Stratified reference: the common core of distributivity, aspect, and measurement

Champollion, Lucas

doi:10.1515/tl-2015-0008

Cited by 19 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Meaning postulates like (42) and (43) have the consequence that the denotation of see always has a certain higher-order property, which I have discussed elsewhere under the name stratified reference (Champollion 2010b(Champollion , 2015b. I come back to stratified reference at the end of this section.…”

Section: :30mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When a predicate P stratifies an event e along a dimension d with granularity g, we can imagine that e can be sliced along direction d into layers with thickness g such that each layer is in P . Strata theory uses this concept to connect the present theory with counterparts in aspect and measurement (Champollion 2010b(Champollion , 2015b. In its original formulation, strata theory was formalized in terms of the universal version of stratified reference in (58).…”

Section: :33mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Covert distributivity in algebraic event semantics

Champollion

2016

S&P

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This is the first in a pair of papers that aim to provide a comprehensive analysis of the semantic phenomenon of distributivity in natural language. This paper investigates and formalizes different sources of covert distributivity. Apart from lexical distributivity effects, which are modeled by meaning postulates, phrasal distributivity is captured via two covert operators: (i) a D operator distributing over atoms only (Link 1987), and (ii) a cover-based Part operator, which can also distribute over nonatomic pluralities under contextual licensing (Schwarzschild 1996). The resulting theory surpasses accounts in which nonatomic distributivity is freely available, or not available at all; furthermore, it correctly predicts differences between lexical and phrasal nonatomic distributivity. D and Part are reformulated in Neo-Davidsonian algebraic event semantics, so that they apply to event predicates and make the sum event available for further modification by arguments and adjuncts. This paves the way for an account of the context-dependency of distributivity phenomena under for-adverbials, which improves on theories that predict indefinites to either always or never covary with for-adverbials. The paper and its companion include an explicit proposal for the compositional process in event semantics.

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Section: :30mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: :33mentioning

confidence: 99%

Covert distributivity in algebraic event semantics

Champollion

2016

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“…This general picture is itself part of a broader theoretical framework that also encompasses applications to aspect and measurement (Champollion 2010b(Champollion , 2015c. No matter whether distributivity is introduced by an overt or by a covert element, it always involves a certain domain that contains the individuals or the material to be distributed over, and a certain size or granularity that specifies how finely the relevant predicates are distributed.…”

Section: :54mentioning

confidence: 99%

Overt distributivity in algebraic event semantics

Champollion¹

2016

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This is the second in a pair of papers that aim to provide a comprehensive analysis of the semantic phenomenon of distributivity in natural language. This paper describes and explains observable cross-linguistic differences in overt distributive items in the framework of Neo-Davidsonian algebraic event semantics. The previous paper, Champollion 2016a, postulated two covert distributivity operators, D and Part, in the grammar, even though the semantic effects of D can be subsumed under the workings of Part. This paper motivates the split by arguing that distance-distributive items across languages are in essence overt versions of these operators. For example, English each lexicalizes D while German jeweils lexicalizes Part. For this reason, jeweils occurs in a wider range of distributive environments, including distribution over salient occasions. The proposed analysis explains why distributive items that can also be used as determiners, such as each and every, never allow distribution over occasions. It also accounts for the ability of these determiners to take part in cumulative readings and to interact with nondistributive event modifiers. The paper and its companion include an explicit proposal for the compositional process in event semantics.

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“…In other words, although gather does not distribute all the way down to the atoms of a plurality, it does seem to distribute down to (at least some of) the non-atomic subparts of a plurality (cf. Champollion 2015). What is important, as far as our pragmatic constraint is concerned, is that if a group x gathered, then we can always find some subgroup y of x such that |y| = 2 and y gathered.…”

Section: Collective Predicates With Downward Inferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modified numerals and maximality

Buccola

Spector

2016

Linguist and Philos

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In this article, we describe and attempt to solve a puzzle arising from the interpretation of modified numerals like less than five and between two and five. The puzzle is this: such modified numerals seem to mean different things depending on whether they combine with distributive or non-distributive predicates. When they combine with distributive predicates, they intuitively impose a kind of upper bound, whereas when they combine with non-distributive predicates, they do not (they sometimes even impose a lower bound). We propose and explore in detail four solutions to this puzzle, each involving some notion of maximality, but differing in the type of maximality involved ('standard' maximality versus 'informativity-based' maximality) and in the source of maximality (lexically encoded in the meaning of the numeral modifier versus non-lexical). While the full range of data we consider do not conclusively favor one theory over the other three, we do argue that overall the evidence (i) goes against the view that modified numerals lexically encode a 'standard' maximality operator, and (ii) suggests the need for a pragmatic blocking mechanism that filters out readings (logical forms) of sentences that are generated by the grammar but intuitively unavailable.

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Stratified reference: the common core of distributivity, aspect, and measurement

Cited by 19 publications

References 38 publications

Covert distributivity in algebraic event semantics

Covert distributivity in algebraic event semantics

Overt distributivity in algebraic event semantics

Modified numerals and maximality

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