Justyna Grudzinska: Scope-taking with dependent types: relational nouns, inverse linking and long-distance indefinites

Abstract: In this talk, we discuss two puzzling scope facts occurring in complex syntactic environments: inverse linking and long-distance indefinite readings. First, we develop a new account of the so-called relational nouns (e.g. representative, solution) from the perspective of our semantics combining generalized quantifiers with dependent types [1]. Whereas in the Montagovian setting relational nouns are interpreted as two-place relations (expressions of type ⟨e,⟨e,t⟩⟩), our framework allows us to interpret them as dependent types. Then, we use our dependent type account of relational nouns to tackle the two puzzling scope phenomena in question. The solution to the puzzle of long-distance indefinites extends our earlier proposal in [2] and [3].

1. Grudzinska, J., Zawadowski M. (2016). Generalized Quantifiers on Dependent Types: A System for Anaphora. In S. Chatzikyriakidis and Z. Luo (eds), Type-Theoretical Semantics: Current Perspectives, Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, Springer, forthcoming, preprint at arXiv:1402.0033v2.
2. Grudzinska, J., Zawadowski M. (2016). Whence Long-Distance Indefinite Readings? Solving Chierchia's Puzzle with Dependent Types, TbiLLC 2015 proceedings (H. Hansen, S. Murray, M. Sadrzadeh, H. Zeevat, eds), LNCS, Springer, forthcoming.
3. Grudzinska, J., Zawadowski M. (2015). A Puzzle about Long-Distance Indefinites and Dependent Type Semantics, ESSLLI proceedings of the TYTLES workshop on Type Theory and Lexical Semantics (R. Cooper, Ch. Retoré, eds) ESSLLI 2015, Barcelona.