Dylan Bumford
Biographic Data
| ID | 1715849 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dylan Bumford |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dylan |
| FAMILY NAME | Bumford |
| SIGNATURE | BUMFORD D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Department of Linguistics UCLA, [email protected] |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1454-7798 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 4 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 4 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Polymorphic distributivity
This article describes a novel pattern of interpretations associated with universal determiners like ‘each’ and ‘every’. It is demonstrated that these canonically distributive quantifiers can give rise to surprising collective readings when they quantify into sub-clausal constituents, especially other Determiner Phrases. For instance, ‘two cards from each player’ can be understood to pick out a single assorted deck of cards, one whose contents co…
Negative Polarity Items in Definite Superlatives
Ordinary superlative descriptions are well-known to provide safe harbor to negative polarity items (NPIs), as in the longest book anyone read. What is less well-known is that relative superlative descriptions also sometimes host NPIs, as in the loudest that anyone sang. We observe that this latter pattern is more general than has been previously described. In fact, relative superlatives can license NPIs outside of their own descriptions. On the o…
Donkeys under discussion
Donkey sentences have existential and universal readings, but they are not often perceived as ambiguous. We extend the pragmatic theory of non-maximality in plural definites by Križ (2016) to explain how hearers use Questions under Discussion to fix the interpretation of donkey sentences in context. We propose that the denotations of such sentences involve truth-value gaps — in certain scenarios the sentences are neither true nor false — and demo…
Incremental quantification and the dynamics of pair-list phenomena
Distributive universals are unique among natural language quantifiers in the following three ways: (i) matrix interrogatives that contain them accept pair-list answers; (ii) indefinites and disjunctions in their scope may assume arbitrary functional readings; and (iii) they permit sentence-internal interpretations of a wide range of comparative adjectives, like "new" and "different". Because other quantifiers in the same environments do not give …
Negative Polarity Items in Definite Superlatives
Ordinary superlative descriptions are well-known to provide safe harbor to negative polarity items (NPIs), as in the longest book anyone read. What is less well-known is that relative superlative descriptions also sometimes host NPIs, as in the loudest that anyone sang. We observe that this latter pattern is more general than has been previously described. In fact, relative superlatives can license NPIs outside of their own descriptions. On the o…
Incremental quantification and the dynamics of pair-list phenomena
Distributive universals are unique among natural language quantifiers in the following three ways: (i) matrix interrogatives that contain them accept pair-list answers; (ii) indefinites and disjunctions in their scope may assume arbitrary functional readings; and (iii) they permit sentence-internal interpretations of a wide range of comparative adjectives, like "new" and "different". Because other quantifiers in the same environments do not give …
Donkeys under discussion
Donkey sentences have existential and universal readings, but they are not often perceived as ambiguous. We extend the pragmatic theory of non-maximality in plural definites by Križ (2016) to explain how hearers use Questions under Discussion to fix the interpretation of donkey sentences in context. We propose that the denotations of such sentences involve truth-value gaps — in certain scenarios the sentences are neither true nor false — and demo…
Polymorphic distributivity
This article describes a novel pattern of interpretations associated with universal determiners like ‘each’ and ‘every’. It is demonstrated that these canonically distributive quantifiers can give rise to surprising collective readings when they quantify into sub-clausal constituents, especially other Determiner Phrases. For instance, ‘two cards from each player’ can be understood to pick out a single assorted deck of cards, one whose contents co…
Negative Polarity Items in Definite Superlatives
Ordinary superlative descriptions are well-known to provide safe harbor to negative polarity items (NPIs), as in the longest book anyone read. What is less well-known is that relative superlative descriptions also sometimes host NPIs, as in the loudest that anyone sang. We observe that this latter pattern is more general than has been previously described. In fact, relative superlatives can license NPIs outside of their own descriptions. On the o…
Computer Science (4 works) · Linguistics (4 works) · Artificial Intelligence (3 works) · Mathematics (3 works) · Natural language processing (3 works) · Natural Language Processing Techniques (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (3 works) · Distributive property (2 works) · Distributivity (2 works)