Events and Semantic Architecture

Abstract

Abstract This book articulates and defends a simple conception of semantic composition: when two meaningful expressions are concatenated, the result is understood as a conjunction of monadic predicates; in human languages, concatenation always signifies predicate conjunction. From this 'Conjunctivist' perspective, simple cases of adjunction (like 'black cat') are paradigms, and neo-Davidsonian event analyzes rightly associate certain grammatical relations with thematic roles. The sentence 'Fido chased Garfield yesterday' means, roughly, that something satisfies four conditions: its Agent was Fido, it was a chase, its Theme was Garfield, and it occurred yesterday. Such analyses, involving existential closure of a covert variable, are easily extended to examples involving negation and sentential connectives. This book contains four chapters. Chapter 1 compares elementary Conjunctivist proposals with 'Functionist' accounts according to which (i) predicate-argument concatenation signifies function-application, and (ii) adjuncts are accommodated by appeal to type-shifting or function-conjunction. Chapter 2 provides a Conjunctivist account of quantificational constructions, like 'chased every cat', in terms of a metalanguage with plural variables. This account is extended to plural noun phrases, as in 'Three dogs chased the cats'; and this suggests a treatment of apparently nonconjunctive phrases like 'big ants'. The resulting proposals — which explain the conservativity of determiners, and handle collective readings without quantifying over collections — are better than Functionist alternatives. Chapter 3 shows that Conjunctivism is superior to Functionism with regards to causative constructions, serial verbs, and many verbs that combine with complementizer phrases. Chapter 4 is a summary of conclusions, and discusses some difficulties facing all extant accounts of meaning.

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