Movement, Variables and Hamblin Alternatives

Abstract

Sets of Hamblin alternatives are often used side by side syntactic movement and variable binding. Shan (2004) shows that previous attempts at defining a Predicate Abstraction rule for variable binding while using sets of alternatives face serious problems: they overgenerate alternatives and/or are incapable of handling binding into a wh-phrase. This paper provides a solution by assuming Poesio’s (1996) general type ??a,??,t? and by borrowing and extending Rullmann and Beck’s (1997) treatment of wh-phrases as definites.