In this paper, we derive a notion of word meaning in context that characterizes meaning as both intensional and conceptual. We introduce a framework for specifying local as well as global constraints on word meaning in context, together with their interactions, thus modelling a wide range of lexical shifts and ambiguities observed in utterance interpretation. We represent sentence meaning as a situation description system, a probabilistic model which takes utterance understanding to be the mental process of describing to oneself one or more situations that would account for an observed utterance. We show how the system can be implemented in practice, and apply it to examples containing various contextualisation phenomena.
{"title":"How to Marry a Star: Probabilistic Constraints for Meaning in Context","authors":"Katrin Erk, Aurélie Herbelot","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffad016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffad016","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we derive a notion of word meaning in context that characterizes meaning as both intensional and conceptual. We introduce a framework for specifying local as well as global constraints on word meaning in context, together with their interactions, thus modelling a wide range of lexical shifts and ambiguities observed in utterance interpretation. We represent sentence meaning as a situation description system, a probabilistic model which takes utterance understanding to be the mental process of describing to oneself one or more situations that would account for an observed utterance. We show how the system can be implemented in practice, and apply it to examples containing various contextualisation phenomena.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139648305","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper argues that English present ability modal statements like “I can see Saturn” are ambiguous in the same way as past ability statements like “I was able to lift a fridge”: they can express either a general ability (‘I have the ability to see Saturn, in general’), or have an actualized (episodic) interpretation (‘I'm seeing Saturn, right now’). The challenge is to explain why in the present, actualized interpretations are only licensed when the modal's prejacent is a perception verb like see, and not with other predicates: “I can watch Saturn” only has the general ability reading available, and not the actualized one. I propose that (i) similar to what has been shown for past modal statements in the literature on Actuality Entailments (AEs) (Bhatt 1999), the ambiguity depends on grammatical aspect: general ability readings are due to the imperfective, which “removes” AEs by having the event occur in worlds introduced by a generic operator (Bhatt 1999), and actualized readings are due to the perfective, which directly combines with the prejacent event across the modal (Hacquard 2009); (ii) The usual unavailability of actualized interpretations in the present comes from the Present Perfective Paradox (Malchukov 2009): perfective aspect is incompatible with present tense, because the event time, a time interval, cannot be contained within the punctual speech time. (iii) Perception verbs are special in that they, and only they, are able to combine with perfective in the present, either because the PPP does not arise at all, or because they allow a specific type of aspectual coercion. This also explains their behavior in (non-modal) simple present sentences. A second challenge is that actualized interpretations in the present appear to occur exclusively with ability modals, and not when modals express other root flavors (e.g. teleological or deontic). I propose that this restriction is due to a further temporal orientation constraint.
{"title":"Can you See? Actuality Entailments in the Present","authors":"Anouk Dieuleveut","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffad011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffad011","url":null,"abstract":"This paper argues that English present ability modal statements like “I can see Saturn” are ambiguous in the same way as past ability statements like “I was able to lift a fridge”: they can express either a general ability (‘I have the ability to see Saturn, in general’), or have an actualized (episodic) interpretation (‘I'm seeing Saturn, right now’). The challenge is to explain why in the present, actualized interpretations are only licensed when the modal's prejacent is a perception verb like see, and not with other predicates: “I can watch Saturn” only has the general ability reading available, and not the actualized one. I propose that (i) similar to what has been shown for past modal statements in the literature on Actuality Entailments (AEs) (Bhatt 1999), the ambiguity depends on grammatical aspect: general ability readings are due to the imperfective, which “removes” AEs by having the event occur in worlds introduced by a generic operator (Bhatt 1999), and actualized readings are due to the perfective, which directly combines with the prejacent event across the modal (Hacquard 2009); (ii) The usual unavailability of actualized interpretations in the present comes from the Present Perfective Paradox (Malchukov 2009): perfective aspect is incompatible with present tense, because the event time, a time interval, cannot be contained within the punctual speech time. (iii) Perception verbs are special in that they, and only they, are able to combine with perfective in the present, either because the PPP does not arise at all, or because they allow a specific type of aspectual coercion. This also explains their behavior in (non-modal) simple present sentences. A second challenge is that actualized interpretations in the present appear to occur exclusively with ability modals, and not when modals express other root flavors (e.g. teleological or deontic). I propose that this restriction is due to a further temporal orientation constraint.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138686372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Copredication as Illusion","authors":"John Collins","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffad014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffad014","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":" 31","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138612683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Dayal (1996) makes two predictions on the interaction of number and wh-phrases: (i) that questions with singular wh-phrases yield a uniqueness inference, and (ii) that questions with plural wh-phrases yield an antiuniqueness inference. Maldonado (2020) shows that Spanish bare wh-phrases do not conform to Dayal’s predictions. From this, she argues against a unified treatment of number across wh-expressions. Elliott et al. (2022) argue that a unified treatment of number can be maintained if bare wh-phrases are capable of ranging over generalized quantifiers. We weigh in on this discussion by arguing for an intermediate position: though independent evidence suggests that wh-phrases can range over generalized quantifiers, an assumption that we adopt for bare wh-phrases, the unified treatment of number presented in Elliott et al. (2022) faces challenges that can be avoided under Maldonado’s assumptions about number marking on bare wh-phrases.
{"title":"Spanish Bare Interrogatives and Number","authors":"Luis Alonso-Ovalle, Vincent Rouillard","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffad008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffad008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Dayal (1996) makes two predictions on the interaction of number and wh-phrases: (i) that questions with singular wh-phrases yield a uniqueness inference, and (ii) that questions with plural wh-phrases yield an antiuniqueness inference. Maldonado (2020) shows that Spanish bare wh-phrases do not conform to Dayal’s predictions. From this, she argues against a unified treatment of number across wh-expressions. Elliott et al. (2022) argue that a unified treatment of number can be maintained if bare wh-phrases are capable of ranging over generalized quantifiers. We weigh in on this discussion by arguing for an intermediate position: though independent evidence suggests that wh-phrases can range over generalized quantifiers, an assumption that we adopt for bare wh-phrases, the unified treatment of number presented in Elliott et al. (2022) faces challenges that can be avoided under Maldonado’s assumptions about number marking on bare wh-phrases.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135943622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract According to proponents of the continuity hypothesis, metaphors represent one end of a spectrum of linguistic phenomena, which includes various forms of loosening/broadening, such as category extensions and approximations, as well as hyperbolic interpretations. The continuity hypothesis is used to establish that the inferences derived from the set of linguistic expressions mentioned above result from the same or nearly similar pragmatic processes. In this paper, we want to challenge that particular aspect of the continuity hypothesis. We do so based on considerations and analysis of an understudied linguistic phenomenon that we call the metaphorical uses of proper names (MPNs). We first explain how MPNs represent a unique linguistic class distinguishable from, for example, nicknames. In addition, we offer some remarks on how MPNs can be understood against the background of current debates between referentialists and predicativists about names. Our discussion leads us to conclude that MPNs are categorically different from literal interpretations of proper names. We spell out the consequences that the results of our analysis have for the continuity hypothesis.
{"title":"Metaphorical Uses of Proper Names and the Continuity Hypothesis","authors":"Jacob Hesse, Chris Genovesi, Eros Corazza","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffad006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffad006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract According to proponents of the continuity hypothesis, metaphors represent one end of a spectrum of linguistic phenomena, which includes various forms of loosening/broadening, such as category extensions and approximations, as well as hyperbolic interpretations. The continuity hypothesis is used to establish that the inferences derived from the set of linguistic expressions mentioned above result from the same or nearly similar pragmatic processes. In this paper, we want to challenge that particular aspect of the continuity hypothesis. We do so based on considerations and analysis of an understudied linguistic phenomenon that we call the metaphorical uses of proper names (MPNs). We first explain how MPNs represent a unique linguistic class distinguishable from, for example, nicknames. In addition, we offer some remarks on how MPNs can be understood against the background of current debates between referentialists and predicativists about names. Our discussion leads us to conclude that MPNs are categorically different from literal interpretations of proper names. We spell out the consequences that the results of our analysis have for the continuity hypothesis.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134945198","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Implicative verbs (e.g., manage, dare) are characterized by complement inferences (Karttunen, 1971). English manage entails its complement; the entailment reverses polarity with matrix negation, and is accompanied by a projective inference to the complement’s non-triviality (Coleman, 1975; Karttunen & Peters, 1979). I use data from Finnish and English to argue that the implicative inferential profile is derived from backgrounded relations of causal necessity and causal sufficiency (defined over the structure of a formal causal model; Pearl 2000; Schulz 2011) which link the lexical content of an implicative verb to the realization of its complement. The proposal builds on Baglini & Francez’s (2016) causal analysis of manage, but significantly revises the earlier proposal to offer a treatment which accounts not only for English manage, but extends to the lexical semantics of the full implicative class, including ‘polarity-reversing’ verbs like fail, lexically specific verbs like dare, and their Finnish counterparts. Unlike earlier analyses, the proposed causal semantics also provides a natural explanation of the commonalities between two-way entailing verbs like manage and a related class of weaker ‘one-way’ implicatives such as Finnish jaksaa (‘have the strength’), which entail complement truth values under only one matrix polarity, but generate strong pragmatic implicatures in the two-way implicative pattern under the non-entailing polarity.
{"title":"Causal Semantics for Implicative Verbs","authors":"Prerna Nadathur","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffad009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffad009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Implicative verbs (e.g., manage, dare) are characterized by complement inferences (Karttunen, 1971). English manage entails its complement; the entailment reverses polarity with matrix negation, and is accompanied by a projective inference to the complement’s non-triviality (Coleman, 1975; Karttunen & Peters, 1979). I use data from Finnish and English to argue that the implicative inferential profile is derived from backgrounded relations of causal necessity and causal sufficiency (defined over the structure of a formal causal model; Pearl 2000; Schulz 2011) which link the lexical content of an implicative verb to the realization of its complement. The proposal builds on Baglini & Francez’s (2016) causal analysis of manage, but significantly revises the earlier proposal to offer a treatment which accounts not only for English manage, but extends to the lexical semantics of the full implicative class, including ‘polarity-reversing’ verbs like fail, lexically specific verbs like dare, and their Finnish counterparts. Unlike earlier analyses, the proposed causal semantics also provides a natural explanation of the commonalities between two-way entailing verbs like manage and a related class of weaker ‘one-way’ implicatives such as Finnish jaksaa (‘have the strength’), which entail complement truth values under only one matrix polarity, but generate strong pragmatic implicatures in the two-way implicative pattern under the non-entailing polarity.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135788825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the Hintikkan tradition, attitude verbs are viewed as relations between individuals and propositions. Previous work on know and believe with Content DPs like the rumour has tended to treat know CP vs. know DP as polysemy. In this paper, I show that polysemy runs into conceptual and empirical problems, and propose instead a new decompositional approach to know-verbs, which avoids polysemy; linking both know DP and know CP to the same lexical root, which describes, broadly speaking, acquaintance. This analysis thus provides an explicit and compositional morpho-semantic link between know DP and know CP that accounts for the interpretation of DPs as objects of acquaintance, and further captures the idea that knowledge, and factivity more broadly, is tied to acquaintance with a situation, the res ( Kratzer 2002, a.o.). Based on detailed examination of the morpho-syntax and interpretation of DP and CP complements of believe, I further show that DPs can either combine with believe in the same fashion as CPs, as a direct object (saturating a propositional argument slot, as in Uegaki 2016), or as an indirect object, via a type of attitudinal applicative (proposed here). The former option is defined for Content DPs and the latter for agentive DPs, so-called Source DPs. Together, these proposals account for the observation that the interpretation of believe DP sentences varies depending on the type of DP (believe the rumour vs. believe the referee), whereas for know-verbs, both types of DPs are interpreted as objects of acquaintance. At the core of the current proposal is the idea that verbs like know and believe differ fundamentally at the level of argument structure and internal morpho-semantic composition, and thus combine with DPs via different routes; contrary to uniform approaches to know and believe. Whereas believe-verbs describe relations to intensional content, and require external licensing mechanisms to combine with DPs, know-verbs describe complex relations, fundamentally anchored in the attitude holder’s acquaintance with (abstract or concrete) individuals in the world, and thus make reference to individuals as part of their argument structure. The current proposal also builds on and adds to previous insights about connections between factivity, DP-complementation, and question-embedding.
{"title":"Knowing and Believing Things: What DP-Complementation Can Tell us about the Meaning and Composition of (Factive) Attitudes","authors":"Kajsa Djärv","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffac015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffac015","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In the Hintikkan tradition, attitude verbs are viewed as relations between individuals and propositions. Previous work on know and believe with Content DPs like the rumour has tended to treat know CP vs. know DP as polysemy. In this paper, I show that polysemy runs into conceptual and empirical problems, and propose instead a new decompositional approach to know-verbs, which avoids polysemy; linking both know DP and know CP to the same lexical root, which describes, broadly speaking, acquaintance. This analysis thus provides an explicit and compositional morpho-semantic link between know DP and know CP that accounts for the interpretation of DPs as objects of acquaintance, and further captures the idea that knowledge, and factivity more broadly, is tied to acquaintance with a situation, the res ( Kratzer 2002, a.o.). Based on detailed examination of the morpho-syntax and interpretation of DP and CP complements of believe, I further show that DPs can either combine with believe in the same fashion as CPs, as a direct object (saturating a propositional argument slot, as in Uegaki 2016), or as an indirect object, via a type of attitudinal applicative (proposed here). The former option is defined for Content DPs and the latter for agentive DPs, so-called Source DPs. Together, these proposals account for the observation that the interpretation of believe DP sentences varies depending on the type of DP (believe the rumour vs. believe the referee), whereas for know-verbs, both types of DPs are interpreted as objects of acquaintance. At the core of the current proposal is the idea that verbs like know and believe differ fundamentally at the level of argument structure and internal morpho-semantic composition, and thus combine with DPs via different routes; contrary to uniform approaches to know and believe. Whereas believe-verbs describe relations to intensional content, and require external licensing mechanisms to combine with DPs, know-verbs describe complex relations, fundamentally anchored in the attitude holder’s acquaintance with (abstract or concrete) individuals in the world, and thus make reference to individuals as part of their argument structure. The current proposal also builds on and adds to previous insights about connections between factivity, DP-complementation, and question-embedding.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45049932","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In order to handle presuppositions in the scope of attitude verbs, the binding theory allows presuppositions triggered in a subject's beliefs to be bound at the matrix level; and it allows presuppositions triggered in non-doxastic attitudes to be bound in the subject's beliefs (Geurts, 1999; Maier, 2015). However, we argue that this leads to serious overgeneration, for example it predicts that the unacceptable ‘Sue will come to the party, but Bill is sure that she won't and that only Sue will come to the party’ should be equivalent to the acceptable ‘Sue will come to the party, but Bill is sure that nobody will come to the party’. This is because the presupposition triggered by ‘only Sue will come to the party’ should be able to be bound at the matrix level. We discuss some responses to this problem, but argue that they all have shortcomings.
{"title":"Attitudes, Presuppositions, and the Binding Theory","authors":"Kyle Blumberg","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffad007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffad007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In order to handle presuppositions in the scope of attitude verbs, the binding theory allows presuppositions triggered in a subject's beliefs to be bound at the matrix level; and it allows presuppositions triggered in non-doxastic attitudes to be bound in the subject's beliefs (Geurts, 1999; Maier, 2015). However, we argue that this leads to serious overgeneration, for example it predicts that the unacceptable ‘Sue will come to the party, but Bill is sure that she won't and that only Sue will come to the party’ should be equivalent to the acceptable ‘Sue will come to the party, but Bill is sure that nobody will come to the party’. This is because the presupposition triggered by ‘only Sue will come to the party’ should be able to be bound at the matrix level. We discuss some responses to this problem, but argue that they all have shortcomings.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42661972","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this paper, we introduce a class of exceptionally narrow-scoping singular indefinites in English (e.g., “Sam drove a car for several years before switching to a truck”), which pattern more closely with what have been termed “weak definites” in the literature (e.g., Poesio, 1994; Carlson et al., 2006) than with regular indefinites. While the existence of such exceptional “weak” indefinites has been previously anticipated by Klein et al. (2013), the category is difficult to distinguish from simple narrow-scoped singular indefinites in most contexts. Here, we argue that there is one environment where weak singular indefinites can be distinctively identified: namely, when they appear with for-adverbials. We sketch a concrete implementation of a semantic incorporation-based account for such nominals, bringing them analytically in line with incorporation analyses of weak definites, building closely on the ideas in Dayal (2011). We further briefly discuss how the proposed analysis adjudicates between two competing analyses for for-adverbials, one which assumes that for encodes a universal quantifier (e.g., Deo & Piñango, 2011) and another which takes for to be non-quantificational (e.g., Champollion, 2013), in favor of the latter view. We close by considering some remaining issues surrounding semantically incorporated DPs in English: specifically, how weak (in) definites relate to other nominals that receive covarying interpretations across contexts—such as bare plurals on the one hand (which we do not take to be semantically incorporated) and bare singulars on the other.
在本文中，我们在英语中引入了一类范围异常狭窄的奇异不确定性（例如，“Sam在换上卡车之前开了几年车”），这种模式与文献中所称的“弱定义”（例如，Poesio，1994；Carlson et al.，2006）更接近，而不是常规不确定性。虽然Klein等人之前已经预料到这种特殊的“弱”不确定性的存在。（2013），但在大多数情况下，该类别很难与简单的狭义奇异不确定性区分开来。在这里，我们认为有一种环境可以区分弱单数不确定性：即当它们与for状语一起出现时。我们在Dayal（2011）的思想的基础上，为这类名词描绘了一个基于语义合并的解释的具体实现，使它们在分析上与弱定义的合并分析一致。我们进一步简要讨论了所提出的分析如何在两种竞争性的for状语分析之间做出裁决，一种假设for编码一个通用量词（例如，Deo&Piñango，2011），另一种假设是非定量的（例如，Champollion，2013），支持后一种观点。最后，我们考虑了英语中语义结合的DP的一些遗留问题：特别是，弱（in）定义与其他在上下文中接受同变解释的名词之间的关系，例如裸复数（我们不认为它是语义结合的）和裸单数。
{"title":"Semantic Incorporation in English Singular Indefinites","authors":"S. Srinivas, Kyle Rawlins","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffad005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffad005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In this paper, we introduce a class of exceptionally narrow-scoping singular indefinites in English (e.g., “Sam drove a car for several years before switching to a truck”), which pattern more closely with what have been termed “weak definites” in the literature (e.g., Poesio, 1994; Carlson et al., 2006) than with regular indefinites. While the existence of such exceptional “weak” indefinites has been previously anticipated by Klein et al. (2013), the category is difficult to distinguish from simple narrow-scoped singular indefinites in most contexts. Here, we argue that there is one environment where weak singular indefinites can be distinctively identified: namely, when they appear with for-adverbials. We sketch a concrete implementation of a semantic incorporation-based account for such nominals, bringing them analytically in line with incorporation analyses of weak definites, building closely on the ideas in Dayal (2011). We further briefly discuss how the proposed analysis adjudicates between two competing analyses for for-adverbials, one which assumes that for encodes a universal quantifier (e.g., Deo & Piñango, 2011) and another which takes for to be non-quantificational (e.g., Champollion, 2013), in favor of the latter view. We close by considering some remaining issues surrounding semantically incorporated DPs in English: specifically, how weak (in) definites relate to other nominals that receive covarying interpretations across contexts—such as bare plurals on the one hand (which we do not take to be semantically incorporated) and bare singulars on the other.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42490199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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