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Existentials, predication, and modification

Linguistics and Philosophy 32 (1):1-50 (2009)

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Semantics with Assignment Variables.Alex Silk - 2021 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.details This book combines insights from philosophy and linguistics to develop a novel framework for theorizing about linguistic meaning and the role of context in interpretation. A key innovation is to introduce explicit representations of context — assignment variables — in the syntax and semantics of natural language. The proposed theory systematizes a spectrum of “shifting” phenomena in which the context relevant for interpreting certain expressions depends on features of the linguistic environment. Central applications include local and nonlocal contextual dependencies with (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 1 citation
Bare Quantifiers.Zoltán Gendler Szabó - 2011 - Philosophical Review 120 (2):247-283.details We design new languages, by and large, in order to bypass complexities and limitations within the languages we already have. But when we are concerned with language itself we should guard against projecting the simple and powerful syntax and semantics we have concocted back into the sentences we encounter. For some of the features of English, French, or Ancient Greek we routinely abstract away from in the process of formalization might be linguistic universals – the very features that set human (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 10 citations
Context dependence and implicit arguments in existentials.Itamar Francez - 2010 - Linguistics and Philosophy 33 (1):11-30.details This paper discusses the semantics of bare existentials , i.e. existentials in which nothing follows the post copular NP (e.g. There are four sections ). While it has sometimes been recognized that the interpretation of such sentences depends in some way on context, the exact nature of the context dependence involved has not been properly understood. It is shown that the meaning of bare existentials involves a set-denoting implicit argument, and that the range of interpretations found with bare existentials is (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 1 citation
How indefinites choose their scope.Adrian Brasoveanu & Donka F. Farkas - 2011 - Linguistics and Philosophy 34 (1):1-55.details The paper proposes a novel solution to the problem of scope posed by natural language indefinites that captures both the difference in scopal freedom between indefinites and bona fide quantifiers and the syntactic sensitivity that the scope of indefinites does nevertheless exhibit. Following the main insight of choice functional approaches, we connect the special scopal properties of indefinites to the fact that their semantics can be stated in terms of choosing a suitable witness. This is in contrast to bona fide (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 14 citations
The Quantified Argument Calculus and Natural Logic.Hanoch Ben-Yami - 2020 - Dialectica 74 (2):179-214.details The formalisation of Natural Language arguments in a formal language close to it in syntax has been a central aim of Moss’s Natural Logic. I examine how the Quantified Argument Calculus (Quarc) can handle the inferences Moss has considered. I show that they can be incorporated in existing versions of Quarc or in straightforward extensions of it, all within sound and complete systems. Moreover, Quarc is closer in some respects to Natural Language than are Moss’s systems – for instance, is (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 4 citations

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