'And': Conjunction Reduction Redux

1021 Pages·2017·4.745 MB·English

by  Barry Schein

Acknowledgments
In 1989, Jim Higginbotham’s counterexamples, now in section 14.1.1, launched a pair
of job talks with equivocal results. After nearly three decades of critical commentary,
attempted rescue, and comic relief, my benefactors will find the results no less
equivocal and only these words of thanks for their pains. Those among the living
who suffered the longest the details herein are Elena Herburger, Paul Pietroski,
Roger Schwarzschild and Anna Szabolcsi. Joining them in the metatheoretical
excursions about meaning or vinification have been Richard Larson, Peter Ludlow,
and Robert May. Through most of it, Donca Steriade has endured progress reports,
returning pitch-perfect advice. But, our young son, Aaron Joseph Steriade Schein,
escaped quickly and painlessly, it seems, from bewilderment to a higher science.
Other lifers putting up with my game include Toni Borowsky, Neil Briskman, David
Eisenberg, Victor Eisenberg, Joey Freed, Alessandra Giorgi, Nina Hyams, Pino
Longobardi, Richard Mendelson, Melissa Monroe, Joel Rotenberg, Ken Safir, Sandra
Schein, Jerry Silverman, Dominique Sportiche, Richard Usatine, and Karina Wilkin-
son. Cheering on the last three years and twenty-six miles of this marathon were
Ladan Shams and Leon and Ella Shams-Schaal, current and future cognitive
scientists.
For merely a decade, Elena Guerzoni sustained the semantics program and in our
seminars posed questions so deftly that I would not grasp the full force of it until
she had safely left the room. We caught up in postmortems to review the week in
semantics and semantics gossip. More recently, joining the mash-up of workday
research and after-hours speculation have been Yael Sharvit and Alexander Wil-
liams. To Alexander Williams, I am especially grateful for a close reading and com-
ments on this and an earlier manuscript.
The Poet says that “there are in our existence spots of time, / That with distinct
pre-eminence retain / A renovating virtue, whence, depressed/ By false opinion and
contentious thought, / Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight, / In trivial occu-
pations, and the round / Of ordinary intercourse, our minds / Are nourished and
invisibly repaired.” Lots of spots. Nourished and invisibly repaired I have been by
xiv Acknowledgments
many occasional poets, some who may better remember their submission as a pro-
tracted inquisition: Pranav Anand, Chris Barker, Lucas Champollion, Cleo Con-
doravdi, Danny Fox, Martin Hackl, John Hawthorne, Norbert Hornstein, Kyle
Johnson, Kathrin Koslicki, Angelika Kratzer, Peter Lasersohn, Chris Laterza, Terje
Lohndal, Philippe Schlenker, Alexis Wellwood, and Eytan Zweig.
In corridor and classroom, touching on this work, I have learned much from col-
leagues and fellow seminarians: Joseph Aoun, Hagit Borer, Thomas Borer, José
Camacho, Lina Choueiri, Bridget Copley, Elena Guerzoni, Jim Higginbotham,
Roland Hinterhölzl, Hajime Hoji, Utpal Lahiri, Katy McKinney-Bock, Toby Mintz,
Sarah Ouwayda, Roumyana Pancheva, Philippe Schlenker, Robert Shanklin, Saurov
Syed, Barbara Tomaszewicz, Antonella Vecchiato, Jean-Roger Vergnaud, Karina
Wilkinson, and Maria Luisa Zubizarreta. José Camacho went as far as a 1997 dis-
sertation and 2003 book on the syntax of coordination just as I was alleged to be
finishing up its semantics.
At critical junctures for this book, three, Ernie Lepore invited presentations at
the Semantics Workshop of the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, his home for
the care and feeding of interdisciplinary linguistics and philosophy. On four occa-
sions of equal import, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini and colleagues at the University
of Arizona welcomed presentations of this work at their forum for linguistics and
cognitive science. I am grateful to Jay Keyser for his years of support and support
of the completed manuscript and also for his example of personal courage with
schtick—I meant, grace.
To my editors, Marc Lowenthal and Marcy Ross, at MIT Press, my copy editor
Elizabeth Judd and indexer David Hill, many thanks for shepherding a very fat
sheep to publication.
1 Introduction
1.0 Univocal and
It is an old prayer that the and conjoining the Determiner Phrases (DPs) in (1) be
the same and that connects sentences, if only the logical form of (1) were something
like (2):
(1) At Acropolis Pizza, the sauce and the cheese are fresh.
(2) At Acropolis Pizza, the sauce is fresh, and the cheese is fresh.
Aristotle laments (Lasersohn 1995) that this could not in general be so because the
sensible (3) would be rendered nonsense if its logical form were like (4):
(3) At Acropolis Pizza, the sauce and the cheese are a perfect marriage of two
rivals.
(4) *At Acropolis Pizza, the sauce is a perfect marriage of two rivals, and the
cheese is a perfect marriage of two rivals.
The and of (3) must instead be one that composes DPs rather than sentences, and
it applies to them so that the result refers to a plurality consisting of their referents,
to the toppings of a plain cheese pizza that the subject of (5) also refers to:
(5) The pizza toppings are a perfect marriage of two rivals.
Aristotle’s brief for a nominal and is as good as the impoverished logical forms he
assumes. If there is nothing more to be a perfect marriage than a one-placed predi-
cate, there will indeed be no sentential source for (3). There is nothing for a senten-
tial connective to connect except the conjuncts in the nonsensical (4), “Ms & Mc.”
But if there are unspoken relations that logical form makes explicit (Davidson 1967;
Castañeda 1967; Parsons 1990), it becomes possible to render (3) with a logical form
in which the ordinary sentential connective conjoins clauses about the sauce’s and
the cheese’s participation in the same event:
(6) For some event e, ((Participates(e, s) and Participates(e, c)) & be a perfect
marriage(e))
‘The sauce participates and the cheese participates & it’s a perfect marriage.’1
2 Chapter 1
Here is the only and, the sentential one. Analysis of (3) as (6) explains why natural
languages pronounce the sentential connective and the nominal conjunction alleged
for (3) as if they were the same—they are.
The collective reference of nominal conjunction finds a counterpart in the divided
reference of predicative conjunction:
(7) The pizza toppings are ladled and sprinkled over an outstretched pizza.
Ladling and sprinkling divide the pizza toppings. That is, there is an event of ladling
and there is an event of sprinkling and the pizza toppings participate in them, refer-
ring to these events with a plural pronoun:
(8) For some events e,e, (Participates(them , t) & ladled(e) and sprinkled(e))
1 2 1,2 1 2
As the ladling is not the sprinkling, there are the two events. As it is left open which
toppings go on which way, all that can be said is that the toppings participate in
them. The reference to distinct events in (7) is as obvious as the distinct verbs
describing them. Yet plural reference to events is also latent in nominal conjunction,
although (6) did not reflect it:
(9) The sauce simmering and the cheese burbling are a perfect marriage of two
rivals.
For some events e, e,
1 2
((Participates(e,s) & simmering(e)) and (Participates(e,c) & burbling(e))
1 1 2 2
& perfect marriage(they ))
1,2
(10) The sauce slowly and the cheese quickly are ladled and sprinkled over the
face of the outstretched pizza.
For some events e, e, e, e,
1 2 3 4
((Participates(e,s) & slow(e)) and (Participates(e,c) and quick(e))
1 1 2 2
& Be(they , them ) & (ladled(e) and sprinkled(e))
1,2 3,4 3 4
As the simmering is not the burbling and what is slow is not quick, the sauce and
the cheese each participate in their own state or event in (9) and (10). Their states
while simmering and bubbling, these constitute a perfect marriage. The slow and
quick events in which they participate, these are those, the events of their being
ladled and being sprinkled.
To Aristotle’s question of why this and of collective or divided reference isn’t
different from sentential and, the answer is that in a language with unspoken rela-
tions to events, and’s collective or divided reference is just an illusion of plural event
pronouns cloaking their plural reference to events in silence. If and is always a
sentential connective, then much of what it connects often goes unspoken—Con-
junction Reduction (Chomsky 1957; Ross 1967)—and unspoken must be grasped in
context from what is not unspoken.
Introduction 3
So plural event pronouns rescue and. But even if a word’s integrity did not mean
much, there is further argument concluding this chapter that any syntax and seman-
tics deriving DPs or Predicate Phrases from their conjunctions—[ [ the sauce] and
DP DP
[ the cheese]], [ [ ladled] and [ sprinkled]]—are mistaken both in syntax,
DP PredP PredP PredP
facing a dilemma with no exit (section 1.5.1), and in semantics. What is expressed
with an and of collective or divided reference proves not to be synonymous with
the use of plural event pronouns (section 1.5.2). Natural language again conforms
in form and meaning to a language, Eventish, with a univocal sentential and, unspo-
ken relations to events, and plural event pronouns. This argument launches a
grammar in Eventish for and and its surroundings in natural language developed in
the following chapters. An overview of the major results fills out this one (sections
1.2–1.8), but I begin with an apology (section 1.1). Prior to any thought of events
and what is to be said in their name, a few facts of natural language show that
answering Aristotle in a logical language in which and is univocal and sentential is
the only game in town, whether or not it will be played well here.
1.1 The slippery slope to Conjunction Reduction
The semantic fact of (3) that inclines Aristotle toward another meaning for and
recurs in (11)–(15) despite a sentential connective that cannot be anything else:
DP-Tense-V Δ and DP-Tense-V Φ
i i
(11) No well-behaved child will grab at Δ and no well-behaved sibling will tear
i
into [a piece of pizza that they have been told to share].
i
(12) Not many a student proposed and not many a professor (of his) accepted
that they should collaborate even more than they already have.
(13) Most philosophers by noon had overrun and most linguists no more than 10
minutes later had mobbed some twenty pizzerias between them in the
neighborhood of their joint session.
(14) Most of the philosophers (while) hollering crushed and most of the linguists
(while) hooting squashed forty pizza delivery vans between them.
(15) Marvin made a grand entrance and Bernice swept in at the gala with each
other’s spouses on their arms.
In (11)–(15), and conjoins fully tensed sentences containing spoken subjects and
tensed verbs. The coordinate structures chosen exemplify Right-Node Raising, so
called in that the first of the conjoined sentences contains a gap Δ, an unspoken
i
phrase, related to the Right-Node Raised phrase, spoken at the rightmost edge of
the second sentence. The Right-Node Raised phrases of (11)–(15) are all collective
4 Chapter 1
(Perlmutter and Ross 1970; Jackendoff 1977; McCawley 1981a) like be a perfect
marriage in (3). Their spoken repetition in the first sentence fails to preserve the
meaning of the original, just as (4) fails (3). The sentential connective, it appears, is
no impediment to collective meaning from a Right-Node Raised phrase. Its collec-
tive meaning continues into (16)–(25), where the sentences conjoined have now
been reduced to a spoken subject and adverb, as already seen in (9) and (10) too:
DP AdverbP Δ and DP AdverbP [ Tense-V Φ]
i i
(16) No well-behaved child selfishly and no well-behaved sibling angrily will tear
from each other pizza they have sworn to share.
(17) Not many a student before an oral exam and not many a professor (of his)
afterward agree to collaborate more than they already have.
(18) Few philosophers (while) boasting and few linguists (while) bragging
converse about each other’s children.
(19) Few Russian chess masters in one move and few Armenian chess masters in
the very next one stalemate.
(20) Most philosophers (while) hollering and most linguists (while) hooting
drowned out the lecture heckling each other.
(21) Saul hollering and David hooting drowned out the lecture heckling each
other.
(22) Saul hollering and David hooting heckled each other.
(23) Most philosophers by this morning and most linguists by nightfall yesterday
had plundered more bordeaux from each other’s wine cellars than the region
produces in a week.
(24) Saul from early morning in New Jersey and David later in the day in
California have been swapping wine futures in online trading.
(25) Marvin this afternoon from Great Neck and Bernice this evening from
Syosset are arriving at Leonard’s with each other’s spouses in rented
Mercedes.
Whether of fully tensed sentences or of sentences reduced, their conjunction in
(11)–(25) does not refer to a plurality or to an object of any kind, a point made
plainer by the truth of (11) and (16) when there are no well-behaved children or
siblings to refer to (and similarly (12), (17)–(19)).
Adverbs being adverbs, there must be something for them to modify in the logical
forms for (22) and (24), although it is unspoken:
(26) Saul hollering participates and David hooting participates, & it all was a
heckling of each other.
Introduction 5
(27) Saul from early morning in New Jersey participates and David later in the
day in California participates, & it all has been a swapping of wine futures in
online trading.
Adverbs being adverbs, they are optional. Omitting them in (28) and (29) but leaving
in place what was modified but unspoken sketches logical forms for (30) and (31):
(28) Saul participates and David participates, & it all was a heckling of each other.
(29) Saul participates and David participates, & it all has been a swapping of wine
futures in online trading.
(30) Saul and David heckled each other.
(31) Saul and David have been swapping wine futures in online trading.
Pace my pleading in the chapters to follow, whatever semantics next solves collectiv-
ized Right-Node Raising and is then supplied to the conjunction of the more full-
blooded clauses in (11)–(25) applies without amendment when the clauses happen
to be greatly reduced, dropping as in (30) and (31) (and (3)) adverbs and any other
spoken verbal elements. It thus promises a general account of the semantic facts on
display in (3), (9), and (11)–(31). In contrast, an and that fashions a plurality only
from phrases that themselves refer is good only for conjoined DPs and may be
dismissed on these grounds. What was Aristotle thinking, imagining that collective
predication in (3) propels an argument that and has a sense other than that of the
sentential connective when only the latter occurs with Right-Node Raising and its
collective meaning? In concluding that the sauce and the cheese refers to a plurality,
Aristotle succumbs to an illusion, misparsing as conjoined DPs a conjunction of
sentences in which much is unspoken. The semantics of natural language it leads
him to thus rests on an error of syntax.2,3
1.2 Conjunction Reduction restrained
Almost as old as the prayer for univocal and and a perfect logical language is fore-
boding about translation into it. Conjunction Reduction, in insisting that much of a
sentence’s logical form goes unspoken, threatens runaway translations. What will
spare (32) and (33) from becoming synonyms if an unspoken subject copies its
antecedent, and will it not confound (34) and (35) if unspoken subjects can be null
pronouns?
(32) A rocker shimmied and shook.
(33) A rocker shimmied and a rocker shook.
(34) No rocker screeched and (then) smashed his Stratocaster.
i i
(35) *No rocker screeched and (then) he (then) smashed his Stratocaster.
i i i
6 Chapter 1
There is no respite from this foreboding without grammar, which will consist here
largely of variations on two themes.
The first is special to the Davidsonian setting to which Conjunction Reduction is
restored. No matter that the subject is copied in (36); there cannot be two different
rockers unless there are also two independent existential event quantifiers as in (37)
approximating (33):
(36) [A x: rocker(x)] Agent(e, x) & shimmied(e) and
[A x: rocker(x)] Agent(e, x) & shook(e)
(37) [A x: rocker(x)] ∃e(Agent(e, x) & shimmied(e)) and
[A x: rocker(x)] ∃e(Agent(e, x) & shook(e))
Should however the event variable or pronoun in the second clause refer to the
event described in the first, the second clause comes to repeat harmlessly that this
same event has for its unique Agent a rocker.4 Thus (32) and (33) are spared syn-
onymy by the grammar of event quantification, withholding from (32) the two
existential event quantifiers necessary for (33). Pronunciation in the second clause
of (33) cues articulation of a second existential event quantifier, and silence in (32)
signals resumption in the events referred to (chapter 3).
The distribution of existential event quantifiers fixes the meaning not only of
unspoken subjects but of unspoken phrases in general, including the gaps that Right-
Node Raising (section 1.1) leaves behind. The sentences of Lebanese Arabic (38)–
(41) (chapter 2) all report that the pines were sparse as were the oaks, two sparsities,
while the forest itself may be dense:5
(38) keenou l-snoubraatw keenou l-sendyeeneetxfeef bimantʕa Hadd
were.3m.plthe-pines andwere.3m.plthe-oaks sparseinregion near
mantaʕabašariyyeh
region human
‘The pines were and the oaks were sparse in a region near human
settlement.’
(39) keenou l-snoubraat w l-sendyeeneetxfeef bimantʕaHadd mantaʕa
were.3m.plthe-pines andthe-oaks sparseinregion near region
bašariyyeh
human
‘The pines and the oaks were sparse in a region near human settlement.’
(40) keenou l-snoubraatmen 5000senehw l-sendyeeneetmen 1000 seneh
were.3m.plthe-pines from5000year andthe-oaks from1000 year
xfeef bimantʕaHaddmantaʕabašariyyeh
sparse inregion near region human
‘The pines 5000 years ago and the oaks 1000 years ago were sparse in a
region near human settlement.’
Introduction 7
(41) l-snoubraatw l-sendyeeneetkeenou xfeef bimantʕaHaddmantaʕa
the-pines andthe-oaks were.3m.plsparseinregion near region
bašariyyeh
human
‘The pines and the oaks were sparse in a region near human settlement.’
Despite the reported two sparsities, the sentences differ in allowing them different
regions. In a coordination of Tensed Phrases (38), with Tense introducing existential
event quantification, the unspoken and spoken tokens of a region near human settle-
ment fall within the scope of distinct existential event quantifiers and may thus be
understood to describe distinct events. In (41), the DPs include a Tensed Phrase
within their scope. With an unspoken Tensed Phrase in the first conjunct, (41) comes
to resemble (33) in structure and interpretation—two tokens of Tense, two existen-
tial event quantifiers, the possibility of two regions. In contrast, in (39), a solitary
existential event quantifier corresponds to the single token of Tense. It is a plural
quantifier, denoting the two sparsities, about which it is said that they are sparse and
they are in a region near human settlement, the same one. The introduction in (40)
of existential event quantifiers in the guise of Adverb Phrases within each conjunct
restores the interpretation that allows for different regions. The presence of this
interpretation in (40) is evidence of an unspoken token of a region near human
settlement within the first conjunct.6 That the unspoken token is harmless in (39)
again reflects the distribution of existential event quantifiers.
The second theme in the grammar of Conjunction Reduction (chapter 3) turns
to the modern syntax of clauses that discovers among them different sizes according
to how much morphology is present beyond the minimal subject and predicate.
There is certainly some difference of syntax between (34) and (35). Yet, argument
that the conjuncts in (34) are less than sentences and therefore without subjects is
as sound as an argument from the contrast between (42) and (43) that the conjuncts
in (42) are likewise without subjects:
(42) No rocker is shimmying and any of his mamas shaking to that funky disco
i i
beat. (After McCawley 1993)
No rocker has shimmied and any of his mamas shaken to that funky disco
i i
beat.
(43) *No rocker is shimmying and any of his mamas is shaking to that funky
i i
disco beat.
*No rocker has shimmied and any of his mamas has shaken to that funky
i i
disco beat.
The contrasts are rather evidence of a constraint confining the scope of no rocker
within fully tensed clauses, so that when these large clauses are conjoined, as in (35)
8 Chapter 1
and (43), no rocker will either fail to include within its scope the bound variable in
the second conjunct, (45a), or violate this constraint on its scope, (45b):
(44) [ No rocker Tense+Aux [[t shimmying] and [any of his mamas shaking]]]
TP i i i
(45) a. *[ No rocker Tns+Aux [t shimmying]] and
TP i i
[ any of his mamas Tns+Aux [t shaking]]
TP i j j
b. *No rocker
i
[[ t Tns+Aux [t shimmying]] and
TPi i
[ any of his mamas Tns+Aux [t shaking]]]
TP i j j
A coordination of smaller clauses, (42) and (44), leaves room enough for no rocker
to remain within the fully tensed clause while including within its scope both con-
juncts. What is to be said about the contrast between (34) and (35), where the
coordinations in both are of fully tensed clauses? It must be that a clause is larger
with its subject pronounced than unpronounced, and only the largest clauses, fully
tensed with subjects pronounced, confine the scope of no rocker. The suggestion
that pronunciation induces a larger clause goes hand in hand with the earlier one
that it cues articulation of an existential event quantifier. This sketch of the contrast
between (34) and (35) illustrates the approach throughout to the evidence alleged
for nonsentential, phrasal conjunction. The facts are real enough and indicative of
healthy sentences in S, M, and L, which should not be tortured into an XXS impos-
sible-to-fit sentential and between. A grammar developed with attention to both the
distribution of event quantifiers and clauses tailored to size promises to rein in
Conjunction Reduction against runaway translation.
Foreboding about runaway translation allayed, this grammar of event quantifica-
tion and clausal size is also an argument in favor of the answer to Aristotle at the
center of this work. Clausal size combines with morpheme weight to restrict divided
reference in conjoined PredPs:
(46) Kunstler is sitting and standing (to annoy the judge and entertain the
gallery).
According to (46), the flamboyant attorney divides his antics between events of
sitting and events of standing, a division not effected by a special meaning for and
in the composition of a coordinate participial phrase. From outside the coordina-
tion—so goes the answer to Aristotle’s lament—a plural event pronoun refers to
the events that it describes and finds a relation, again outside the coordination, to
relate these events to those of the subject’s participation (cf. (10)):
(47) For some events e, e, e, Participates(e,k) &
1 2 3 1
Be(that, them ) & (sitting(e ) and standing(e))
1 2,3 2 3