TY - JOUR
T1 - Operators vs. Quantifiers
T2 - the View from Linguistics
AU - Cohen, Ariel
N1 - Funding Information: I would like to thank Fran?ois Recanati for numerous thorough discussions and insightful suggestions. I also thank Betsy Ritter, from whom I learned a great deal about the syntax of functional categories. Publisher Copyright: © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2021/1/1
Y1 - 2021/1/1
N2 - In several publications, François Recanati argues that time, world, location, and similar constituents are not arguments of the verb, although they do affect truth conditions. However, he points out that this fact does not decide the debate regarding whether these notions are represented as sentential operators variables bound by quantifiers, as both approaches can be made compatible with such non-arguments. He makes these points using philosophical arguments; in this paper I use linguistic evidence from a variety of languages. Specifically, I demonstrate that time, world, location, and person behave syntactically and semantically the same across languages. Hence, either all are arguments, or neither are; and the evidence points to the latter position. The cross-linguistic data give rise to a generalization, which connects the availability of quantifying over times, worlds, locations, or persons with the availability of indexical expressions of the corresponding type. For example, a language that does not have temporal indexicals cannot have tense. I demonstrate that this generalization follows naturally from the quantifier approach, but would remain a mystery under the operator view. Therefore, the cross-linguistic evidence argues in the favor of the quantificational approach.
AB - In several publications, François Recanati argues that time, world, location, and similar constituents are not arguments of the verb, although they do affect truth conditions. However, he points out that this fact does not decide the debate regarding whether these notions are represented as sentential operators variables bound by quantifiers, as both approaches can be made compatible with such non-arguments. He makes these points using philosophical arguments; in this paper I use linguistic evidence from a variety of languages. Specifically, I demonstrate that time, world, location, and person behave syntactically and semantically the same across languages. Hence, either all are arguments, or neither are; and the evidence points to the latter position. The cross-linguistic data give rise to a generalization, which connects the availability of quantifying over times, worlds, locations, or persons with the availability of indexical expressions of the corresponding type. For example, a language that does not have temporal indexicals cannot have tense. I demonstrate that this generalization follows naturally from the quantifier approach, but would remain a mystery under the operator view. Therefore, the cross-linguistic evidence argues in the favor of the quantificational approach.
KW - Linguistic evidence
KW - indexicals
KW - location
KW - modality
KW - person
KW - tense
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85049566800&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2018.1491325
DO - https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2018.1491325
M3 - Article
SN - 0020-174X
VL - 64
SP - 564
EP - 592
JO - Inquiry (United Kingdom)
JF - Inquiry (United Kingdom)
IS - 5-6
ER -