Only the Strong: Restricting Situation Variables

Linguists often assume that possible worlds and times are represented as pronouns in natural language (see Cresswell 1990, Percus 2000, Kusumoto 2005, Keshet 2008). This paper will construe such pronouns as world-time pairs, which will be referred to as situations, for simplicity. A predicate taking such a pair as an argument is evaluated in the world and the time specified by that situation, effectively determining whether it is de re or de dicto. Researchers such as Percus (2000) have noted that such a system overgenerates and proposed generalizations describing where this overgeneralization occurs. This paper will examine three such generalizations: Percus’s (2000) Generalization X, a generalization by Musan (1997), and a new generalization covering modifiers of nouns. Ultimately, a unified generalization will be proposed, stating that only strong DPs ever may receive a de re interpretation. An explanation for this generalization is offered, involving a change in the semantic type system, under which only strong determiners may take situation pronouns.