This paper claims that indefinite descriptions, singular and plural, have different scope properties than genuine quantifiers. This claim is based on their distinct behavior in island constructions: while indefinites in islands can have intermediate (and maximal) scope readings, quantifiers cannot. Further, the simplest in situ interpretation strategy for indefinites results in incorrect truth conditions for intermediate (and maximal) scope readings. I introduce a mechanism which “auto-matically” preserves the restriction on free variables corresponding to indefinites, in a way which allows the (...) restriction to be carried up in the course of semantic interpretation and to be used at the level where the variable is quantified. This mechanism is a realization of the “indefinites-as-free-variables” proposal of Lewis, Kamp, and Heim, but emphasizes the role of the restriction. I then show that distributive readings of plural indefinites also display island-escaping behavior and argue for an independent, island-insensitive distribution mechanism. (shrink)

The formal semantics that we have proposed for definite and indefinite descriptions analyzes them both as variable-binding operators and as referring terms. It is the referential analysis which makes it possible to account for the facts outlined in Section 2, e.g. for the purely ‘instrumental’ role of the descriptive content; for the appearance of unusually wide scope readings relative to other quantifiers, higher predicates, and island boundaries; for the fact that the island-escaping readings are always equivalent to maximally wide scope (...) quantifiers; and for the appearance of violations of the identity conditions on variables in deleted constituents. We would emphasize that this is not a random collection of observations. They cohere naturally with each other, and with facts about other phrases that are unambigously referential.We conceded at the outset of this paper that the referential use of an indefinite noun phrase does not, by itself, motivate the postulation of a referential interpretation. Our argument has been that the behavior of indefinites in complex sentences cannot be economically described, and certainly cannot be explained, unless a referential interpretation is assumed. It could be accounted for in pragmatic terms only if the whole theory of scope relations and of conditions on deletion could be eliminated from the semantics and incorporated into a purely pragmatic theory. But this seems unlikely. (shrink)

The paper investigates the scope properties of indefinites.