Sloppy identity unbound  

Oleh:

Keshet, Ezra

Jenis: Article from Proceeding
Dalam koleksi: Proceedings of the 23rd Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference, held at the University of California, Santa Cruz, May 3 - 5, 2013, page 412–431.
Topik: sloppy identity; pronouns; focus; discourse
Fulltext: 3704-7387-1-PB.pdf (147.05KB)

Isi artikel

Reinhart (1983)claims that only pronouns whose antecedents c-command them may give rise to sloppy identity readings. This paper presents counterexamples to this claim; for instance, referring to the famous 1960 televised presidential debate, it is acceptable to say: Kennedy looked good. People voted for him. Nixon looked bad. People didn’t. Despite the fact that the antecedent Kennedy for the pronoun him is in a previous sentence, this pronoun allows a sloppy identity reading wherein the fourth sentence (People didn’t) means that people didn’t vote for Nixon. To analyze such cases, I ?rst propose an extension to the ~ focus operator due to Rooth (1992), allowing this operator to alter the assignment function used to interpret pronouns. One construction where Rooth places ~ is in the answers to questions. My new meaning for ~ explains why pronouns are so constrained in answers, e.g., Who does John like? He[=John] likes Mary. Next, I argue for the Question-Under-Discussion (QUD) model of discourse described in Roberts 2012, which theorizes that every sentence is the answer to an explicit or implicit question. Finally, I show that unbound sloppy identity examples can be analyzed as cases where pronouns are constrained by antecedents in implicit questions. Along the way, I argue that the QUD model is compatible with the coherence relation model of discourse due to Hobbs (1979), explaining how coherence can constrain pronoun reference as well.

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