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The Discourse Semantics of Long-Distance Reflexives

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The Discourse Semantics of Long-Distance Reflexives The Discourse Semantics of Long-Distance Reflexives Thesis submitted for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor Per Erik Solberg Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas Faculty of Humanities University of Oslo 2017 Acknowledgements I first and foremost wish to thank my supervisors, Dag Haug and Corien Bary. Working with Dag is always stimulating and interesting. I have learned a lot from our interactions, and I appreciate his broad knowledge of linguistics and Latin, and his reluctance to accepting standard solutions without discussing them thoroughly first. I spent the spring semester of 2016 in Nijmegen to work with Corien. My project benefited greatly from this stay. Corien devoted a lot of time to working with me, and her comments and suggestions were of great help. I also wish to thank my midway evaluator, Hazel Pearson. She gave very detailed and constructive feedback, and devoted an entire day to discussing the project with me. The course of the project changed quite a bit due to my discussions with Hazel. There are many other people who deserve thanks: Marius Jøhndal, Sandhya Sun- daresan, Thomas McFadden, Emar Maier, Bart Geurts, Rob van der Sandt, Arnim von Stechow, Michèle Fruyt, Jefferson Barlew, Amy Rose Deal, Pritty Patel-Grosz, Patrick Grosz, Isabelle Charnavel, Vibeke Roggen, Bjørg Tosterud, Kjell Johan Sæbø, Alexan- dra Spalek, Urd Vindenes, Signe Laake, Paweł Urbanik, Kari Kinn, Matthew Gotham, Bridget Samuels, my mom, my colleagues in the Synsem project and at Radboud, and everyone else who have helped me in different ways. I have presented my project at vari- ous occasions the last three years. I am grateful for comments from my audiences at ZAS, NoSLiP 2014, ESSLLI 2015, Sinn und Bedeutung 2016, as well as at various seminars in Oslo and Nijmegen. Last, but not least, I wish to thank my friends and family. PhD life can be a bit lonely at times, you guys have made it much less so! Glossing conventions and text editions The wording of the Latin examples in this dissertation follows the editions in the digital Loeb Classical Library.1 Abbreviations of authors and texts follow the conventions of the Oxford Latin Dictionary (Glare, 2012). The interlinear glossing of Latin examples follows the Leipzig glossing rules (Bickel et al., 2015). Glosses used in Latin examples which are not found in the list in Bickel et al. (2015, p. 8-10) are: cpv = comparative ger = gerund/gerundive su = supine 1http://www.loebclassics.com/ iii Contents 1 General introduction 1 1.1 Introducing the topic . .1 1.2 The data collection . .5 1.3 Terminological clarifications . .6 1.4 Organization of the dissertation . .6 2 An overview of long-distance reflexivity 9 2.1 Introduction . .9 2.2 Latin reflexives . .9 2.3 Indirect discourse in Latin . 10 2.3.1 Definition of indirect discourse . 10 2.3.2 Mood and finiteness in Latin indirect discourse . 12 2.3.3 Unembedded indirect discourse . 16 2.4 LDRs in indirect discourse . 17 2.4.1 Distribution . 17 2.4.2 Antecedents . 19 2.4.3 LDRs and other pronouns . 22 2.5 LDRs outside of indirect discourse . 23 2.6 Why distinguish between local and long-distance reflexives? . 24 2.7 Cross-linguistic data and the role of perspective . 25 2.8 Lexical items with a comparable reference to LDRs . 29 2.9 Summary . 30 3 Long-distance reflexivity: A semantic challenge 33 3.1 Introduction . 33 3.2 The LDR-antecedent relationship is not structural . 33 3.3 What should a semantic theory of long-distance reflexivity account for? . 35 3.4 Previous semantic accounts of long-distance binding . 36 3.4.1 Accessing the AH: Centred worlds . 36 3.4.2 Reflexives as property abstractors . 40 3.4.3 Oshima (2007) . 43 3.4.4 Sundaresan (2012) . 46 3.4.5 Sells (1987) . 49 3.4.6 Latin-specific accounts . 53 3.5 The route from here: Anaphora, events and dynamic semantics . 55 v 4 Theoretical framework 57 4.1 Introduction . 57 4.2 Compositionality and dynamic semantics . 57 4.3 The predecessors of PCDRT . 59 4.3.1 Background . 59 4.3.2 An informal sketch of DRT . 59 4.3.3 Compositional DRT . 66 4.4 Partial CDRT . 67 4.4.1 Partial type theory . 68 4.4.2 States and registers . 68 4.4.3 Abbreviations and composition . 70 4.4.4 Anaphora resolution . 72 4.4.5 Truth in PCDRT . 75 4.5 Modality in PCDRT . 75 4.6 Neo-Davidsonian event semantics in PCDRT . 78 4.6.1 Introduction . 78 4.6.2 Introducing events in PCDRT . 79 4.6.3 Event semantics and composition . 80 4.7 Summary . 82 5 A new analysis of LDRs with sentence-internal antecedents 85 5.1 Introduction . 85 5.2 The event semantics of attitudinal complements . 86 5.2.1 Propositional attitude predicates and events . 86 5.2.2 Contentful events . 86 5.2.3 Deal’s account of context shift . 88 5.3 A PCDRT account of perspective shift and perspective anaphora . 90 5.3.1 Background . 90 5.3.2 An event semantics for embedded indirect discourse in PCDRT . 90 5.3.3 Context shift and perspective shift . 92 5.3.4 Modelling perspective shift and perspective anaphora: Two failed attempts . 92 5.3.5 Interlude: Perspective and truth-conditional semantics . 98 5.3.6 Modeling perspective shift and perspective anaphora: Labeled reg- isters . 100 5.4 The event approach to attitudinal complements and Latin facts . 108 5.4.1 Distribution . 108 5.4.2 Non-subject antecedents . 110 5.4.3 LDRs with plural antecedents . 116 5.5 Multiple embedding . 120 5.5.1 Indirect discourse within indirect discourse . 120 5.5.2 LDRs in non-complement clauses in indirect discourse . 123 5.6 LDRs and de se readings . 128 5.7 Some cross-linguistic considerations . 131 vi 5.8 Generalizing to non-attitudinal contexts . 133 5.8.1 The issue . 133 5.8.2 Latin LDRs in non-attitudinal environments . 134 5.8.3 A draft of an analysis . 139 5.9 Concluding remarks . 142 6 LDRs with discourse antecedents 145 6.1 Introduction . 145 6.2 Cross-sentential LDRs in Latin . 145 6.3 Acccounting for UID . 149 6.3.1 Previous DRT accounts of UID . 149 6.3.2 Reportive presupposition as event anaphora . 156 6.3.3 Where is the reportive presupposition represented? . 165 6.4 LDRs and perspective shift in UID . 170 6.5 An additional challenge: UID and deeply embedded attitudinal complements177 6.6 Cross-linguistic data . 181 6.7 Concluding remarks . 182 7 Messenger reports and residual issues 185 7.1 Introduction . 185 7.2 Messenger reports . 185 7.2.1 The issue . 185 7.2.2 Type 1: Speaking on behalf of the group . 188 7.2.3 Type 2: Recovering the speech event . 193 7.2.4 Type 3: The purpose for sending messengers . 196 7.2.5 Concluding remarks on messenger reports . 199 7.3 Residual issues in Latin . 199 7.3.1 Quod-clauses with emotive predicates . 199 7.3.2 LDRs and inferred attitudinal events . 200 8 Conclusion 203 A Semantic details of PCDRT 207 A.1 Partial type theory . 207 A.2 The succession of registers . 209 B Anaphora resolution 211 B.1 Standard anaphora . 211 B.2 Anaphora with bridging . 211 vii Chapter 1 General introduction 1.1 Introducing the topic This dissertation will argue for a discourse-semantic analysis of long-distance reflexives, based on Latin data. One of the virtues of the formal linguistic research conducted at the end of the last century was the precise characterization of the behavior of different pronominal elements. In particular, it was found that the difference in distribution be- tween reflexive pronouns and other pronominals, exemplified in (1), to a large extent could be explained in terms of locality and structural relations:2 (1) a. Johni kicked himselfi. ∗ b. Johni’s egoism killed himselfi. ∗ c. Johni thinks that I kicked himselfi. ∗ d. Johni kicked himi. e. Johni’s egoism killed himi. f. Johni thinks that I kicked himi. These contrasts are famously captured in the conditions of Chomsky’s Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1981, p. 188): A reflexive pronoun, e.g. himself, must be bound in its gov- erning category (Condition A). This condition depends on the two notions of binding and governing category. The binding requirement means that there is a particular struc- tural relationship between the antecedent and the pronoun. In Chomsky’s framework, a bound pronoun is a pronoun c-commanded by its antecedent, i.e., the pronoun must be a sister of the antecedent in the phrase-structure tree, or embedded within the sister of the antecedent.3 There is a structural relationship of this kind between the subject and the object of a verb, and (1a) is therefore grammatical. In (1b), on the other hand, the antecedent is in a non-c-commanding position, and himself is therefore unbound, which 2Coreference between pronouns and antecedents is marked with subscript indices here and in the rest of the dissertation. 3This definition of c-command is based on Adger, 2003, p. 117. 1.
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