A unified non monstrous semantics for third person pronouns

Semantics and Pragmatics 10 (2017)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

It is common practice in formal semantics to assume that the context specifies an assignment of values to variables and that the same variables that receive contextually salient values when they occur free may also be bound by quantifiers and λs. These assumptions are at work to provide a unified account of free and bound uses of third person pronouns, namely one by which the same lexical item is involved in both uses. One way to pursue this account is to treat quantifiers and λs as monsters in Kaplan’s sense. We argue that this move should be avoided and explore an alternative route based on the idea that there is a variable assignment coordinate in the context and a variable assignment coordinate in the circumstance of evaluation, with the definition of truth in context identifying them. One fundamental challenge that arises in pursuing a unified account is to explain the difference in the way the gender presuppositions of bound and free pronouns project. The proposal that emerges from the attempt to meet this challenge is a non-indexical account of free third person pronouns and a new conception of the role and structure of assignment functions

Links

PhilArchive

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Essentially Indexical Bound Anaphoric Pronouns.Katrina Przyjemski - 2008 - Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 39:215-222.
A plea for monsters.Philippe Schlenker - 2002 - Linguistics and Philosophy 26 (1):29-120.
Focusing bound pronouns.Clemens Mayr - 2012 - Natural Language Semantics 20 (3):299-348.
Monsters in Kaplan’s logic of demonstratives.Brian Rabern - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 164 (2):393-404.
Structured contexts and anaphoric dependencies.Julie Hunter - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 168 (1):35-58.
Relational nouns, pronouns, and resumption.Ash Asudeh - 2005 - Linguistics and Philosophy 28 (4):375 - 446.
Dependent plural pronouns with Skolemized choice functions.Yasutada Sudo - 2014 - Natural Language Semantics 22 (3):265-297.
Pronouns of Zichang Dialect in the Jin Dialect.Yan-mei Li - 2005 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 35 (2):158-162.
Opacity, coreference, and pronouns.Barbara Hall Partee - 1970 - Synthese 21 (3-4):359 - 385.

Analytics

Added to PP
2016-06-29

Downloads
376 (#48,557)

6 months
80 (#47,517)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Fabio Del Prete
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Citations of this work

Monsters and the theoretical role of context.Brian Rabern & Derek Ball - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 98 (2):392-416.
No context, no content, no problem.Ethan Nowak - 2020 - Mind and Language 36 (2):189-220.
Gender in conditionals.Fabio Del Prete & Alessandro Zucchi - 2021 - Linguistics and Philosophy 44 (4):953–980.

View all 7 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

Semantics in generative grammar.Irene Heim & Angelika Kratzer - 1998 - Malden, MA: Blackwell. Edited by Angelika Kratzer.
On referring.Peter F. Strawson - 1950 - Mind 59 (235):320-344.
Quantifiers and propositional attitudes.Willard van Orman Quine - 1955 - Journal of Philosophy 53 (5):177-187.

View all 42 references / Add more references