A multi-dimensional treatment of quantification in extraordinary English

Abstract

Link to publication Citation for published version (APA):Dekker, P. (2008). A multi-dimensional treatment of quantification in extraordinary English. Linguistics and Philosophy, 31(1), 101-127. DOI: 10.1007/s10988-008-9034-1 General rightsIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. Download date: 11 May 2018Abstract In this paper I revive two important formal approaches to the interpretation of natural language, that of Montague and that of Karttunen and Peters. Armed with insights from dynamic semantics (Heim, Krifka) the two turn out to stand up against age-old criticisms in an orthodox fashion. The plan is mainly methodological, as I only want to illustrate the technical feasibility of the revived proposals. Even so, there are illuminating and welcome empirical consequences on the subject of scope islands (as discussed by Abusch and Kratzer, among many others), as well as unintended theoretical implications in the contextualist debate (Grice, Recanati, Simons, Stanley, and many others again).

Indefinite Determiners and the Pragmatics of Referential Anchoring

“…In particular, we suggest (similar to Dekker, 2004Dekker, , 2008 ) that referential anchoring is -at its very core -a pragmatic phenomenon. Using an indefi nite the speaker generally introduces a new discourse item, which for reasons of simplicity we model in a classical way as an existential quantifi er.…”

“…We discuss this point at some length. Our proposal also diff ers from Dekker ( 2008 ). Our domain narrowing is just as pragmatic as Dekker's system, but it doesn't include any special dimension of meaning.…”

“…Th ere have been a number of implementations of this idea: most infl uentially, Kratzer ( 1998 ) uses Skolemized choice functions (see also von Heusinger, 2002 ), but one can alternatively use plain Skolem functions as shown in Bende- Farkas and Kamp ( 2001 ), cf. also Steedman ( 2007 ), Endriss ( 2009 ) and from another pragmatic perspective Dekker ( 2008 ).…”

Varieties of Distributivity: 'One by One' vs 'Each'

“…The second route to distributivity is based on encapsulation into a function. Functions, e.g., Skolem functions, store quantificational dependencies as a whole, mapping each entity to the (possibly non-atomic) entity that depends on it (Stone 1999, Bittner and Trondhjem 2008and Dekker 2008. For example, one by one in (6) below associates each boy-atom with an event of reciting a poem and, thereby, induces a dependency between boys and the recited poems encapsulated in a function like f in (7) below.…”

The semantics, syntax, and morphology of Transparent Free Relatives revisited; a comparison of two approaches

“…Note that the variable x in the meaning and in the contextually salient inference are bound by a common (existential) quantifier. For detailed discussion of such situations and a proposed formalization, see Dekker (2008).…”