I argue that common nouns should be analyzed as variables, rather than as predicates which take variables as arguments. This necessitates several unusual features to the analysis, such as allowing variables to be modally non-rigid, and assigning their values compositionally. However, treating common nouns as variables offers a variety of theoretical and empirical advantages over a more traditional analysis: It predicts the conservativity of nominal quantification, simplifies the analysis of articleless languages, derives the weak reading of sentences with donkey anaphora, solves the proportion problem presented by quantifiers like 'most', improves the analysis of the temperature paradox, allows a more unified analysis of bare plurals, and regularizes the correspondence between syntactic categories and semantic types.

Mass and plural expressions exhibit interesting similarities in distribution and interpretation, including cumulative reference, the ability to appear bare, and a parallel alternation between existential and generic readings. They also exhibit important differences in agreement, determiner choice, and in the types of quantification available. Major approaches to plural denotation make conflicting claims whether plurality involves reference to collective objects such as sets or mereological sums, or instead requires simultaneous saturation of an argument place by multiple individuals. Theories of mass denotation differ as to whether the count/ mass distinction is a difference in discrete vs. continuous denotation, reference to objects vs. the material they are composed of, or reference to mereological sums vs. classes of individuals. Bare plurals and mass nouns sometimes denote "kinds"; there is disagreement whether they also have an indefinite reading. Several kinds of plural and mass quantification can be distinguished, depending on determiner choice, predicate modification, and the use of a classifier or measure phrase. Plural quantifiers may interact to give a "cumulative" reading, in which the quantifiers are scopally independent. Sentences containing plurals sometimes exhibit an ambiguity between collective and distributive readings; the number of readings and mechanisms for producing them is in dispute.

First published in 1990, this dissertation presents an event-based model-theoretic semantics for plural expressions in English. The author defends against counterarguments the hypothesis that distributive predicates are predicates of groups, and not just individuals. By defining the collective/distributive distinction in terms of event structure, he solves formal problems with previous group-level analyses. The author notes that certain adverbials have a systematic ambiguity between a reading indicating collective action, and readings indicating spatial or temporal proximity; the event-based definition of collective action makes possible a parallel treatment of these readings. This book presents a formal proposal on the algebraic structure of groups and events, and a semantically based analysis of number agreement.

What is the relation between models, as used in model-theoretic semantics, and the “world” which models represent? More specifically, let us consider the question of whether a single individual, event, time or other element in a model might be used to represent more than one individual, event, time or other object in the real world. It should be understood that the question here is not whether groups of objects may be represented with some sort of “plural individual” in the style of Link (1983); rather, the idea is to use a model in which pragmatically irrelevant distinctions between individuals are ignored, so that the model “conflates” more than one realworld entity into a single model-theoretic entity, representing them as though they were the same object. This idea was argued for most explicitly and systematically, to my knowledge, in Nunberg (1984); though related ideas have been hinted at or suggested briefly or casually in a number of other places. The present paper provides arguments against this technique, as developed by Nunberg, and suggests an alternative approach to dealing with cases where the distinction between real-world individuals is pragmatically ignorable, based on the device of “Pragmatic Halos” presented in Lasersohn (1999). In considering this issue, we will also have to consider exactly what the point is of using models in model-theoretic semantics; and although this seems like a very elementary issue, and one which lies at the foundation of our whole technique, I think it is still an issue about which there is a great deal of obscurity and differences in thinking. To a surprising degree, semanticists often use essentially identical formalism, yet understand that formalism very differently.

I argue that sentence contents should be assigned truth-values relative to parameters other than a possible world only if those parameters are fixed by the context of assessment rather than the context of use. Standard counterexamples, including tense, de se attitudes, and knowledge ascriptions, all admit of alternative analyses which do not make use of such parameters. Moreover, allowing such indices greatly complicates the task of defining disagreement, and forces an odd separation between what is true, and what someone has truthfully said. If non-world indices are always fixed by the context of assessment, a characterization of semantic theories as 'relativist' in terms of assessment-sensitivity converges with a characterization in terms of sensitivity to non-world indices. More tentatively, I suggest that even a possible world index, when used in the assignment of truth-values to sentence contents, should be fixed by the context of assessment, not the context of use. This eliminates MacFarlane's category of 'non-indexical contextualism', and results in a system in which parameters fixed by the context of use are used only in the assignment of contents to linguistic expressions, and parameters used in the assignment of truth-values to contents are uniformly fixed by the context of assessment.

I argue that compositionality (in the sense of homomorphic interpretation) is compatible with radical and pervasive contextual effects on interpretation. Apparent problems with this claim lose their force if we are careful in distinguishing the question of how a grammar assigns interpretations from the question of how people figure out which interpretations the grammar assigns. I demonstrate, using a simple example, that this latter task must sometimes be done not by computing a derivation defined directly by the grammar, but through the use of pragmatic background knowledge and extragrammatical reasoning, even when the grammar is designed to be fully compositional. The fact that people must sometimes use global pragmatic mechanisms to identify truth conditions therefore tells us nothing about whether the grammar assigns truth conditions compositionally. Compositional interpretation (or the lack thereof) is identifiable not by the mechanisms necessary to calculating truth conditions, but by the structural relation between the interpretation of a phrase in context and the interpretations of its parts in that same context. Even if this relation varies by context, an invariant grammar is possible if grammars can “invoke” pragmatic concepts; but this does not imply that grammatical theory must explain these concepts or incorporate a theory of pragmatics.

Determinerless (or “bare”) mass and plural noun phrases also show a parallel alternation in interpretation, depending on the predicate with which they combine. If the predicate is stagelevel (in the terminology of Carlson 1977a,b), the noun phrase is understood as existentially quantified, as in (4)a. and b., which are roughly equivalent to Some water leaked into the floor and Some raccoons were stealing my corn, respectively:

Recent arguments for relativist semantic theories have centered on the phenomenon of "faultless disagreement." This paper offers independent motivation for such theories, based on the interpretation of predicates of personal taste in certain attitude contexts and presuppositional constructions. It is argued that the correct interpretation falls out naturally from a relativist theory, but requires special stipulation in a theory which appeals instead to the use of hidden indexicals; and that a hidden indexical analysis presents problems for contemporary syntactic theory.

Philosophical PerspectivesVolume 22, Issue 1 p. 305-337 QUANTIFICATION AND PERSPECTIVE IN RELATIVIST SEMANTICS Peter Lasersohn, Peter Lasersohn University of IllinoisSearch for more papers by this author Peter Lasersohn, Peter Lasersohn University of IllinoisSearch for more papers by this author First published: 29 December 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1520-8583.2008.00150.xCitations: 24Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume22, Issue1December 2008Pages 305-337 RelatedInformation

I compare Potts' use of a 'judge" parameter in semantic interpretation with the use of a similar parameter in Lasersohn (2005). The latter technique portrays the content of expressives as constant across speakers, while Pott's technique does not. The idea that the content of expressives is a kind of presupposition is also briefly defended, and a technical problem in the "dynamics" of Pott's formalism is pointed out.

Certainly this would seem to be what many authors mean by the term compositional. In introductory textbooks, the idea of compositionality is often introduced by pointing out that if there weren’t some systematic way of calculating the meanings of complex expressions from the meanings of their parts, we could not explain how speakers understand novel sentences, or indefinitely many sentences. The following passage from Larson and Segal (1995: 11-12) is representative; similar passages may be found in many other textbooks:

This paper argues that truth values of sentences containing predicates of “personal taste” such as fun or tasty must be relativized to individuals. This relativization is of truth value only, and does not involve a relativization of semantic content: If you say roller coasters are fun, and I say they are not, I am negating the same content which you assert, and directly contradicting you. Nonetheless, both our utterances can be true (relative to their separate contexts). A formal semantic theory is presented which gives this result by introducing an individual index, analogous to the world and time indices commonly used, and by treating the pragmatic context as supplying a particular value for this index. The context supplies this value in the derivation of truth values from content, not in the derivation of content from character. Predicates of personal taste therefore display a kind of contextual variation in interpretation which is unlike the familiar variation exhibited by pronouns and other indexicals.

January 01 2005 The Temperature Paradox as Evidence for a Presuppositional Analysis of Definite Descriptions In Special Collection: CogNet Peter Lasersohn Peter Lasersohn University of Illinois Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Peter Lasersohn University of Illinois Online ISSN: 1530-9150 Print ISSN: 0024-3892 © 2005 Massachusetts Institute of Technology2005 Linguistic Inquiry (2005) 36 (1): 127–134. https://doi.org/10.1162/0024389052993646 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Peter Lasersohn; The Temperature Paradox as Evidence for a Presuppositional Analysis of Definite Descriptions. Linguistic Inquiry 2005; 36 (1): 127–134. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/0024389052993646 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsLinguistic Inquiry Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 2005 Massachusetts Institute of Technology2005 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Recent years have seen a whole series of book-length studies on the formal semantics of plurality and its relation to coordination, quantifier scope, and related phenomena (Landman, 2000; Lasersohn, 1995; Schein, 1993; Schwarzschild, 1996; etc.). Winter's book provides a very interesting and worthwhile addition to this list, and shows that despite the extensive attention this subject has received, there is a good deal more to be said.

Sentences containing plural or conjoined noun phrases often display an ambiguity between so-called collective and distributive readings. For example, sentence (1) can mean either than John and Mary each bought a house, which is the distributive reading, or that they bought one jointly, which is the collective reading.

This paper argues that a kinds-based analysis of bare plurals is incompatible with an analysis of donkey anaphors as variables. However, kinds are compatible with an E-type analysis.