Equational-intensional relative clauses with syntactic reconstruction
Itai Bassi, Ezer Rasin
April 2018
 

Analyses of scope reconstruction typically fall into two competing approaches: ‘semantic reconstruction’, which derives non-surface scope using semantic mechanisms, and ‘syntactic reconstruction’, which derives it by positing additional syntactic representations at the level of Logical Form. Grosu and Krifka (2007) proposed a semantic-reconstruction analysis for relative clauses like "the gifted mathematician that Dan claims he is", in which the relative head NP can be interpreted in the scope of a lower intensional quantifier. Their analysis relies on type-shifting the relative head into a predicate of functions. We develop an alternative analysis for such relative clauses that replaces type-shifting with syntactic reconstruction. The competing analyses diverge in their predictions regarding scope possibilities in head-external relative clauses. We use Hebrew resumptive pronouns, which disambiguate a relative clause in favor of the head-external structure, to show that the prediction of syntactic reconstruction is correct. This result suggests that certain type-shifting operations are not made available by Universal Grammar.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003876
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: To appear in proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 22
keywords: relative clauses, scope, reconstruction, type-shifting, de dicto, intensional quantifiers, binding, resumptive pronouns, semantics, syntax
previous versions: v1 [February 2018]
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