Open AccessEquational-intensional relative clauses with syntactic representation
Author(s) -
Itai Bassi,
Ezer Rasin
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
zas papers in linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1435-9588
DOI - 10.21248/zaspil.60.2018.459
Subject(s) - scope (computer science) , predicate (mathematical logic) , computer science , relative clause , quantifier (linguistics) , head (geology) , linguistics , logical form , representation (politics) , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , philosophy , programming language , geomorphology , politics , political science , law , geology
Analyses of scope reconstruction typically fall into two competing approaches: ‘semanticreconstruction’, which derives non-surface scope using semantic mechanisms, and ‘syntacticreconstruction’, which derives it by positing additional syntactic representations at thelevel of Logical Form. Grosu and Krifka (2007) proposed a semantic-reconstruction analysisfor relative clauses like the gifted mathematician that Dan claims he is, in which the relativehead NP can be interpreted in the scope of a lower intensional quantifier. Their analysis relieson type-shifting the relative head into a predicate of functions. We develop an alternativeanalysis for such relative clauses that replaces type-shifting with syntactic reconstruction. Thecompeting analyses diverge in their predictions regarding scope possibilities in head-externalrelative clauses. We use Hebrew resumptive pronouns, which disambiguate a relative clausein favor of the head-external structure, to show that the prediction of syntactic reconstructionis correct. This result suggests that certain type-shifting operations are not made available byUniversal Grammar.Keywords: relative clauses, scope, reconstruction, type-shifting, de dicto, intensional quantifiers,binding, resumptive pronouns.