The Semantics of Plurals, Focus, Degrees, and Times

This volume is a tribute to Roger Schwarzschild's immense contributions in the formal semantics of nouns, focus, degrees and space, and tense and aspect. Collectively, the papers in the volume reveal parallels across ontological domains, in particular in the context of elements with internal structure, like plural sets, alternative sets, degree intervals, temporal intervals, and vectors. This research suggests that the structure of an entity could inform the semantic behavior of that entity just as much (if not more) than its semantic type or lexical category. And because these structures dictate the formation of semantic alternatives, it can help inform focus semantics and scalar implicature as well.

Old questions on plurals, focus and degree expressions get new answers in this collection of papers in honor of Roger Schwarzchild. Roger Schwarzschild is one of the leading scholars in semantics, and the editors have beenhighly successful in requesting contributions by his teachers, peers and former students. Some papers have circulated in draft form for many years, and find their final home in this edited volume, which well reflects the state of the art in the field. Prof. dr. Henriëtte de Swart, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

New research on core themes in semantics and its interface with syntax and pragmatics, with a focus on the structure of elements Contributions by leading semanticists in the field An overview of topics studied by Roger Schwarzschild, and a celebration of his contribution to the field

Autorentext

Daniel Altshuler is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Hampshire College. He received his PhD from Rutgers University in 2010, with his dissertation Temporal interpretation in narrative discourse and event internal reference. *His research investigates how compositional semantics interacts with discourse structure and discourse coherence; a topic explored in his recent book *Events, States and Times. He has also developed pedagogical texts that promote student centered learning, such as his forthcoming, co-authored textbook A course in semantics.

Jessica Rett is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at UCLA. She received her PhD from Rutgers University in 2008, with her dissertation Degree modification in natural language. She writes on degree semantics and the semantics/pragmatics interface; both topics are covered in her recent book The semantics of evaluativity. She is Vice-Chair of Graduate Studies at UCLA and a proud co-organizer of the Committee on the Status of Women in Linguistics' Pop-Up Mentoring program.

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Klappentext

This volume is a tribute to Roger Schwarzschild's immense contributions in the formal semantics of nouns, focus, degrees and space, and tense and aspect. Collectively, the papers in the volume reveal parallels across ontological domains, in particular in the context of elements with internal structure, like plural sets, alternative sets, degree intervals, temporal intervals, and vectors. This research suggests that the structure of an entity could inform the semantic behavior of that entity just as much (if not more) than its semantic type or lexical category. And because these structures dictate the formation of semantic alternatives, it can help inform focus semantics and scalar implicature as well. Old questions on plurals, focus and degree expressions get new answers in this collection of papers in honor of Roger Schwarzchild. Roger Schwarzschild is one of the leading scholars in semantics, and the editors have beenhighly successful in requesting contributions by his teachers, peers and former students. Some papers have circulated in draft form for many years, and find their final home in this edited volume, which well reflects the state of the art in the field. Prof. dr. Henriëtte de Swart, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Zusammenfassung

This volume is a tribute to Roger Schwarzschild's immense contributions in the formal semantics of nouns, focus, degrees and space, and tense and aspect. Collectively, the papers in the volume reveal parallels across ontological domains, in particular in the context of elements with internal structure, like plural sets, alternative sets, degree intervals, temporal intervals, and vectors. This research suggests that the structure of an entity could inform the semantic behavior of that entity just as much (if not more) than its semantic type or lexical category. And because these structures dictate the formation of semantic alternatives, it can help inform focus semantics and scalar implicature as well.

Old questions on plurals, focus and degree expressions get new answers in this collection of papers in honor of Roger Schwarzchild. Roger Schwarzschild is one of the leading scholars in semantics, and the editors have been highly successful in requesting contributions by his teachers, peers and former students. Some papers have circulated in draft form for many years, and find their final home in this edited volume, which well reflects the state of the art in the field. **Prof. dr. Henriëtte de Swart, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Inhalt

Preface; D. Altshuler & J. Rett.- Part I: The semantics of nouns and plurals.- A Chapter in the History of Formal Semantics: Plurals; B.H. Partee.- Intensions, Types, and Models: Remarks on some developments in formal semantics; T.E. Zimmermann.- Singleton Inde_nites and the Privacy Principle: Certain Puzzles; V. Dayal.- Why is attributive `heavy' distributive? K. McKinney-Bock & R. Pancheva.- Factivity meets polarity: On two differences between Italian vs. English factives; G. Chierchia.- Part II: The semantics of focus; Topless and Salient - Convertibles in the Theory of Focus; D. Büring.- New vs. Given; A. Kratzer & E.Selkirk.- The semantics of degree.- Equatives and Maximality; L. Crni & D. Fox.- The perils of interpreting comparatives with pronouns for children and adults; K. Syrett & V. Gor.- Differentials crosslinguistically; R. Bhatt & V. Homer.- Subjectivity and Gradability: on the semantics of the possessive property concept construction in Mandarin Chinese; X. Li.- Part III: The semantics of tense and aspect.- Did Socrates die? A note on the moment of change; S. Zucchi.- Adverbs of Change; T. Koev.- Since; K. von Fintel & S. Iatridou.