Thomas Ede Zimmermann

Free Choice Disjunction and Epistemic Possibility

This paper offers an explanation of the fact that sentences of the form (1) ‘X may A or B’ may be construed as implying (2) ‘X may A and X may B’, especially if they are used to grant permission. It is suggested that the effect arises because disjunctions are conjunctive lists of epistemic possibilities. Consequently, if the modal may is itself epistemic, (1) comes out as equivalent to (2), due to general laws of epistemic logic. On the other hand, on a deontic reading of may, (2) is only implied under exceptional circumstances – which usually obtain when (1) is used performatively.

On the proper treatment of opacity in certain verbs

This paper is about the semantic analysis of referentially opaque verbs like seek and owe that give rise to nonspecific readings. It is argued that Montagues categorization (based on earlier work by Quine) of opaque verbs as properties of quantifiers runs into two serious difficulties: the first problem is that it does not work with opaque verbs like resemble that resist any lexical decomposition of the seek ≈ try to find kind; the second one is that it wrongly predicts de dicto (i.e. narrow scope) readings due to quantified noun phrases in the object positions of such verbs. It is shown that both difficulties can be overcome by an analysis of opaque verbs as operating on properties.

Discourse and grammar : from sentence types to lexical categories

Bringing together papers from various subfields of theoretical linguistics, this volume gives a representative glimpse of current research of form and function in grammar. Its overarching topic is the relation between the major clause types and their canonical or idiosyncratic roles in discourse. Though none of the papers addresses the topic in its full breadth, they all make their specific contributions to it, scrutinizing the pertinent aspects of the grammatical interfaces and elaborating detailed case studies.

Intensional Logic and Two-Sorted Type Theory

Among the symbolic languages used most frequently in the indirect interpretation of natural language are Montagues Intensional Logic IL [5, 384ff.] and its extensional counterpart, the language Ty2 of two-sorted type theory. The question of which of these two formal languages is to be preferred has been obscured by lack of knowledge about the exact relation between them. The present paper is an attempt to clarify the situation by showing that, modulo a small, decidable class of formulas irrelevant to these applications, IL and Ty2 are equivalent in the strong sense that there exists a reversible translation between the terms of either language. In [3, 6Iff.] Gallin has shown that there exists a simple and natural translation * of IL into Ty2. Following Gallins translation procedure, it is even possible to conceive of IL as a highly restricted sublanguage of Ty2, viz. as that part which only contains expressions of certain intensional types plus one variable of the basic type of indices or worlds. In an obvious sense, this sublanguage has less expressive power than the whole of Ty2, where it is possible to express conditions on entities that do not even exist in ILs ontology. However, by a certain amount of coding, one can translate Ty2 into IL [3, 105]. Conditions on nonintensional entities then become conditions on corresponding intensional objects; and these paraphrases preserve (standard) validity and entailment. On the other hand, this retranslation of Ty2 into IL is not an inversion of *, as can be seen from a simple example.

Introduction to semantics : an essential guide to the composition of meaning

This textbook introduces undergraduate students of language and linguistics to the basic ideas, insights, and techniques of contemporary semantic theory. The book starts with everyday observations about word meaning and use primarily and then gradually zooms in on the question of how speakers manage to meaningfully communicate with phrases, sentences, and texts they have never come across before. Extensive English examples provide ample illustration.

On truckenbrodt on interrogatives

Abstract Introduction In his contribution to the present volume, Hubert Truckenbrodt presents a novel and elegant account of the connection between the syntactic structure of an utterance and the illocutionary force signalled by it. In this short note we cannot do justice to the entire approach with its intricate architecture, which is why we decided to confine ourselves to a few scattered remarks relating to the analysis of interrogatives — partly fore-shadowed in Truckenbrodts (2004) earlier work, to which we will occasionally refer.

What it Takes to be Missing

At first glance, the predicate [be] missing appears to be an ordinary verb of absence 4 to be analyzed along the lines of Quine (1956) or more recent implementations and 5 alternatives.1 On closer inspection, though, this particular specimen turns out to give 6 rise to some surprising semantic complexity – which is what the present note is about. 7 As always with referentially opaque verbs, one may distinguish between specific 8 (or ‘objectual’) and unspecific (or ‘notional’) readings, the latter being typical of 9 indefinites whereas proper names tend to be restricted to the former. Thus, whereas 10 (1) does not seem to be ambiguous in the relevant sense, (2) may but need not be used 11 to report about a specific screw: 12

Imagination, Psychologistic Semantics, and the Paradox of Fictional Names

The main goal of Maier’s article is to provide a new solution to what he calls the paradox of fictional names. This new solution combines two different already classic proposals: (a) Walton’s (1990) anti-realist analysis of fictional discourse and (b) Kamp’s (2015) psychologistic version of the formal semantic framework of Discourse Representation Theory. Before evaluating Maier’s solution in more detail, let us first indicate what we take to be the depth and multiple dimensions of the problem he aims to solve. According to Maier the paradox of fictional names can be stated by focusing on the following two sentences, which are paradigm examples of two different aspects of fictional discourse:

Der Bezug der Sprache auf die Welt

Sprache bietet die Mittel, um Informationen uber Gegenstande im weiteren Sinne, darunter Konkreta und Abstrakta, mitzuteilen (s. Kap. III.B). Wir beziehen uns auf Dinge und sagen etwas uber sie aus.

Coercion vs. indeterminacy in opaque verbs

0 . Introduction This paper is about the semantic analysis of opaque verbs such as seek and owe, which allow for unspecific readings of their indefinite objects.1 One may be looking for a good car without there being any car that one is looking for; or, one may be looking for a good car in that a specific car exists that one is looking for. It thus appears that there are two interpretations of these verbs – a specific and an unspecific one – and one may wonder how they are related. The present paper is a contribution to this question.