May 27, 2005: Chris Tancredi

Time:: 4:30pm, May 27, 2005
Place:: Collaboration Room 3, 4th floor, Building 18, University of Tokyo Komaba campus.
Speaker:: Chris Tancredi, University of Tokyo
Title:: Predicate-Triggered Group Formation
Abstract:: In this talk I examine the interaction of downward entailing plural quantifiers and the predicates "gather" in English and "atsumaru" in Japanese. I will argue that the interaction between these expressions requires two extensions to Landman's (2000) analysis of plural interpretation. Landman allows plurals to be analyzed as either groups or as i-sums, but his analysis only generates distributed readings for 1-place predicates applying to an i-sum via pluralization of the predicate. I will show that "gather" and "atsumaru" require a different interpretation mechanism that does not involve such pluralization. I will then show that while these predicates take i-sums as arguments, they generate groups from these i-sums that can be employed by other predicates conjoined with "gather"/"atsumaru". I propose a dynamic model of interpretation which allows "gather"/"atsumaru" to take i-sums as input and effectively form this i-sum into a group as part of its output.

May 27, 2005: Chris Tancredi, Predicate-Triggered Group Formation