Agreement Target Situations

Agreement Target Situations * ISHIKAWA, Kiyoshi Hosei University kiyoshi©fujimi.hosei.ac.jp Abstract We analyze number agreement in English in the version of Situa- tion Semantics I put forth in [1]. We propose two theoretical notions, agreement target situations and relevance of situations. We propose that structural constraints shift the former in a way governed by the latter. Our analysis shows that number agreement reflects our knowl- edge about the structure of the world and the speaker's interests in the discourse. 1 Introduction In [1] I put forth a situation-semantic theory of plurality and other phenom- ena. The purpose of the present paper is to construct a particular application of the above theory to number agreement in English.' After briefly surveying and augmenting [1] (section 2), we propose two theoretical notions, agree- ment target situations and relevance of situations, with which we analyze number agreement in English. We propose that structural constraints shift agreement target situations in a way governed by the relevance of situations. After introducing these mechanisms (section 3), we discuss examples where the subjects are plural in number but the verbs exhibit singular agreement (section 4). Our analysis will lead us to the conclusion (section 5) that num- ber agreement reflects our knowledge about the structure of the world and the speaker's interests in the discourse. 2 Theoretical Backgrounds In [1], lattice-theoretic structure of atomic and non-atomic individuals ([2]) is relativised to situations (see also [3]). Thus, something may be atomic in one situation and non-atomic in another. For example, in (1), let X be the subject's referent, r be the resource situation of the subject, and r be the described situation of the whole sentence. (1) Two boys annoyed Carol. X is non-atomic in r. Whether (1) is read collectively or distributively depends on whether X is non-atomic in s too. 29 However, as it stands this analysis has one flaw. Suppose that (2) obtains. We will want to say that X is plural (non-atomic) in s, i.e. X has members in s. Let x 1 be one of these members. Then, [1] would predict that (3) follows from (2), which is clearly undesirable. (2) s� people, X (3) s� people, xi We augment [1] by extending lattice structures to infons. For example, in order for (5) to be a resolution of (4), it is not necessarily required that P1 ,� ,� P; when it isn't the case that 131 ,� counts as a resolution of (4) depends on what P1 ,�, Pn = P, whether (5) , P, and P are. (4) s� P, X (5) s� s where x 1 , ..., x, , are the members of X in s. (2) is to be resolved to (6) (a people infon is the sum of a set of person infons whose person arguments are different from each other); (3) then doesn't follow from (2). (6) s� person, xi >>,� s� person, xn, Examples like the following (from [4]) could complicate the infon lattice structure. (7) a. Your …

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