Dependent plural pronouns with Skolemized choice functions

Abstract

The present paper discusses two interesting phenomena concerning phifeatures on plural pronouns: (i) plural pronouns that denote atomic individuals ('dependent plural pronouns'), and (ii) plural pronouns with more than one binder ('partial binding'). A novel account of these two phenomena is proposed, according to which all occurrences of phi-features are both semantically and morphologically relevant. For such a 'uniformly semantic account' of phi-features, dependent plural pronouns constitute a theoretical challenge, while partial binding is more or less straightforwardly accounted for. In order to make sense of the semantic effects of the phi-features on dependent plural pronouns, the following idea is pursued: the phi-features on a dependent plural pronoun reflect the range of values that the pronoun takes, rather than the particular value it denotes at a time. This idea is implemented in a compositional semantics by making use of (Skolemized) choice functions. An appealing feature of the present account is that, unlike its predecessors, it accounts for dependent plural pronouns without c-commanding antecedents in essentially the same way as for those with c-commanding antecedents. It is also shown how this account of dependent plural pronouns can straightforwardly be augmented with set indices to account for partial binding.

Bound Variable Singular They Is Underspecified: The Case of All vs. Every

“…We suggest that the absence of number effects in both the online and offline measures is most compatible with the view that they is underspecified for number, and the presence of distributivity effects only in the acceptability ratings is related to a perhaps late construal mechanism that is required to fully semantically interpret singular-denoting pronouns under non-distributive quantifiers like all (Rullmann, 2003 ; Sudo, 2014 ). Furthermore, we take the processing effect associated with bound singular pronouns ( he ) to reflect a general fact about the English pronoun system, revealed here at the early moments of processing: morphologically singular pronouns resist bound interpretations, possibly because they is the language's preferred alternative.…”

“…In the studies that follow, we make this comparison by capitalizing on configurations in English where a morphologically plural quantified noun phrase, headed by all , can bind they with a singular interpretation. This is shown in (5a) (Rullmann, 2003 ; Sudo, 2014 ). As with the bound variable sentence in (3b), repeated in (5b), this sentence attributes a pragmatically plausible thought to all the runners—that only one singular individual, they themselves, is the fastest runner.…”

“…To obtain the plausible singularly-interpreted bound variable reading of (17), most researchers posit a distributive operator DIST (Rullmann, 2003 ; Sudo, 2014 ). The question is whether a collective interpretation is at all possible for (17), and when (and if) readers accommodate a distributive interpretation.…”

Gender and interpretation in Greek: Comments on Merchant (2014)

“…14 There is some controversy in the literature regarding the analysis of examples like (42). In particular, one popular analysis says that the φ-features on these pronouns are semantically uninterpreted and are morphological reflections of the agreement relation with the binder (Heim 2008;Kratzer 1998;, but there are other ideas as well (Spathas 2010;Jacobson 2012;Sauerland 2013;Sudo 2012;2014a). For the most part, we can be neutral with respect to this debate, but for certain data points, e.g.…”

Agreement at PF: An Argument from Partial Control

“… See Rullman , Sauerland , and Sudo , for semantic analyses that respond to this challenge. A case often discussed in this connection involves pronouns inside reversed specificational clefts, bound by the subject.…”