Abstract
I am going to present a semantics for nominals of kind (1)–(3):
-
(1)
the performance of the song
-
(2)
the performing of the song
-
(3)
his performing the song
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See, for example, Gazdar (1979).
If propositions are represented as sets of situations, plural individuals have to be kept distinct from sets (contra Landman (1989) and in agreement with Link (1983)). Since the plural predicate are sudden applies to plural situations, then are sudden would wind up being defined for propositions (sets of situations) if plural individuals were sets.
In adopting this way of expressing semantic selection, I am following Cresswell (1973).
Technically, this may be done by assuming that a family of interpretations, rather than a single interpretation, is associated to a given lexical item. If we assume that the interpretation is provided by translating lexical items into expressions of an intensional language, this amounts to assigning to lexical items a family of translations. This move has been advocated for independent reasons in Partee (1986).
This assignment was adopted in Delacruz’s (1976) treatment of NPs of kind (39).
Chierchia (1984) provides some arguments to this effect.
There may also be reasons to do things differently from the way suggested here. For example, Chierchia (1984) does not assume that propositions are directly included in the domain of entities, but assumes instead that propositions have individual counterparts that are included in the domain of entities. Both methods seems to me to be compatible with the semantics I am adopting.
The translation of (3) can also be specified in such a way that (3) turns out to be of the type of generalized quantifiers. Since it is arguable, however, that some NPs may be of type 1 (see Partee (1986)), I’ll keep type 1 for NP (3).
Indeed, Parsons’s (1989) analysis of the distinction between telic and atelic events runs into the same problem (see p. 233).
The notion of inertia world was originally introduced by Dowty in order to account for the semantics of the progressive. Vlach (1981), Parsons (1989) point out a number of difficulties for Dowty’s (1979) account of the meaning of the progressive. Similar difficulties are likely to arise for the inertia world account of discourses like (44) as well. For example, (44) is incorrectly predicted to be false if the interruption of the concert is the most natural outcome of the previous course of events in the real world. I take it, however, that it’s still an open issue whether there exists a version of the inertia world approach which can avoid this difficulties.
For a summary and discussion of the different views on the matter, see Bennett (1988).
This example is from Davidson (1969).
For further arguments against identifying events with space-time regions, see Lewis (1986). Kratzer’s (1989) semantics for counterfactual reasoning is also based on the assumption that situations are not identical to space-time regions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Zucchi, A. (1993). A Semantics for English Nominalization. In: The Language of Propositions and Events. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 51. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8161-5_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8161-5_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-4310-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-015-8161-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive