Topicality and (Non-)Specificity in Mandarin

Current analyses of specificity are unable to provide an explanatory account for why specific and nonspecific uses of indefinites are available. While Abusch (1994), Reinhart (1997), and Kratzer (1998) provide successful mechanisms for deriving specific readings, they do not provide a fundamental explanation for the availability of this mechanism. This is due to the fact that specific indefinites are treated as involving an interpretive component or procedure unique to themselves: storage (Abusch) or choice function (Reinhart and Kratzer), for example. It would be preferable if specific indefinites could be understood as deriving from the use of independently motivated meaning components and interpretive mechanisms. Here I will pursue the idea, building on Portner & Yabushita (1998), that specificity has to do with the indefinite's interaction with a topical domain (note similarities with the proposals of Enç 1991, Cresti 1995, and Schwarzschild 2000). In this conception, specificity is a matter of degree: the narrower the topical domain, the more specific the indefinite. More precisely, sentences containing specific indefinites will be understood as involving ordinary existential quantification in combination with a topical domain function

Overt and Covert Subjects in Uyghur: Not the same thing

Overt nominative-marked indexicals in Uyghur attitude reports are known to undergo obligatory shifting and trigger matching agreements. This paper challenges the prevailing view that the covert subject is parallel to its overt nominative counterpart. We evaluate several hypotheses that consider covert subjects to be true indexicals, but we find that none of them can fully explain all the observed readings. Drawing inspiration from previous studies on null subject licensing in Partial Null Subject languages, we suggest that the covert subject in Uyghur functions as an anaphor, while the overt subject is an indexical. The recognition of their differences opens up the possibility of associating Uyghur covert subjects with other non-indexical elements, thereby contributing to our understanding of indexical shift

The Semantics of Imperatives within a Theory of Clause Types

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Gerunds and Types of Events

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Mood and Contextual Commitment

Many recent analyses of mood selection in Romance and Balkan rely on the idea that subjunctive is triggered by a modal predicate whose meaning is comparative. We work out a precise version of this idea, which we call the Proto-Standard Theory, and show that it runs into problems with a variety of indicative-selecting predicates in French. We then develop and argue in favor of an alternative account based on individuals being Contextually Committed towards the modal parameters used to give the meaning of the predicate