The paper proposes a novel solution to the problem of scope posed by natural language indefinites that captures both the difference in scopal freedom between indefinites and bona fide quantifiers and the syntactic sensitivity that the scope of indefinites does nevertheless exhibit. Following the main insight of choice functional approaches, we connect the special scopal properties of indefinites to the fact that their semantics can be stated in terms of choosing a suitable witness. This is in contrast to bona fide (...) quantifiers, the semantics of which crucially involves relations between sets of entities. We provide empirical arguments that this insight should not be captured by adding choice/Skolem functions to classical first-order logic, but in a semantics that follows Independence-Friendly Logic, in which scopal relations involving existentials are part of the recursive definition of truth and satisfaction. These scopal relations are resolved automatically as part of the interpretation of existentials. Additional support for this approach is provided by dependent indefinites, a cross-linguistically common class of special indefinites that can be straightforwardly analyzed in our semantic framework. (shrink)

Subjective language has attracted substantial attention in the recent literature in formal semantics and philosophy of language Subjective meaning: alternatives to relativism, De Gruyter, Berlin, pp 1–19, 2016; Lasersohn in Subjectivity and perspective in truth-theoretic semantics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017; Vardomskaya in Sources of subjectivity, Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, IL, 2018; Zakkou in Faultless disagreement: a defense of contextualism in the realm of personal taste, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M., 2019b). Most current theories argue that Subjective Predicates, which (...) express matters of opinion, semantically differ from ordinary predicates, which express matters of fact. We will call this view “SP exceptionalism”. This paper addresses SP exceptionalism by scrutinizing the behavior of SPs in attitude reports, which, as we will argue, significantly constrains the space of analytical options and rules out some of the existing theories. As first noticed by Stephenson :487–525, 2007a; Towards a theory of subjective meaning, Ph.D. thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 2007b), the most prominent reading of embedded SPs is one where they talk about the attitude holder’s subjective judgment. As is remarked sometimes :327–352, 2009; Pearson in J Semant 30:103–154, 2013a), this reading is not the only one: embedded SPs may also talk about someone else’s, non-local, judgment. We concentrate specifically on such cases and show that non-local judgment is possible if and only if SPs are used within a DP that is outside main predicate position and that entire DP is read de re. We demonstrate that the behavior of SPs in attitude reports does not differ from that of ordinary predicates: it follows from general constraints on intersective modification and intensional quantification Ways of scope taking, Springer, Dordrecht, pp 183–215, 1997; Musan in On the temporal interpretation of noun phrases, Garland, New York, 1997; Percus in Nat Lang Semant 8:173–229, 2000; Keshet in Good intensions: paving two roads to a theory of the de re/de dicto distinction, Ph.D. thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 2008). We argue that this unexceptional behavior of SPs in fact has unexpected consequences for SP exceptionalism. Precisely because SPs have been argued to be semantically different from ordinary predicates, not all theories correctly predict these less-studied data: some overgenerate :691–706, 2007; Sæbø 2009) and some undergenerate Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung, vol 11, pp 433–447, 2007; Pearson 2013a). Out of the currently available theories, only relativist accounts :643–686, 2005; MacFarlane 2014; Bylinina in J Semant 34, 291–331, 2017; Coppock in Linguist Philos 41:125–164, 2018) predict the right interpretation, and only that interpretation. We thus present a novel empirical argument for relativism, and, more generally, formulate a constraint that has to be taken into consideration by any view that advocates SP exceptionalism. (shrink)

Standard theories of scope are semantically blind. They employ a single logico-syntactic rule of scope assignment quantifying in Quantifier Raising, storage, or type change etc which roughly speaking prefixes an expression \aplha.

Ways of Scope Taking is concerned with syntactic, semantic and computational aspects of scope. Its starting point is the well-known but often neglected fact that different types of quantifiers interact differently with each other and other operators. The theoretical examination of significant bodies of data, both old and novel, leads to two central claims. (1) Scope is a by-product of a set of distinct Logical Form processes; each quantifier participates in those that suit its particular features. (2) Scope interaction is (...) further constrained by the semantics of the interacting operators. The arguments are developed using Minimalist syntax, Generalized Quantify theory, Discourse Representation Theory, and algebraic semantics. The contributors (Beghelli, Ben-Shalom, Doetjes, Farkas, Gutiérrez Rexach, Honcoop, Stabler, Stowell, Szabolcsi and Zwarts) make tightly related theoretical assumptions and focus on related empirical phenomena, which include the direct and inverse scope of quantifiers, distributivity, negation, modal and intensional contexts, weak islands, event-related readings, interrogatives, wh/quantifier interactions, and Hungarian syntax. An introduction to the formal semantics background is provided. Audience: Linguists, philosophers, computational and psycholinguists; advanced undergraduates, graduate students and researchers in these fields. (shrink)

As Quine observed, the following sentence has a reading which, if true, would be of special interest to the authorities: Ralph believes that someone is a spy. This is the reading where the quantifier is naturally understood as taking wide scope relative to the attitude verb and as binding a variable within the scope of the attitude verb. This essay is interested in addressing the question what the semantic analysis of this kind of reading should look like from a Fregean (...) perspective—a perspective according to which attitude states are generally relations to structured Fregean thoughts composed of senses. The Fregean view faces a challenge of compositionality here. This essay describes the challenge and offers a response on the Fregean's behalf. (shrink)

Ratio, Volume 35, Issue 2, Page 104-111, June 2022.

Kaplan claims in Demonstratives that no operator may manipulate the context of evaluation of natural language indexicals. We show that this is not so. In fact, attitude reports always manipulate a context parameter (or, rather, a context variable). This is shown by (i) the existence of De Se readings of attitude reports in English (which Kaplan has no account for), and (ii) the existence of a variety of indexicals across languages whose point of evaluation can be shifted, but only in (...) attitude reports. We develop an alternative account within an extensional framework with overt quantification over times, worlds and contexts. Various typological facts are discussed, esp. the distinction between English, Amharic and Ewe pronouns, and that between English and Russian tenses. (shrink)

Crosslinguistically, the same modal words can be used to express a wide range of interpretations. This crosslinguistic trend supports a Kratzerian analysis, where each modal has a core lexical entry and where the difference between an epistemic and a root interpretation is contextually determined. A long-standing problem for such a unified account is the equally robust crosslinguistic correlation between a modal’s interpretation and its syntactic behavior: epistemics scope high (in particular higher than tense and aspect) and roots low, a fact (...) which has led to proposals that hardwire different syntactic positions for epistemics and roots (cf. Cinque’s hierarchy). This paper argues that the range of interpretations a modal receives is even more restricted: a modal must be keyed to certain time-individual pairs, but not others. I show that this can be captured straightforwardly by minimally modifying the Kratzerian account: modals are relative to an event—rather than a world—of evaluation, which readily provides a time (the event’s running time) and (an) individual(s) (the event’s participants). I propose that this event relativity of modals can in turn explain the correlation between type of interpretation and syntactic position, without stipulation of an interpretation-specific height for modals. (shrink)

Using a version of situation semantics, this article argues that bare and complex demonstratives are interpreted as individual concepts.

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)

The paper proposes a novel analysis of quantificational subordination, e.g. Harvey courts a woman at every convention. {She is very pretty. vs. She always comes to the banquet with him.} (Karttunen 1976), in particular of the fact that the indefinite in the initial sentence can have wide or narrow scope, but the first discourse as a whole allows only for the wide scope reading, while the second discourse allows for both readings. The cross-sentential interaction between scope and anaphora is captured (...) in terms of structured anaphora to quantifier domains, formalized in a new dynamic system couched in classical type logic; given the underlying type logic, Montague-style compositionality at sub-clausal level follows automatically. Modal subordination (Roberts 1987) is analyzed in a parallel way, thereby capturing the parallels between the individual and modal domains argued for in Stone (1999). Several other phenomena are analyzed in terms of structured anaphora: exceptional wide scope, weak / strong donkey readings, anaphoric / uniqueness-implying definite descriptions and interactions between same / different and quantifier scope. (shrink)

The first part of this article (Sections 1–5) focuses on the classical notions of scope and binding and their formal foundations. It argues that once their semantic core is properly understood, it can be implemented in various different ways: with or without movement, with or without variables. The second part (Sections 6–12) takes up the empirical issues that have redrawn the map in the past two decades. It turns out that scope is not a primitive. Existential scope and distributive scope (...) have to be distinguished, leaving few if any run-of-the-mill quantifiers. Scope behavior is also not uniform. At least three classes of expressions emerge: indefinites, distributive universals, and counters. Likewise, the bound variable interpretation of pronouns is joined by co-variation with situations. As a result, the classical notions of scope and binding are likely to end up as building blocks in the varied mechanisms at work in “scope phenomena” and “binding phenomena”, and not as self-contained analyses of those phenomena. (shrink)

The paper proposes a novel account to the problem of exceptional scope (ES) of (in)definites, e.g. the widest and intermediate scope readings of the sentence Every student of mine read every poem that a famous Romanian poet wrote before World War II. We propose that ES readings are available when the sentence is interpreted as anaphoric to quantificational domains and quantificational dependencies introduced in the previous discourse. For example, the two every quantifiers and the indefinite elaborate on the sets of (...) individuals and the correlations between them introduced by a previous sentence like Every student chose a poet and read every poem written by him (for the intermediate scope reading) or a sentence like Every student chose a poet - the same poet - and read every poem written by him (for the widest scope reading). Our account, formulated within a compositional dynamic system couched in classical type logic, relies on two independently motivated assumptions: (a) the discourse context stores not only (sets of) individuals, but also quantificational dependencies between them, and (b) quantifier domains are always contextually restricted. Under this analysis, (in)definites are unambiguous and we do not resort to movement or special storage mechanisms, nor do weposit special choice-functional variables. (shrink)

A method now popular for fixing the scopes of arguments involves a covert movement operation, named QR (for Quantifier Rule) by Robert May. May envisioned QR as a kind of adjunction operation, attaching the arguments so affected to phrases dominating that argument. From the surface representation in (1a), for instance, QR can fashion the representations in (1b) and (1c) by adjoining the object and/or subject argument to IP. (1) a. [IP Someone [VP loves everyone ]]. b. [IP everyone1 [IP someone (...) [VP loves t1 ]]]. c. [IP someone2 [IP everyone1 [IP t2 [VP loves t1 ]]]] As the representations in (1a,b) suggest, QR has syntactic consequences rather like those displayed by Topicalization, the process that derives (2b) from (2a). (shrink)