On the Temporal Interpretation of Noun Phrases
R. Musan, 1995
This thesis investigates the temporal interpretation of noun phrases. The leading questions throughout are the following: (1) is the temporal interpretation of a noun phrase determined by the temporal interpretation of the rest of its clause? (2) what kind of further interactions take place between the interpretation of noun phrases and the temporal interpretation of the main clause? The framework in which these questions are answered exploits an ontology that assumes individuals, stages of individuals, and kinds as basic entities. Determiner-quantification is argued to be quantification over stages of individuals rather than individuals in their whole temporal extendedness.
Chapter I provides a survey of the main topics of this thesis. It is argued that an account of the temporal interpretation of noun phrases must investigate at least two issues that are to be distinguished: the temporal location of individuals and the temporal location of predication times.
In Chapter II, the temporal location of individuals is explained as an effect of lifetime presuppositions that are introduced by the lexical semantics of stage-level predicates and individual-level predicates, but not by a third type of predicate, existence-independent predicates. Life-time effects associated with individual-level predicates are captured as a pragmatic phenomenon in terms of Grice"s Maxim of Informativity and related implicatures. In temporally specific contexts, life-time effects are neutralized. This is related to certain effects that topic-focus structure has on temporal interpretation.
Chapter III explains the temporal location of predication times associated with noun phrases. In contrast to previous research, it is argued that the temporal location of predication times of nouns depends on the temporal interpretation of the rest of the clause. The notions of "temporally dependent" and "temporally independent" noun phrases are introduced. It is shown that the distribution of temporally dependent and temporally independent noun phrases involves the distinction between weak (or cardinal) and strong (or presuppositional) noun phrases as well as the distinction between existence-independent arguments and other arguments. This distribution is explained as a consequence of (1) determiner-quantification being analyzed as quantification over stages of individuals, (2) independently motivated mechansims of implicit quantifier restriction, and (3) a particular account of weak and strong determiners. This account analyzes both types of determiners as restrictive quantifiers, and attributes differences between them to whether the noun is mapped at LF into the restrictive clause or into the nuclear scope of the determiner. The mechanisms introduced in this chapter are also applied to generic noun phrases, certain kind-denoting noun phrases, and to the distinction between object-related readings and event-related readings.
Chapter IV deals with the semantics of certain types of noun phrase internal temporal modifiers, in-modifiers, and of-modifiers. It is argued that in-modifiers are obligatory restrictors of quantifiers. Moreover, they impose constraints on the tense interpretation of their clause by activating the Upper Limit Constraint, which has also been used to explain certain aspects of the behavior of sequence-of-tense constructions and double-access constructions.
Chapter V offers a summary of results achieved in the preceding chapters and suggestions for future research.
Thesis supervisor: Kai von Fintel
I Introduction 11
1 The central question 11
2 Previous results and counterevidence 13
2.1 Predication times 13
2.2 Times of existence 18
3 Preview 19
II Temporal location of individuals 22
1 Introduction: life-time effects with individual-level predicates 22
2 A pragmatic explanation of life-time effects 24
2.1 Preliminaries 24
2.2 Informativity 29
2.3 A Gricean explanation: Life-time effects as implicature 34
2.4 Stage-level predicates and the Gricean explanation 35
2.5 Predictions for existence-independent predicates 37
2.6 Predicates with more than one argument 38
3 Contextual relativization of life-time effects 40
3.1 The blocking of life-time effects in certain contexts 40
3.2 On temporal interpretation 42
Appendix to Section 3.2: definite and indefinite temporal
adverbials, quantifier restrictions, scrambling and related issues 47
3.3 Informativity in temporally specific contexts 54
3.4 Informativity and life-time effects in out-of-the-blue
sentences: the final analysis 56
3.5 Overt temporal adverbials and individual-level predicates 61
4 A comparison with Kratzer"s (1988) proposal 62
4.1 Kratzer"s treatment of life-time effects 62
4.2 Wrong predictions with existence-independent predicates
and ergative verbs 66
4.3 "Relating to the external argument" 68
4.4 Problems with the interaction of tense and adverbs of
quantification 69
5 Conclusion 70
III Temporal location of predication times 73
1 Introduction 73
2 The distribution of temporal dependence with noun phrases 78
3 A scope approach based on the cardinal/presuppositional
distinction 84
3.1 The general idea 84
3.2 Cardinal subjects of existence-independent predicates 87
3.3 A problem: constructions with adverbs of quantification 90
4 Stages 93
4.1 The basic idea 94
4.2 On the semantics of quantification 97
4.2.1 The ontology 97
4.2.2 Quantification with resource domain variables 99
4.2.3 On the semantics of cardinal and presuppositional
DPs 100
4.2.3.1 The interpretation of cardinal DPs 100
4.2.3.2 The interpretation of resource domain
variables 104
4.2.3.3 the interpretation of resource domain
variables with restrictive nouns 107
4.3 Temporally dependent and temporally independent noun
phrase interpretation 116
4.3.1 Temporal restrictions and temporal adverbials
modify resource domain variables 116
4.3.2 The difference between restrictive
(presuppositional) noun phrases and unrestrictive
(cardinal) noun phrases 118
Appendix to Section 4.3: Modifications of resource domain
variables by temporal adverbials are mediated by the context:
scope interactions of temporal adverbials and DPs 121
5 Unrestrictive noun phrases that get temporally independent
interpretations: an explanation under the stage approach 128
6 Constructions with adverbs of quantification 130
7 Generic noun phrases 131
8 Remarks on temporally independent noun phrases 136
8.1 The salience of properties and the choice of nouns 137
8.2 The salience of the time of utterance and the choice of
predication times 141
8.3 Competing times and the salience of established discourse
topics 142
8.4 Different types of noun phrases 143
9 Conclusion 144
10 More on stages 146
10.1 Ships passing through locks and how to determine and
count stages 146
10.1.1 Object-related readings and event-related readings 146
10.1.2 Maximality of stages 148
10.1.3 How to account for the ambiguity of object-related
readings 150
10.2 The president of the U.S. and how to merge stages 156
10.2.1 Stages merging across the individuals? 156
10.2.2 Individuals, stages, and kinds 157
10.2.3 On the behavior of kind-nouns 158
IV On temporal NP-modifiers and upper limit effect 160
1 Introduction 160
1.1 Preliminaries on temporal NP-modifiers 160
1.2 In-modifiers and of-modifiers 163
2 On the distribution of in-modifiers: restrictive and unrestrictive
DPs 165
3 In-modifiers as obligatory restrictors 170
3.1 The restricted distribution of in-modifiers 170
3.2 Obligatory restrictors in natural language 174
4 Interactions of in-modifiers and tense 176
4.1 What precisely are the effects? 176
4.2 Abusch"s (1994) Upper Limit Constraint in complex
sentences 180
4.3 Other combinations of in-modifiers and tenses 184
5 In-modifiers and upper limits 187
5.1 Do in-modifiers pragmatically provide local evaluation
times? 188
5.2 The syntactic relation between ULC-related elements 196
6 Conclusion 200
7 How to interpret in-modifiers 202
V Conclusion and speculations 207
1 Results achieved in previous chapters 207
2 Possible extensions I: time and space 211
3 Possible extensions II: times and worlds 213