Weak definites and reference to kinds
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v20i0.2583Keywords:
Weak Definites, Reference to Kinds, Definite GenericsAbstract
Weak definite NPs do not presuppose the existence of uniquely identifiable entities. In addition, they display a range of other peculiar properties such as sloppy readings in VPs ellipsis, narrow scope interpretations, lexical restrictions and enriched meaning. In order to account for these, in this paper we analyze weak definites as expressions that refer to the same sort of kind individuals that definite generics refer to. We propose that the combination of weak definites with object-level predicates is made possible by a lexical rule that lifts object-level relations to 'enriched' kind-level relations.Downloads
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2010-08-14
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Articles appearing in SALT are published under an author agreement with the Linguistic Society of America and are made available to readers under a Creative Commons Attribution License.