Syntax and Semantics

Over the past 15 years there has been an explosion in the number of languages reported to allow indexical shift. Across this literature, the argument for indexical shifting is typically quite simple: (Premise 1) Indexical n has non-utterance-based reference in embedded clause c of language L. (Premise 2) Clause c cannot be a quote (e.g. because it is permeable to wh-movement or NPI licensing, or contains descriptions de re). (Conclusion) Therefore, Language L allows indexical shift. Is this form of argument valid? For many cases discussed in the recent literature: only if we take 1st...

Must reflexive pronouns always interpreted as semantically bound by their local antecedents, as the conventional wisdom would have it? No: that is what we learn from ECM subject reflexives. A theory that hopes to deal with these reflexives adequately must allow for the broader range of interpretive possibilities that comes about when the local antecedents of reflexive pronouns are associated with mismatching inner and outer binding indices (in the sense of Heim 1993). In this case, reflexives reveal the ability to be coreferential or co-bound with their local antecedents, rather than...

External possession is a phenomenon where a nominal is syntactically encoded as a verbal dependent but semantically understood as the possessor of one of its co-arguments. While the general pattern is crosslinguistically very common, there is much variation in its precise syntax and semantics. In this chapter I review the classic analyses of external possession as possessor raising and possessor binding. The evidence behind these analyses indicates that raising and binding are indeed each appropriate for certain subtypes of external possession, as is an analysis in terms of movement...

At first glance, Nez Perce looks like a language lacking any correlate of the traditional mass-count distinction. All Nez Perce nouns behave like canonical count nouns in three ways: all nouns combine with numerals without an overt measure phrase, all NPs may host plural features, and all NPs may host adjectives like big and small. I show that Nez Perce nevertheless makes two countability distinctions in noun semantics. A sums-based (cumulativity) distinction is revealed in the interaction of quantifiers with plural; a parts-based (divisiveness) distinction is revealed in...