Papers by Angelika Kratzer
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Oct 31, 2022
This is my chapter for the forthcoming book Linguistics meets Philosophy, edited by Daniel Altshu... more This is my chapter for the forthcoming book Linguistics meets Philosophy, edited by Daniel Altshuler and to be published by Cambridge University Press. In the book, my section 1.1 is preceded by a section 1.0 with answers to four questions provided by the editor.
Here is a list of all errata (typos, slips, mistakes, blunders) that have come to my attention so... more Here is a list of all errata (typos, slips, mistakes, blunders) that have come to my attention so far. I thank everybody who alerted me to some or all of them. Page 5. There is an interference with German that appeared in the original 1977 article (due to my only rudimentary knowledge of English then) and that slipped by me in the rewritten version: In German, negation takes scope over the necessity modal muss, but in English, negation takes scope under must. You: I must sneeze. I: Don't be silly. You don't have to. You: Rakaipaka must be our chief. I: No, he doesn't have to. Page 13 The problem pops up again on p. 13: In view of what the New Zealand judgments provide, murder must not be a crime. The book has it must be that murder is not a crime and mentions that the stilted wording is chosen to get "the scope of negation right." Thank you to Ljubomir Stevanovic for informing me about this problem. Page 31 p follows from A iff p ⊇ ∩A. Thank you to Daniel Goodhue and Roberta Pires de Oliveira for spotting this. Page 65 In the definition of conditional modality, a strange, superfluous, symbol (that I can't even reproduce) appears after if. The definition of conditional modality is repeated on page 94, but it is correct this time.
Cognitive scientists have become increasingly interested in understanding how natural minds repre... more Cognitive scientists have become increasingly interested in understanding how natural minds represent and reason about possible ways the world may be. However, there is currently little agreement on how to understand this remarkable capacity for ‘modal thought’. Drawing on formal frameworks for reasoning about possibilities from logic, philosophy, computer science, and linguistics, we argue that this capacity is built from a set of relatively simple component parts, centrally involving a basic ability to consider possible extensions of a piece of the actual world. Natural minds can productively combine this basic ability with a range of other capacities, eventually allowing for the observed suite of increasingly more sophisticated ways of reasoning about what is possible. We demonstrate how this (de)compositional account can accurately predict both what has been observed in the trajectory of children’s developing capacity to reason about possibilities and what has been observed in h...
At Sinn und Bedeutung 25, which took place virtually in London in 2020, the organizers, Hazel Pea... more At Sinn und Bedeutung 25, which took place virtually in London in 2020, the organizers, Hazel Pearson, Luisa Martí, and Yasutada Sudo, organized a series of interviews with senior semanticists, questioning them about their careers, about their views on the most important ideas in the development of formal semantics, and more. I was interviewed by Daniel Rothschild
Conditionals, Paradox, and Probability, 2021
The chapter looks at indicative conditionals embedded under quantifiers, with a special emphasis ... more The chapter looks at indicative conditionals embedded under quantifiers, with a special emphasis on ‘one-case’ conditionals as in No query was answered if it came from a doubtful address. It agrees with earlier assessments that a complete conditional (with antecedent and consequent) is embedded under a quantifier in those constructions, but then proceeds to create a dilemma by showing that we can’t always find the right interpretation for that conditional. Contrary to earlier assessments, Stalnaker’s conditional won’t always do. The chapter concludes that the embedded conditional in the sentence above is a material implication, but the if-clause also plays a pragmatic role in restricting the domain of the embedding quantifier. That an appeal to pragmatics should be necessary at all goes with Edgington’s verdict that ‘we do not have a satisfactory general account of sentences with conditional constituents’.
The talk explores the hypothesis that the roots of transitive attitude verbs and verba dicendi (o... more The talk explores the hypothesis that the roots of transitive attitude verbs and verba dicendi (or verbs of communication) have two arguments, an eventuality argumentand an individual argument referring to the content of the attitude or speech report. They do not have propositional arguments. Apparent propositional complements of verbs like say or believe express properties of things that have propositional content and specify what that content is
Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie
Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, 1995
... Thanks to the participants in the 1988 LSA Symposium on Cross-Linguistic Quantification: besi... more ... Thanks to the participants in the 1988 LSA Symposium on Cross-Linguistic Quantification: besides the four of us, these were Maria Bittner, Leonard Faltz, David Gil, Polly Jacobson, Dick Oehrle, David Dowty, Ken Hale, Jerry Sadock, and Greg Stump. ...
Ms. University of Massachusetts at Amherst.[ …, 2003
basic lexical items without being given explicit definitions or instructions. I will explore the ... more basic lexical items without being given explicit definitions or instructions. I will explore the consequences of one such hypothetical constraint, the Cumulativity Universal, which was originally proposed by Manfred Krifka and has since been pursued extensively by Fred Landman. The version of the Cumulativity Universal that is relevant here has it that the denotations of basic predicates at logical-conceptual structure are cumulative from the very start. If there is a basic logical-conceptual predicate 'red', for example, that is true of my hat and your scarf (two singularities), then the Cumulativity Universal says that that very same predicate is also true of the sum of my hat and your scarf (a plurality). Cumulativity extends to relational predicates. If the predicate 'buy', for example, is cumulative, then whenever it relates, say, some action of yours to your scarf, and some action of mine to my hat, it also relates the sum of our buying actions to the sum of what we each bought. Suppose there was independent support in favor of the Cumulativity Universal. This would be of great importance for us since, as we will see shortly, the Cumulativity Universal immediately disqualifies the 'theme' or 'object' relation and a significant number of other object related thematic relations from being possible denotations of thematic role predicates at logical-conceptual structure, and thus at any level of syntactic representation. I will use this fact to argue that, in all likelihood, there are verbs whose direct objects are not neo-Davidsonian at any level of mental representation. The Cumulativity Universal is far from being uncontroversial. I will thus launch a detailed defense of it in chapters 4 and 5. It will be a long and complicated argument, fed by the work of many of the key players in this popular field of investigation. The argument will be of interest beyond the issues of argument association and semantic universals, however, revealing The Event Argument, Chapter 1. Angelika Kratzer December 2002. 13 many not at all obvious consequences of Davidsonian event semantics including some relating to the placement possibilities of quantifier phrases and adverbials within a verb's extended projection. Last not least, the discussion of cumulativity might shed some light on the nature of verbal number agreement, and thus ultimately help us understand the connection between voice and verbal agreement. Like many longwinded arguments, then, that one too, will open up unexpected vistas into new and uncharted terrains that will guide subsequent excursions. Returning to argument association in the syntax, what kind of facts could give us information about the way arguments are linked to their heads in that central component of the grammar? Optionality of arguments is a possible diagnostic for neo-Davidsonian association, as pointed out in Dowty 1989. Dowty notes that some event nouns do not show any real subcategorization, and suggests that this could be explained by assuming that in contrast to verb arguments, the arguments of those nouns are associated by the neo-Davidsonian method in the syntax. Here is the example he considers: (2) a. Gifts of books from John to Mary would surprise Helen. b. Gifts of books from John would surprise Helen. c. Gifts of books to Mary would surprise Helen. d. Gifts from John to Mary would surprise Helen. e. Gifts from John would surprise Helen. f. Gifts of books would surprise Helen. g. Gifts to Mary would surprise Helen. h. Gifts would surprise Helen.
Chicago Linguistics Society, 1991
The generic book, 1995
That I am sitting on this chair is a very transitory property of mine. 1 That I have brown hair i... more That I am sitting on this chair is a very transitory property of mine. 1 That I have brown hair is not. The first property is a stage-level property in the terminology of Carlson (1977b). The second property is an individual-level property. Stage-level properties are expressed by stage-level predicates. And individual-level properties correspond to individual-level predicates. A number of grammatical phenomena have been shown to be sensitive to the distinction between stage-level and individual-level predicates. TViere-insertion ...
Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 1996
ABSTRACT In his analysis of action sentences, Donald Davidson drew a clear distinction between ar... more ABSTRACT In his analysis of action sentences, Donald Davidson drew a clear distinction between arguments and adjuncts. Neglecting temporal relations, sentences like (1) We bought your slippers in Marrakesh.
Contrastiveness in Information Structure, Alternatives and Scalar Implicatures, 2017
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Papers by Angelika Kratzer