Chris Barker

Syntax, Semantics. From New York University.

Scope-taking adjectives

Explicit analyses of adjectives such as "same" and "different" are either brazenly non-compositional (Stump, Moltmann, Keenan), or else rely too heavily on pragmatic magic (Dowty, Beck). I will show that a compositional yet purely semantic analysis is possible if we recognize that some scope-taking elements are able to steal the scope of some other scope-taking element. For instance,in "Everyone read the same book", the scope of "same" is parasitic on the scope of "everyone". This talk is based largely on a just-completed manuscript now in press at Linguistics and Philosophy, available as a preprint here:

http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/jkzZGI2O/barker-parasitic-scope.pdf