I shall now clarify the sense in which my proposal provides a pragmatic account of all sentences traditionally thought to exhibit category mistakes. I will also observe that my account’s reliance on general, independently-motivated mechanisms renders it more parsi- monious than those that endorse Unique Defectiveness.
My proposal is that the sentences traditionally classified as category mistake-exhibiting may be divided into two groups, with the first group consisting of those that are treated as category mistakes solely due to the inclusion of an empty restrictor. I argued that, when sen- tences from the first group include clause-initial definite determiners with perceived empty restrictors and are presented out-of-context, the assessor is likely to consider an occurrence where the DP is topical and an existence presupposition subsequently emerges and fails. This results in an oddness response, no matter how rich the context imagined by the asses- sor is. However, when sentences from the first group include indefinite determiners with perceived empty restrictors, or occur with an indication that the DP isnottopical, an asses- sor is often able to assign the value predicted by accounts of generalized quantifiers. On the other hand, when sentences from the second group (that is, those that are considered cate- gory mistakes for reasons independent of the presence of an empty restrictor) are considered out-of-context, any sense of oddness is attributable to the fact that it is taxing to enrich the imagined minimal context to the degree that the sentence may be situated within a coherent discourse. In other words, of the sentences traditionally thought to exhibit category mis- takes, those in the first group frequently yield an oddness response even when they occur relative to a rich context, whereas those in the second group will be assigned the expected value by assessors when they occur relative to a sufficiently rich context. It is therefore my claim that, for any sentence traditionally classified as category mistake-exhibiting, there are some occurrences of it for which assessors will naturally assign a value. Whilst there are also some occurrences for which assessors are likely to encounter an oddness response, this is attributable to general, pragmatic mechanisms.
An additional point in favour of my proposal is the parsimony fostered by its reliance on independently motivated mechanisms with general applicability. Unique Defectiveness- Endorsing accounts typically pursue explanatory adequacy by invoking specialised mecha- nisms that are exclusively targeted towards, and motivated by, category mistake-exhibiting sentences. For example, Magidor’s pragmatic account attributes far more complexity to both the lexicon and the common ground than standard approaches to semantics and prag- matics. That is, she attributes presuppositions to any predicate that can be used to gener- ate a category mistake-exhibiting sentence, including most verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and
prepositions.10 Requiring such a number of predicates to be presupposition triggers would
complicate their lexical entries, and requiring common grounds to include the information supposedly presupposed by an occurrence of a predicate would vastly increase the infor- mation that interlocutors are required to assume for a felicitous discourse. An advocate of Magidor’s account might maintain that there are independent reasons to think that lexical entries or common grounds display the postulated richness. However, it is surely prefer- able to endorse an account that remains neutral with respect to this issue, as opposed to an account that commits itself to such complex lexical entries and common grounds.
My proposal therefore includes a uniform account of the sentences that are typically classified as category mistake-exhibiting: they are a proper subclass of a class of sentences that have a notable propensity to display ‘storage problems’, by which I mean that it is often difficult to store the information expressed by occurrences of them within an imaginary or real-life common ground. I take an assessor’s experiencing an oddness response to correlate with her encountering storage problems. Crucially, a propensity to display storage problems must not be treated as a defect unique to a phenomenon of category mistakes: many other sentences (e.g. those with topical occurrences of DPs with contingently empty restrictors, (9a) – (9b), etc.) are similarly challenging to store.
Summary of §(5.2)
I began by showing how the topic-sensitive, presuppositional account of contingently empty restrictors developed in §(4.3) – §(4.3) applies to sentences with necessarily empty restric- tors. Of the two groups of sentence that are typically classified as category mistake-exhibiting, this proposal accounts for the first group while relying on general pragmatic mechanisms and rejecting Unique Defectiveness. I then observed that a rival account of category mis- takes could attempt to supplement itself with my topic-sensitive account for the first group of sentences, whilst maintaining its indispensibility in accounting for the second group of sentences. Hence I argued that the second group of sentences may also be accounted for by means of general pragmatic mechanisms.
Chapter Summary
I suggested that accounts of the sentences traditionally thought to exhibit category mistakes must display both descriptive and explanatory adequacy. In order to explain why such sentences often prompt an oddness response in assessors, it is frequently claimed that they exhibit a form of defectiveness unique to the class of category mistakes.
I began by singling out the group of putative category mistakes that are considered as such solely due to the presence of perceived necessarily empty restrictors. I argued that Definite Variance and ‘There’ Acceptability data emerges with respect to these sentences,
10The list of presupposition-triggering predicates she explicitly gives (pp.141-5.) includes ‘pregnant’ (which
presupposes that the argument can be pregnant), ‘dreaming’ (which presupposes that the argument has mental states), ‘prime’ (which presupposes that the argument is either prime or composite), ‘drinks’ (which presup- poses that the first argument is capable of drinking, and the second is capable of being drunk), ‘furiously’ (which presupposes that an action is performed with some emotion) and ‘under’ (which presupposes that the argument is located in space).
data which no extant account of category mistakes is able to predict. This prevents these accounts from displaying descriptive adequacy.
I then suggested the following natural explanation of Definite Variance and ‘There’ Ac- ceptability with respect to both necessarily and contingently empty restrictors: topical DPs are associated with pragmatic existence presuppositions, and the failure of these presuppo- sitions yields an oddness response. As argued in §(4.4.1), assessors of out-of-context sen- tences will be highly likely to construe clause-initial definite DPs as topical, will possibly construe clause-initial indefinite DPs as topical, and will be highly unlikely to construe the post-verbal DPs or restrictors of existential ‘there’-sentences as topical. This perspective in- dicates that sentences with perceived necessarily empty restrictors that supposedly exhibit category mistakes may be analysed by means of general, pragmatic mechanisms.
I then observed that an advocate of a rival account of category mistakes might attempt to supplement her Unique Defectiveness-accepting account with the topic-sensitive approach required to predict Definite Variance and ‘There’ Acceptability. I argued that the reduced parsimony of such an approach would be justified only if a Unique Defectiveness-accepting account is necessary to predict and explain assessors’ responses to sentences with perceived non-empty restrictors. I therefore considered a second group of the sentences traditionally classified as category mistake-exhibiting, consisting of those classified as such for reasons independent of the presence of empty restrictors. I argued that assessors are likely to assign truth values to such sentences relative to a suitably rich context. Hence the sense of oddness often elicited by such sentences may be explained by general, pragmatic mechanisms.
My Unique Defectiveness-denying approach therefore displays descriptive and explana- tory adequacy with respect to the class of sentences typically classified as category mistake- exhibiting. It is my view that such sentences are simply a proper subclass of those that are prone to exhibit storage problems, insofar as it is often difficult to store the information ex- pressed by occurrences of them within an imaginary or real-life common ground. It follows that there are no category mistakes; that is, there is no class of category mistake-exhibiting sentences consisting of all and only the sentences afflicted by a particular defect.
Conclusion
The main conclusions reached in this thesis are as follows:
1. All determiner phrases should be analysed as denoting generalized quantifiers (§(1.1.2)). 2. The best semantics for ‘there’-sentences are either those given in Keenan (2003) or
Francez (2009), and the best explanation for the problem of existential acceptability is a pragmatic one (§(1.2)).
3. A sentence topic should be thought of as the constituent that indicates the aboutness item with respect to which information storage should occur (§(2.1.2)).
4. A structured common ground should be used to model discourse, where topical occur- rences of DPs are associated with file cards representing one of their minimal witness sets (§(2.2)).
5. The weak verification condition should be accepted, which holds that the file card with respect to which information storage occurs affects the way in which an occurrence of a sentence is understood (§(2.2.4)).
6. It should be accepted that out-of-context sentences are assessed relative to imagined contexts, and that neutral prosody for a sentence may be used to reconstruct a minimal context in the absence of additional clues about the envisaged context (§(2.3.1)). 7. The Triggering Question is partially answered with the claim that a focus-based, do-
main restricted understanding of an occurrence of a sentence with a DP headed by ‘every’ or ‘most’ is possible only if its focus includes a proper part of the DP-external material (§(3.3.1)).
8. A domain restricted understanding of an occurrence of a sentence with a DP headed by ‘every’ or ‘most’ arises if and only if information storage occurs with respect to a file card that is not supplied solely by the IS of the occurrence of the sentence, and which represents a proper subset of the DP’s restrictor’s extension (§(3.4)).
9. The Triggering Question is partially answered in a more informative (but more contro- versial) way with the claim that a domain restricted understanding of an occurrence of a sentence with a DP headed by ‘every’ or ‘most’ is possible only if some file card supplied solely by IS represents a proper or improper superset of a minimal witness set of the DP. (§(3.4)).
10. The problem of contingently empty restrictors is best addressed by treating topical occurrences of expressions as presupposing the presence in the common ground of the file card with which they are associated (§(4.3.1)).
11. When an oddness response is elicted by an occurrence of a monotone decreasing DP, this should be attributed either to a failed existence presupposition triggered by the topicality of its restrictor, or a conversational implicature that the real or imaginary speaker of the occurrence does not take herself to be in a position to assert that the restrictor is empty (§(4.3.2)).
12. The truth conditions of ‘the’-headed DPs should include a cardinality constraint on the quantifier’s first argument as a condition for truth, rather than a condition for definedness, with an existence presupposition’s emerging when such DPs are topical (§(4.3.3)).
13. Definite Variance is explained by the view that, for sentences in canonical form pre- sented out-of-context, clause-initial definite DPs are highly likely to be construed as topics, whereas clause-initial indefinite DPs display a less robust likelihood to be con- strued as such (§(4.4.1)).
14. ‘There’ Acceptability is explained by the view that, for existential ‘there’-sentences presented out-of-context, post-verbal DPs and their restrictors are highly likely to be construed as non-topical (§(4.4.1)).
15. Progress towards a solution to the problem of existential acceptability is fostered by the generalisation that a definite DP is acceptable in post-verbal position if and only if the information expressed by the occurrence of the ‘there’-sentence is stored on a file card representing a proper subset ofD, whereas all-focus occurrences of ‘there’- sentences with indefinite post-verbal DPs may be stored on a file card representingD. (§(4.4.2)).
16. Definite Variance and ‘There’ Acceptability arises with respect to sentences that in- clude DPs with perceived necessarily empty restrictors, which prevents all extant ac- counts of category mistakes from attaining descriptive adequacy (§(5.1)).
17. Those sentences that are traditionally thought to exhibit category mistakes are a proper subclass of those sentences that display a propensity to cause storage problems, and are best explained by an account that denies the existence of a class of ‘category mis- takes’ consisting of all and only the sentences that display a unique defect (§(5.2)). 18. An assessor’s experiencing an oddness responses is characteristic of her encountering
storage problems (§(5.2)).
These conclusions include solutions to the long-standing philosophical puzzles with which this thesis is directly concerned, along with a number of insights about the correct analysis of quantifier expressions. Furthermore, a new model of the pragmatics of ordinary discourse has been developed in §(2) and refined in subsequent chapters. Finally, I have em- phasised certain information-theoretic notions – including topic, focus and questions under discussion – and shown their potential to help philosophers of language with a broad range of problems.
Bibliography
Abbott, B. (1992). Definiteness, existentials, and the ’list’ interpretation. InProceedings of Se- mantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT), volume 2, pages 1–16. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Linguistic Publications.
Abbott, B. (1993). A pragmatic account of the definiteness effect in existential sentences.
Journal of Pragmatics, 19(1):39–55.
Abbott, B. (1999). Support for a unique theory of definiteness. InProceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT), volume 9, pages 1–15. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Linguistic Publications.
Abbott, B. (2008). Definiteness and indefiniteness. In Horn, L. and Ward, G., editors,The Handbook of Pragmatics, pages 122–149. Oxford: Blackwell.
Abrus´an, M. and Szendr˝oi, K. (2013). Experimenting with the king of France: Topics, verifi- ability and definite descriptions. Semantics and Pragmatics, 6(10):1–43.
Abusch, D. and Rooth, M. (2004). Empty-domain effects for presuppositional and nonpre- suppositional determiners. In Kamp, H. and Partee, B., editors,Context-Dependence in the Analysis of Linguistic Meaning, pages 7–27. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Aissen, J. (2003). Differential coding, partial blocking, and bidirectional OT. In Nowak, P. and Yoquelet, C., editors,Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, pages 1–16. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.
Ariel, M. (2001). Accessibility theory: An overview. In Sanders, T., Schilperoord, J., and Spooren, W., editors,Text Representation: Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Aspects, pages 27– 88. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
Asher, N. (2011). Lexical Meaning in Context: A Web of Words. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press.
Atlas, J. D. and Levinson, S. C. (1981). It-clefts, informativeness and logical form: Radical pragmatics (revised standard version). In Cole, P., editor,Radical Pragmatics, pages 1–62. New York, NY: Academic Press.
Baart, J. L. G. (1987).Focus, Syntax, and Accent Placement. Dordrecht: ICG Printing.
Babby, L. H. (1980). Existential Sentences and Negation in Russian. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma Publishers.
Bach, K. (1994). Conversational impliciture. Mind & Language, 9(2):124–162.
Bach, K. (2000). Quantification, qualification and context: A reply to Stanley and Szab ´o.
Mind & Language, 15:262–283.
Bach, K. (2005). Context ex machina. In Szabo, Z. G., editor,Semantics Versus Pragmatics, pages 15–44. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bader, M. (1998). Prosodic influences on reading syntactically ambiguous sentences. In Fodor, J. D. and Ferreira, F., editors, Reanalysis in Sentence Processing, pages 1–46. Dor- drecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Barwise, J. and Cooper, R. (1981). Generalized quantifiers and natural language.Linguistics and Philosophy, 4(2):159–219.
Barwise, J., Feferman, S., and Baldwin, J. T. (1985). Model-Theoretic Logics. Berlin: Springer- Verlag.
Beardsley, M. C. (1962). The metaphorical twist. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 22(3):293–307.
Beaver, D. and Clark, B. (2003). Always and only: Why not all focus-sensitive operators are alike. Natural Language Semantics, 11(4):323–362.
Beaver, D., Francez, I., and Levinson, D. (2005). Bad subject: (non-)canonicality and np distribution in existentials. In Georgala, E. and Howell, J., editors, Proceedings of Seman- tics and Linguistic Theory (SALT), volume 15, pages 19–43. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Linguistic Publications.
Beaver, D. I. and Clark, B. Z. (2008). Sense and Sensitivity: How Focus Determines Meaning. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Benesova, E., Hajiˇcov´a, E., and Sgall, P. (1973). Remarks on the topic-comment articulation.
Prague Bulletin of Mathematical Linguistics, 19:29–58.
Bentley, D., Ciconte, F. M., Cruschina, S., and Ramsammy, M. (2012). Micro-variation in information structure: There sentences in Italo-Romance. In Fernandez-Vest, J. and van Valin, R., editors, Information Structuring of Spoken Language From a Cross-Linguistic Per- spective, pages 95–120. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Bonevac, D. (2012). A history of quantification. In Gabby, D. M., Pelletier, F. J., and Woods, J., editors,Handbook of the History of Logic, Volume 11, pages 63–126. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Borschev, V. and Partee, B. H. (2002). The Russian genitive of negation in existential sen-
tences: The role of Theme-Rheme structure reconsidered. In Hajiˇcov´a, E., Sgall, P., Hana, J., and Hoskovec, T., editors,Prague Linguistic Circle Papers Volume 4, pages 185–250. Am- sterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
Breheny, R. (2003). A lexical account of implicit (bound) contextual dependence. InProceed- ings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT), volume 13, pages 55–72. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Linguistic Publications.
B ¨uring, D. (1994). The interaction of focus, phrase structure, and quantification. In Giordano, C. and Ardron, D., editors,Proceedings of the 6th Student Conference in Linguists (SCIL 6), MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 23, pages 75–94. Boston, MA: MIT.
B ¨uring, D. (1996). A weak theory of strong readings. In Galloway, T. and Spence, J., editors,
Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT), volume 6, pages 17–34. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Linguistic Publications.
B ¨uring, D. (1999). Topic. In Bosch, P. and van der Sandt, R., editors,Focus: Linguistic, Cog- nitive, and Computational Perspectives, pages 142–165. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
B ¨uring, D. (2007). Semantics, intonation, and information structure. In Ramchand, G. and Reiss, C., editors,The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces, pages 445–473. Oxford: Ox- ford University Press.
Chafe, W. L. (1976). Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics and point of view. In Li, C. N., editor,Subject and Topic, pages 25–55. New York, NY: Academic Press. Chomsky, N. (1965).Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Chomsky, N. (1971). Deep structure, surface structure, and semantic interpretation. In Stein- berg, D. D. and Jakobovits, L. A., editors,Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philoso- phy, Linguistics and Psychology, pages 183–216. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Christophersen, P. (1939).The Articles: A Study of their Theory and Use in English. Copenhagen:
E. Munksgaard.
Comorovski, I. (1996). Interrogative Phrases and the Syntax-Semantics Interface. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Comrie, B. (1979). Definite and animate direct objects: A natural class. Linguistica Silesiana, 3:13–21.
Cruschina, S. (2012). Focus in existential sentences. In Bianchi, V. and Chesi, C., editors,
Enjoy Linguistics! Papers Offered to Luigi Rizzi on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday, pages