Compositional paths to de re

Abstract

I argue that attitude reports de re arise compositionally via two distinct LF mechanisms. One mechanism allows the res to remain inside the embedded clause syntactically, and does not treat the res as an argument of the attitude verb semantically (Percus & Sauerland 2003, Ninan 2012). The other involves the res semantically serving as an argument of the attitude verb, and syntactically occupying a distinctive res position external to the embedded clause (Heim 1994). I show that both LF mechanisms are made use of by a single natural language, Nez Perce, and that Nez Perce allows the distinctive res position to be filled by covert movement (res-movement) or by base-generation.