Some arguments include imperative clauses. For example: ‘Buy me a drink; you can’t buy me that drink unless you go to the bar; so, go to the bar!’ How should we build a logic that predicts which of these arguments are good? Because imperatives aren’t truth apt and so don’t stand in relations of truth preservation, this technical question gives rise to a foundational one: What would be the subject matter of this logic? I argue that declaratives are used to (...) produce beliefs, imperatives are used to produce intentions, and beliefs and intentions are subject to rational requirements. An argument will strike us as valid when anyone whose mental state satisfies the premises is rationally required to satisfy the conclusion. For example, the above argument reflects the principle that it is irrational not to intend what one takes to be the necessary means to one’s intended ends. I argue that all intuitively good patterns of imperative inference can be explained using off-the-shelf formulations of our rational requirements. I then develop a formal-semantic theory embodying this view that predicts a range of data, including free-choice effects and Ross’s paradox. The resulting theory shows one way that our aspirations to rational agency can be discerned in the patterns of our speech, and is a case study in how the philosophy of language and the philosophy of action can be mutually illuminating. (shrink)

Concord describes a natural language phenomenon in which a single logical meaning is expressed syntactically on multiple lexical items. The canonical example is negative concord, in which multiple negative expressions are used, but a single negation is interpreted. Formally similar phenomena have been observed for the redundant marking of distributivity and definiteness. Inspired by recent dynamic analyses of these latter two phenomena, we extend a similar dynamic analysis to negative concord. We propose that negative concord items introduce a discourse referent, (...) but then test that no discourse referent has been introduced in any assignment. These apparently contradictory requirements are licensed with split scope around negation: introduction occurs below negation; the test appears above it. The analysis successfully predicts that negative concord items must be licensed by a sufficiently local negative operator. We further show that modulation of what is at-issue can account for cases in which NC items themselves carry negative force. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between dynamic and truth conditional semantics for epistemic modals. It provides a generalization of a standard dynamic update semantics for modals. This new semantics derives a Kripke semantics for modals and a standard dynamic semantics for modals as special cases. The semantics allows for new characterizations of a variety of principles in modal logic, including the inconsistency of ‘p and might not p’. Finally, the semantics provides a construction procedure for transforming any truth conditional semantics (...) for modals into a dynamic semantics for modals with similar properties. (shrink)

Extant attempts to incorporate _intensionality_ into the grammar either systematically over-generate, or systematically under-generate. In this paper, building on Keshet (Linguist and Philos 33(4):251–283, 2011), we aim to reconcile a scopal account of _de re_ with the possibility of _de re_ readings out of scope islands. By adapting compositional techniques for dealing with exceptionally scoping indefinites (Charlow, in On the semantics of exceptional scope, PhD thesis, Rutgers University, 2014; The scope of alternatives: indefiniteness and islands. Linguist and Philos 43(4):427–472, 2020), (...) we develop an intensional grammar in which exceptional _de re_ is achieved via _cyclic scope_. World-sensitive expressions are converted into scope-takers via a constrained inventory of type-flexible operators. Type flexibility _explains_ the possibility of apparently island-violating _de re_ by predicting the possibility of cyclic scope-taking. We argue that the resulting theory—which we dub the _flexible scope theory_—is sufficiently expressive to address the under-generation issues of current accounts, while still capturing constraints on _de re_ in an explanatory fashion. (shrink)

In this paper, we aim to account for the distribution and interpretation of a novel class of free choice items in Romanian, which we refer to as additive free choice items (ADD-FCIs). We show that the internal composition of ADD-FCIs, as well as their distribution, differs from that attested for other free choice paradigms discussed in the literature. Morphologically, ADD-FCIs are a more complex variant of regular universal FCIs, by virtue of an additional morpheme. This morpheme plays an additive role (...) when it functions as a stand-alone particle, and we propose that its role is similarly additive when it functions as an infix in ADD-FCIs. Couched in an exhaustification framework, we put forward a novel compositional account that can derive the interpretation of these ADD-FCIs. As for their distribution, these elements are only found in the presence of the conditional mood, as well as unconditional structures. We show how our analysis, coupled with the Viability Constraint used to explain the distribution of regular FCIs, can also account for their restricted distribution. In doing so, we further show how the pattern we investigate opens new perspectives regarding the licensing of free choice items in unconditionals. (shrink)

Plural definite descriptions across many languages display two well-known properties. First, they can give rise to so-called non-maximal readings, in the sense that they ‘allow for exceptions’. Second, while they tend to have a quasi-universal quantificational force in affirmative sentences, they tend to be interpreted existentially in the scope of negation. Building on previous works, we offer a theory in which sentences containing plural definite expressions trigger a family of possible interpretations, and where general principles of language use account for (...) their interpretation in various contexts and syntactic environments. Our theory solves a number of problems that these previous works encounter, and has broader empirical coverage in that it offers a precise analysis for sentences that display complex interactions between plural definites, quantifiers and bound variables, as well as for cases involving non-distributive predicates. The resulting proposal is briefly compared with an alternative proposal by Križ, which has similar coverage but is based on a very different architecture and sometimes makes subtly different predictions. (shrink)

Natural language semanticists have often found it useful to assume that all expressions denote sets of values. The approach is most prominent in the study of questions and prosodic focus, but also common in work on indefinites, disjunction, negative polarity, and scalar implicature. However, the most popular compositional implementation of this idea is known to face technical obstacles in the presence of object-language binding constructs, including, chiefly, lambda abstraction. The problem has been well-described on several occasions in the literature, and (...) in fact several solutions have been explored. This paper seeks to formalize the challenge of defining an indeterminate semantics for binding operators, and to formally establish the intuition that the challenge is in fact insurmountable. The primary benefit to this exercise is that it offers an abstract characterization of what it means to lift an operation from one semantic space to another, a notion which may be applied to domains having nothing to do with sets of alternatives. (shrink)

This article describes a novel pattern of interpretations associated with universal determiners like ‘each’ and ‘every’. It is demonstrated that these canonically distributive quantifiers can give rise to surprising collective readings when they quantify into sub-clausal constituents, especially other Determiner Phrases. For instance, ‘two cards from each player’ can be understood to pick out a single assorted deck of cards, one whose contents co-vary with the players. Yet this deck as a whole may be said to participate in a range (...) of collective activities (being shuffled together, being traded en masse, not fitting into a standard pack, etc.). Such examples are shown to differ from more familiar _cumulative_ readings of the same quantifiers. A compositional analysis is offered that generalizes Krifka’s ( 2001 ) method of quantification into speech acts in order to accommodate quantification into a larger class of non-truth-denoting semantic objects, including in these cases, entities. (shrink)

Research in dynamic semantics has made strides by studying various aspects of discourse in terms of computational effect systems, for example, monads (Shan, 2002; Charlow, 2014), Barker and 2014), (Maršik, 2016). We provide a system, based on graded monads, that synthesizes insights from these programs by formalizing individual discourse phenomena in terms of separate effects, or grades. Included are effects for introducing and retrieving discourse referents, non-determinism for indefiniteness, and generalized quantifier meanings. We formalize the behavior of individual effects, as (...) well as the interactions between effects, in terms of algebraic laws tailored to the relevant discourse phenomena. The system we propose is thus modular and suggests a novel approach to integrating formal accounts of distinct semantic phenomena. Finally, we give an interpretation of the system into pure \( \lambda \) -calculus that respects the laws. Future work will aim to integrate more discourse phenomena using the same methodology, for example, presupposition and conventional implicature. (shrink)