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Reference under a Perspective 3| old_uid | 2771 |
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| title | Reference under a Perspective 3 |
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| start_date | 2007/05/09 |
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| schedule | 11h-13h |
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| online | no |
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| summary | In this seminar I analyse the semantics of 'as' phrases and their role in relative predications. 'As' phrases are puzzling for a theory of predication. Consider:
1) John as a store clerk makes only $30K a year but as a salesman on E-Bay he makes at least $40K a year.
'John as a store clerk' and 'John as a salesman on E-Bay' cannot
simply refer to John; for otherwise
we would infer by substitution of coreferential expressions in
extensional contexts (makes only $30K a year' and 'makes at least
$40K a year' are simple extensional predicates)
that 1) is inconsistent----namely that John
makes only $30K a year but at least $40K a year.
I review some proposals by Fred Landman, Gerhardt Jaeger, and Zoltan
Szabo on the semantics of 'as' phrases before proposing
an alternative view, according to which 'as' phrases pick out aspects
of their subjects. I go on to suggest that such aspects show up
in copredications like
2) Mary carried home and mastered three books on mathematics
which seem to predicate properties of books qua physical objects and
books qua informational objects at the same time.
I provide a categorial analysis of aspects. |
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| responsibles | Moltmann, Matushansky |
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