This paper is about the semantic analysis of referentially opaque verbs like seek and owe that give rise to nonspecific readings. It is argued that Montague's categorization (based on earlier work by Quine) of opaque verbs as properties of quantifiers runs into two serious difficulties: the first problem is that it does not work with opaque verbs like resemble that resist any lexical decomposition of the seek ap try to find kind; the second one is that it wrongly predicts de (...) dicto (i.e. narrow scope) readings due to quantified noun phrases in the object positions of such verbs. It is shown that both difficulties can be overcome by an analysis of opaque verbs as operating on properties. This is a strongly modified version of a paper entitled lsquoDo We Bear Attitudes towards Quantifiers?rsquo that I have presented at conferences in Gosen (Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft), Ithaca (SALT I), and Konstanz (Lexikon). I owe a special debt to Hans Kamp and Arnim von Stechow for shaping my views on the subject of this paper during the past ten years or so. Comments from and discussions with the following friends and colleagues have also led to considerable improvements: Heinrich Beck, Steve Berman, David Dowty, Veerle van Geenhoven, Fritz Hamm, Irene Heim, Wolfgang Klein, Angelika Kratzer, Michael Morreau, Barbara Partee, Mats Rooth, Roger Schwarzschild, Wolfgang Sternefeld, Emil Weydert, Henk Zeevat, and three referees. (shrink)

This paper has two goals. The first is to formulate an adequate account of the semantics of the progressive aspect in English: the semantics of Agatha is making a cake, as opposed to Agatha makes a cake. This account presupposes a version of the so-called Aristotelian classification of verbs in English into EVENT, PROCESS and STATE verbs. The second goal of this paper is to refine this classification so as to account for the infamous category switch problem, the problem of (...) how it is that modification of a verb like run by an adverbial like to the store can turn a PROCESS phrase (run) into an EVENT phrase (run to the store). Views discussed include those of Aqvist, Bach, Bennett, Bennett and Partee, Dowry, Montague and Scott, and Vendler. (shrink)

This paper has two parts. In part I, I review two older accounts of the logical forms of modifiers, and suggest that they may be combined with each other so as to yield a theory that is better than either of its parts taken singly. Part of this theory involves the idea that certain sentences refer to events, states, or processes; Part II of this paper shows how to use this idea to account for tenses and temporal adverbials, and offers (...) a new account of ordinary language quantification. (shrink)

This paper has two parts. In part I, I review two older accounts of the logical forms of modifiers, and suggest that they may be combined with each other so as to yield a theory that is better than either of its parts taken singly. Part of this theory involves the idea that certain sentences refer to events, states, or processes; Part II of this paper shows how to use this idea to account for tenses and temporal adverbials, and offers (...) a new account of ordinary language quantification. (shrink)

This papers argues that the apparent constraint of adverbials like 'for two hours' (or 'throughout the house') should not be viewed as a restriction to telic events or event predicates, but should be explained entirely in terms of the quantificational status of such adverials, acting as quantifiers over (contextually individuated) parts of a time interval (or spatial region).

In The Dynamics of Meaning , Gennaro Chierchia tackles central issues in dynamic semantics and extends the general framework. Chapter 1 introduces the notion of dynamic semantics and discusses in detail the phenomena that have been used to motivate it, such as "donkey" sentences and adverbs of quantification. The second chapter explores in greater depth the interpretation of indefinites and issues related to presuppositions of uniqueness and the "E-type strategy." In Chapter 3, Chierchia extends the dynamic approach to the domain (...) of syntactic theory, considering a range of empirical problems that includes backwards anaphora, reconstruction effects, and weak crossover. The final chapter develops the formal system of dynamic semantics to deal with central issues of definites and presupposition. Chierchia shows that an approach based on a principled enrichment of the mechanisms dealing with meaning is to be preferred on empirical grounds over approaches that depend on an enrichment of the syntactic apparatus. Dynamics of Meaning illustrates how seemingly abstract stances on the nature of meaning can have significant and far-reaching linguistic consequences, leading to the detection of new facts and influencing our understanding of the syntax/semantics/pragmatics interface. (shrink)

This extended investigation of the semantics of event (and state) sentences in their various forms is a major contribution to the semantics of natural language, simultaneously encompassing important issues in linguistics, philosophy, and logic. It develops the view that the logical forms of simple English sentences typically contain quantification over events or states and shows how this view can account for a wide variety of semantic phenomena. Focusing on the structure of meaning in English sentences at a &"subatomic&" level&-that is, (...) a level below the one most theories accept as basic or &"atomic&"&-Parsons asserts that the semantics of simple English sentences require logical forms somewhat more complex than is normally assumed in natural language semantics. His articulation of underlying event theory explains a wide variety of apparently diverse semantic characteristics of natural language, and his development of the theory shows the importance of seeing the distinction between events and states. Parsons demonstrates that verbs, also, indicate kinds of actions rather than specific, individual actions. Verb phrases, too, he argues, depend on modifiers to make their function and meaning in a sentence specific. An appendix gives many of the details needed to formalize the theory discussed in the body of the text and provides a series of templates that permit the generation of atomic formulas of English. (shrink)

I reject the contention that an important theoretical difference exists between formal and natural languages.

Event semantics takes eventualities, understood as events, processes, and states, to be basic objects in reality, not set-theoretic constructions from something else . I defend this view and argue that events, processes, and states form pairwise disjoint sorts, having the ontological status of atoms, aggregates, and mass objects, respectively. Aggregates are composed of atoms, whereas mass objects are not. Two intermediate groupings of eventualities are important in this mereological characterization: occurrences, comprising events and processes, and eventuality chunks, comprising processes and (...) states. Processes are the sort of eventualities belonging to both categories. ;Focusing on the ontology of occurrences, I argue that processes constitute events, although events are not identical to the processes that constitute them. Events and the processes that constitute them are spatio-temporally superposed, meaning that they have the same spatio-temporal parts; but spatio-temporal superposition is not tantamount to identity, because events and the processes that constitute them are modally distinct. Constitution cannot be characterized in extensional terms, for it appeals to an asymmetry in persistence conditions between the constituent parts and what they constitute . I argue that if a process constitutes an event, then there are worlds in which the process exists but the event does not. In this sense, a process can survive the destruction of the event that it constitutes. ;Eventualities are ontologically dependent particulars: necessarily they exist only if their participants exist, and their identity depends on their participants. I claim that events differ from the processes that constitute them in that they are ontologically dependent upon consequent states as well. An event is necessarily such that it cannot exist unless its consequent state exists, and its identity depends on the identity of its consequent state; an event differs in this respect from the process constituting it, which is not ontologically dependent upon a consequent state. (shrink)

This thesis proposes that the English progressive semantically modifies the relation between events and times, and that this semantics uniformly underlies a variety of apparently disparate readings of the progressive. Chapter 2 begins with Jespersen's observation that the progressive presents an event as a temporal frame around a given time. I demonstrate that the temporal frame reading is not an entailment of the progressive but arises by implicature; the existence of an event of greater duration than the framed time t (...) is implicated but not entailed. I also show that restrictions on the framed time t proposed elsewhere, claiming that t must be an instant, or that t must be non-initial and non-final in t$\sp\prime$, are incorrect. ;In Chapter 3 I address certain problems with the progressive of state predicates, including habituals. Having argued that the progressive is not ill-formed or false with state predicates per se, I offer an account of the temporary or limited duration reading of progressive state predicates in terms of the implicature outlined in Chapter 2 for the progressive/non-progressive contrast in the present tense. I argue that where a simple tense state predicate has the individual-level reading, the progressive form implicates temporariness because it explicitly dates or temporally locates the state described. I argue that certain psychological state predicates resist the progressive because the explicit dating of a state or event expressed by the progressive is anomalous. ;A very old traditional observation, holding that the progressive is a "definite tense", contrasting with the "indefinite" perfect, is addressed in Chapter 4. I argue for a quantificational analysis of the novelty and familiarity effects, and claim that the original definite/indefinite classification of verb forms should be captured by differences in the quantification over times. ;In Chapter 5 I discuss the Imperfective Paradox, and the two main types of response to it. I argue that certain inadequacies indicate the correctness of the second view, which holds that the paradox is only apparent, as the predicate found in a progressive sentence is not the same as the predicate in the corresponding non-progressive sentence. (shrink)