Plurals and Events

Description

Barry Schein proposes combining a second-order treatment of plurals with Donald Davidson's suggestion that there are positions for reference to events in ordinary predicates in order to account for several of the more puzzling features of plurals without invoking plural objects, with its attendant metaphysics, and also provide an absolute truth-theoretic characterization of the semantics of sentences with plurals in them. How do we make sense of sentences with plural noun phrases in them? In Plurals and Events, Barry Schein proposes combining a second-order treatment of plurals with Donald Davidson's suggestion that there are positions for reference to events in ordinary predicates in order to account for several of the more puzzling features of plurals without invoking plural objects, with its attendant metaphysics, and also provide an absolute truth-theoretic characterization of the semantics of sentences with plurals in them. Schein's highly original argument should have significant impact on how natural-language semantics is done, with repercussions for philosophy and logic. The book opens with foundational arguments that the logical language should have four major features: reduction to singular predication via a Davidsonian logical form, amereology of events, a logical syntax that allows the constituents of a Davidsonian analysis to be predicated of distinct events and separated from one another by other logical elements, and descriptive anaphors that cross-refer to the events described by antecedent clauses. A semantics for plurality and quantification is developed in the remaining chapters, which address some of the empirical and formal questions raised by the variety of interpretations in which plurals and quantifiers participate. Table of Contents 1 - Introduction 1.1- "Essential Plurals" 1.1.1 - Plurals as singular terms that refer to plural objects 1.1.2 - Plurals as predicates in a Davidsonian logical form 1.2 - Plurals as predicates in a Davidsonian logical form 1.2.3 - Separation 1.2.1- Reduction of plural predication to singular predication 1.2.2 - First-order quantifiers and a mereology of events 1.2.4 - Cross-reference to events 1.3 - Basic Data 1.4 - The Plan 2 - Plural Reference 2.1 -Plural Reference and Predication 2.2. - What Speakers Know about Plurals and Russell's Paradox 2.3 - A Semantics for the Objectual View 2.3.1 - Axioms relating singular and plural predicates 2.3.2 - Comprehension principles 2.3.3 - Paradox 2.3.4 - Ways out 2.4 - Second-Order Logic and the Semantics of Plural Terms 2.4.1 - Syntax 2.4.2 - Semantics 3 - Polyadicity and Plural Reference 3.1 - Variables Must Be Sorted into Singular (First-Order) and Plural (Second-Order) 3.2 - Exhaustive Reference to an Event's Participants 4 - Essential Separation 4.1 - Crucial Truth Conditions for Cases of Essential Separation 4.1.1 - A context where cases of essential separation are true 4.1.2 - A context where cases of essential separation are false 4.2 - Approximating Essential Separation with Polyadic Logical Forms 4.3 - Failure with Unary, Restricted Quantifiers 4.4 - Failure with n-ary Quantifiers 5 - Theta-Roles, Events, and Contexts of Events 5.1 - Variable Polyadicity 5.2 - Event Identity 5.3 - Mereology and the Contexts of Events 5.4 - Contexts of Events 5.4.1 - Possible and actual individuals 5.4.2 - Contexts of events and inferences about cumulativity 6 - A Semantics for Plurality and Quantification 6.1 - Translation: LF to Logical Form 6.1.1 - Negative Events 6.1.2 - The typology of NPs and of quantifiers over events 6.2 - Truth, Satisfaction, and Second-Order "Modalized" Quantification over Events and Their Parts 6.2.1 - Event mereology and the interpretation of θ-roles 6.2.2 - Event identity and interpretation 6.2.3 - Truth with respect to a context of events 7 - First-Order and Second-Order Quantifiers 7.1 - First-Order Quantifiers: Distributivity 7.1.1 - The syntax and semantics of [E: ϴ[e, v]] 7.1.2 - The interaction of ∃E and [E: ϴ[e, v]] 7.2 - Second-Order Quantifiers 7.2.1 - The translation of second-order quantifiers in situ 7.2.2 - Essential separation and the interaction of first-order and second-order quantifiers 7.2.3 - No more than one existential event quantifier in a clause 8 - Semidistributivity 8.1 - The Semidistributive Operator Co- 8.2 - Semidistributively Bound Pronouns 8.3 - Evidence against a Covert Occurence of '[∃V:Φ]' in the Logical Form of Semidistributivity 8.3.1 - Semidistributive scope 8.3.2 - Interactions of scope and binding 9 - Cumulative Quantification 9.1 - The Logical Form of Cumulative Quantification 9.2 - Cumulative Asymmetry 9.3 - The Interpretation of '[E: Φ]' 9.4 - Apparent Counterexamples to Cumulative Asymmetry 9.5 - Quantifier Raising Assigns the Same Scope to Distinct Quantifiers 9.5.1 - Long-distance cumulative quantifiers 9.5.1.1 - Ellipsis and reconstruction 9.5.1.2 - Adjuncts 10 - Cumulative Quantifiers and Nonmaximal Reference 10.1 - Nonmaximal Reference and Unbound Anaphora 10.2 - Exact Description 10.2.1 - The first account of exact description 10.2.1 - The second account of exact description 11 - The Cumulative Interpretation of Dependent Quantifiers 12 - Cumulative Quantification Is Not n-ary 12.1 - An Interaction between Cumulative Quantifiers and Adverbial Phrases 12.2 - Cumulative Quantifiers as n-ary Quantifiers 12.2.1 - Essentially n-ary quantifiers 12.3 - The Interaction between Cumulative Quantifiers and Adverbial Phrases Notes Ch. 1 Ch. 2 Ch. 3 Ch. 4 Ch. 5 Ch. 6 Ch. 7 Ch. 8 Ch. 9 Ch. 10 Ch. 11 Ch. 12 Appendix I References Subject Index Author Index