Context Dependence and Procedural Meaning: The Semantics of Definites Richard Breheny University College London Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD University of London 1999 ProQuest Number: 10608947 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10608947 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Abstract This thesis argues that there is a theoretically interesting connection between members of the intuitive category of context-dependent expressions, including “we”, “tall”, “local”, “every man”, “the woman”, “it”, “those donkeys” and so on. A treatment of the linguistic meaning of these expressions will be proposed based on the idea that their use raises issues for the audience about the proper understanding of the utterances in which they occur. The proposal will be developed in terms of a semantics for questions, which draws on the idea that to know the meaning of a question is to know what would count as an answer. It can be summarised along similar lines: to know the meaning of a context-dependent expression is to know what properties or relations (of the appropriate type) it could be used to express. The framework in which this idea will be developed can account for why the expressions that are given this issue-based treatment can also be given dependent, bound readings. The class of definite expressions, including descriptions and pronouns, is analysed in detail. A quantificational approach, where the determiner is existential, is assumed for all forms of definiteness. In all cases, the restrictor is interpreted by an atomic definite concept. The audience’s grasp of the properties which definite concepts express is the result of inferential processes which take the linguistic meaning of a definite expression as input. These processes are constrained by pragmatic principles. The analysis of context-dependent expressions is extended to account for dependent interpretations. A treatment of donkey sentences that accounts for their variable quantificational force is shown to follow naturally from the analysis. A pragmatic account of infelicitous uses of definites is provided and shown to compare favourably with that provided by dynamic semantic theories. Also, a novel treatment of plural definites is provided which accounts for their variable quantificational force. 2 Contents Acknowledgements 6 Chapter 1 Introduction 9 1 Issues relating to context-dependent expressions 9 2 Definites and context dependence 12 3 Dynamic semantics 14 4 Outline 18 Chapter 2 Definites: Empirical Issues 19 Section I Introduction 19 Section II Static Approaches 22 1 Definites as quantifiers 22 2 Incomplete descriptions and context dependence 27 3 Plural descriptions 34 4 Issues and problems for the Russellian account 40 4.1 Linguistics and the Russellian view 40 4.2 Uniqueness and identifiability 44 4.3 Maximality 50 5 Summary 53 Section III Plurals 53 1 Introduction 53 2 Plurals 55 2.1 Background 55 2.2 Issues 58 2.3 Distributive/Collective 61 3 A grammar with plurals 65 4 Plural definites 76 4.1 Introduction 76 4.2 Definites denote collections 77 4.3 Maximality 81 4.4 Plurals and negation 87 4.5 Cumulative readings 102 5 Pragmatic possibilities 116 5.1 Introduction 116 5.2 Loosening 117 5.3 Strengthening 121 3 6 Summary 125 Section IV Pronouns 126 1 Introduction 126 2 Cross-sentential cases and E-type pronouns 132 3 Donkey pronouns and quantificational force 153 3.1 Uniqueness 153 3.2 Non-unique alternatives 161 Section V Identifiability, Partiality, and Dynamic Semantics 175 1 Introduction 175 2 Situation semantics 179 3 Dynamic semantics 182 4 Dual strategies 208 Chapter 3 An Issue Based Approach to Context Dependence 222 Section I Introduction 222 Section II The Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction: 224 Classical and Presuppositional Views 1 The classical semantics-Gricean nexus 224 2 Dynamic presuppositional approaches 230 Section III The Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction: 234 The Psychological View 1 An intermediate level of representation 234 2 Decoding 236 Section IV The Conceptual Systems and Context Dependence 239 1 Basic issue 239 2 The conceptual system 243 3 Context dependence 246 4 “tall” 247 4.1 The semantics of issues 248 4.2 Issue resolution 250 4.3 Descriptive vs. rigid 253 4 5 Quantification 255 6 Quantification and the focus of joint attention 259 Section V Definites 262 1 Basics 262 2 Singular definites and partial resolution 268 3 Referential use 275 4 Loose ends 282 Chapter 4 Binding 285 Section I Introduction 285 Section II Binding into Context-Dependent Expressions 288 1 The uniformity issue 288 2 Variable-free binding 289 3 Dependent interpretations of context-dependent expressions 292 Section III Conditional Donkey Sentences 310 Chapter 5 Pragmatics 320 Section I Overview 320 1 Introduction 320 2 The semantics/pragmatics interface 320 3 Relevance theory 323 Section II Infelicity and Gratuitous Effort 330 1 Pointing and focus 330 2 Marbles 334 Section III Justifying the Strongest Meaning 337 1 Default based strategies 337 2 Which Strategy? 341 3 Maximal/Non-maximal 346 4 Summary 353 Bibliography 355 5 Acknowledgments I consider myself to have been very fortunate to come to UCL when I did to take an MA in Linguistics. In that introductory year, I was both given as good an introduction to the subject as one could hope for, and I was inspired by the manner in which the subject is approached in London, emphasising issues of theoretical principle, conceptual rigour and integrity. As a thesis of this type is as much a product of formative experiences as anything else, I gladly acknowledge the input not only of my ‘meaning’ teachers, Deirdre Wilson, Ruth Kempson and Robyn Carston, but also the other faculty at UCL and SOAS that I have had the pleasure of listening to over the years. In particular, Neil Smith, Rita Manzini and Michael Brody. My good fortune continued into my second year at UCL in that I was taken on by Annabel Cormack as an assistant. I think that this year was as important for my linguistic development as anything else. I’m not sure how much use I was to Annabel at this stage, but I certainly gained a lot from the experience; both with regards education concerning the syntax- semantics interface, but also in terms of just doing linguistics. In that same year, I also attended some seminars on donkey anaphora given by Shalom Lappin at SOAS. Though at the time I didn’t know that I myself would be working on that subject in my thesis, I benefitted greatly from the input. I had the greatest good fortune, however, to be supervised by Deirdre Wilson. Apart from anything else, working on this thesis for the past few years has been mostly just fun and having Deirdre as a supervisor was a major reason for this. I don’t think that I ever had a formal supervision, just a lot of long chats which happened to be on the subject of what I was currently working on. Of course, I must acknowledge the intellectual debt that I owe to Deirdre in as far as this thesis draws on her work with Dan Sperber. But more importantly, I should say that I have been inspired by working with Deirdre to look for answers beyond the sometimes narrow confines of one sub-discipline or another. I should also say that I am indebted for her contribution to the final written version; for helping me to transform a very 6 rushed and rough first draft not only with useful comments but also with (more than a few) stylistic suggestions. There are many other people who have read or listened to earlier versions of parts of this thesis. I should mention Robyn Carston, Annabel Cormack, Ruth Kempson, David Adger and the members of UCL’s pragmatics reading group who sat through some fairly long presentations in the past couple of years. These include Corinne Iten, Eun-ju Noh, Milena Nuti, Anna Papaffagou, George Powell, Villy Rouchota and Vlad Zegerac. I thank them for their feedback. I would finally like to mention some people whose friendship and (especially) support were instrumental in the completion of this thesis: my sister Fiona, Paul Novotny, Anja Belz and especially to Milena Nuti, who helped me in very many ways to get the final version together in time and who supported me through some pretty hectic months of working full-time on two things at once. 7 To my family. Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Issues relating to context-dependent expressions There is a fairly substantial class of natural-language expressions which we might classify, in a pre-theoretical sense, as context dependent. There are the indexical expressions, such as "I" and "now". There are comparative adjectives, such as "tall" and "fast". There are very many expressions which are implicitly perspectival, such as "local", "come" and "arrive". Expressions involving quantification are also commonly regarded as being, in some sense, context dependent. An utterance of (1) could be understood in any number of different ways depending on the circumstances in which it is uttered: (1) Everyone brought a gift. Not only quantified noun phrases but also adverbial quantifiers generally have their domain implicitly restricted by context: (2) John usually takes Bill to the movies.