Events and Plurality: The Jerusalem Lectures

The main claim of this book is that the very same distinctionbetween semantic singularity and plurality that is fundamental to thesemantics of nouns in the nominal domain is operative and fundamentalin the verbal domain as well, applying to verbs and verbal argumentsroles.It is argued that collective interpretations of verbal argumentsinvolve semantically singular argument roles, and that a large varietyof other interpretations discussed in the literature - mostimportantly distributive and cumulative interpretations - canbe reduced to semantic plurality.The book consists of three parts. The first part discusses Davidsonianand neo-Davidsonian event analyses of verbs and verbal roles. Thesecond part discusses theories of semantic plurality, focussing on theanalysis of collective, distributive, and cumulative readings. Thethird part develops a neo-Davidsonian theory of events and plurality, a theory of event-maximalization, and a theory of scopal relations, basing both the nominal and the verbal domain strictly on the semanticsingularity/plurality distinction. This part provides a detailedanalysis of nominal plurality, verbal plurality, and theirinteraction, and it is shown how these plurality interactions producethe effects of collective, distributive, cumulative, and relatedinterpretations.The book will be of interest to theoretical linguists, in particularscholars and advanced students in semantics, or in neighboring fieldsof syntax, pragmatics, and computational linguistics. It will also beof interest to researchers in philosophy of language, logic, andcognitive science, and to computer scientists with an interest in thesemantics of natural language.