The aims of this section are first to compare the account proposed in Section 2.5.3 to Malamud’s (2006; 2007) account as introduced in Section 2.3, and to then critically evaluate both accounts with respect to their predictions regarding the data. The main problems faced by the account proposed in Section 2.5.3 concern the core ingredient that was used to unify the referential and impersonal uses: the context-dependent relation that links the index and the individual variable introduced by the pronoun.
The comparison to Malamud’s account, I believe, is instructive since, as mentioned in Section 2.5, the two accounts are rather similar on the formal level. Malamud also aims to give a unified account for the impersonal and referential uses, and analyzes you as an indefinite expression, as well. The first difference to the account proposed in Section2.5.3 is that Malamud formalizes you as a generalized quantifier with hard-wired existential force, see (129).
(129) JyouK
g,w,c =λs.λP. ∃y[persona(y)(addressee(c))(s) & P(y)(s)]
Since Malamud’s proposal makes you similar to existential quantifiers like someone (Germ. ‘jemand’), the question arises of how Malamud can account for the differences between these expressions. Note that the behavior of jemand (Engl. ‘someone’) de-scribed in Section 2.2.3 suggests that its existential force is hard-wired in its lexical entry: (i) it behaves like a quantificational expression with respect to scope taking, and (ii) it cannot co-vary withGen or adverbs of quantification.
For German second person singular du, I assume, in contrast, that the pronoun contributes an open proposition of a sort, i.e. a property containing a free variable, see (130).
(130) JduK
g,w,c =λw.x=cA in w
The operator which binds the free variable and contributes its quantificational force is not part of the lexical entry of the pronoun.
Nevertheless, both accounts propose a similar propositional meaning to sentences containing these pronouns. Compare (131) to (132), which contain referential uses of you and du, respectively.
(131) a. You burned a house.
b. λs0.∃y∃z[persona(y)(addressee(c))(s0) & house(z)(s0) & burned(y)(z)(s0)]
(adapted fromMalamud 2007:26) (132) a. Du
you hast have
ein a
Haus house
angez¨undet.
set-on-fire
‘You set a house on fire.’
b. λw.∃x∃y[x=cA in w & house(y)(w) & set-on-fire(y)(x)(w)]
The two accounts also agree with respect to the internal structure of personal pronouns:
pronouns contain a relation that links a contextually given individual to a variable. In Malamud’s account this is the persona-relation, which occurs in the referential and impersonal uses. In the account proposed in Section 2.5.3, the relation that links the two individual denoting expressions is contextually determined and varies across uses.
For the impersonal uses of second person you/du, Malamud’s persona-relation plays a similar role to the identifies-with-relation proposed above. Both relations take the addressee, and relate her to those individuals that she empathizes/identifies with. In both accounts, this is used to model the participant-related effects observed in Section 1.4.
The accounts crucially differ further with respect to (i) the underspecification of the lexical meanings, and (ii) the interaction between binding operators and the pronominal meaning.
With respect to the first point, the account presented in Section2.5.3is less restrictive than the proposal in Malamud (2006, 2007). Since R is an unrestricted, free variable any contextually given relation—observing certain restrictions—can be assigned to R.
Because of this freedom, the different uses, including the deferred ostension cases—can be derived by assuming different values for R. Since Malamud models impersonal and referential uses with the same persona-relation, this commits her to the assumptions that (i) the different uses solely depend on the different co-occurring operators, and that (ii) the set of people that the addressee empathizes with may vary.74
Regarding co-occurring operators, Malamud assumes that they all are quantifiers over situations, and that they do not bind individual variables. That is, the impersonal use and quantificational variability effects are modelled indirectly by quantification over situations (cf. Section 2.3.2).75 The individual variable y that is part of the meaning of you remains existentially bound in these readings. In contrast, for the account proposed in Section 2.5.3 it is assumed that the generic operator Gen and adverbs of quantification bind the free individual variable contributed by the pronoun. If no such
74Note, though, that her formal proposal cannot capture any context-dependent variance regarding the set of people the addressee empathizes with; the value of the persona-relation only depends on the situation of evaluation.
75Seevon Fintel(2004/1995) andPortner(2009) for a situation semantic account of quantificational variability effects which may be extended to account for generic quantification. Cf. alsoKrifka et al.
(1995) for a situation semantic interpretation ofGen.
operator is present, existential closure applies. Table2.6 schematically summarizes the comparison between the two accounts.
relation possible binders ofx variables bound by Gen and adverbs of quantification
Malamud (2006, 2007)
persona -relation
existential quantifier∃ situation variable s Section 2.5.3 free
vari-able R
Gen, adverbs of quan-tification, and existen-tial closure ∃
individual variable x
Table 2.6: Summary: Malamud (2006, 2007) vs. the account in Section 2.5.3
I now turn to issues that arise for the account presented in Section 2.5.3. Given the similarity between this account and Malamud’s (2006; 2007), some of these issues also apply to the latter. This is pointed out at the relevant places. In sum, I present seven points, of which the first five concern the formal specifics of the account, i.e. the complex structure adopted for personal pronouns from Elbourne (2008) and its interpretation, and the last two are general considerations regarding co-occurring operators.
The biggest problem for the account concerns a discussion inNunberg(1993) on the semantic contribution of indexicals. As argued in Nunberg (1993), first and second person pronouns never contribute descriptive content to the meaning of a sentence (cf.
Sections 1.5 and 2.5.1). Both of the accounts compared above contribute descriptive content, and therefore may run into the well-known problems connected to modal operators (cf. Section2.5.2).
The descriptive content contributed by the pronouns is also the source for the second problem, which arises because the contextually determined relationR and indexi are part of the asserted, truth-conditional content. This means that they restrict the domain of quantification to the set of individuals the speaker or addressee identifies with for any of the binding operators. Consequently, truth-conditional equivalence between the different impersonal uses cannot be ensured. It is predicted, for instance, that a speaker cannot express the same truth-conditional meaning with two sentences containing distinct impersonally used pronouns. Since the speaker and the addressee may have different sets of people they empathize with, different impersonally used pronouns generalize over possibly different sets of people. In the most extreme cases, the binding operators may even have disjoint domains. This is not reflected in the data, though. As shown in Section1.2, a speaker may freely switch between different pronominal forms to generalize over the same set of individuals, see(133).
(133) Wenn ich als H¨andler Schrott kaufe, dann muss ich mit so etwas rech-nen. [. . . ] Wenn du als H¨andler von jemanden ein Fahrzeug kaufst und
dann weiter verkaufen m¨ochtest, dann musst du den Wagen vorher ¨uberpr¨ufen lassen.
‘If a trader buys trash, he has to expect a situation like this.[. . . ] If a trader buys a vehicle from someone, and he wants to resell it, he has to let it get checked beforehand.’76
The third problematic point is that the contextually determined relationR is an unre-stricted free variable, and therefore the variable assignment can in principle assign any relation of the right type to it.77 In Section2.5.3, I proposed different values forRthat capture the respective readings of ich and du. However, at the moment nothing blocks the possibility that the identification relation, which is involved in the impersonal uses, features in deferred reference cases. Similarily, nothing determines that the identity relation is not a possible value for R in the impersonal uses.
This is clearly a problem of overgeneration, and there are two possible ways to address it: The first option is to say that the unattested combinations mentioned above are not prohibited; they are simply no plausible candidates for the meaning of ich and du. The second option is to explicitly tie the combinations of values for R and the necessary operators to the different uses. Both options are not unproblematic. Since both options first need to be worked out further to be discussed in detail, neither will be addressed further in this thesis; the other problems mentioned in this section are, to my mind, already reasons enough to discard this type of account in general.
The fourth and fifth issues are not serious conceptual problems like the first three problems, but counter-intuitive predictions made by the account.
The fourth issue arises because in neither of the accounts compared above, referen-tially used pronouns aredirectly-referential expressions. In fact, in the account proposed in Section 2.5.3, referentially used pronouns are analyzed more or less like Russellian definite descriptions. Consider (134), in which the identity statement restricts the domain of possible values for xto cS.
(134) ∃x[cS =x inw0 &P(x)(w0)]
As discussed in Section2.4, Russell’s quantificational proposal for definite descriptions, whichasserts uniqueness, interacts in an undesirable way with sentential negation. The same is true for the proposal in (134).
(135) ¬∃x[cS =x inw0 &P(x)(w0)]⇔
∀x¬[cS =x inw0 &P(x)(w0)]⇔
∀x[cS 6=x inw0∨ ¬P(x)(w0)]
76http://diskussionen.quoka.de/viewtopic.php?t=691
77Besides the instantiation requirement, no other restrictions on the contextually determined rela-tions are discussed in Nunberg’s original account.
It is predicted that a negated sentence containing a referential use ofich, for example, asserts that all individuals are such that they are not identical to the speaker, or P does not hold of them. This makes the counter-intuitive prediction that a sentence like I don’t sleep at the moment asserts something about other individuals besides the speaker; more specifically, that these individuals are (trivially) not the same person as the speaker. Since the final formula in (135) is equivalent with ¬P(cS), this could be seen as a negligible issue—if one is prepared to accept the conceptually unintuitive consequences. A similar issue was discussed in Section 2.3.2 for Malamud’s account.
The fifth issue is that the referential use of personal pronouns is predicted to be a last resort reading. Since the referential use is derived via existential closure of the free variable, it is predicted to arise only if no other quantifier binds the free variable first.
This is in conflict with the observation that the referential use is the predominant use of personal pronouns; the impersonal use the special case. As discussed in Section2.3, this problem also applies to Malamud’s (2006;2007) proposal.
The last two problems—or rather open issues—concern the (expected) interaction between the meanings proposed for personal pronouns and co-occurring operators—
independently of the specific internal structure of the pronouns.
First, since personal pronouns are analyzed as Heimian indefinites, it is expected that all operators that can bind a free variable contributed by an indefinite can also bind the variable contributed by personal pronouns. This is borne out for the generic operator, adverbs of quantification, and existential closure. For modal verbs/auxiliaries, the possible interactions still need to be determined.
Second, most recent work on the meaning of generic sentences stresses their intension-ality (cf.Krifka et al. 1995): generic sentences do not express accidental generalizations, but general rules, regulations, and norms. To express this type of meaning formally, an account is needed that involves evaluation in a relevant set of possible worlds. For the moment, I adopt the modal interpretation proposed in Krifka et al.(1995), see (136).
(136) Gen[x1, . . . , xi;y1, . . . , yj](Restrictor;Scope) is true in w relative to a modal base Bw and an ordering source ≤w iff:
∀x1, . . . , xi∀w0 ∈Bw[Restrictor(x1, . . . , xi)(w0)→ ∃w00 ∈Bw[w00 ≤w w0 &
∀w000[w000 ≤w w00→ ∃yi, . . . , yj[Matrix(x1, . . . , xi, y1, . . . , yj)(w000)]]]]
(Krifka et al. 1995:52)
According to this interpretation, the generic operator introduces universal quantifi-cation over most normal worlds and over the individuals that exist in these worlds;
example(137) paraphrases (136)along these lines.
(137) In all most normal worlds w0, all individuals which have the properties in the restrictor in w0 are such that they have the properties in the matrix in w0.
When the modal interpretation of the generic operator is combined with the meaning for impersonally used personal pronouns proposed in Section 2.5.3, a sentence containing an impersonally used personal pronoun is interpreted as follows (cf. also example(125)).
(138) In all most normal worlds w0, all individuals x for which identifies-with(i)(x) and φ hold in w0 are such thatψ holds for them in w0.
For the interpretation of sentences containing an impersonal use, quantification over most normal worlds seems inadequate. According to (136), it is assumed that in the accessible worlds, all individuals behave according to the laws and rules under consid-eration. That is, for generic sentences which express moral rules, for example, the most normal worlds are the morally most conforming worlds. This is too strong, though.
Generic sentences containing impersonally used personal pronouns that express moral rules only state that these rules apply to the individuals the generalization is “about”, i.e. only to the domain of the variable contributed by the impersonally interpreted personal pronoun. No specific moral behavior is expected of any of the other entities mentioned in the generalization. Consider (139).
(139) Ich
’A bridal couple can’t expect their guests to more or less pay for the party!’78 In example(139), the rule of conduct expressed by the sentence is only stated for bridal couples, but not e.g. for their guests. This is supported by the possibility to continue (139) with (140), in whichsie (Engl. ‘they’) refers to the guests.
(140) Auch,
‘Even if they usually only spend their money buying junk.’
Therefore, for an adequate formalization of (139), one has to assume a stronger tie between the modal meaning of the generic operator and the contribution of the imper-sonally used personal pronoun (including the als-phrase). The desired result would be that Gen picks out only the morally most normal worlds for bridal couples.
In sum, seven issues and problems were identified that need to be addressed and, if possible, solved for the account to adequately capture the data. In Chapter 4, the most radical solution for the first five problems is pursued, i.e. to discard Elbourne’s (2008) syntacticized formalization of Nunberg (1993) altogether. The last two issues,
78 http://www.urbia.de/archiv/forum/th-2142726/Wieviel-Geld-zur-Hochzeit-schenken.html
which concern the possible binders and the interpretation of Gen are taken up, and discussed in detail in Chapter 3.