Syntactically Complex Demonstratives and Sortal Inherency

Syntactically complex demonstratives and sortal inherency Richard Zuber CNRS, Paris, France Richard.Zuber@linguist.jussieu.fr Abstract. Two problems related to the analysis of noun phrases in which demonstratives oc- cur are discussed: (1) it is shown that there exists an infinite number of syntactically complex demonstrative noun phrases and thus an infinite number of noun phrases which are neither purely referential not purely quantificational, (2) some problems concerning the semantic role of the common noun to which demonstrative apply can be treated within the generalised quantifier theory. This can be done using the distinction between sortally inherent and sortally not inherent quantifiers. Keywords: complex demonstratives, generalised quantifiers. 1 Introduction Usually when philosophers talk about ”complex demonstratives” they talk about noun phrases of the form this/that CN, where CN stands for a common noun, possibly complex (Borg, 2000; Dever, 2001; King, 2001). There has been much debate recently on the semantic and pragmatic status of such constructions and their relation to other noun phrases in NLs. Some theorists (Braun,1994) claim that such expressions are directly referential in the sense of Kaplan. This means that strictly speaking they are not quantificational and are similar to other referential noun phrases. Other researchers take an opposite view: complex demonstratives are essentially quantificational and thus belong to the larger class of quantificational noun phrases (King, 2001). Arguments of King are criticised in (Altshuler, 2007). There are also views which although compatible with the demonstrative and quantificational positions, present complex demonstratives in a different light. Thus Roberts (2002) claims that they are just definites. Of course the discussion of demonstratives is unavoidably related to other problems in natural language semantics. One of the problems in the focus of the discussion concerning complex demonstratives is the semantic status of the common noun CN. In particular most researchers are concerned with the question of whether the sentence of the form This CN VP, completed by speaker demonstration, expresses a proposition if the object demonstrated does not have the property expressed by CN. Furthermore, is this situation similar to the more general situation of non-expressibility of proposition due to presupposition failure? I will leave aside many of the problems which the above debate brings up. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, I want to point out that from the empirical point of view the way philoso- phers talk about complex demonstratives is very restricted. I will show that natural languages use the usual means they have at their disposal to form syntactically complex expressions in forming syntactically complex demonstratives. It follows from this observation that the class of complex demonstratives that one has to consider is much larger than the class considered by philosophers. Secondly, I want to apply some results from the generalised quantifier theory to deal with the problem of the semantic status of the common noun in the subject NP in which a demonstrative occurs. In particular I will use the distinction between sortally inherent and not sortally inherent Copyright 2010 by Richard Zuber PACLIC 24 Proceedings …

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