Linguistics And Philosophy

  Bare plurals (dogs) behave in ways that quantified plurals (some dogs) do not. For instance, while the sentence John owns dogs implies that John owns more than one dog, its negation John does not own dogs does not mean John does not own more than one dog', but rather John does not own a dog'. A second puzzling behavior is
 known as the dependent plural reading; when in the scope of another plural, the ˜more than one' meaning of the plural is not
 distributed over, but the existential force of the plural is. For example, My friends attend good schools requires that each of my friends attend one good school, not more, while at the same time being inappropriate if all my friends
 attend the same school. This paper shows that both these phenomena, and others, arise from the same cause. Namely, the plural
 noun itself does not assert ˜more than one', but rather the plural denotes a predicate that is number neutral (unspecified
 for cardinality). The ˜more than one' meaning arises as an scalar implicature, relying on the scalar relationship between
 the bare plural and its singular alternative, and calculated in a sub-sentential domain; namely, before existential closure
 of the event variable. Finally, implications of this analysis will be discussed for the analysis of the quantified noun phrases
 that interact with bare plurals, such as indefinite numeral DPs (three boys), and singular universals (every boy).
 
	

  Some propositional attitude verbs require that the complement contain some subjective predicate'. In terms of the theory
 proposed by Lasersohn, these verbs would seem to identify the judge' of the embedded proposition with the matrix subject,
 and there have been suggestions in this direction. I show that it is possible to analyze these verbs as setting the judge
 and doing nothing more; then according to whether a judge index or a judge argument is assumed, unless the complement contains
 a subjective predicate, the whole matrix is redundant or there is a type conflict. I further show that certain clear facts
 argue for assuming a judge argument which can be filled by a contextually salient entity“or by the subject of a subjective
 attitude verb.
 
	

  Direct reference theorists tell us that proper names have no semantic value other than their bearers, and that the connection
 between name and bearer is unmediated by descriptions or descriptive information. And yet, these theorists also acknowledge
 that we produce our name-containing utterances with descriptions on our minds. After arguing that direct reference proponents
 have failed to give descriptions their due, I show that appeal to speaker-associated descriptions is required if the direct
 reference portrayal of speakers wielding and referring with public names is to succeed.
 
	

  This paper investigates the interpretation of counterfactual conditionals. The main goal of the paper is to provide an account
 of the semantic role of similarity in the evaluation of counterfactuals. The paper proposes an analysis according to which
 counterfactuals are treated as predications de re' over past situations in the actual world. The relevant situations enter semantic composition via the interpretation of tense.
 Counterfactuals are treated as law-like conditionals with de re predication over particular facts. Similarity with respect to particular facts is ensured by the semantics of tense in interaction
 with the modal, while the modal itself is responsible for invoking laws. In the paper, various arguments are provided to support
 a local view of similarity over the global approach found in semantics along the line of Lewis's and Stalnaker's. Arguments
 are also provided tying the evaluation of similarity to the interpretation of tense. Finally, arguments are provided to show
 that in key cases, the approaches make comparable predictions.
 
	

  This paper discusses the interaction of aspect and modality, and focuses on the puzzling implicative effect that arises when
 perfective aspect appears on certain modals: perfective somehow seems to force the proposition expressed by the complement
 of the modal to hold in the actual world, and not merely in some possible world. I show that this puzzling behavior, originally discussed in Bhatt (1999, Covert
 modality in non-finite contexts) for the ability modal, extends to all modal auxiliaries with a circumstantial modal base
 (i.e., root modals), while epistemic interpretations of the same modals are immune to the effect. I propose that implicative readings are contingent
 on the relative position of the modal w.r.t. aspect: when aspect scopes over the modal (as I argue is the case for root modals),
 it forces an actual event, thereby yielding an implicative reading. When a modal element scopes over aspect, no actual event
 is forced. This happens (i) with epistemics, which structurally appear above tense and aspect; (ii) with imperfective on a
 root modal: imperfective brings in an additional layer of modality, itself responsible for removing the necessity for an actual
 event. This proposal enables us to solve the puzzle while maintaining a standardized semantics for aspects and modals.
 
	

  Of late, evidentiality has received great attention in formal semantics. In this paper I develop ˜evidentiality-informed'
 truth conditions for modal operators such as must and may. With language data drawn from Luoping Nase (a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the P.R. of China and belonging to the Yi
 Nationality), I illustrate that epistemic modals clash with clauses articulating first-hand information. I then demonstrate
 that existing models such as Kratzer's graded possible-worlds semantics fail to provide accurate truth conditions for modals
 tagging clauses with first-hand information. As a remedy I propose a fuzzy version of possible-worlds semantics with various
 grades of belief and knowledge. In addition to preserving the expressive power of graded possible-worlds semantics, the fuzzy
 model will be shown to supply appropriate truth conditions for epistemic modals appended to evidential clauses (i.e. clauses
 expressing first-hand information).
 
	

  The natural interpretation of counterfactuals with disjunctive antecedents involves selecting from each of the disjuncts the
 worlds that come closest to the world of evaluation. It has been long noticed that capturing this interpretation poses a problem
 for a minimal change semantics for counterfactuals, because selecting the closest worlds from each disjunct requires accessing
 the denotation of the disjuncts from the denotation of the disjunctive antecedent, which the standard boolean analysis of
 or does not allow (Creary and Hill, Philosophy of Science 43:341“344, 1975; Nute, Journal of Philosophy 72:773“778, 1975; Fine,
 Mind 84(335):451“458, 1975; Ellis et al. Journal of Philosophical Logic 6:335“357, 1977). This paper argues that the failure
 to capture the natural interpretation of disjunctive counterfactuals provides no reason to abandon a minimal change semantics.
 It shows that the natural interpretation of disjunctive counterfactuals is expected once we refine our assumptions about the
 semantics of or and the logical form of conditionals, and (i) we assume that disjunctions introduce propositional alternatives in the semantic
 derivation, in line with independently motivated proposals about the semantics of or (Aloni, 2003a; Simons, Natural Language Semantics 13:271“316, 2005; Alonso-Ovalle, Disjunction in Alternative Semantics.
 PhD thesis, 2006); and (ii) we treat conditionals as correlative constructions, as advocated in von Fintel (1994), Izvorski
 (Proceedings of NELS 26, 1996), Bhatt and Pancheva (2006), and Schlenker (2004).
 
	

  This paper proposes a new look at the so-called ˜present-perfect puzzle'. I suggest that it is in fact part of a bigger problem,
 which also involves simple past tenses. I argue that present perfects compete with simple past tenses, and that the distribution
 of these tenses shows signs of the impact of this competition. The outcome of the competition is argued to be heavily dependent
 on which of the two tense-forms is the default. A pragmatic theory is proposed which accounts for the reduced distribution
 of the present perfect in languages like English and (American) Spanish, and the reduced distribution of the simple past tense
 in languages like French and German.
 
	

  A distinction is drawn between situations as indices required for semantically evaluating sentences and situations as denotations
 resulting from such evaluation. For atomic sentences, possible worlds may serve as indices, and events as denotations. The
 distinction is extended beyond atomic sentences according to formulae-as-types and applied to implicit quantifier domain restrictions, intensionality and conditionals.
 
	

  A type 

á12, 1ñ
 quantifier F is symmetric iff F(X, X)(Y) = F(Y, Y)(X). It is shown that quantifiers denoted by irreducible binary determiners in natural languages are both conservative and symmetric
 and not only conservative.
 
	

  This paper explores a novel analysis of adjectives in the comparative and the positive based on the notion of a trope, rather
 than the notion of a degree. Tropes are particularized properties, concrete manifestations of properties in individuals. The
 point of departure is that a sentence like ˜John is happier than Mary' is intuitively equivalent to ˜John's happiness exceeds
 Mary's happiness', a sentence that expresses a simple comparison between two tropes, John's happiness and Mary's happiness.
 The analysis received particular support from various parallels between adjectival constructions and corresponding adjective
 nominalizations which make reference to tropes.
 
	

  This paper offers a new semantic theory of existentials (sentences of the form 
 There be NP
 
 pivot
 
 XP
 
 coda
 ) in which pivots are (second order) predicates and codas are modifiers. The theory retains the analysis of pivots as denoting
 generalized quantifiers (Barwise and Cooper 1981; Keenan 1987), but departs from previous analyses in analyzing codas as contextual
 modifiers on a par with temporal/locative frame adverbials. Existing analyses universally assume that pivots are arguments
 of some predicate, and that codas are main or secondary predicates. It is shown that these analyses cannot account for the
 behavior of codas with quantifiers and for the interaction of multiple codas, both of which receive a simple treatment on
 the proposed theory. The assimilation of codas to frame adverbials explains several semantic properties which have not been
 analyzed in the semantic literature, and that distinguish existentials from their copular counterparts. Furthermore, it highlights
 important properties of the semantics of modification and its relation to predication.
 
	

  This paper considers the meaning and use of the English particle man. It is shown that the particle does quite different things when it appears in sentence-initial and sentence-final position;
 the first use involves expression of an emotional attitude as well as, on a particular intonation, intensification; this use
 is analyzed using a semantics for degree predicates along with a separate dimension for the expressive aspect. Further restrictions
 on modification with the sentence-initial particle involving monotonicity and evidence are introduced and analyzed. The sentence-final
 use can be viewed as strengthening the action performed by the sentence. A formal semantics is given by making use of dynamic
 techniques and, in a sense, dynamically simulating the modification of certain speech acts. Some empirical and theoretical
 extensions of the analyses are proposed and some consequences discussed.
 
	

  The paper has two main objectives: first, it presents a new argument against the so-called Anscombe Thesis (if x φ-s by ψ-ing, then x's φ-ing = x's ψ-ing). Second, it develops a proposal about the syntax and semantics of the ˜by'-locution.
 
	

  I contrast two approaches to the interpretation of generics such as ˜ravens are black:' majority-based views, on which they
 are about what is the case most of the time, and inquiry-based views, on which they are about a feature we focus on in inquiry.
 I argue that majority-based views face far more systematic counterexamples than has previously been supposed. They cannot
 account for generics about kinds with multiple characteristic properties, such as ˜elephants live in Africa and Asia.' I then
 go on to sketch an inquiry-based view.
 
	

  John Perry has urged that a semantic theory for natural languages ought to be concerned with the issue of cognitive significance'of
 how true identity statements containing different (utterances of) indexicals and proper names can be informative, held to
 be unaccountable by the referentialist view. The informativeness that he has in mind'one that has puzzled Frege, Kaplan and
 Wettstein'concerns knowledge about the world. In trying to solve this puzzle on referentialist terms, he comes up with the
 notion of cognitive significance as a special kind of a second-order content which should account for cognitive significance
 in the former sense. Focusing on his treatment of perceptual demonstratives, I argue that he fails to do so both on the level
 of second-order contents containing demonstrative utterances and on the level of second-order contents containing perceptual
 buffers as new notions associated with the perceptions and used to temporarily store ideas we gain from the perceptions, which
 he holds to be causally connected to each other.
 
	

  While proper names in argument positions have received a lot of attention, this cannot be said about proper names in the naming
 construction, as in Call me Al'. I argue that in a number of more or less familiar languages the syntax of naming constructions
 is such that proper names there have to be analyzed as predicates, whose content mentions the name itself (cf. quotation
 theories'). If proper names can enter syntax as predicates, then in argument positions they should have a complex structure,
 consisting of a determiner and its restriction, like common nouns (cf. definite description theories of proper names'). Further
 consideration of the compositional semantics of proper names in the naming construction also shows that they have another
 argument slot, that of the naming convention. As a result, we will be able to account for the indexicality of proper names
 in argument positions and provide compositional semantics of complex and modified proper names (e.g., the famous detective Sherlock Holmes).
 
	

A response to Abbott on presupposition and common ground
	

  This paper presents problems for Stalnaker's common ground theory of presupposition. Stalnaker (Linguist and Philos 25:701“721,
 2002) proposes a 2-stage process of utterance interpretation: presupposed content is added to the common ground prior to acceptance/rejection
 of the utterance as a whole. But this revision makes presupposition difficult to distinguish from assertion. A more fundamental
 problem is that the common ground theory rests on a faulty theory of assertion'that the essence of assertion is to present
 the content of an utterance as new information. Many examples are presented of utterances which are felicitous but not informative
 in this way.
 
	

  In Spanish (and other Romance languages) certain predicates select the subjunctive mood in the embedded clause, while others
 select the indicative mood. In this paper, I present a new analysis for the predicates that select the subjunctive mood in
 Spanish that is based on a semantics of comparison. The main generalization proposed here is the following: in Spanish, a
 predicate selects the subjunctive mood in its embedded proposition if the proposition is compared to its contextual alternatives
 on a scale introduced by the predicate. In this proposal, predicates that select the subjunctive mood are thus analyzed as
 gradable predicates. Furthermore, the subjunctive mood morpheme is claimed to make a semantic contribution, namely to evaluate
 the contextual alternatives that are compared by the predicate. In comparing this proposal to other approaches, I show that
 it can more straightforwardly account for a number of properties of these predicates (entailment relations, practical inferences,
 and contexts with more than two alternatives). New empirical evidence for two crucial properties of the predicates that select
 the subjunctive mood is provided: these predicates are focus sensitive and they are gradable, two properties that follow directly
 from the proposal developed here. In the vast literature on mood, the link between the appearance of the subjunctive mood
 and these important properties has never been made before.