Maribel Romero

Flexible Composition In Ltag: Quantifier Scope and Inverse Linking

1 Here and throughout this chapter, we will avoid using (singular) indefinites as wide scope quantifiers. This is because the wide scope effect of indefinites can be obtained through a special pseudo-scoping mechanism – namely, choice functions (Kratzer, 1998, Reinhart, 1997) –, and not through the general truly scoping mechanisms that we are concerned with in this chapter. This pseudo-scoping mechanism allows indefinites to yield the truthconditional effect of wide scope in configurations where regular quantifiers cannot, e.g., out of if-islands, as the contrast (81)-(82) illustrates. In sum, even though (83a) in the text has an ∃∀ reading, we need example (84a) to ensure that true inverse scope is available in the grammar.

The Syntax of Whether/Q… Or Questions : Ellipsis Combined with Movement

In this paper, we argue that the syntax of whether/Q...; or questionsinvolves both movement of whether/Q and ellipsis of the type that hasbeen argued to exist for either ... or constructions. Three argumentsare presented: (i) English whether/Q ... or questions present at thesame time movement characteristics (sensitivity to islands) and ellipsistraits (focus pattern on the disjuncts); (ii)crosslinguistic data on the surface string syntax of Subject-Object-Verb(SOV) languages support the ellipsis plus movement account in general and,thus, indirectly also for English; and (iii) certain asymmetries betweenI whether/Q...or and either...or are resolved, permitting aunified account of the two types of constructions.

Ellipsis and the Structure of Discourse

It is generally assumed that ellipsis requires certain parallelism between the clause containing the ellips is and some antecedent clause. We argue that the parallelism requirement generated by ellipsis must be applied in accordance with discourse structure: a matching antecedent clause must be found that locally c-commands the clause containing the ellipsis in the discourse tree. We show that the claim makes several correct predictions concerning the interpretation of ellipsis, both in terms of the selection of the antecedent (in Sluicing and Verb Phrase Ellipsis), and in terms of the possible readings given a particular antecedent (in the “many-clause” puzzle and in Antecedent-Contained Deletion).

Disjunction, focus, and scope

This article presents the observation that disjunction cannot take wide scope in negative non-wh-questions and declaratives with a preposed negative element. This rules out the alternative question reading for non-wh-questions with preposed negation and the wide scope or reading for neg-inverted declaratives. We show that effects parallel to the ones associated with preposed negation can be reproduced in affirmative non-wh-questions and declaratives when focus is involved. We propose that preposed negation in non-wh-questions and preposed negative adverbials in declaratives necessarily contribute focus marking (in particular, verum focus) and argue that the lack of wide scope disjunction reading in both declaratives and non-wh-questions results as a by-product of the interaction between focus and the LF syntax of disjunctive structures, which we argue involves ellipsis.

Concealed questions with quantifiers

Concealed question noun phrases headed by the definite article have been analysed as contributing the intension of the noun phrase -an individual concept- as semantic argument of the verb. Concealed questions with quantifiers challenge this analysis. Several empirical observations will be presented and an analysis will be sketched that treats this quantification as external to the concealed question itself, making it parallel to quantificational adverbs with interrogative clauses and plural individuals. This way, the basic individual concept analysis is maintained.

Quantifier scope in German: an MCTAG analysis

Relative quantifier scope in German depends, in contrast to English, very much on word order. The scope possibilities of a quantifier are determined by its surface position, its base position and the type of the quantifier. In this paper we propose a multicomponent analysis for German quantifiers computing the scope of the quantifier, in particular its minimal nuclear scope, depending on the syntactic configuration it occurs in.

Tense and Intensionality in Specificational Copular Sentences

Specificational sentences show Connectivity Effects (Akmajian 1 970, Higgins 1 979, Halvorsen 1 978, Jacobson 1 994, among others) . For example, an NP like no man embedded in a relative clause in general cannot bind a pronoun outside the relative clause, as illustrated in (3a); but in specificational copular sentences this binding is possible, as in (3b) . This effect is called Variable Binding Connectivity. Similarly, the NP a unicorn cannot be interpreted de dicto with respect to the embedded verb look for in (4a) ; but a de dicto reading is possible in the specificational sentence (4b) (Opacity Connectivity) . Connectivity will be used in this paper as a diagnosis for specificational sentences.

Variable Binding and Sets of Alternatives

This chapter investigates how we can interpret compositionally structures that involve, at the same time, binding of variables and sets of alternatives.

The Temperature Paradox and Temporal Interpretation

Montagues analysis of the well-known temperature paradox poses a problem for Guptas syllogism, whose surface syntax differs from that of the temperature syllogism by the addition of the intensional adverb necessarily. Lasersohn (2005) argues that the puzzle arising from these syllogisms can be solved if one adopts the Fregean presuppositional treatment of definite descriptions, and he concludes that the temperature-Gupta puzzle provides an argument in favor of such treatment. This article shows that the analysis of definite descriptions is in fact orthogonal to the puzzle. Instead, the differences between the two syllogisms turn out to stem from the temporal interpretation of their premises.