When philosophers talk about descriptions, usually they have in mind singular definite descriptions such as ‘the finest Greek poet’ or ‘the positive square root of nine’, phrases formed with the definite article ‘the’. English also contains indefinite descriptions such as ‘a fine Greek poet’ or ‘a square root of nine’, phrases formed with the indefinite article ‘a’ (or ‘an’); and demonstrative descriptions (also known as complex demonstratives) such as ‘this Greek poet’ and ‘that tall woman’, formed with the demonstrative articles (...) ‘this’ and ‘that’. Following the custom in philosophy, in this chapter often we use ‘description’ as short for ‘definite description’; and following the custom in linguistics, often we use ‘definite’, ‘indefinite’, and ‘demonstrative’ as shorthand nouns. For the most part we focus on definite and indefinites, although a few words about demonstratives are called for. At the centre of debates about descriptions is the matter of whether they are devices of reference or of predication (simple or higher-order), and much discussion focuses on how various proposals are to be incorporated into broader theories of the semantics of natural language. But philosophical interest goes beyond the confines of linguistics, logic, and the philosophy of language because choices made about the semantics of descriptions have repercussions elsewhere, particularly in epistemology and metaphysics. A simple match of form and meaning appears to fail.1 First, many occurrences of expressions of both forms ‘the φ’ and ‘a φ’ appear to be used to talk about particular individuals. Consider (1). (shrink)

W. Labov's & T. Labov's findings concerning their child grammar acquisition ("Learning the Syntax of Questions" in Recent Advances in the Psychology of Language, Campbell, R. & Smith, P. Eds, New York: Plenum Press, 1978) are interpreted in terms of different semantics of why & other wh-questions. Z. Dubiel.

This dissertation investigates the ways in which natural language restricts the domains of quantifiers. Adverbs of quantification are analyzed as quantifying over situations. The domain of quantifiers is pragmatically constrained: apparent processes of "semantic partition" are treated as pragmatic epiphenomena. The introductory Chapter 1 sketches some of the background of work on natural language quantification and begins the analysis of adverbial quantification over situations. Chapter 2 develops the central picture of "semantic partition" as a side-effect of pragmatic processes of anaphora (...) resolution. I argue that the apparent effects of topic/focus articulation and presuppositional information on the interpretation of quantifiers are not the result of a direct and local mechanism of sentence grammar. Instead, I develop an analysis where the link is established via the anaphoric dependence of quantifier domains on the discourse context. Chapter 3 discusses the analysis of conditional clauses as quantifier restrictors, concentrating on the question whether conditional clauses restrict quantifiers directly or indirectly. A treatment is explored which has if-clauses constrain the value of the hidden domain variable of the restricted quantifier. Chapter 4, on unless-clauses, and Chapter 5, on only if- and even if-clauses, present some issues in the compositional analysis of complex conditional clauses. These chapters significantly expand the data coverage of the theory of A-quantification. Building on previous work of mine on exceptives, I analyze unless-clauses as exceptive operators on A-quantifiers. The analysis of only if-clauses, treated as conditional clauses that combine if with the focus adverb only, unearthes some interesting new properties. Chapter 6, finally, examines the phenomenon of donkey-anaphora in the light of the results of the previous chapters. I show that a solution to the proportion problem may become possible once we combine the situation-semantic approach to adverbial quantification with the pragmatic theory developed in Chapter 2 and further elaborated in the analysis of donkey anaphora in complex conditionals. (shrink)

This thesis proposes that the typological distinctions among languages with respect to the formation of wh-questions can be attributed to the availability of question particles and the properties of wh-words. It is argued that the availability of question particles correlates with the lack of syntactic wh-movement. A theory of Clausal Typing is proposed to account for this correlation. In particular, languages employ either question particles or syntactic wh-movement to type a clause as a wh-question. It is shown that the Principle (...) of Economy of Derivation predicts that no language has the option of alternating between the two methods of Clausal Typing and thus there are no languages with "optional movement" of wh-words and movement of one wh-word is sufficient to type a clause as a wh-question. Apparent counterexamples to the proposal are discussed. It is argued that in languages with apparent optional fronting of wh-words , sentences with a clause-initial wh-word are clefts. In addition, it is shown that in languages which front multiple wh-words in multiple questions, the wh-words are morphologically complex and need to satisfy a licensing requirement independent of Clausal Typing. ;The internal structure of wh-words in an "in-situ" language, namely Mandarin Chinese is also examined. It is shown that wh-words in Mandarin are indefinite NPs, which lacks quantificational force, and they are polarity sensitive. In addition, Two LF operations are discusssed: Quantifier Raising and LF wh-movement. It is shown that the lack of scope ambiguities in Mandarin can be attributed to lexical properties of indefinite NPs. Arguments for and against LF wh-movement as well as the landing site of wh-words at LF are examined. It is shown that evidence against LF wh-movement does not hold and arguments against adjunction of wh-words to IP at LF will be provided. (shrink)