Bound 'de re' pronouns and the LFs of attitude reports

Abstract

An empirical argument is given in support of Percus & Sauerland's (2003) theory of 'de re' ascription, according to which the internal argument of believe is a function from concept-generators to propositions. The argument concerns pronouns in the scope of attitude verbs that are interpreted both 'de re' and as bound variables. It is argued that more traditional theories of 'de re' ascription -specifically, theories that take the 'res' to be an internal argument of believe -fail to account for such pronouns, as they predict that a pronoun cannot simultaneously be an argument of believe and bound by a quantifier in the scope of believe.

Compositional paths to de re

“…The first option (call it 'Method 1') posits LFs wherein the element to be read de re -the ressemantically does not serve as an argument of the attitude verb, and syntactically remains inside the embedded clause. This is in keeping with the current consensus view about the de re reading of English sentences like (1) (Percus & Sauerland 2003, Anand 2006, Ninan 2012, Charlow & Sharvit 2014, Pearson 2015. The second option (call it 'Method 2') posits LFs wherein the res semantically does serve as an argument of the attitude verb, and syntactically occupies a distinctive res position external to the embedded clause.…”

Perspectives

“…Therefore, in order to interpret an expression a, we will need both an assignment function (as is standard) and a perspective index. We 14 A reviewer points out that any scopal approach, including ours, seems likely to have trouble with the recently explored case of bound de re pronouns (Charlow & Sharvit 2014). However, the specific proposal of Charlow & Sharvit is couched in the descriptivist theory of de re ascription of Percus & Sauerland (2003), and we argue in Section 5 that such approaches are problematic in light of the full range of data that we consider here.…”

Names, Masks, and Double Vision

“…A full investigation of these matters is beyond the scope of this paper, however. See Charlow and Sharvit (2014) for discussion of examples like this. cribed belief, along the lines suggested by Kaplan (1968).…”

“…The semantics I shall go on to articulate in certain respects resembles proposals made by Yalcin (2015), Ninan (2012), Santorio (2012), as well as Cumming's (2008) own proposal, insofar as 'believes' will shift not just the world but also the variable assignment. Other directions one could pursue include the dynamic semantics proposed by Maier (2009) or a view that postulates "concept generator" variables in the syntax, as proposed by Percus and Sauerland (2003) and Charlow and Sharvit (2014). idea. A variable assignment is like a lookup table that maps variable indices to individuals.…”