Plurals and Events

by Barry Schein

Author	: Barry Schein
Publisher	: MIT Press
Total Pages	: 412
Release	: 1993
Genre	: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN	: 9780262193344

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Barry Schein proposes combining a second-order treatment of plurals with Donald Davidson's suggestion that there are positions for reference to events in ordinary predicates in order to account for several of the more puzzling features of plurals without invoking plural objects, with its attendant metaphysics, and also provide an absolute truth-theoretic characterization of the semantics of sentences with plurals in them. How do we make sense of sentences with plural noun phrases in them? In Plurals and Events, Barry Schein proposes combining a second-order treatment of plurals with Donald Davidson's suggestion that there are positions for reference to events in ordinary predicates in order to account for several of the more puzzling features of plurals without invoking plural objects, with its attendant metaphysics, and also provide an absolute truth-theoretic characterization of the semantics of sentences with plurals in them. Schein's highly original argument should have significant impact on how natural-language semantics is done, with repercussions for philosophy and logic. The book opens with foundational arguments that the logical language should have four major features: reduction to singular predication via a Davidsonian logical form, amereology of events, a logical syntax that allows the constituents of a Davidsonian analysis to be predicated of distinct events and separated from one another by other logical elements, and descriptive anaphors that cross-refer to the events described by antecedent clauses. A semantics for plurality and quantification is developed in the remaining chapters, which address some of the empirical and formal questions raised by the variety of interpretations in which plurals and quantifiers participate.

Plurality, Conjunction and Events

by P. Lasersohn

Author	: P. Lasersohn
Publisher	: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages	: 319
Release	: 2013-03-09
Genre	: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN	: 9401585814

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Plurality, Conjunction and Events presents a novel theory of plural and conjoined phrases, in an event-based semantic framework. It begins by reviewing options for treating the alternation between `collective' and `distributive' readings of sentences containing plural or conjoined noun phrases, including analyses from both the modern and the premodern literature. It is argued that plural and conjoined noun phrases are unambiguously group-denoting, and that the collective/distributive distinction therefore must be located in the predicates with which these noun phrases combine. More specifically, predicates must have a hidden argument place for events; the collective/distributive distinction may then be represented in the part/whole structure of these events. This allows a natural treatment of `collectivizing' adverbial expressions, and of `pluractional' affixes; it also allows a unified semantics for conjunction, in which conjoined sentences and predicates denote groups of events, much like conjoined noun phrases denote groups of individuals.

Plural Logic

by Alex Oliver

Author	: Alex Oliver
Publisher	: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages	: 399
Release	: 2016
Genre	: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN	: 0198744382

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Alex Oliver and Timothy Smiley provide a new account of plural logic. They argue that there is such a thing as genuinely plural denotation in logic, and expound a framework of ideas that includes the distinction between distributive and collective predicates, the theory of plural descriptions, multivalued functions, and lists.

Plural Predication

by Thomas McKay

Author	: Thomas McKay
Publisher	: Oxford University Press
Total Pages	: 272
Release	: 2006-06-15
Genre	: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN	: 0199278148

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Plural predication is a pervasive part of ordinary language. We can say that some people are fifty in number, are surrounding a building, come from many countries, and are classmates. These predicates can be true of some people without being true of any one of them; they are non-distributive predications. Yet the apparatus of predication and quantification in standard modern logic does not allow a place for such non-distributive predicates.Thomas McKay's book explores the enrichment of modern logic with plural predication and quantification. We can have genuinely non-distributive predication without relying on singularizing procedures from set theory and mereology. The fundamental 'among' relation can be understood in a way that does not generate any hierarchy of plurals analogous to a hierarchy of types or a hierarchy of higher-order logics. Singular quantification can be understood as a special case, with the general type beingquantifiers that allow both singular and plural quantification. The 'among' relation is formally similar to a 'part of' relation, but the relations are distinct, so that mass quantification and plural quantification cannot be united in the same way that plural and singular are united.Analysis of singular and plural definite descriptions follows, with a defense of a fundamentally Russellian analysis, but coupled with some new ideas about how to be sensitive to the role of context. This facilitates an analysis of some central features of the use of pronouns, both singular and plural.

Plural Logic

by Alex Oliver

Author	: Alex Oliver
Publisher	: Oxford University Press
Total Pages	: 430
Release	: 2016-11-04
Genre	: Philosophy
ISBN	: 0192593153

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Alex Oliver and Timothy Smiley provide a natural point of entry to what for most readers will be a new subject. Plural logic deals with plural terms ('Whitehead and Russell', 'Henry VIII's wives', 'the real numbers', 'the square root of -1', 'they'), plural predicates ('surrounded the fort', 'are prime', 'are consistent', 'imply'), and plural quantification ('some things', 'any things'). Current logic is singularist: its terms stand for at most one thing. By contrast, the foundational thesis of this book is that a particular term may legitimately stand for several things at once; in other words, there is such a thing as genuinely plural denotation. The authors argue that plural phenomena need to be taken seriously and that the only viable response is to adopt a plural logic, a logic based on plural denotation. They expound a framework of ideas that includes the distinction between distributive and collective predicates, the theory of plural descriptions, multivalued functions, and lists. A formal system of plural logic is presented in three stages, before being applied to Cantorian set theory as an illustration. Technicalities have been kept to a minimum, and anyone who is familiar with the classical predicate calculus should be able to follow it. The authors' approach is an attractive blend of no-nonsense argumentative directness and open-minded liberalism, and they convey the exciting and unexpected richness of their subject. Mathematicians and linguists, as well as logicians and philosophers, will find surprises in this book. This second edition includes a greatly expanded treatment of the paradigm empty term zilch, a much strengthened treatment of Cantorian set theory, and a new chapter on higher-level plural logic.

What It All Means

by Philippe Schlenker

Author	: Philippe Schlenker
Publisher	: MIT Press
Total Pages	: 488
Release	: 2022-11-22
Genre	: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN	: 0262371774

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How meaning works—from monkey calls to human language, from spoken language to sign language, from gestures to music—and how meaning is connected to truth. We communicate through language, connecting what we mean to the words we say. But humans convey meaning in other ways as well, with facial expressions, hand gestures, and other methods. Animals, too, can get their meanings across without words. In What It All Means, linguist Philippe Schlenker explains how meaning works, from monkey calls to human language, from spoken language to sign language, from gestures to music. He shows that these extraordinarily diverse types of meaning can be studied and compared within a unified approach—one in which the notion of truth plays a central role. “It’s just semantics” is often said dismissively. But Schlenker shows that semantics—the study of meaning—is an unsung success of modern linguistics, a way to investigate some of the deepest questions about human nature using tools from the empirical and formal sciences. Drawing on fifty years of research in formal semantics, Schlenker traces how meaning comes to life. After investigating meaning in primate communication, he explores how human meanings are built, using in some cases sign languages as a guide to the workings of our inner “logic machine.” Schlenker explores how these meanings can be enriched by iconicity in sign language and by gestures in spoken language, and then turns to more abstract forms of iconicity to understand the meaning of music. He concludes by examining paradoxes, which—being neither true nor false—test the very limits of meaning.

Events and Plurality

by Fred Landman

Author	: Fred Landman
Publisher	: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages	: 397
Release	: 2012-12-06
Genre	: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN	: 9401143595

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JERUSALEM LECTURES In 1992, I was a Lady Davis Fellow in the English Department at the Hebrew Univer sity of Jerusalem. In the context of this, Edit Doron asked me to present a series of weekly evening lectures. The idea was that I would be talking about my own current research on plurality in an event based theory, without the restraints that a nonnal seminar fonnat would im pose: i.e. the idea was that I would actually get to the part where I would talk about my own work. At the same time, Edit added, it would be nice if, rather than just presupposing or presenting a neo-Davidsonian framework to develop my analysis of plurality, I could provide a more general setting of the problems by discussing in some depth the archi tecture of event arguments and thematic roles. In particular, Terry Parsons' book, Par sons 1990, had appeared relatively recently, and there was real interest among the audience in discussing Parsons' arguments for events and roles.

Time and TAME in Language

by Ana Maria Tramunt Ibaños

Author	: Ana Maria Tramunt Ibaños
Publisher	: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages	: 240
Release	: 2014-09-26
Genre	: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN	: 1443867969

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This book presents a collection of papers on various syntactic and semantic aspects of temporal expression in language. The articles included in this volume were presented at the I International Meeting on Syntax and Semantics and their Interfaces, with the main theme of the event being time. The authors include well-renowned researchers as well as new contributors to the field who present cutting-edge research on a variety of topics, ranging from the fundamental nature of time to formal approaches to specific tense-aspect structures as well as their interaction with other grammatical categories. This volume represents a valuable contribution to the field and will be of interest to scholars studying the representation of time in language as well as to syntacticians and semanticists in general.

Lexical Semantics, Syntax, and Event Structure

by Malka Rappaport Hovav

Author	: Malka Rappaport Hovav
Publisher	: OUP Oxford
Total Pages	: 424
Release	: 2010-02-25
Genre	: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN	: 0191572845

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This book focuses on the linguistic representation of temporality in the verbal domain and its interaction with the syntax and semantics of verbs, arguments, and modifiers. Leading scholars explore the division of labour between syntax, compositional semantics, and lexical semantics in the encoding of event structure, encompassing event participants and the temporal properties associated with events. They examine the interface between event structure and the systems with which it interacts, including the interface between event structure and the syntactic realization of arguments and modifiers. Deploying a variety of frameworks and theoretical perspectives they consider central issues and questions in the field, among them whether argument-structure is specified in the lexical entries of verbs or syntactically constructed so that syntactic position determines thematic status; whether the hierarchical structure evidenced in argument structure find parallels in sign language; should the relation between members of an alternation pair, such as the causative-inchoative alternation, be understood lexically or derivationally; and the role of syntactic category in determining the configuration of argument structure.