The Semantics of Plurals, Focus, Degrees, and Times: Essays in Honor of Roger Schwarzschild PDF
Preview The Semantics of Plurals, Focus, Degrees, and Times: Essays in Honor of Roger Schwarzschild
Daniel Altshuler Jessica Rett Editors The Semantics of Plurals, Focus, Degrees, and Times Essays in Honor of Roger Schwarzschild The Semantics of Plurals, Focus, Degrees, and Times Daniel Altshuler Jessica Rett (cid:129) Editors The Semantics of Plurals, Focus, Degrees, and Times Essays in Honor of Roger Schwarzschild 123 Editors DanielAltshuler Jessica Rett Schoolof Cognitive Science Department ofLinguistics Hampshire College University of California, LosAngeles Amherst, MA, USA LosAngeles, CA, USA ISBN978-3-030-04437-4 ISBN978-3-030-04438-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04438-1 LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2018962766 ©SpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG2019 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpart of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission orinformationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilar methodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped. 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ThisSpringerimprintispublishedbytheregisteredcompanySpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:Gewerbestrasse11,6330Cham,Switzerland Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Daniel Altshuler and Jessica Rett Part I The Semantics of Nouns and Plurals A Chapter in the History of Formal Semantics in the Twentieth Century: Plurals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Barbara H. Partee Intensions, Types and Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Thomas Ede Zimmermann Singleton Indefinites and the Privacy Principle: Certain Puzzles . . . . . . 57 Veneeta Dayal Why Is Attributive “Heavy” Distributive? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Katy McKinney-Bock and Roumyana Pancheva Factivity Meets Polarity: On Two Differences Between Italian Versus English Factives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Gennaro Chierchia Part II The Semantics of Focus Topless and Salient—Convertibles in the Theory of Focus. . . . . . . . . . . 137 Daniel Büring New vs. Given . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Angelika Kratzer and Elisabeth Selkirk Part III The Semantics of Degree Equatives and Maximality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Luka Crnič and Danny Fox v vi Contents The Perils of Interpreting Comparatives with Pronouns for Children and Adults. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Kristen Syrett and Vera Gor Differentials Crosslinguistically. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 Rajesh Bhatt and Vincent Homer Measurement Scales and Gradability: On the Semantics of the Possessive Property Concept Construction in Mandarin Chinese. . . . . . 239 Xiao Li Part IV The Semantics of Tense and Aspect Did Socrates Die? A Note on the Moment of Change. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 Sandro Zucchi Adverbs of Change. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 Todor Koev Since since . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 Kai von Fintel and Sabine Iatridou Contributors Daniel Altshuler Department of Linguistics, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, USA Rajesh Bhatt Department of Linguistics, UMass-Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA Daniel Büring Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Gennaro Chierchia Department of Linguistics, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA Luka Crnič Department of Linguistics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel Veneeta Dayal Department of Linguistics, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA Danny Fox Department ofLinguistics andPhilosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA Vera Gor Department of Linguistics, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA VincentHomer DepartmentofLinguistics,UMass-Amherst,Amherst,MA,USA; Institut Jean-Nicod, CNRS, Paris, France Sabine Iatridou Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA Todor Koev Department of Linguistics, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Angelika Kratzer Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA Xiao Li Department of Classical, Middle Eastern Asian Languages and Cultures, Queens College, CUNY, Flushing, NY, USA vii viii Contributors Katy McKinney-Bock Center for Spoken Language Understanding, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, OR, USA Roumyana Pancheva University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA Barbara H. Partee Departments of Linguistics and Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA Jessica Rett Department of Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA Elisabeth Selkirk Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA Kristen Syrett Department of Linguistics, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA KaivonFintel DepartmentofLinguisticsandPhilosophy,MassachusettsInstitute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA Thomas Ede Zimmermann Institut Für Linguistik, Goethe -Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany SandroZucchi DipartimentodiFilosofia,UniversitàdegliStudidiMilano,Milan, Italy Preface DanielAltshulerandJessicaRett Abstract Inthispreface,weintroduceRogerSchwarzschild’sbodyofwork,aswell asthepapersinthisvolume.BecauseRoger’sworkissodiverseandcomprehensive, thebookisdividedintofourcategories:papersthataddressthesemanticsofnouns and plurals; papers on focus semantics; papers on degree semantics; and papers addressing the semantics of tense and aspect. We end with compelling arguments thatRogeristhebest. · · · · · Keywords Plurals Focus Degrees Space Tense Aspect ThisbookislovinglydedicatedtoRogerSchwarzschildontheoccasionofhis60th birthday. WheneverRogerisbroughtupinconversation—anyconversation—thewordsare shadedwiththewarmestpastels.Sharedexperiencesareoftenfamiliarbecausehe hasbeenaguidingangelforsomany.ForthoseluckyenoughtogettoknowRoger, theirthoughtsandexperienceshaveforeverbecomeRogeresque.Astheeditorsof thisvolume, wearehonored toaidacelebration ofRoger’s accomplishments asa scholar,colleague,teacher,friend,andmentor. Roger’scontributiontosemanticshasbeenformative.AsnotedbyRoger’sDok- tormutter, Angelika Kratzer, Roger is not satisfied until he gets to the truth of the matter. This is not only painstaking, but it takes a long time. Roger, however, has been a successful perfectionist, even from early on in his career. Every one of his publicationshasmadeavitalcontributiontothefield.Rogerhasinspiredgenerations of scholars to rethink their own work in a new light, regardless of the framework employed,regardlessofthekindofresearchbeingpursued.Afterall,thetruthofthe matterisnottiedtoaparticularframeworkoraparticularresearchquestion.Once discovered,itlivesonasthecoreofsemantictheorizing. B D.Altshuler ( ) DepartmentofLinguistics,HampshireCollege,Amherst,MA,USA e-mail:[email protected] J.Rett DepartmentofLinguistics,UniversityofCalifornia,LosAngeles,LosAngeles,CA,USA e-mail:[email protected] ©SpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG2019 1 D.AltshulerandJ.Rett(eds.),TheSemanticsofPlurals,Focus,Degrees,andTimes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04438-1_1 2 D.AltshulerandJ.Rett 1 Roger’sContributionstoFormalSemantics Roger’s contributions to formal semantics is unusually varied. As the title of this volume reflects, he has made lasting impacts on the semantics of plurals, focus, degrees, and tense; areas that seem quite diverse on the face of things. But the creative approaches he has used in this work—cross-linguistic, undogmatic, and phenomenon-general—have also helped address broader questions, including the questionofwhatsortsofentitiescanberepresentedinnaturallanguage,andwhat thepropertiesandstructuresofthoseentitiescanandmustbe. 1.1 TheSemanticsofNounsandPlurals Roger’s earliest impact on the field of natural language semantics was one of his biggest. In his dissertation (Schwarzschild 1991), Roger advanced an empirically comprehensive treatment of plurals as set-denoting. While it has historical prece- dence (see Winter and Scha 2015, for a recent overview), the proposal was made in direct contrast to Link’s (1983) suggestion that plurals denote individuals qua join semi-lattices. To account for the symmetric interpretations of complex plu- rals(e.g.,MaryandJohnwereseparated),Rogerproposedthatpluraldenotations include a context-sensitive parameter defining their cover, allowing for the plural to be associated with different subsets of its referential denotation. This view was furtherdevelopedinaseriesofpapers(Schwarzschild1992, 1994)andinhisbook (Schwarzschild1996),promptingfuturegenerationsofscholarstoresearchhowcon- textualeffectsshouldbeincorporatedintotheanalysisofpluralphenomena,across theoreticalframeworks. In later work, culminating in a very influential Journal of Semantics article (Schwarzschild2002),Rogerarguedthatspecificindefinitestakeexceptionalscope because of their semantic properties, as opposed to their syntactic properties. In particular, he argued that a specific indefinite is any indefinite with a singleton in itsextension,inwhichcasethescopeoftheindefiniteisneutralizedwithrespectto otherquantifiers,givingtheappearanceofwidescope.Toalargeextent,itisthisidea thathasmadethetreatmentofspecificindefinitesahottopicinformalsemantics. Roger’stheoryisstillfirmlyinplaceaspartofthecanon,inlinguisticsemanticsas wellasthephilosophyoflanguage. In2006,RogertaughtagraduateseminaratRutgersonthemass/countdistinc- tion.Whilerecentworkhadbeendonetoaddresstheapparentsemanticdifferences between mass and count nouns (Chierchia 1998a,b), Roger remained frustrated by the distinction, as well as a potentially related distinction between cumulative and distributive interpretations of plurals. In a series of paradigm-shifting papers (Schwarzschild 2011, 2015), Roger advanced the proposal (inspired by Higgin- bothamandSchein(1989);Parsons(1990))thatthecount/massdistinctionandthe cumulative/distributivedistinctionarebothbestaccountedforinasemanticsinwhich
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