Dependent Plural Pronouns with Skolemized Choice Functions A Semantic Account of Phi-Features on Plural Pronouns

This paper discusses two theoretically challenging phenomena concerning the phi-features on plural pronouns: (i) ‘dependent plural pronouns’, i.e. plural pronouns that denote atomic individuals, and (ii) partial binding, i.e. plural pronouns with more than one antecedent. I will offer a novel semantic account of these two phenomena where all occurrences of phi-features are both semantically and morphologically relevant. For such an analysis, dependent plural pronouns constitute the main problem. In order to explain the effects of phi-features on dependent plural pronouns, I will pursue the following idea: the phi-features on a dependent plural pronoun reflect the range of values the pronoun takes, rather than the particular value it denotes at a time. In order to implement this idea in a compositional semantics, I will make use of (Skolemized) choice functions. The proposed account is motivated by a novel observation regarding phi-features on dependent plural pronouns that do not have c-commanding antecedents. I will also demonstrate that it can be straightforwardly augmented with set indices to account for partial binding.