Lewis (1981) showed the equivalence between two dominant semantic frameworks for counterfactuals: ordering semantics, which relies on orders between possible worlds, and premise semantics, which relies on sets of propositions (so-called ordering sources). I define a natural, restricted version of premise semantics, expressible premise semantics, which is based on ordering sources containing only expressible propositions. First, I extend Lewis’ (1981) equivalence result to expressible premise semantics and some corresponding expressible version of ordering semantics. Second, I show that expressible semantics are (...) strictly less powerful than their nonexpressible counterparts, even when attention is restricted to the truth values of expressible counterfactuals. Assuming that the expressibility constraint is natural for premise semantics, this result breaks the equivalence between ordering semantics and (expressible) premise semantics. Finally, I show that these results cast doubt on various desirable conjectures, and in particular on a particular defense of the so-called limit assumption. (shrink)

The goal of this dissertation is twofold. First, we aim to identify the source of distributivity in natural language. Our hypothesis is that throughout the grammar, distributivity can be tracked down to a single operator. Two converging lines of reasoning help us identify this operator. One line emerges as a result of generalizing and unifying previously disparate treatments of distributivity in the domain of nominal quantifiers. The other line comes from analyzing the meaning of durative adverbials, with special attention to (...) their interaction with cumulative readings. Second, we aim to provide a unified formal semantic framework for the treatment of interactions between verbs and their arguments, most importantly aspect, plurality, and quantification, and to shed light on the way in which thematic arguments are associated with the verb in the lexicon and in the compositional process. Although existing frameworks deal with parts of this picture, no such unified framework exists to date. The theoretical results presented in this proposal include a novel argument in favor of a quantificational analysis of durative adverbials (Dowty, 1979; Moltmann, 1991); a novel account of cumulativity and distributivity that covers both the two-quantifier and three-quantifier case in the nominal domain, including readings prominently discussed by Schein (1993); a reason for severing not only the external, but also the internal argument from the semantics of the verb, in response to Kratzer (1996); and the first event-based semantics for Tree-adjoining grammar (TAG, Joshi et al., 1975). (shrink)

Situation semantics as conceived in Kratzer (1989) has been shown to be a valuable companion to the e-type pronoun analysis of donkey sentences (Heim 1990, and recently refined in Elbourne 2001b), and more generally binding out of DP (BOOD; Tomioka 1999; Büring 2001). The present paper proposes a fully compositional version of such a theory, which is designed to capture instances of crossover in BOOD.

In this paper we argue for a unified semantics for hypothetical conditionals, hc s, e.g. _if it rains, we’ll cancel the picnic_, and biscuit conditionals, bc s, e.g., _if you are hungry, there are biscuits on the sideboard_. We side with recent literature in proposing that differences in the interpretation are related to (in)dependence between antecedent and consequent, but we move beyond current accounts in spelling out a characterization of independence that is actually predictive. We further establish a systematic link (...) between _if_-constructions and discourse structure, providing a dynamic update model that integrates the QUD, and thus the intentional discourse-structure. We argue that in bc s the antecedent sets up the question that is addressed by the consequent, and show that rescuing (Gricean) relevance in face of independence gives rise to implicatures corresponding to the different flavors associated with bc s. Crucially, we argue, this is the same mechanism responsible for our understanding that in the hc above, for example, it is the rain that will cause the cancellation of the picnic. Along the way we notice how the phenomena observed in _if_-constructions are also replicated in other quantificational structures. Ultimately, there is not much that is biscuit-specific. Their interpretation is the result of a conspiracy among semantics, dynamic update and intentional discourse-structure. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a restriction on certain types of LF movement, which I call ‘wh-related LF movement’. Evidence comes from a number of wh-in-situ constructions in German, such as the scope-marking construction and multiple questions. For semantic reasons, the in situ element in those constructions has to move at LF to either a position reserved for wh-phrases, or even higher up in the structure. The restriction (the Minimal Quantified Structure Constraint, MQSC) is that an intervening quantified expression (...) blocks this movement. In the case of every, the MQSC leads to an unambiguously distributive interpretation of the question. In the case of all other intervening operators, including negation, it leads to ungrammaticality. (shrink)

The 2007 edition of the Amsterdam Colloquium is the Sixteenth in a series which started in 1976. Originally, the Amsterdam Colloquium was an initiative of the Department of Philosophy of the University of Amsterdam. Since 1984 the Colloquium is organized by the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) of the University of Amsterdam.