Intensionality, grammar, and the sententialist hypothesis (original) (raw)
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Intensional verbs and their intentional objects
brandonavery, 2022
The complement of transitive intensional verbs, like any nonreferential complement, can be replaced by a 'special quantifier' or 'special pronoun' such as something, t h es a m et h i n g ,o rwhat. In previous work on predicative complements and that-clauses I argued that special quantifiers and pronouns introduce entities that would not have occurred in the semantic structure of the sentence without the special quantifier, entities that one would refer to with the corresponding nominalization. Thus something in John thinks something or the same thing in John thinks the same thing as Mary ranges not over propositions, but rather over entities of the sort 'John's thought that S' or 'the thought that S', without those entities acting as arguments of the think-relation. Despite initial apparent lack of evidence for this view for transitive verbs like need, a closer inspection of a greater range of data gives in fact further support for the 'Nominalization Theory' of special quantifiers, once 'nominalization' is viewed in a suitably extended and flexible way. Keywords Transitive intensional verbs AE Intensional quantifiers AE Modality AE Situation AE Intensionality I would like to thank the audiences at the Paris workshop Intensional Verbs and Nonreferential Complements, the University of Sendai (Japan), and Rutgers University for challenging discussion, and for Graeme Forbes and the two referees for comments on a previous version of the paper.
Nonreferential complements, nominalizations, and derived objects (Journal of Semantics 13, 2004)
Journal of Semantics , 2004
This paper gives a semantic account of adjective nominalizations and nominalizations of attitude verbs and argues that quantifiers like 'something' when taking the position of complements of copula, intensional transitive, or attitude verb have a nominalizing function, quantifying over the same sorts of objects that corresponding nominalizations stand for.
Non‐Sentential Assertions and the Dependence Thesis of Word Meaning
Mind & language, 1999
To assert is to utter a sentence under certain conventions, claims Michael Dummett. This view runs afoul of empirical evidence indicating the widespread assertoric use of non-elliptical words and phrases. Dummett also advances two theses apparently related to his sentence conventionalism: that word meaning depends on sentence meaning, and that language is (in some sense) prior to thought. I argue that these latter two theses are independent of the empirically dubious Sentential Thesis. Plausibly, the wider Dummettian logico-metaphysical programme is not impugned by the existence of non-sentential assertions.
Scientific Journal of Polonia University
This article presents the results of quantitative-corpus parameterization of reference properties of English detached nonfinite constructions with an explicit subject, carried out from the perspective of the cognitive-quantitative approach to language study. Through the prism of cognitive-constructive grammar, the syntactic patterns under scrutiny are recognized as grammatical constructions, i.e. complex semiotic units, non-compositional cognitively motivated pairings of form and conceptual meaning/ function, stored as holistic, conceptually connected, and interacting structures. Corpus-quantitative parameterization of referential properties of the given constructions presupposes the analysis of the linguistic means of expressing coreference between five micro-constructions and a corresponding matrix clause, reflected by the factors “Coreference” (COREF) and “Absence of coreference” (ØCOREF) of the parameter “Reference relations” (REFREL). Quantitative verification of the data invol...
The Structural and the Semantic: Subject-Object and Referential-Predicative Asymmetries
"A semantic picture (Aristotle, Mill, direct reference) analyzes the logical structure of sentences in terms of reference –the subject denoting an object—and predication –the predicate ascribing a property to that object. Frege brought attention to puzzling dimensions of that view, concluding that proper names themselves had not only a reference, but a predicative sense (while Russell did away with reference altogether). (Correcting Russell,) Donnellan showed that not just proper names but definite descriptions had both a referential use and a predicative (attributive) use. The understanding of logical structure in terms of semantic function has by and large been ejected from linguistic theorizing, replaced in GB by structural, syntactic, analyses (although categorial grammars retain some of this understanding through rules of functional application.) Various facts detailed in this talk suggest that the referential-predicative distinction is psychologically real. A closer look at how this distinction operates deeply in our linguistic judgments sheds light on subtleties affecting belief attributions, derogation inheritance, and other presuppositional facts. First, we review subject-object asymmetries in syntax, which are legion and well-studied. Then, we observe much less studied metalinguistic subject-object asymmetries: we show that proper names are referential in subject position, but receive predicative interpretation in object position. However, we show that the relevant subject-object asymmetries are not amenable to structural explanations: they cannot be cashed out in structural or syntactic terms, but in semantic (or functional or logical or ontological) terms: the first denotes an object, the second a property. We show that interestingly (although predictably, by our analysis), the metalinguistic referential-predicative effects discussed in the talk also appear in derogation inheritance: they explain when a speaker uttering “that bastard Kaplan” will inherit, or not the, the negative presupposition. The same analysis also solves (part of) the “projection problem,” or how to compute the presuppositions of a complex sentence. "
Intensional Verbs and their Intentional Objects (Natural Language Semantics 16(3), 2008)
Natural Language Semantics, 2008
This paper deals with quantifiers like 'something' when occurring as complements of intensional transitive verbs such as 'need'. Such quantifier occurrences raise significant challenges for the analysis of quantifiers like 'something' as nominalizing quantifiers (Moltmann 2003). The paper argues that those challenges can be overcome by extending the ontology, making use of te notion of a variable satisfier, a notion that derives from that of a variable embodiment in Kit Fine's sense.