Tense and Intensionality in Specificational Copular Sentences

Specificational sentences show Connectivity Effects (Akmajian 1 970, Higgins 1 979, Halvorsen 1 978, Jacobson 1 994, among others) . For example, an NP like no man embedded in a relative clause in general cannot bind a pronoun outside the relative clause, as illustrated in (3a); but in specificational copular sentences this binding is possible, as in (3b) . This effect is called Variable Binding Connectivity. Similarly, the NP a unicorn cannot be interpreted de dicto with respect to the embedded verb look for in (4a) ; but a de dicto reading is possible in the specificational sentence (4b) (Opacity Connectivity) . Connectivity will be used in this paper as a diagnosis for specificational sentences.