations of the identity conditions on variables in deleted constituents. We would emphasize that this is not a random collection of observations. They cohere naturally with each other, and with facts about other phrases that are unambigously referential.We conceded at the outset of this paper that the referential use of an indefinite noun phrase does not, by itself, motivate the postulation of a referential interpretation. Our argument has been that the behavior of indefinites in complex sentences cannot be economically described, and certainly cannot be explained, unless a referential interpretation is assumed. It could be accounted for in pragmatic terms only if the whole theory of scope relations and of conditions on deletion could be eliminated from the semantics and incorporated into a purely pragmatic theory. But this seems unlikely.
... survey.n))))) Most of these propagation functions never consider SLFs because the inference context and scope island constraints (Fodor & Sag, 1982;Park, 1995;Ruys & Winter, 2011;Barker, 2015) eliminate the possibility of the scoping affecting the expressions participating in the substitution. This leads to a considerable speed advantage over the polarity marking functions. ...
We describe the foundations and the systematization of natural logic-like monotonic inference using unscoped episodic logical forms (ULFs) that as reported by Kim et al. (Proceedings of the 1st and 2nd Workshops on Natural Logic Meets Machine Learning (NALOMA), Groningen, 2021a, b) introduced and first evaluated. In addition to providing a more detailed explanation of the theory and system, we present results from extending the inference manager to address a few of the limitations that as reported by Kim et al. (Proceedings of the 1st and 2nd Workshops on Natural Logic Meets Machine Learning (NALOMA), Groningen, 2021b) naive system has. Namely, we add mechanisms to incorporate lexical information from the hypothesis (or goal) sentence, enable the inference manager to consider multiple possible scopings for a single sentence, and match against the goal using English rather than the ULF.
... So one hypothesis that we could entertain is that the THEME argument of xatırlamaq is just an indefinite which has to take exceptional scope. That indefinites can take exceptional scope has been observed in the literature (Fodor and Sag 1982;Charlow 2014, a.m.o.), for example the indefinite in (81) can take scope outside of the conditional, suggesting that there is a particular relative of the speaker, such that if that relative dies, they will inherit a condo. ...
Factivity alternations received at least two kinds of explanations in the literature: there are approaches that attribute the two readings to two different LFs and approaches that derive the presence/absence of a factive inference by appealing to general pragmatic mechanisms. In this paper I investigate verbs displaying two different kinds of factivity alternations in Azeri and argue for the former view of how factivity alternations emerge.
... The important theoretical difference between homonymy and polysemy is that with homonymy we have two (or many) words, two (or many) unrelated meanings and one word form, which arguably is a case of accidental multiple encoding, like in 22 In the sense of Karttunen (1976); compare also Fodor and Sag (1982). 23 More examples have been given by Burge (1973), Geurts (1997), Elbourne (2005), and Rami (2015). ...
Proper names are usually considered devices of singular reference but, when considered as word-types, they also exhibit other kinds of uses. In this paper I intend to show that systematic kinds of uses of proper names considered as word-types can be accounted for by a generalized rule-based conception of systematic polysemy, one which not only postulates a multiplicity of stable senses for an expression, but also a multiplicity of content generating rules, each of which determines potentially different contents in different contexts. In contrast to the currently extant polysemous conceptions of proper names (Leckie in Philos Stud 165:1139–1160, 2013), which only encompass individual and predicative uses, the presented proposal concerns all systematic uses of proper names considered in the literature, i.e., individual, predicative, deferred, descriptive, anaphoric, and bound uses of proper names. The resulting conception accommodates referential intuition about the default individual uses of proper names while also admitting other kinds of uses without generating homonymy. It transpires that proper names are semantically underdetermined and context-sensitive expressions.
... The baby lost his/her baby hair.'Considering that topics are definite DPs(Fodor & Sag 1982), Munhoz & Naves offer as evidence for their proposal the observation that the Nominative-possessors at issue have referential interpretations. However, sentences like (20) are grammatical. ...
In this paper, we analyze external possessors in Brazilian Portuguese, showing that those realizing Nominative-Case (Nominative-possessors) are not syntactically uniform, varying derivationally. These variations are related to the vP internal structure. In agentive argument structures, Nominative-possessors are licensed in obligatory control configurations. Non-agentive argument structures give rise to raising configurations. In turn, raising configurations are not syntactically uniform either. Unaccusative vPs, differently from inchoative ones, contain a dative position at the vP edge. This position is used as an intermediate landing site for the raised Nominative-possessor. Importantly, a copy of a possessor in this intermediate position alters information structure at LF, having three interpretative effects: (a) affectedness: the possessor is interpreted as being affected by the denoted event, (b) presupposition of existence: the possessor must be an existent entity, and (b) contextual confinement: the possessor-possessum is interpreted as an integral part-whole at the event time.
... There is still another notion interfering with uniqueness and familiarity that is relevant in our study on the use and meaning of nominal expressions. This is specificity (Fodor & Sag, 1982), which determines whether a description is associated with some specific referent or not. 9 Definite nominals in languages with articles are most often considered to have a specific reference, but indefinites are either specific or non-specific. ...
This article focuses on the choice of nominal forms in a language with articles (Catalan) in comparison to a language without articles (Russian). An experimental study (consisting of various naturalness judgment tasks) was run with speakers of these two languages which allowed to show that in bridging contexts native speakers' preferences vary when reference is made to one single individual or to two disjoint referents. In the former case, Catalan speakers chose (in)definite NPs depending on their accessibility to contextual information that guarantees a unique interpretation (or the lack of it) for the entity referred to. Russian speakers chose bare nominals as a default form. When reference is made to two disjoint referents (as encoded by the presence of an additional altre/drugoj "other" NP), speakers prefer an optimal combination of two indefinite NPs (i.e., un NP followed by un altre NP in Catalan; odin "some/a" NP followed by drugoj NP in Russian). This study shows how speakers of the two languages manage to combine grammatical knowledge (related to the meaning of the definite and the indefinite articles and altre in Catalan; and the meaning of bare nominals, odin and drugoj in Russian) with world knowledge activation and accessibility to discourse information.
Este artículo analiza la distribución de los pronombres reasuntivos que aparecen en las oraciones de relativo modales del español. La variación sintáctica se explora por medio de algunos diagnósticos, como la naturaleza opcional del pronombre y su valor de desambiguación del antecedente de la oración. La reasunción en estas estructuras no puede derivarse de los mecanismos generales que rigen la presencia o ausencia del clítico en contextos no subordinados. El análisis de las construcciones modales, que se conciben como relativas de interpretación de tipo, sigue las pautas generales de otros estudios formales sobre los pronombres reasuntivos del español.
The purpose of this chapter is to define the notion of justification for doxastic reports, sentences of the form “\(\mathcal{S}\) believes that α”. What makes the problem particularly complex is the presence, in doxastic reports of natural languages, of a well-known ambiguity tracing back to Aristotle, and called in the Middle Age the De Dicto/De Re ambiguity ; it is therefore necessary to analyze preliminarily this ambiguity. In the Introduction (Sect. 7.1) it is argued that the De Dicto/De Re ambiguity conceals in fact two different ambiguities and distinctions: the Transparent/Opaque (TO) one and the Epistemic Specific/Non-specific (ESN) one. Section 7.2 is devoted to the TO ambiguity; in Sects. 7.2.1–7.2.5 it is argued that the foundational puzzles concerning it do not admit an optimal solution within the framework of externalist semantics; in Sects. 7.2.6–7.2.10 the distinction is analyzed and formally represented, within the framework of the internalist semantics outlined in Chaps. 4 and 5, as concerning not two kinds of belief but two different propositions semantically expressed—for the Believer and for the Reporter, respectively—by the subordinate clause of the belief report. In Sect. 7.3 a solution to the Paradox of Analysis is suggested. Sect. 7.4 is devoted to the ESN distinction; in Sect. 7.4.1 it is argued that it cannot be represented in terms of scope; in Sect. 7.4.2 a distinction is introduced between to kinds of cognitive states which can serve as justifications for sentences of the form ∃xα; in Sect. 7.4.3 the distinction is connected to the one between the assertibility conditions, within intuitionistic logic, of ∃xα and ¬∀x¬α; in Sect. 7.4.4 and in Sect. 7.4.5 the distinction is used to account for the ESN ambiguity.KeywordsBelief-reportsPropositional attitudesDe dicto/de reSpecific/non-specificSynonymyMates’ puzzleFrege’s puzzleKripke’s puzzleQuineInternalist semanticsParadox of analysisCognitive statesIntuitionism
Idiomatic verb phrases (e.g., kick the bucket, fig. 'to die') vary in their syntactic flexibility: they can undergo operations like, e.g., passivization (“The bucket was kicked”) to varying degrees. We (re-)consider potential sources of this variability. It has been proposed that compositionality influences syntactic flexibility of idioms. In the first part of the paper, we reassess this finding from a methodological perspective by replicating earlier experiments on German and English, in which we change the previously used – and potentially biased – methods of measuring compositionality. Our results for German are compatible with the view that higher compositionality makes some of the tested structures more acceptable (most consistently: scrambling, prefield fronting, and which-questions), while we do not find a connection between compositionality and flexibility for English. In the second part of the paper, we present an additional experiment following up on the German findings. We extend the empirical domain and explore factors which – in contrast to compositionality – have the potential of explaining the syntactic flexibility of both idioms and non-idioms. We find that definiteness influences the flexibility of idioms and non-idioms in similar ways, supporting the view that both types of expressions are subject to the same grammatical rules. We discuss referentiality as a potential underlying semantic source for the behavior of both idioms and non-idioms.
Original essays on reference and referring by leading scholars that combine breadth of coverage with thematic unity.
These fifteen original essays address the core semantic concepts of reference and referring from both philosophical and linguistic perspectives. After an introductory essay that casts current trends in reference and referring in terms of an ongoing dialogue between Fregean and Russellian approaches, the book addresses specific topics, balancing breadth of coverage with thematic unity.
The contributors, all leading or emerging scholars, address trenchant neo-Fregean challenges to the direct reference position; consider what positive claims can be made about the mechanism of reference; address the role of a theory of reference within broader theoretical context; and investigate other kinds of linguistic expressions used in referring activities that may themselves be referring expressions.
The topical unity and accessibility of the essays, the stage-setting introductory essay, and the comprehensive index combine to make Reference and Referring, along with the other books in the Topics in Contemporary Philosophy series, appropriate for use in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses.
The paper proposes an account of asymmetries in agreement patterns that obtain in restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses headed by hybrid agreement nouns 'd(j)eca '‘children’, 'braća '‘brothers’, and 'gospoda '‘gentry’ in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS). We note that relative clauses headed by hybrid nouns display different possibilities of agreement morphology on the relative pronoun 'koji/a/e '‘which’, depending, on the one hand, on whether the relative clause is restrictive or non-restrictive and on the other, on the case of the relative pronoun. We argue that the observed differences are the result of a conspiracy of the following factors: (i) hybrid number-agreement nouns introduce a null plural pronoun unspecified for gender (Postal 1966; den Dikken 2001; Torrego and Laga 2015), (ii) all plural case forms of the relative pronoun except for nominative and accusative show full gender syncretism (Alsina and Arsenijević 2012b), and (iii) non-restrictive relative clauses involve a null definite pronoun and attach to the head noun higher than the restrictive relative clauses (Postal 1994; de Vries 2002; 2006). We maintain that the facts discussed in the paper argue against analyses which derive the differences between restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses from their LF representations, rather than from their overt syntax.
This chapter discusses movement transformations and relative clauses. An adequate grammar of English must provide constraints on the syntax to prevent violation of these conditions and forestall the production of ungrammatical sentences. The grammar given by Montague in PTQ predicts that the sentences are two ways ambiguous, the ambiguity centering on the relative scopes of the quantifiers a and every. However, neither sentence actually is ambiguous. In English, one cannot relativize an element that belongs to a relative clause, and an adequate grammar of the language must take this into account. Thus, the Montague grammar claims that the fact that elements of relative clauses cannot be relativized, and the fact that such elements always have narrower scope than the NP head of their relative clause is somehow related. Whether this claim is empirically justifiable on purely linguistic grounds remains to be seen. If it is, the kind of grammar advocated by Montague receives empirical support of particular significance, as no standard theory can associate two such facts so closely.
Rodman (1976) makes the extremely interesting and attractive proposal that quantifier scope relationships are governed by the constraints that Ross (1967) proposed for certain movement and other syntactic transformations. Similar proposals have been made by Postal (1974) and Fauconnier (1975). Such claims are of great interest to linguists since potentially they not only identify semantic properties of natural languages which distinguish them from formal languages (thereby helping to characterize that subset of all possible languages which is the set of possible natural languages) but they also point the way towards a unified account of certain characteristics of both the syntax and semantics of natural languages. In this paper I shall examine Rodman’s proposal in the light of a Montague approach to the interpretation of transformational syntaxes. I shall restrict my attention mainly to the complex NP constraint with respect to relative clauses, but I believe that my remarks will generalize to other types of complex NP and also to cases involving the sentential subject constraint. I shall suggest that some rather obvious apparent counterexamples can, in fact, be explained away and I shall point out some examples where it seems extremely difficult to tell whether there is a reading associated with the sentence which would provide a counterexample.