Plural Discourse Reference
نویسنده
چکیده
The goal of this additional section is to further explore the semantic notion of plurality and argue that, in addition to plural reference to collections, natural language interpretation involves a notion of plural discourse reference that is essential for the interpretation of quantificationally dependent pronouns (and anaphoric expressions in general, e.g., definites, partitives, reciprocals etc.), irrespective of whether these pronouns are morphologically singular or plural. Plural discourse reference is reference to a quantificational dependency between sets of objects (e.g., atomic individuals or collections, but also times, eventualities, possible worlds etc.) that is established and subsequently elaborated upon in discourse. Consider, for example, the sentence in (1) below – where antecedents are superscripted with the discourse referent (dref) they introduce, while anaphors are subscripted with the dref they retrieve (following the convention in Barwise 1987).
منابع مشابه
Donkey Pluralities: Plural Information States vs. Non-Atomic Individuals
The paper argues that two distinct and independent notions of plurality are involved in natural language anaphora and quantification: plural reference (the usual non-atomic individuals) and plural discourse reference, i.e. reference to a quantificational dependency between sets of objects (e.g. atomic / non-atomic individuals) that is established and subsequently elaborated upon in discourse. F...
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