Equational-intensional relative clauses with syntactic reconstruction
Abstract
Analyses of scope reconstruction typically fall into two competing approaches: ‘semantic reconstruction’, which derives non-surface scope using semantic mechanisms, and ‘syntactic reconstruction’, which derives it by positing additional syntactic representations at the level of Logical Form. Grosu and Krifka (2007) proposed a semantic-reconstruction analysis for relative clauses like the gifted mathematician that Dan claims he is, in which the relative head NP can be interpreted in the scope of a lower intensional quantifier. Their analysis relies on type-shifting the relative head into a predicate of functions. We develop an alternative analysis for such relative clauses that replaces type-shifting with syntactic reconstruction. The competing analyses diverge in their predictions regarding scope possibilities in head-external relative clauses. We use Hebrew resumptive pronouns, which disambiguate a relative clause in favor of the head-external structure, to show that the prediction of syntactic reconstruction is correct. This result suggests that certain type-shifting operations are not made available by Universal Grammar.
Published
2019-05-15
How to Cite
Bassi, I., & Rasin, E. (2019). Equational-intensional relative clauses with syntactic reconstruction. Proceedings of Sinn Und Bedeutung, 22(1), 143-159. Retrieved from https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/sub/index.php/sub/article/view/83
Section
Articles
Copyright (c) 2018 Itai Bassi, Ezer Rasin

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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