Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. / My dissertation consists of three essays in the Metaphysics of Modality: In "A Puzzle about Truth and Singular Propositions," I consider two theses that seem to be true and then an argument for the conclusion that they form an inconsistent pair. One thesis is that a proposition that is singular with respect to a given object implies that the object exists. This is so because the proposition predicates something of the object. The other thesis is that some propositions are true with respect to possible worlds in which they do not exist. An example is the negation of the proposition that Socrates is wise. This proposition is true with respect to possible worlds in which Socrates does not exist, but it does not exist in those worlds. In "Actualism, Ontological Dependence, and Possible Worlds," I consider Actualism, the doctrine that every possible object is an actual object. Plantinga has argued that the actualist is committed to the existence of unexemplified essences if he analyzes statements of modality by quantifying over possible worlds and over members of their domains. I argue that the actualist is committed to the existence of unexemplified essences even if he paraphrases statements of modality by quantifying only over possible worlds and actual objects. In "Possibilism and the Nature of Actuality," I consider Possibilism, the doctrine that there are possible objects that are not actual objects. / (cont.) Possibilism seems to be a coherent ontological doctrine. It is not Meinong's doctrine that there are objects of which it is true to say that there are no such objects. If one fails to distinguish between these two doctrines, then one's attempt to refute Possibilism might amount to an attack on a blatant contradiction. I illustrate this claim by arguing that the distinction between Possibilism and Meinong's doctrine has eluded Plantinga. I then consider the view that Possibilism is a consequence of Lewis's doctrine that 'actual' is an indexical term. I also argue that the sense in which Lewis said that 'actual' is indexical is an esoteric sense of the word, not a sense it ordinarily has. / by Aviv Hoffmann. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1984. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND HUMANITIES. / Bibliography: leaves 226-228. / by Janet Stephanie Wager. / Ph.D.

Thesis: Ph. D. in Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-207). / I give an account of the meaning of epistemic modals-words like 'might' and 'must', on a broadly epistemic interpretation-and how speakers use them to coordinate on their information. I begin by exploring what epistemic modals mean. Motivated by embedding data which are problematic for almost all existing accounts, I develop a new semantics for epistemic modals which I call the bounded theory. The bounded theory comprises a standard relational semantics together with a constraint which entails that local information is always taken into account in the evaluation of epistemic modals. I argue that the bounded theory makes sense of the subtle embedding behavior of epistemic modals-thus providing an adequate account of their meaning-and sheds new light on the way that local information is structured in natural language. In Chapter 2, I turn to the question of how speakers use epistemic modals to coordinate on their common information. I argue that we can make sense of the characteristic dynamics of epistemic modality within a relational semantic framework (like the one given in Chapter 1), together with a contextualist approach to the dynamics of conversation. The key to doing so is to take the relation in question to be determined by the interlocutors' prospective common attitudes. Chapter 3 explores the contribution of 'must'. Assertions of -Must p-1 and assertions of p alone seem to have the same basic goal, and yet their felicity conditions subtly differ. I argue for a new characterization of those differences, and a broadly pragmatic explanation of those differences based on the approach to epistemic modals advocated in the preceding chapters. In Chapter 4, I return to semantic questions. I develop formal tools to compare the expressive power of semantic theories with respect to the embedding data which they can account for. These tools show that the relational theory can account for all the embedding data which recent revisionary theories can account for, but not vice versa, a fact which necessitates a substantial shift in perspective on the debate regarding the semantics of epistemic modals. / by Matthew Mandelkern. / Ph. D. in Philosophy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2008. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-165). / The main goal of this dissertation is to determine the best theory of de re/de dicto intensionality. Recently, it has become apparent that the traditional scope theory of this phenomenon is inadequate, the most marked evidence for this being the scope paradoxes discussed in Fodor (1970), BaƯuerle (1983), and Percus (2000). This work therefore discusses two theories designed to replace the traditional theory. The first such replacement is the situation pronoun theory, which posits covert pronouns in the syntax of natural language representing pairs of worlds and times.This theory overgenerates, though, in several areas where the scope theory does not.These are discussed in terms of several generalizations captured by the latter but not the former. First, extending work by Musan (1997), the Intersective Predicate Generalization (IPG) states that two nodes combined via Predicate Modification must be evaluated at the same world and time. To capture this generalization in the situation pronoun theory, a rule of Situation Economy is proposed, which favors natural language structures having fewer situation pronouns. However, three more generalizations are next discussed, based on and extending work by Percus (2000): Generalizations X, Y, and Z rule out de re readings for VPs, adverbs, and the head nouns of weak NPs, respectively. Proposals to capture these generalizations by Shimada (2007) and Schueler (2007) are discussed. The last chapter of the dissertation raises several new ways in which the situation pronoun theory predicts unattested readings of intensional sentences. / (cont.) These cases,involving island constraints, polarity items, and subconstituents of DPs, are all captured under the scope theory. Therefore, a second replacement for the scope theory is proposed, which represents a more modest departure. The split intensionality system separates each intensional operator's quantificational force from its intensional force, by use of a new operator, ? after Montague (1970). Although further work is required, this new system preliminarily seems able to solve the problems with the traditional theory without overgenerating as the situation pronoun theory does. / by Ezra Keshet. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-89). / by Maria Isabel Oltra Massuet. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, leaves 348-363). / by Norvin W. Richards, III. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Jay Aaron Lebed. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2013. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 135-139). / This dissertation explores the role of scalar implicatures in the grammar of plurality and disjunction. I argue that scalar implicatures are relevant not only for the meaning of plurals and disjunctions, but also for their distribution in language. For example, the computation of scalar implicatures will be shown to be the decisive factor regulating the patterns of (un)grammaticality of plural agreement with disjunctive noun phrases (Chapter 3). But before getting to conclusions like that, I will spend some time on the semantics of bare plurals (Chapter 2), developing a version of the grammatical view of scalar implicatures along the way (some necessary background on scalar implicatures will be built in Chapter 1). The claim that scalar implicatures are calculated in the grammar is very far from uncontroversial. But if they really are, then many of the facts that I discuss could be predicted, more or less straightforwardly. If one treats scalar implicature calculation as a purely pragmatic process, these facts are arguably harder to make sense of. / by Natalia Ivieva. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2012. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 295-307). / In this thesis, I examine some core grammatical phenomena - case licensing, agreement, the EPP - through the lens of the Bantu language Zulu. Zulu has a number of remarkable and puzzling properties whose analysis affords us new insight on the interaction between these components. Despite a number of unusual-looking properties in the domain of nominal distribution, I propose that Zulu has a both a system of asbtract structural case and a system of morphological case. This conclusion is notable because it has long been assumed that Bantu languages lack both of these types of case (e.g. Harford Perez, 1985). Though the type of case system that I propose for Zulu is at its core similar to our current understanding of case, there are a number of differences between the case system I argue for in Zulu and more familiar case systems. In particular, I demonstrate that the positions in which structural licensing occur in Zulu are not the familiar positions of structural licensing: none of the heads that function as structural licensers in a language like English - T0, v0 , and P0 - are licensers in Zulu. The absence of licensing from these positions gives rise to a system in which case-licensing and phi-agreement have no syntactic overlap. I show that the interactions between phi-agreement and morphological case in Zulu provide a novel argument in favor of treating phi-agreement as a syntactic process. I also argue that Zulu has a novel type of morphological case: the augment vowel functions as a freely-applying case-licenser for nominal that lack structural case. The existence of such a morpheme is notable because this type of element has been explicitly ruled out by various theories (e.g. Schutze, 2001) on the grounds that it would render the Case Filter vacuous. Finally, I build on this system of case in Zulu to analyze constructions that involve a puzzling agreement pattern: complex NPs and raised subjects appear to allow optional agreement in positions where Zulu otherwise requires it. I argue that the optional agreement effect in these constructions arises from the possibility for T to agree with a CP. From these construction, we gain insight into the properties of agreement and the EPP in Zulu. Specifically, these constructions demonstrate the inadequacy of a theory of "reverse agree" to capture the patterns in Zulu and the primacy of a syntactic EPP to Zulu syntax. / by Claire Halpert. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 179-184). / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / The thesis presents a theoretical and experimental investigation of the interaction between focus intonation pattern (FIP) and certain syntactic phenomena-especially those involving wh-questions-in Japanese. A phonological mechanism of FIP formation is proposed that accounts for the variety of FIPs observed in various syntactic configurations. In the FIPs of Japanese wh-questions, the F0 of wh-phrases is raised, and the F0 of following phrases is lowered. There is a correlation between the domain of Fo-lowering and the scope of the wh-phrase. In a matrix wh-question, Fo-lowering after the wh-phrase continues until the end of the sentence, while in the case of an indirect wh-question, it stops at the end of the embedded clause. I account for this FIP- Wh-scope correspondence as follows. A pair of phonological rules is proposed that manipulate the prominence relations between semantically focalized phrases and post-focus phrases. These rules apply cyclically during the course of syntactic derivations, rather than waiting until the whole sentence is syntactically composed. Adopting the Multiple Spell-Out analysis (Chomsky, 2000, 2001b), I propose that the phonological rules for FIP formation apply to Spell-Out domains, rather than to a whole sentence. This proposal departs from previous analyses of FIP in Japanese (Truckenbrodt, 1995; Selkirk, 2003; Sugahara, 2003) in two respects: (1) it does not refer to prosodic phrasing; and (2) it is based on a cyclic model instead of a single-output model. The analysis makes the following prediction: if there are two wh-phrases that take different scopes in a single sentence, two independent FIPs will be created at different Spell-Out domains. This prediction was tested instrumentally. The results show that such a pitch contour is possible, and confirms other predictions as well. / by Shinichiro Ishihara. / Ph.D.