SOMETHING ABOUT ANYTHING

381 Pages·2016·0.8 MB·English

SOMETHING ABOUT ANYTHING:
THE SEMANTICS OF A, THE, ANY, AND CERTAIN
by
David Fairchild Houghton
26 August 2000
Major advisor: Jean-Pierre Koenig
A dissertation submitted to the
Faculty of the Graduate School of
State University of New York at Buffalo
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Linguistics Department
SOMETHING ABOUT ANYTHING:
THE SEMANTICS OF A, THE, ANY, AND CERTAIN
by
David Fairchild Houghton
26 August 2000
A dissertation submitted to the
Faculty of the Graduate School of
State University of New York at Buffalo
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Linguistics Department
Copyright by
David Fairchild Houghton
2000
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I must give special thanks to my committee members and outside reader, without whose
assistance this dissertation could not have been written. I thank Jean-Pierre Koenig for his
patience, editorial attention, vast knowledge of the linguistic literature, and skepticism.
The last was the most valuable, in that it forced me to refine my arguments and ideas. I
thank my other committee members, Matthew Dryer and John Kearns, for agreeing to
read my unconventional ideas. And I thank my outside reader, Bill Rappaport, for
encouraging me with his enthusiasm for these ideas.
However solitary one’s scholarly work, this work does not stand alone, but must
be surrounded with the life of the body and spirit. I would like to thank the people below
for making this life for me sometimes just tolerable, sometimes joyous, but always
livable.
I thank my family — my mother, Jeanne; my siblings, Kevin and Cynthia; and my
grandmother, Dorothy Walker — for sending me off to graduate school with enough
enthusiasm and self-confidence to keep me going.
For their toleration of my angst while I worked, I thank my fellow graduate
students and graduate student-like friends, in particular, Matthew Davidson, David
Kemmerer, Martha Islas, Holger Diessel, Eve Ng, Alissa Melinger, Greg Gulrajani, Suda
Rangkupan, and Ruth Shields.
For reminding me what was good in life, namely friendship, good food, and living
by one’s ideals, I thank my friends and co-workers at the Lexington Real Foods
Community Co-op, in particular, Miriam Hill, Jessica Leonard, Megan Crowley, Pat
McMullen, Ron Gadziewski, Tim Bartlett, Jenny Bruce, John Rasmussen, Orion
Burroughs, Brock Cole, Dorothy Shaw, Ingrid Loos, Betsy Turner, and Mike Cianciosi.
I thank my cousin Paul, with whom I work, for giving me something interesting to
do and tolerating my absences from work work while I’ve worked on my dissertation.
And I thank my uncle and aunt Dick and Maaret for many lunches and conversation.
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I thank Tracee Howell, who provided a futon for me and Paula to sleep on when I
came up to defend my dissertation and a congratulatory balloon after I defended it. And I
thank Eric Falls, who’s just a great friend and deserves to be acknowledged.
Most of all, I thank my wife, Paula Melton. She gave me moral and financial
support, an interesting life, love, good conversation, and interest in what I was doing. I’m
glad I wrote this dissertation if only because during the writing of it I met Paula.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
s e ction p age
Abstract x
Chapter 1: introduction 1
1.1 Background 1
1.2 What is rational implicature? 6
1.3 What is a choice function? 11
1.4 structure of the dissertation 18
Chapter 2: referential (in)definites 20
2.1 Uniqueness 23
2.2 Familiarity 27
2.3 Games of pure coordination 34
2.4 The game-theoretical account 40
2.4.1 presuppositions 47
2.4.2 Conclusion of the game-theoretical account 51
2.5 the choice-functional account 52
Chapter 3: Nonreferential (In)definites 57
3.1 predicate nominals 58
3.1.1 problems with the equational analysis 59
3.1.2 problems with the predicative analysis 63
3.1.3 the middle way: roles 66
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3.2 generics 76
3.2.1 the nature of genericity 78
3.2.1.1 generics versus universals: normativeness and the tolerance of exceptions 78
3.2.1.2 ad hoc versus well-established kinds 80
3.2.1.3 generics and discourse restrictions 82
3.2.1.4 types of generic noun phrases 85
3.2.2 definite generics 88
3.2.2.1 what is a kind? 89
3.2.2.1.1 the kind term test 89
3.2.2.1.2 why kinds 91
3.2.2.2 what kinds can do for us 94
3.2.3 indefinite generics 99
3.2.3.1 the nature of indefinite generics 100
3.2.3.2 universal generalization 103
3.2.3.3 why exceptions 109
3.2.3.4 ad hoc kinds 110
3.2.3.5 normativeness and contextual restrictions 111
3.2.3.6 what is an arbitrary individual? 118
3.2.3.7 alternative accounts of indefinite generics 119
3.2.4 bare plural generics 123
3.2.4.1 why bare plurals are plural indefinites 124
3.2.4.2 why bare plurals do not refer synecdochically to kinds 128
3.2.4.3 bare plurals designate groups, not kinds 133
3.2.5 aphoristic generics and typicality noun phrases 136
3.2.5.1 aphoristic and typicality generics do not refer to kinds 138
3.2.5.2 explanation of aphoristic and typicality generics 142
3.3 conclusion 146
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Chapter 4: specificity 148
4.1 nature of specificity 150
4.2 the scopal analysis of specificity and its faults 153
4.3 indexed choice functions 161
Chapter 5: certain 166
5.1 the categorial status of certain 168
5.1.1 adjectives of specificity are more determiner-like than other adjectives 169
5.1.2 certain is more determiner-like than other adjectives of specificity 170
5.1.3 conclusion: certain is an adjective becoming a determiner 174
5.2 the empirical facts 176
5.2.1 loss for words 178
5.2.2 knowledge withheld 181
5.2.3 hearsay 182
5.2.4 understating/hedging 184
5.2.5 restricting generalization 185
5.2.6 allusion 187
5.2.7 mere acquaintance 189
5.2.8 negative polarity and irrealis contexts 190
5.2.9 predication 191
5.2.10 wide scope 192
5.2.11 particular 196
5.2.11.1 the meaning of particular 202
5.3 the meaning of certain: various approaches 207
5.3.1 the meaning of certain: an indexed choice function account 214
5.3.1.1 explaining the empirical facts 217
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5.3.2 the meaning of certain: the choice functional rational implicature approach 224
5.4 some remaining problems 226
5.4.1 inappropriate determiners 226
5.4.2 problematic operators 228
5.5 conclusion 230
Chapter 6: any 230
6.1 The basic pattern in the use of any 233
6.2 Is any universal, existential, or both? 236
6.2.1 any is universal 236
6.2.2 any is existential 236
6.2.3 PS any is existential and FC any is universal 245
6.3 A review of the facts 259
6.3.1 Some simplifying generalizations 267
6.3.1.1 reasons to doubt the existential-even account 276
6.3.1.2 conclusion regarding the existential-even account of any 287
6.3.2 the indiscriminative alternative to the existential-even account 287
6.3.3 a laundry list of explananda 290
6.4 The rational implicature account of any 291
6.4.1 deriving the non-specificity of any 294
6.4.2 deriving a preference for downward-entailing contexts 295
6.4.3 any and irrealis contexts 296
6.4.4 the special sense of any with questions and imperatives 298
6.4.5 why FC any forms dispositional rather than habitual propositions 299
6.4.6 why any cannot occur with strong epistemic modality 302
6.4.7 why any cannot occur as the subject of a negated predicate 304
6.4.8 why any implies existence when it does and why it does not when it does not 308
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6.5 Other accounts of any 310
6.5.1 syntactic analyses 310
6.5.2 existential-even analyses 312
6.5.2.1 Horn, Fauconnier, & Ladusaw 312
6.5.2.2 Krifka 314
6.5.2.3 Kadmon & Landman 315
6.5.2.4 Lee & Horn 317
6.5.2.5 Israel 323
6.5.3 negative implicature analyses 324
6.5.3.1 Baker 324
6.5.3.2 Linebarger 325
6.6 Conclusion 329
Chapter 7: Conclusion 331
7.1 extensions 336
7.2 loose ends 345
7.3 advantages of the rational implicature account 346
Conventions of this dissertation 347
References 350
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