The Semantics of Scope of English
A. S. Kroch, 1974
This thesis aims to present a descriptively adequate and revealing analysis of the scope order relations among logical operator words in English sentences. Prefatory to the analysis there is discussion of some philosophical issues in linguistic semantics, including a discussion of the correctness of translating natural language sentences into a formal language in order to produce semantic representations for the. It is concluded that such representations have obvious benefits as indicators of the truth conditions of sentences and that the objections that have been raised against them are non well-founded.
The body of the thesis consists in the derivation of a number of rules that capture the scope ambiguities of a wide range of sentences and the scope order preferences or incompatibilities of a number of English logical operator words. The rules themselves are of three kinds; a general surface ordering principle that fixes the initial scope order of the operator words in an English sentence according to their surface order; a set of scope readjustment rules that account for the scope ambiguities of English sentences; and a set of output filters that block or mark as unpreferred certain scope orders in the presence of certain operator words. In the final chapter of the thesis an analysis of plurality is given and integrated with the analysis of scope so that some differences in scope behavior between singular and plural quantifier words can be explained.
Thesis Supervisor: Paul Kiparsky
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 7
Semantics of scope in formal and natural languages 7
General semantic theory and the semantics of scope 18
The problem of opacity 31
Note to chapter one 42
2 Some Linguistic Analyses of Scope Relations 44
Introduction 44
Dougherty. Feature analysis of a scope ambiguity 45
Heny"s analysis of scope ambiguity 52
Jackendoff"s objections to logical formalism 61
Recent linguistic analyses of any 70
Summary 75
Notes to chapter two 79
3 Scope of Universal Quantifiers, Indefinite Noun Phrases and Negation 81
Introduction 81
The universal quantifier and the indefinite noun phrase 84
Scope of negation 107
Summary to chapter three 130
Notes to chapter three 132
4 Broadening the analysis of scope relations 135
Introduction 135
Reformulating the description of scope relations 136
Extending the analysis 150
Modal scope 157
Summary and conclusions 178
Notes to chapter four 184
5 Plurality and Quantifier Scope 186
Introduction 186
Universal quantifier and the unquantified plural 189
The indefinite plural 209
Indefinite plural quantifiers 229
The NP quantifiers and adverbial quantification 245
Notes to chapter five 261