Pluralities

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Two Ways to Interpret Plural Noun Phrases

   • Roger Schwarzschild

   Pages 1-16

3. Precursors

   • Roger Schwarzschild

   Pages 17-31

4. Preview of the Arguments: Data and Methodology

   • Roger Schwarzschild

   Pages 33-42

5. General Arguments from VP Denotations

   • Roger Schwarzschild

   Pages 43-56

6. Distributivity

   • Roger Schwarzschild

   Pages 57-101

7. Reciprocity

   • Roger Schwarzschild

   Pages 103-136

8. Notes on Floated Quantifiers

   • Roger Schwarzschild

   Pages 137-150

9. Sorting the Domain

   • Roger Schwarzschild

   Pages 151-158

10. Collective Nouns

    • Roger Schwarzschild

    Pages 159-192

11. Conclusion

    • Roger Schwarzschild

    Pages 193-198

12. Back Matter

    Pages 199-212

    PDF

Pluralities begins with a concise introduction to recent theories of the semantics of plurals. The author argues, contrary to many of those theories, that plural discourse involves entities corresponding to sets of individuals but nothing corresponding to higher order sets. In the course of the book, the reader will become acquainted with the linguistics data that lies at the heart of this debate including extensive discussion of reciprocals and of collectives (such as the committee). In addition, a unique account of distributivity is proposed in which collective/distributive ambiguities are analyzed in pragmatic terms. The account capitalizes on the idea that the universe may be partitioned differently at different points in a discourse.
Pluralities should be accessible to those with an introductory level background in model-theoretic semantics.

• Denotation
• discourse
• semantic
• semantics

• Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA

  Roger Schwarzschild

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