1st Edition

On the Semantics of Wh-Clauses

By Marjorie Boulton Copyright 1994
198 Pages
by Routledge

198 Pages
by Routledge

196 Pages
by Routledge

First published in 1994, this book is concerned with certain kinds of wh -clauses, whose interpretations are easily and, the author argues, plausibly rendered by a logicosemantic analysis on which wh- phrases translate as open sentences, that is, as expressions of the semantically interpreted representation which contain free variables. After a review of influential contemporary analyses of the... Read more

Preface; Acknowledgments; I Introduction; 1 Overview 2 The Lewis/Heim/Kamp Theory 3 Summary Notes; II An Overview of Semantic Analyses of Questions; 1 Introduction 2 Categorical Approaches 3 Embedding Approaches 4 Propositional Approaches 5 Summary Notes; III A Nonquantificational Analysis of Wh-Phrases, I: Parallels Between Wh-Phrases and Indefinites; 1 Introduction 2 The Quantificational Variability of Wh-Phrases 3 Wh-Clauses as Restrictive Terms 4 Deriving the Restrictive Term: Presupposition 5 The Presuppositional Vagueness of clauses-embedding Predicates 6 Recapitulation Notes; IV Exhaustiveness; 1 Introduction 2 (Weak) Exhaustiveness 3 The Domain of Quantification 4 Summary Notes; V A Nonquantificational Analysis of Wh-Phrases II: Asymmetries Between Wh-Phrases and Indefinites; 1 Introduction 2 Data and Generalizations 3 Wh-Movement as a Determinate of Wh-Phrase Quantifiability 4 Nonquantifiable Wh-Phrases 5 Summary Notes; Appendices; A Wh-Phrases as Variables Over Functions B Definiteness and Global Accommodation C Complement If- and Whether-Clauses; Bibliography; Index

Biography

Berman, Stephen