Ambiguity and Quantification

Considered are sentences with mixed plural quantification & the problems these pose for the nature of ambiguity. On the basis of conflicting evidence (linguistic requirements suggesting no ambiguity, truth-conditional requirements suggesting ambiguity), it is proposed that semantic theory recogn...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Linguistics and philosophy 1981-01, Vol.4 (2), p.259-309
Main Authors: Kempson, Ruth M., Cormack, Annabel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambiguity
Linguistic ambiguity
Logical form
Noun phrases
Pragmatics
Predicates
Quantification
Semantics
Sentences
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Summary:Considered are sentences with mixed plural quantification & the problems these pose for the nature of ambiguity. On the basis of conflicting evidence (linguistic requirements suggesting no ambiguity, truth-conditional requirements suggesting ambiguity), it is proposed that semantic theory recognize a distinction between sentence-ambiguity & logical ambiguity, to be formally characterized by two levels of logical representation with rules mapping the first level, the sentence representation, onto the second level, the propositional representation. Only by such means can semantic theory provide a general explanation of the universal phenomenon of the multiplicity of interpretations available to non-singular expressions. AA
ISSN:0165-0157
1573-0549
DOI:10.1007/BF00350141