Downloadable Papers - Peter Lasersohn
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at 
.
- Quantification
and
Perspective in Relativist Semantics [222K] Attempts to clarify some
issues about the use of hidden arguments to predicates of personal
taste, and motivate an analysis which does not make use of such
arguments. (To appear in Philosophical Perspectives.)
- Relative
Truth, Speaker Commitment, and Control of Implicit Arguments
[142 K] Motivates a relativist semantics independently of
"faultless disagreement" by examing the behavior of predicates of
personal taste in factive environments and under the verb consider.
(To appear in Synthese.
Slightly revised from the
version in the proceedings of NELS 37 [217
K].)
- Compositional
Interpretation in Which the Meanings of Complex Expressions are not
Computable from the Meanings of their Parts
[226K]
Argues for separating the principle that meaning be computable from the
principle of homomorphic interpretation, rather than conflating them
both into a single "principle of compositionality".
Homomorphic
interpretation must then be justified on grounds other than language
users' ability to understand novel sentences. (To appear in Theory and Evidence in Semantics,
ed. by Erhard Hinrichs and John Nerbonne, CSLI Publications.)
- Expressives,
Perspective and Presupposition [67K] Commentary on Chris Potts'
paper 'The Expressive Dimension'. (From Theoretical Linguistics 2007)
- Context Dependence,
Disagreement, and
Predicates of Personal Taste [433K]
Argues
that sentences containing "predicates of personal taste" such as fun or tasty vary in truth
value from
individual to individual without varying in semantic content, and
formalizes this idea in a Kaplan-style semantics. (From Linguistics and Philosophy
2005)
- The Temperature Paradox
as
Evidence for a Presuppositional Analysis of Definite Descriptions
[86K] Argues that an improvement to Montague's
treatment of the temperature paradox requires abandoning the Russellian
analysis of definite descriptions in favor of a presuppositional
analysis. (From Linguistic
Inquiry 2005)
- Same,
Models and Representation [161K] Argues against
Nunberg's (1984) analysis of same and different,
and
presents an alternative based on the technique of "pragmatic halos."
Includes discussion on basic methodological issues in model-theoretic
semantics. (Presented at SALT X, 2000).
- Pragmatic Halos
[3860K] Argues that
certain expressions serve to indicate the intended degree of
approximation to the truth, and presents a technique for formalizing
their semantics in terms of such approximation. (From Language 1999.)
- Parts, Wholes and Still
[182K]
This is a short paper on the meaning of still,
which takes as its starting point a medieval sophism discussed by
William of Sherwood. (From Studies in the Linguistic Sciences
1999.)
- Generalized
Distributivity Operators [494K] Presents
a
series of generalizations of distributivity operators across a type
hierarchy, in order to account for collective-distributive ambiguities
for non-subject arguments. (From Linguistics and Philosophy,
1998).
- Bare
Plurals and Donkey Anaphora [48K] Argues that a
kinds-based analysis of bare plurals is incompatible with an analysis
of donkey anaphors as variables, but compatible with an E-type
analysis. (From Natural
Language Semantics, 1997).
- Adnominal Conditionals
[128K] Argues
that certain conditional clauses are irreducibly
adnominal, so that if cannot be treated purely as a
sentential
connective. A unified analysis of adnominal if
-clauses
and ordinary if-clauses is possible, however, if we
assume a
semantic theory in which sentences denote sets of events rather than
truth values. (Presented at SALT VI, 1996)
- Group Action and
Spatio-Temporal
Proximity [1481K] Presents a unified semantics for
various
readings of together,
using
event mereology. (From Linguistics
and Philosophy 1992)
- On the
Readings of Plural
Noun Phrases [276K] Argues against a Gillon-style
covers-based analysis of plural noun phrases. (From Linguistic Inquiry
1989)