Does every sentence like this exhibit a scope ambiguity? Paul Pietroski and Norbert Hornstein, univ. Of maryland
| Abstract | We think recent work in linguistics tells against the traditional claim that a string of words like (1) Every girl pushed some truck has two readings, indicated by the following formal language sentences (with restricted quantifiers): (1a) [!x:Gx]["y:Ty]Pxy (1b) ["y:Ty][!x:Gx]Pxy. In our view, (1) does not have any b-reading in which ‘some truck’ has widest scope.1 The issue turns on details concerning syntactic transformations and terms like ‘every’. This illustrates an important point for the study of natural language: ambiguity hypotheses are indeed hypotheses—i.e., theoretical claims to be justified in light of various considerations, not theses whose truth can be directly observed by speakers. | |||||||||
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Similar books and articlesRuth M. Kempson & Annabel Cormack (1981). Ambiguity and Quantification. Linguistics and Philosophy 4 (2):259 - 309.
Thomas E. Patton (1997). Explaining Referential/Attributive. Mind 106 (422):245-261.
Paul Pietrowski (2003). The Character of Natural Language Semantics. In Alex Barber (ed.), Epistemology of Language. Oxford University Press.
Paul Pietrowski (2002). Function and Concatenation. In Georg Peter & Gerhard Preyer (eds.), Logical Form and Language. Oxford University Press.
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