A second route to truth: Feature -placing, existence, and the interpretation of there -sentences.
Item
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Title
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A second route to truth: Feature -placing, existence, and the interpretation of there -sentences.
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Identifier
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AAI3325383
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identifier
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3325383
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Creator
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Szekely, Rachel.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Robert W. Fiengo
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Date
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2008
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Language, Linguistics | Philosophy
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Abstract
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The existential there-sentence has an unusual form and grammatical properties, such as an expletive subject, agreement with the post-verbal noun phrase, definiteness effects and the predicate restriction. These properties are argued to stem from the sentence's logical form, which diverges from function-argument structure. The hypothesis pursued here is that in a there-sentence, feature-placing, a term originally coined by Strawson (1959), not predication, is the mechanism that forms a truth-bearing unit. Feature-placing is formalized as the satisfying of a characteristic function at a location. The construction's notable properties are shown to stem from its feature-placing form. Notably, its locative content, expletive subject, the definiteness effects and the predicate restriction all receive a holistic explanation on the feature-placing account. The logical form and truth conditions of the feature-placing sentence, which include neither existential quantification nor an existential predicate, are non-objectual: They contain no individual or individual variable. Nonetheless, an existential assertion results, and its truth conditions are shown to be an equivalent translation of their standard objectual counterparts.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
