Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS
Binding alongside Hamblin alternatives calls for variable-free semantics
Chung-chieh Shan
Source: Semantics Archive
The compositional, bottom-up computation of alternative sets was first introduced by Hamblin (1973) into Montague grammar to treat in-situ wh-questions. In the thirty years since then, alternative sets have found their way into theories of focus (Rooth 1985), indeterminate pronouns (Shimoyama 2001), and free-choice indefinites (Kratzer and Shimoyama 2002). These theories often position alternatives as a scope-taking mechanism that operates separately from Quantifier Raising (May 1977), Quantifying In (Montague 1974), or some other scope-taking mechanism for "genuine" quantifiers like most. On these theories, then, it is not surprising that (say) in-situ who takes scope di erently from most, as is empirically observed.
In particular, if "genuine" scope requires syntactic movement but alternative scope does not, then constraints on movement apply only to the former, and we predict--correctly--that the scope of most is more restricted than the scope of in-situ who.(1) Who denied that who left?
`Which x and y are such that x denied that y left?'
(2) Who denied that most people left?
*`Which x is such that, for most y, x denied that y left?'
Many theories of quantification, including Quantifier Raising and Quantifying In, make essential use of variables for binding. In the first half of this paper, I show that using variables for binding is incompatible with computing alternatives bottom-up. For example, a theory on which who denotes an alternative set and most books binds a variable cannot account for who read most books. To fix this problem, we can either perform binding without variables (Jacobson 1999, 2000) or compute alternatives non-compositionally. Since Karttunen (1977) has already explored the latter option, I consider the former here: in the second half of this paper, I spell out how to compute alternatives compositionally in a variable-free theory of binding and quantification. Both options fix the problem.
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Posted by Tony Marmo
at 00:01 BST
Updated: Monday, 18 October 2004 19:09 BST
