The paper argues that two distinct and independent notions of plurality are involved in natural language anaphora and quantification: plural reference (the usual non-atomic individuals) and plural discourse reference, i.e., reference to a quantificational dependency between sets of objects (e.g., atomic/non-atomic individuals) that is established and subsequently elaborated upon in discourse. Following van den Berg (PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam, 1996), plural discourse reference is modeled as plural information states (i.e., as sets of variable assignments) in a new dynamic system (...) couched in classical type logic that extends Compositional DRT (Muskens, Linguistics and Philosophy, 19, 143-186, 1996). Given the underlying type logic, compositionality at sub-clausal level follows automatically and standard techniques from Montague semantics become available. The idea that plural info states are semantically necessary (in addition to non-atomic individuals) is motivated by relative-clause donkey sentences with multiple instances of singular donkey anaphora that have mixed (weak and strong) readings. At the same time, allowing for non-atomic individuals in addition to plural info states enables us to capture the intuitive parallels between singular and plural (donkey) anaphora, while deriving the incompatibility between singular (donkey) anaphora and collective predicates. The system also accounts for empirically unrelated phenomena, e.g., the uniqueness effects associated with singular (donkey) anaphora discussed in Kadmon (Linguistics and Philosophy, 13, 273-324, 1990) and Heim (Linguistics and Philosophy, 13, 131-177, 1990) among others. (shrink)

Quantifiers in phrasal and clausal comparatives often seem to take distributive scope in the matrix clause: for instance, the sentence John is taller than every girl is is true iff for every girl it holds that John is taller than that girl. Broadly speaking, two approaches exist that derive this reading without postulating the wide scope of the quantifier: the negation analysis and the interval analysis of than-clauses. We propose a modification of the interval analysis in which than-clauses are not (...) treated as degree intervals but as degree pluralities. This small change has significant consequences: it yields a straightforward account of differentials in comparatives and it correctly predicts the existence of hitherto unnoticed readings, viz. cumulative readings of clausal comparatives. Finally, this paper also makes the case that using degree pluralities is conceptually appealing: it allows us to restrict the analysis of comparatives by mechanisms that are postulated independently in the semantics of pluralities. (shrink)

Negli ultimi quindici anni la letteratura filosofico-linguistica ha registrato un rinnovato interesse per i meccanismi di implicatura, specialmente del tipo scalare. In buona parte, l’interesse stato suscitato dall’emergere di una prospettiva grammaticale, secondo la quale i fenomeni di implicatura scalare sarebbero conseguenza di un meccanismo interpretativo incassato nella logica delle lingue naturali, e quindi riferibile al componente semantico dell’architettura cognitiva umana. L’obiettivo di questo testo fornire una presentazione di alcuni tra gli argomenti che hanno motivato l’emergere della prospettiva grammaticale. Inizieremo, (...) con una descrizione del fenomeno di implicatura scalare, sostanzialmente condivisa dai fautori delle diverse prospettive. Quindi, approfondiremo la nostra comprensione del fenomeno, pre- sentando alcuni punti fermi della prospettiva pragmaticista, e mostrandone i punti di debolezza individuati dai fautori della prospettiva grammaticale. Infine, presenteremo la prospettiva grammaticale, presentando da una parte i vantaggi che questo approccio presenta rispetto alla prospettiva pragmaticista, e dall’altra discutendo le sfide che attendono questa nuova prospettiva. (shrink)

A dilemma put forward by Schein (1993) and Rayo (2002) suggests that, in order to characterize the semantics of plurals, we should not use predicate logic, but non-singular logic, a formal language whose terms may refer to several things at once. We show that a similar dilemma applies to mass nouns. If we use predicate logic and sets, we arrive at a Russellian paradox when characterizing the semantics of mass nouns. Likewise, a semantics of mass nouns based upon predicate logic (...) and mereological sums is too weak, since it cannot characterize the “intermediary” construals that sentences containing mass nouns may receive. We then develop an account where mass nouns are treated as non-singular terms, which may refer to several things at once. This semantics is faithful to the intuition that, if there are eight pieces of silverware on a table, the speaker refers to eight things at once when he says: “The silverware that is on the table comes from Italy”. We show that this account provides a satisfactory semantics for a wide range of sentences, including cases often seen as difficult, like “The gold on the table weighs seven ounces” (Bunt 1985) and “All phosphorus is either red or black” (Roeper 1983). (shrink)

A dilemma put forward by Schein (1993) and Rayo (2002) suggests that, in order to characterize the semantics of plurals, we should not use predicate logic, but plural logic, a formal language whose terms may refer to several things at once. We show that a similar dilemma applies to mass nouns. If we use predicate logic and sets when characterizing their semantics, we arrive at a Russellian paradox. And if we use predicate logic and mereoogical ums, the semantics turns out (...) to be too weak. We then develop an account where mass nouns are treated as non-singular terms. This semantics is faithful to the intuition that, if there are eight pieces of silverware on a table, the speaker refers to eight things at once when he says: "The silverware that is on the table comes from Italy." We show that this account provides a satisfactory semantics for a wide range of sentences. (shrink)

In Being Realistic About Reasons,T.M. Scanlon develops a non-naturalistic realist account of normative reasons. A crucial part of that account is Scanlon’s contention that there is no deep epistemological problem for non-naturalistic realists, and that the method of reflective equilibrium suffices to explain the possibility of normative knowledge. In this critical notice we argue that this is not so: on a realist picture, normative knowledge presupposes a significant correlation between distinct entities, namely between normative beliefs and normative facts. This correlation (...) calls for an explanation. We show that Scanlon does not have the resources to offer such an explanation. (shrink)

Sentences that exhibit sensitivity to order (e.g. 'John and Mary arrived at school in that order' and 'Mary and John arrived at school in that order') present a challenge for the standard formulation of plural logic. In response, some authors have advocated new versions of plural logic based on fine-grained notions of plural reference, such as serial reference (Hewitt 2012) and articulated reference (Ben-Yami 2013). The aim of this article is to show that sensitivity to order should be accounted for (...) without altering the standard formulation of plural logic. In particular, sensitivity to order does not call for a fine-grained notion of plural reference. We point out that the phenomenon in question is quite broad and that current proposals are not equipped to deal with the full range of cases in which order plays a role. Then we develop an alternative and unified account, which locates the phenomenon not in the way in which plural terms can refer, but in the meaning of special expressions such as 'in that order' and 'respectively'. (shrink)

In many languages, the same particles build quantifier words and serve as connectives, additive and scalar particles, question markers, existential verbs, and so on. Do the roles of each particle form a natural class with a stable semantics? Are the particles aided by additional elements, overt or covert, in fulfilling their varied roles? I propose a unified analysis, according to which the particles impose partial ordering requirements (glb and lub) on the interpretations of their hosts and the immediate larger contexts, (...) but do not embody algebraic operations themselves. (shrink)

Formal semantic analyses often take words to be minimal building blocks for the purposes of compositionality. But various recent theories of morphology and syntax have converged on the view that there is no demarcation line corresponding to the word level. The same conclusion has emerged from the compositional semantics of superlatives. In the spirit of extending compositionality below the word level, this paper explores how a small set of particles (Japanese KA and MO, Chinese DOU, and Hungarian VALA/VAGY, MIND, and (...) IS) form quantifier words and serve as connectives, additive and scalar particles, question markers, and existential verbs. The main question is whether the meanings of these particles across the varied environments are highly regular, or they are lexicalized with a variety of different meanings that bear a family resemblance. This paper does not reach definitive conclusions, but it raises analytical possibilities using Boolean semantics and the semantics of alternatives. It also draws attention to systematic similarities and some differences between MO and DOU that have not been studied in the literature. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to the study of bare nominal arguments (i.e., determinerless NPs occurring in canonical argumental positions) from a crosslinguistic point of view. It is proposed that languages may vary in what they let their NPs denote. In some languages (like Chinese), NPs are argumental (names of kinds) and can thus occur freely without determiner in argument position; in others they are predicates (Romance), and this prevents NPs from occurring as arguments, unless the category D(eterminer) is projected. Finally, (...) there are languages (like Germanic or Slavic) which allow both predicative and argumental NPs; these languages, being the ‘union’ of the previous two types, are expected to behave like Romance for certain aspects of their nominal system (the singular count portion) and like Chinese for others (the mass and plural portions). This hypothesis (the ‘Nominal Mapping Parameter’) is investigated not just through typological considerations, but also through a detailed contrastive analysis of bare arguments in Germanic (English) vs. Romance (Italian). Some general consequences of this view, which posits a limited variation in the mapping from syntax into semantics, for current theories of Universal Grammar and acquisition are considered. (shrink)

The standard analysis of quantification says that determiner quantifiers (such as every) take an NP predicate and create a generalized quantifier. The goal of this paper is to subject these beliefs to crosslinguistic scrutiny. I begin by showing that in St'á'imcets (Lillooet Salish), quantifiers always require sisters of argumental type, and the creation of a generalized quantifier from an NP predicate always proceeds in two steps rather than one. I then explicitly adopt the strong null hypothesis that the denotations of (...) quantifiers should be crosslinguistically uniform. Since the Salish data cannot be captured by the usual analysis of English, I pursue the idea that English is reducible to the Salish pattern. Reanalysis of many English constructions is required. I argue that the reanalysis has advantages over the standard analysis for partitives, as well as for non-partitive all- and most-phrases, which I analyze as containing bare plurals of argumental type. Even where the new analysis faces some challenges (for example, with every), the attempt still leads to fruitful results. It forces us to view familiar constructions in a new light, and to redefine, I believe correctly, which quantificational constructions are ‘basic’ and which stand in need of further explanation. (shrink)

We argue that a comprehensive theory of reciprocals must rely on a general taxonomy of restrictions on the interpretation of relational expressions. Developing such a taxonomy, we propose a new principle for interpreting reciprocals that relies on the interpretation of the relation in their scope. This principle, the Maximal Interpretation Hypothesis (MIH), analyzes reciprocals as partial polyadic quantifiers. According to the MIH, the partial quantifier denoted by a reciprocal requires the relational expression REL in its scope to denote a maximal (...) relation in REL’s interpretation domain. In this way the MIH avoids a priori assumptions on the available readings of reciprocal expressions, which are necessary in previous accounts. Relying extensively on the work of Dalrymple et al. (Ling Philos 21:159–210, 1998), we show that the MIH also exhibits some observational improvements over Dalrymple et al.’s Strongest Meaning Hypothesis (SMH). In addition to deriving some attested reciprocal interpretations that are not expected by the SMH, the MIH offers a more restrictive account of the way context affects the interpretation of reciprocals through its influence on relational domains. Further, the MIH generates a reciprocal interpretation at the predicate level, which is argued to be advantageous to Dalrymple et al.’s propositional selection of reciprocal meanings. More generally, we argue that by focusing on restrictions on relational domains, the MIH opens the way for a more systematic study of the ways in which lexical meaning, world knowledge and contextual information interact with the interpretation of quantificational expressions. (shrink)

The paper proposes the first unified account of deictic/sentence-external and sentence-internal readings of singular different . The empirical motivation for such an account is provided by a cross-linguistic survey and an analysis of the differences in distribution and interpretation between singular different , plural different and same (singular or plural) in English. The main proposal is that distributive quantification temporarily makes available two discourse referents within its nuclear scope, the values of which are required by sentence-internal uses of singular different (...) to be distinct, much as its deictic uses require the values of two discourse referents to be distinct. Thus, we take sentence-internal readings to be a form of ‘association with distributivity’ that is similar to association with focus. The contrast between singular different , plural different and same is explained in terms of several kinds of quantificational distributors that license their internal readings. The analysis is executed in a stack-based dynamic system couched in type logic, so we get compositionality in the usual Montagovian way. Quantificational subordination and dependent indefinites in various languages provide additional motivation for the account. Investigating the connections between items with sentence-internal readings and the quantificational licensors of these readings opens up a larger project of formally investigating (i) the typology of quantificational distributors and distributivity-dependent items and (ii) the fine-grained contexts of evaluation needed to capture this typological variation. (shrink)

Formal semantics is an approach to SEMANTICS1, the study of meaning, with roots in logic, the philosophy of language, and linguistics, and since the 1980’s a core area of linguistic theory. Characteristics of formal semantics to be treated in this article include the following: Formal semanticists treat meaning as mind-independent (though abstract), contrasting with the view of meanings as concepts “in the head” (see I-LANGUAGE AND E-LANGUAGE and MEANING EXTERNALISM AND INTERNALISM); formal semanticists distinguish semantics from knowledge of semantics (Lewis (...) 1975, Cresswell 1978), which has consequences for the notion of semantic COMPETENCE. A central part of the meaning of a sentence on this approach is its TRUTH CONDITIONS, and most although not all formal semantics is model-theoretic, relating linguistic expressions to model-theoretically constructed semantic values cast in terms of truth, REFERENCE, and possible worlds. This sets formal semantics apart from approaches which view semantics as relating a sentence just to a representation on another linguistic “level” (LOGICAL FORM) or a representation in an innate LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT. The formal semanticist could accept such representations as an aspect of semantics but would insist on asking what the model-theoretic semantic interpretation of the given representationlanguage is (Lewis 1970). Formal semantics is centrally concerned with COMPOSITIONALITY at the SYNTAX-SEMANTICS INTERFACE, how the meanings of larger constituents are built up from the meanings of their parts on the basis of their syntactic structure, and with the relation between compositional SENTENCE MEANING and meaning in discourse. (shrink)

The central claim of this paper is that surface-faithful word-by-word update is feasible and desirable, even in languages where word order is supposedly free. As a first step, in sections 1 and 2, I review an argument from Bittner 2001a that semantic composition is not a static process, as in PTQ, but rather a species of anaphoric bridging. But in that case the context-setting role of word order should extend from cross-sentential discourse anaphora to sentence-internal anaphoric composition. This can be (...) spelled out as a two-part hypothesis. First, in all languages anaphoric composition derives incremental updates based on the topological order rather than the syntactic hierarchy. And secondly, rigid vs. free word order is simply rigid vs. free mapping from syntax to topology. To formalize this hypothesis, I first present, in section 3, Sevensorted Logic of Change with Centering. This makes it possible, in section 4, to articulate a system of constraints on basic meanings in Kalaallisut — a polysynthetic language with free word order, ideally suited to test the hypothesis of incremental update. The key assumptions about topology as the input to anaphoric composition are spelled out in section 5, which concludes the development of a general formal framework. This formal framework then serves, in sections 6 through 8, t o explicate topologically based incremental updates for increasingly more complex samples of an actual Kalaallisut text. This reveals ubiquitous patterns of prominence-guided anaphora, in all semantic domains, t o increasingly more complex types of discourse referents. These anaphoric patterns show that the context-setting role of word order indeed does extend from discourse to word-to-word anaphora. And this, in turn, strongly supports the hypothesis of topologically based anaphoric composition. Finally, in section 9 I adduce evidence from English that this hypothesis also holds for languages with rigid word order, albeit the fixed mapping keeps the topology close to the syntax. I conclude that both free and rigid word orders receive a natural account if semantic composition is viewed as topologically based anaphoric bridging.. (shrink)

The mass/count distinction attracts a lot of attention among cognitive scientists, possibly because it involves in fundamental ways the relation between language (i.e. grammar), thought (i.e. extralinguistic conceptual systems) and reality (i.e. the physical world). In the present paper, I explore the view that the mass/count distinction is a matter of vagueness. While every noun/concept may in a sense be vague, mass nouns/concepts are vague in a way that systematically impairs their use in counting. This idea has never been systematically (...) pursued, to the best of my knowledge. I make it precise relying on supervaluations (more specifically, ‘data semantics’) to model it. I identify a number of universals pertaining to how the mass/count contrast is encoded in the languages of the world, along with some of the major dimensions along which languages may vary on this score. I argue that the vagueness based model developed here provides a useful perspective on both. The outcome (besides shedding light on semantic variation) seems to suggest that vagueness is not just an interface phenomenon that arises in the interaction of Universal Grammar (UG) with the Conceptual/Intentional System (to adopt Chomsky’s terminology), but it is actually part of the architecture of UG. (shrink)

This paper pursues some of the consequences of the idea that there are (at least) two sources for distributive/cumulative interpretations in English. One source is lexical pluralization: All predicative stems are born as plurals, as Manfred Krifka and Fred Landman have argued. Lexical pluralization should be available in any language and should not depend on the particular make-up of its DPs. I suggest that the other source of cumulative/distributive interpretations in English is directly provided by plural DPs. DPs with plural (...) agreement features can ‘release’ those features to pluralize adjacent verbal projections. If there is a lexical source for distributive/cumulative interpretations, there should be instances of such interpretations with singular DPs. But there should also be cases of distributive/cumulative interpretations that require the presence of DPs with plural agreement morphology. (shrink)

Survey of issues pertaining to the semantics of mass and plural nouns.

The Strongest Meaning Hypothesis of Dalrymple et al (1994,1998), which was originally proposed as a principle for the interpretation of reciprocals, is extended in this paper into a general principle of plural predication. This principle applies to complex predicates that are composed of lexical predicates that hold of atomic entities, and determines the pluralities in the extension of the predicate. The meaning of such a complex predicate is claimed to be the truth-conditionally strongest meaning that does not contradict lexical properties (...) of the simple predicates it contains. Weak interpretations of reciprocals (as in the books are stacked on top of each other), plural predicate conjunction (e.g. the books are old and new) and ’atomic’ distributivity in general are derived by a unified mechanism, which ’weakens’ the basic universal meanings of strong reciprocals, boolean conjunction and quantification over atomic entities. (shrink)

This paper presents a theory of situated part structures involving the notion of an integrated and not just a part-of relation. The theory is applied in particular to the semantics of the modifiers 'whole' and 'individual', as in 'the whole collection' and 'the individual students'. The adnominal modifiers 'whole' and 'individual' have been entirely been ignored in the linguistic and philosophical literature, even though they pose significant challenges for standard views of reference, of the semantics of referential NPs, and for (...) ontology (the exception being medieval philosophy of language where 'whole' has received significant attention). 'Whole' strikingly displays two opposite readings: 'The whole collection is expensive' can mean - 'as a whole' or 'every part'. The paper proposes that the two readings be traced to two different conceptions of part structures of objects: one according to which the parts of an objects are just the material parts and another, Aristotelian conception according to which the parts of an object include properties of form. (shrink)

: The Hamblin-Karttunen approach has led to many insights about questions in English. In this article the results of this rule-by-rule tradition are reconsidered from a crosslinguistic perspective. Starting from the type-driven XLS theory developed in Bittner (1994a, b), it is argued that evidence from simple questions (in English, Polish, Lakhota and Warlpiri) leads to certain revisions. The revised XLS theory then immediately generalizes to complex questions — including scope marking (Hindi), questions with quantifiers (English) and multiple wh-questions (English, Hindi, (...) Japanese). Eliminating language- and construction-specific information from the compositional rules, in favor of universal semantic filters, leads to analyses that not only generalize across unrelated languages but are also empirically more accurate, not less. (shrink)

I propose the first strictly compositional semantic account of same. New data, including especially NP-internal uses such as two men with the same name, suggests that same in its basic use is a quantificational element taking scope over nominals. Given type-lifting as a generally available mechanism, I show that this follows naturally from the fact that same is an adjective. Independently-motivated assumptions extend the analysis to standard examples such as Anna and Bill read the same book via a mechanism I (...) call PARASITIC SCOPE, in which the scope of same depends on the scope of some other scopetaking element in the sentence. Although I will initially discuss the analysis in terms of a familiar Quantifier Raising framework, I go on to implement the analysis within an innovative continuation-based Type-Logical Grammar. The empirical payoff for dealing in continuations is that a simple generalization of the basic analysis gives the first ever formal account of cases in which same distributes over objects other than NP denotations, as in the relevant interpretation of John hit and killed the same man. (shrink)

Quine maintained that philosophical and scientific theorizing should be conducted in an untyped language, which has just one style of variables and quantifiers. By contrast, typed languages, such as those advocated by Frege and Russell, include multiple styles of variables and matching kinds of quantification. Which form should our theories take? In this article, I argue that expressivity does not favour typed languages over untyped ones.

In linguistics, the dominant approach to the semantics of plurals appeals to mereology. However, this approach has received strong criticisms from philosophical logicians who subscribe to an alternative framework based on plural logic. In the first part of the article, we offer a precise characterization of the mereological approach and the semantic background in which the debate can be meaningfully reconstructed. In the second part, we deal with the criticisms and assess their logical, linguistic, and philosophical significance. We identify four (...) main objections and show how each can be addressed. Finally, we compare the strengths and shortcomings of the mereological approach and plural logic. Our conclusion is that the former remains a viable and well-motivated framework for the analysis of plurals. (shrink)

We say that each social group is identical to its members. The group just is them; they just are the group. This view of groups as pluralities has tended to be swiftly rejected by social metaphysicians, if considered at all, mainly on the basis of two objections. First, it is argued that groups can change in membership, while pluralities cannot. Second, it is argued that different groups can have exactly the same members, while different pluralities cannot. We rebut these objections, (...) and argue that our plural view is superior to alternative reductive proposals which would identify social groups with the sets or fusions of their members. Finally we deal with some further potential challenges for the view of groups as pluralities. Thus we aim to establish it as a serious contender in the metaphysics of groups. (shrink)

Plural expressions found in natural languages allow us to talk about many objects simultaneously. Plural logic — a logical system that takes plurals at face value — has seen a surge of interest in recent years. This book explores its broader significance for philosophy, logic, and linguistics. What can plural logic do for us? Are the bold claims made on its behalf correct? After introducing plural logic and its main applications, the book provides a systematic analysis of the relation between (...) this logic and other theoretical frameworks such as set theory, mereology, higher-order logic, and modal logic. The applications of plural logic rely on two assumptions, namely that this logic is ontologically innocent and has great expressive power. These assumptions are shown to be problematic. The result is a more nuanced picture of plural logic's applications than has been given thus far. Questions about the correct logic of plurals play a central role in the final chapters, where traditional plural logic is rejected in favor of a "critical" alternative. The most striking feature of this alternative is that there is no universal plurality. This leads to a novel approach to the relation between the many and the one. In particular, critical plural logic paves the way for an account of sets capable of solving the set-theoretic paradoxes. (shrink)

Plural Logic is an extension of First-Order Logic which has, as well as singular terms and quantifiers, their plural counterparts. Analogously, Higher-Level Plural Logic is an extension of Plural Logic which has, as well as plural terms and quantifiers, higher-level plural ones. Roughly speaking, higher-level plurals stand to plurals like plurals stand to singulars; they are pluralised plurals. Allegedly, Higher-Level Plural Logic enjoys the expressive power of a simple type theory while committing us to nothing more than the austere ontology (...) of First-Order Logic. Were this true, Higher-Level Plural Logic would be a useful tool, with various applications in philosophy and linguistics. However, while the notions of plural reference and quantification enjoy widespread acceptance today, their higher-level counterparts have been received with a lot of scepticism. In this paper, I argue for the legitimacy of Higher-Level Plural Logic by providing evidence to the effect that natural languages contain higher-level plural expressions and showing that it is likely that they do so in an indispensable manner. Since the arguments I put forward are of the same sort advocates of Plural Logic have employed to defend their position, I conclude that the commonly held view that Plural Logic is legitimate, but not so its higher-level plural extensions is untenable. (shrink)

I argue that alternative-denoting expressions interact with their semantic context by taking scope. With an empirical focus on indefinites in English, I show how this approach improves on standard alternative-semantic architectures that use point-wise composition to subvert islands, as well as on in situ approaches to indefinites more generally. Unlike grammars based on point-wise composition, scope-based alternative management is thoroughly categorematic, doesn’t under-generate readings when multiple sources of alternatives occur on an island, and is compatible with standard treatments of binding. (...) Unlike all in situ treatments of indefinites, relying on a true scope mechanism prevents over-generation when an operator binds into an indefinite. My account relies only on function application, some mechanism for scope-taking, and two freely-applying type-shifters: the first is Karttunen’s :3–44, 1977. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00351935) proto-question operator, aka Partee’s Studies in discourse representation theory and the theory of generalized quantifiers, Foris, Dordrecht, 1986) IDENT, and the second can be factored out of extant approaches to the semantics of questions in the tradition of Karttunen. These type-shifters form a decomposition of LIFT, the familiar function mapping values into scope-takers. Exceptional scope of alternative-generating expressions arises via scopal pied-piping: indefinites take scope over their island, which then itself takes scope. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on a recently discussed phenomenon illustrated by sentences containing predicates of taste: the phenomenon of " perspectival plurality " , whereby sentences containing two or more predicates of taste have readings according to which each predicate pertains to a different perspective. This phenomenon has been shown to be problematic for (at least certain versions of) relativism. My main aim is to further the discussion by showing that the phenomenon extends to other perspectival expressions than predicates (...) of taste and by proposing a general solution to the problem raised by it on behalf of the relativist. The core claim of the solution (" multiple indexing ") is that utterances of sentences containing perspectival expressions should be evaluated with respect to (possibly infinite) sequences of perspective parameters. (shrink)

Plural Logic is an extension of First-Order Logic with plural terms and quantifiers. When its plural terms are interpreted as denoting more than one object at once, Plural Logic is usually taken to be ontologically innocent: plural quantifiers do not require a domain of their own, but range plurally over the first-order domain of quantification. Given that Plural Logic is equi-interpretable with Monadic Second-Order Logic, it gives us its expressive power at the low ontological cost of a first-order language. This (...) makes it a valuable tool in various areas of philosophy. Some authors believe that Plural Logic can be extended into an even more expressive logic, Higher-Level Plural Logic, by adding higher-level plural terms and quantifiers to it. The basic idea is that second-level plurals stand to plurals like plurals stand to singulars. Allegedly, Higher-Level Plural Logic enjoys the expressive power of type theory while, again, committing us only to the austere ontology of a first-order language. Were this really the case, Higher-Level Plural Logic would be a very useful tool, extending and strengthening some of the applications of Plural Logic. However, while the notions of plural reference and quantification enjoy widespread acceptance today, their higher-level counterparts have been received with scepticism. The main objection raised against them is that higher-level plural reference is unintelligible. This has been argued, among others, on the grounds that there are no higher-level plurals in natural language and that, if there were any, they could be eliminated. In this thesis, after introducing the debate on plurals in Chapters 1 and 2, I turn to defending the legitimacy of the notion of higher-level plural reference. To this end, in Chapter 3, I present and elucidate the notion. Next, in Chapter 4, I show that some natural languages clearly contain these expressions and that they do so in an ineliminable manner. Finally, in Chapters 5 and 6, I develop a semantics for higher-level plurals that employs only devices previously well-understood by English speakers. To finish, in Chapter 7, I describe an application of Higher-level Plural Logic: a strengthening of the neo-Fregean programme. After describing my proposal, I turn to the issue of the logical status of this formalism and defend an optimistic take on the matter. (shrink)

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 (...) quantifiers, attitude ascriptions, conditionals, questions, and relativization. The result is an innovative, philosophically informed compositional semantics compatible with the truth-conditional paradigm. (shrink)

Chomsky’s (1995, 2000a) Minimalist Program (MP) invites a perspective on semantics that is distinctive and attractive. In section one, I discuss a general idea that many theorists should find congenial: the spoken or signed languages that human children naturally acquire and use— henceforth, human languages—are biologically implemented procedures that generate expressions, whose meanings are recursively combinable instructions to build concepts that reflect a minimal interface between the Human Faculty of Language (HFL) and other cognitive systems. In sections two and three, (...) I develop this picture in the spirit of MP, in part by asking how much of the standard Frege-Tarski apparatus is needed in order to provide adequate and illuminating descriptions of the “concept assembly instructions” that human languages can generate. I’ll suggest that we can make do with relatively little, by treating all phrasal meanings as instructions to assemble number-neutral concepts that are monadic and conjunctive. But the goal is not to legislate what counts as minimal in semantics. Rather, by pursuing one line of Minimalist thought, I hope to show how such thinking can be fruitful. (shrink)

In the tradition of quantified modal logic, it was assumed that significantly different linguistic systems underlie reference to individuals, to times and to ‘possible worlds’. Various results from recent research in formal semantics suggest that this is not so, and that there is in fact apervasive symmetrybetween the linguistic means with which we refer to these three domains. Reference to individuals, times and worlds is uniformly effected through generalized quantifiers, definite descriptions, and pronouns, and in each domain grammatical features situate (...) the reference of terms as near, far or ‘further’ from the actual or from a reported speech act. We outline various directions in which a program ofontological symmetrycould be developed, and we offer in theAppendixa symmetric fragment developed in a logic that can be seen as a compromise between an extensional and an intensional system. (shrink)

Formal semantics and pragmatics as they have developed since the late 1960's have been shaped by fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration among linguists, philosophers, and logicians, among others, and in turn have had noticeable effects on developments in syntax, philosophy of language, computational linguistics, and cognitive science.In this paper I describe the environment in which formal semantics was born and took root, highlighting the differences in ways of thinking about natural language semantics in linguistics and in philosophy and logic. With Montague as (...) a central but not solo player in the story, I reflect on crucial developments in the 1960's and 70's in linguistics and philosophy, and the growth of formal semantics and formal pragmatics from there. I discuss innovations, key players, and leading ideas that shaped the development of formal semantics and its relation to syntax, to pragmatics, and to the philosophy of language in its early years, and some central aspects of its early impact on those fields. (shrink)

In Shona , bare plurals and bare singulars seem to have different scope possibilities with respect to a class of modifiers which I term “scopeless quantity words” few’, and ose ‘all’). I argue that this is due to two factors. First, the scopeless quantity words are intersective modifiers rather than quantifying determiners, so that DPs containing them denote entities rather than generalised quantifiers. Second, transitive sentences involving plural arguments are usually interpreted using the **-operator, which gives a cumulative reading; the (...) apparent wide and narrow scope readings of bare plurals are both subcases of this reading, but a narrow scope reading for bare singulars cannot be subsumed by the cumulative reading. I also discuss the scope behaviour of a quantifying determiner, oga-oga ‘every’, which shows a subject/object asymmetry: in subject position, it appears to show the expected scopal ambiguity, but in object position, it appears to have the same readings as a scopeless quantity word; I argue that this is because of the location of existential closure. This adds to the evidence suggesting that many words giving quantity are intersective modifiers rather than quantifying determiners or adverbial quantifiers. (shrink)

This paper develops a semantic analysis of data like It is getting colder and colder. Their meaning is argued to arise from a combination of a comparative with pluractionality. The analysis is embedded in a general theory of plural predication and pluractionality. It supports a semantic theory involving a family of syntactic plural operators.

This paper presents a slightly modified version of the compositional semantics proposed in Events and Semantic Architecture (OUP 2005). Some readers may find this shorter version, which ignores issues about vagueness and causal constructions, easier to digest. The emphasis is on the treatments of plurality and quantification, and I assume at least some familiarity with more standard approaches.

This paper aims to characterise properly entanglement as an external relation obtaining between multiple quantum degrees of freedom. In particular, we argue that the entanglement relation is a unique relation fully characterised by mutual information, i.e. a quantity standardly used as a measure of entanglement. This analysis leads us to propose a new metaphysical account of entanglement, which we call Relational Entanglement Tesseract. Such an account characterises entanglement for both bipartite and multipartite cases, and, at the same time, it satisfies (...) what we argue are three important desiderata of any metaphysical account of entanglement. (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)

This paper argues that lexical and operator-based analyses of distributivity are not in conflict, but are both necessary components of any theory of distributivity that aims to account for all the relevant data. I use several contrasts between plural definites and group NPs to show that we need an operator-based analysis of distributivity; this kind of distributivity is available with plural definites but not with group subjects, which can be explained under the common assumption that group NPs denote atoms rather (...) than sums and hence do not allow quantification over their individual parts. At the same time, we need a lexical theory of distributivity to account for the various distributive interpretations that we do find with groups; a formalisation of such a theory is outlined in the final section of this paper. (shrink)

Since Fodor 1970, negation has worn a Homogeneity Condition to the effect that homogeneous predicates, ) denote homogeneously—all or nothing —to characterize the meaning of – when uttered out-of-the blue, in contrast to –:The mirrors are smooth. The mirrors are not smooth. The mirrors circle the telescope’s reflector. The mirrors do not circle the telescope’s reflector. It has been a problem for philosophical logic and for the semantics of natural language that – appear to defy the Principle of Excluded Middle (...) while – do not—Smooth ¬Smooth Circle ¬Circle. An impoverished logical form – has been the occasion to embellish all else—Boolean algebra, lexical presuppositions, Strongest Meaning Hypothesis, trivalence, supervaluation, double strengthening, etc., enriching the semantics and pragmatics with what remains a special theory of negation, which may be dismissed when the logical syntax and semantics of negation reflects that negated sentences are also tensed sentences. (shrink)

A vagueness-based approach to the mass/count distinction was developed in Chierchia. Liebesman argues against Chierchia’s proposal developing four arguments against it. He furthermore tries to make a case that regardless of the details of C’s proposal no vagueness-based account of the distinction is viable. In this paper I show that Liebesman’s arguments against C don’t go through and that a line of investigation on the mass count contrast in terms of vagueness is not only viable but also perhaps a source (...) of insight on the nature of this much debated distinction and on the relations between grammar and metaphysics in general. The outcome of the present discussion is of interest beyond the question of who is right in this debate, as it puts into sharper focus several issues pertaining to mass vs. count, plural vs. singular, and the role of vagueness in natural language semantics. (shrink)

Predicates such as tall or to know Latin, which intuitively denote permanent properties, are called individual-level predicates. Many peculiar properties of this class of predicates have been noted in the literature. One such property is that we cannot say #John is sometimes tall. Here is a way to account for this property: this sentence sounds odd because it triggers the scalar implicature that the alternative John is always tall is false, which cannot be, given that, if John is sometimes tall, (...) then he always is. This intuition faces two challenges. First: this scalar implicature has a weird nature, since it must be surprisingly robust (otherwise, it could be cancelled and the sentence rescued) and furthermore blind to the common knowledge that tallness is a permanent property (since this piece of common knowledge makes the two alternatives equivalent). Second: it is not clear how this intuition could be extended to other, more complicated properties of individual-level predicates. The goal of this paper is to defend the idea of an implicature-based theory of individual-level predicates by facing these two challenges. In the first part of the paper, I try to make sense of the weird nature of these special mismatching implicatures within the recent grammatical framework for scalar implicatures of Chierchia (Structures and beyond, 2004) and Fox (2007). In the second part of the paper, I show how this implicature-based line of reasoning can be extended to more complicated properties of individual-level predicates, such as restrictions on the interpretation of their bare plural subjects, noted in Carlson (Reference to kinds in English. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1977), Milsark (Linguistic Analysis 3.1: 1–29, 1977), and Fox (Natural Language Semantics 3: 283–341, 1995); restrictions on German word order, noted in Diesing (Indefinites, 1992); and restrictions on Q-adverbs, noted in Kratzer (The Generic Book, ed. Carlson and Pelletier, 125–175, 1995). (shrink)

This paper proposes that elementary reciprocal sentences have four semantic readings: a strongly reciprocal interpretation, a weakly reciprocal interpretation, a situation-based weakly reciprocal reading, and a collective reading. Interpretational possibilities of reciprocal sentences that have been discussed in the literature are identified as one of these four. A compositional semantic analysis of all of these readings is provided in which the reciprocal expression is uniformly represented as 'the other ones among them' (recasting Heim, Lasnik and May 1991a, b). A reciprocal (...) sentence is thus a special kind of relational plural. Interpretational variability comes about by the same mechanisms of plural predication at work in relational plurals: pluralization operators, LF operations like QR, and addition of contextual information. (shrink)

While writing this thesis, there were many things I wanted to get right. I wanted to get the data right. I wanted to get my analysis of the data right. I certainly wanted to get all my citations right, which can get pretty tricky when one is trying to finish a chapter at 2am. But if an error did creep in somewhere in the body of the thesis, that is not a disaster. Sooner or later, I will get a chance (...) to correct it in a future publication. However, this part of the thesis, which sits right at the beginning but was among the last to be written, is different. I only have one opportunity to express, in print, how thankful I am to the people whose assistance was so important to me over the past years. Which is unfortunate, since if I were to truly elaborate all I am thankful for, these acknowledgements would be the lengthiest chapter of the thesis. But I hope this brief version will suffice in its stead. (shrink)