Plural semantics for control sentences in LFG's ``glue'' interface

Control sentences have been extensively studied in the linguistic literature and semantic analysis of control has been proposed in the context of different linguistic theories. However, split control sentences, in which the subject and the object can both contribute to the meaning of the understood subject, haven’t received a comprehensive formal semantic analysis. In particular, in LFG and the Glue semantic interface, such sentences are analyzed using anaphora resolution techniques. This thesis proposes a formal semantic analysis in the framework of LFG and Glue, of the collective reading of split control sentences in the context of the propositional theory of control. For sentences that involve a collective controlled verb, the proposed analysis provides, for the first time, an adequate semantic derivation that does not require anaphoric resolution of the understood subject. Sentences that do not involve collective verbs retain their current semantic analysis, and the proposed analysis provides an additional reading. In order to represent the understood subject as a combination of the subject and the object, plural entities are used at the meaning representation level. In order to derive that meaning, two extensions of the existing frameworks are proposed. The concept of multi-functional control proposes to represent the contribution of multiple grammatical functions to the understood subject of the controlled sentence as a set of f-structures. Such set can be assigned non-distributive features that describe the understood subject, such as the semantic number. The meaning of multi-functional control sets is derived using meta meaning constructors that extend the semantic derivation process by providing the means to derive the meaning of f-structure sets when the number of set elements is a priory unknown. In the context of the propositional theory of control, multi-functional control approach involves issues of resource sensitivity just like the common functional control analysis. This thesis handles these resource sensitivity issues by employing the multiplicative fragment of the underlying linear logic. The thesis shows how the derivation of the plural reading of split control sentences is made possible by combining multi-functional control at the f-structure level with the appropriate meta-meaning constructors and resource management meaning constructors at the Glue level. A comprehensive meaning derivation is provided for a representative split control sentence. As an additional result, the thesis shows how meta-meaning constructors can solve the problem of coordination of more than two conjuncts.