Interpreting plural predication

Homogeneity and non-maximality

Bibliographic Data

ID21461992
AuthorsMartin Kriz (0000-0002-5968-6436, University of Vienna, corresponding author), Bert Spector (0000-0003-0468-5986, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), Benjamin Spector
Year2021
Volume44
Issue5
Pages1131-1178
Publication date2021-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLinguistics and Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0165-0157 • E-ISSN: 1573-0549
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s10988-020-09311-w
PMID34720264
OpenAlexW3095618468
LanguageEN
Citations received32
References cited19

Plural definite descriptions across many languages display two well-known properties. First, they can give rise to so-called non-maximal readings, in the sense that they ‘allow for exceptions’ ( Mary read the books on the reading list , in some contexts, can be judged true even if Mary didn’t read all the books on the reading list). Second, while they tend to have a quasi-universal quantificational force in affirmative sentences (‘quasi-universal’ rather than simply ‘universal’ due to the possibility of exceptions we have just mentioned), they tend to be interpreted existentially in the scope of negation (a property often referred to as homogeneity , cf. Löbner in Linguist Philos 23:213–308, 2000). Building on previous works (in particular Krifka in Proceedings of SALT VI, Cornell University, pp 136–153, 1996 and Malamud in Semant Pragmat, 5:1–28, 2012), we offer a theory in which sentences containing plural definite expressions trigger a family of possible interpretations, and where general principles of language use account for their interpretation in various contexts and syntactic environments. Our theory solves a number of problems that these previous works encounter, and has broader empirical coverage in that it offers a precise analysis for sentences that display complex interactions between plural definites, quantifiers and bound variables, as well as for cases involving non-distributive predicates. The resulting proposal is briefly compared with an alternative proposal by Križ (Aspects of homogeneity in the semantics of natural language, University of Vienna, 2015), which has similar coverage but is based on a very different architecture and sometimes makes subtly different predictions

Epistemology · Linguistics · Metaphysics · Negation · Philosophy of language · Plural · Computer Science · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Mathematics · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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