Ambiguity and Anaphora with Plurals in Discourse

Authors

  • Nicholas Asher University of Texas at Austin
  • Linton Wang University of Texas at Austin

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v13i0.2879

Abstract

We provide examples of plurals related to ambiguity and anaphora that pose problems or are counterexamples for current approaches to plurals. We then propose a dynamic semantics based on an extension of dynamic predicate logic (DPL<sup>+</sup>) to handle these examples. On our theory, different readings of sentences or discourses containing plu­rals don't arise from a postulated ambiguity of plural terms or predicates applying to plural DPs, but follow rather from different types of dynamic transitions that manip­ulate inputs and outputs from formulas or discourse constituents. Many aspects of meaning can affect the type dynamic transitions : the lexical semantics of predicates to the left and right of a transition, and number features of DPs and discourse constraints like parallelism.

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Published

2003-08-18

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Section

Articles