Sauerland on number

[New at “Semantics Archive”:http://semanticsarchive.net/]

Uli Sauerland. “A new semantics for number”:http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/TM0YjdiO. Paper from SALT 13.

bq. Conclusion. My main claim in this paper was that the treatment of plurality requires a presuppositional account of agreement. I have shown in Section 2 that such presuppositional account is necessary for coordinations and pronouns. In Section 3, I have shown that my account also is the only one that can explain the number marking on definite descriptions. These two arguments are then the arguments for my claim. I hope to have shown in section 4 through 7 that the semantic licensing account of agreement raises interesting semantic questions about the interaction of presuppositions and implicatures. In particular, the facts with indefinites in section 5 are still puzzling to me.