Linguists and philosophers of language have shown increasing interest in the expressions that refer to quantifiers: determiners like 'every' and 'many', in addition to determiner phrases like 'some king' and 'no cat'. This thesis addresses several puzzles where the way we understand quantifier expressions depends on features that go beyond standard truth conditional semantic meaning. One puzzle concerns the fact that it is often natural to understand 'Every king is in the yard' as being true if (say) all of the kings at the party are in the yard, even though the standard truth conditions predict it to be true if and only if every king in the universe is in the yard. Another puzzle emerges from the observation that 'Every American king is in the yard' sounds odd relative to contexts where there are no American kings, even though the standard truth conditions predict it to be trivially true. These puzzles have been widely discussed within linguistics and philosophy of language, and have implications for topics as diverse as the distinction between semantics and pragmatics and the ontological commitments of ordinary individuals. Yet few attempts have been made to incorporate discussions from the linguistics literature into the philosophical literature. This thesis argues that attending to the linguistics literature helps to address these puzzles. In particular, my solutions to these puzzles rely on notions from work on information structure, an often overlooked area of linguistics. I will use these notions to develop a new theory of the pragmatics of ordinary discourse, in the process of resolving the puzzles. In the first two chapters, I provide accessible overviews of key notions from the literature on quantifier expressions and information structure. In the third chapter, I discuss the problem of contextual domain restriction. In the fourth chapter, I consider the problems posed by empty restrictors. In the final chapter, I tackle the issue of category mistakes.

Cette etude a une envergure bipartite: outre qu'elle se consacre aux quantificateurs flous avec une forte concentration sur certain(s), diver(s), differents(s), plusieurs et quelque(s), elle compare leurs emplois avec ceux du Dictionnaire des frequences. Avant tout, elle se veut descriptive et synchronique. Dans cette optique, elle se base sur un corpus clos, celui de l'idiolecte de l'anthropologue francais Claude Levi-Strauss. Ce corpus numerise compte dix sous-corpus d'inegale longueur, couvrant cinq decennies de la deuxieme partie du XX[sup e] siecle et totalisant 1 251 792 mots. Par ailleurs, il englobe 3872 occurrences des cinq quantificateurs flous en question. Dans un premier temps, il s'agit d'une analyse distributionnelle a laquelle s'ajoute une analyse componentielle. Nous mettrons en evidence les contextes d'apparition de chacun des cinq quantificateurs flous dans le corpus en plus de leur appliquer une batterie de tests semantiques et syntaxiques pour deceler leur fonctionnement dans la langue francaise. Pour ce qui concerne le semantisme, nous presenterons ce que d'autres linguistes tels Arrive, Gadet & Galmiche, Chevalier, Curat, Damourette & Pichon, Gondret, Grevisse, Gross, Mitterand, Riegel, Pellat & Rioul et Wilmet ont a dire a propos1 de ces cinq quantificateurs flous. Ce chemin parcouru, nous pourrons tester l'hypothese que divers, differents et plusieurs forment un sous-systeme au sein de la classe de quantificateurs flous alors que certains(s) et quelque(s) en forment un autre. La seconde partie de cette etude consiste en une analyse statistique. II s'agit d'une comparaison des frequences relatives des cinq quantificateurs flous dans le corpus de Levi-Strauss avec celles du Dictionnaire des frequences qui livre l'equivalent d'une norme de la langue: il totalise 70 317 234 mots, dont 37 653 685 relevent du XX[sup e] siecle.

Dispersion of mass is a measure of the deviation of transportation of fluid in a reactor from ideal reactor behavior (perfect mixing or plug flow) caused by the combined effects of diffusion, convection and migration. Axial dispersion is always undesirable because it reduces the driving force of the reaction and therefore causes a lower level of conversion. On the other hand, transverse dispersion is often a desirable feature since good transverse mixing will reduce the transverse concentration and temperature gradients and hence improve the selectivity of a thermochemical reactor. Transverse dispersion of mass is of more importance in a three-dimensional flow-by electrochemical reactor than that in a thermochemical reactor because the potential drop is in the transverse direction and the reaction rate and selectivity are determined by the potential as well as concentration and temperature distributions. The transverse dispersion of mass is expected to have a more profound effect on the performance of a 3D electrochemical reactor due to the strong interaction among the concentration, temperature and potential distributions in the transverse direction. In the present work, the axial and transverse dispersion of mass were studied with a twodimensional dispersion model in two types of rectangular packed bed: i) randomly packed glass beads with the average bead diameter of 2 mm and a macroscopic bed porosity of 0.41; ii) a representation of a 3D flow-by electrode - consisting of a bed of carbon felt with the carbon fibre diameter of 20 urn and a macroscopic bed porosity of 0.95. A tracer stimulation-response system was set up and axial and transverse dispersion of In Blackfoot, DPs appear to take obligatory wide scope with respect to the universal quantifier while bare nouns take obligatory narrow scope with respect to the universal quantifier. I propose that the difference in scope-taking properties of Blackfoot nominals is a consequence of their syntactic position. I propose that over argument DPs are adjoined to the clause whereas bare nouns are base generated in an argument position. I suggest that the scope properties fall out from this distinction in the syntax. The Blackfoot universal quantifier, ohkan-, is a preverb. That is, ohkan- occurs as a part of the verb stem preceding the verb root itself. I propose that ohkan- is head of its own QP which takes the VP as its complement. I follow Sportiche (1998) in categorizing ohkan- as a stranded quantifier since it is base generated external to VP. Bare nouns, since they are generated within VP, are structurally inferior to ohkan-, since they are within its c-command domain. The adjoined DPs, however, are structurally superior to ohkan-, since they are adjoined to the clause. I propose that the structural superiority of DPs translates to their obligatory wide scope. Conversely, the structural inferiority of bare nouns translates to their obligatory narrow scope. Blackfoot is a relatively understudied Algonquian language spoken in Southern Alberta and Northern Montana. The Blackfoot data presented in this work come primarily from my own work with two Blackfoot speakers. Both of my language consultants hail from Southern Alberta speak and the Blood dialect of Blackfoot.

CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeiÃoamento de Pessoal de NÃvel Superior / VÃrios problemas computÃveis podem ser resolvidos de maneira mais eficiente ou mais natural atravÃs de algoritmos probabilÃsticos, o que mostra que o uso de tais algoritmos à bastante relevante em computaÃÃo. Entretanto, os algoritmos probabilÃsticos podem retornar uma resposta errada com uma certa probabilidade. Observe, ainda que o uso de algoritmos probabilÃsticos nÃo resolve problemas nÃo computÃveis. A Complexidade Computacional caracteriza a complexidade de um problema a partir da quantidade de recursos computacionais, como espaÃo e tempo, para resolvÃ-lo. Problemas que tem a mesma complexidade compÃem uma classe. As classes de complexidade computacional sÃo relacionadas atravÃs de uma hierarquia. A Complexidade Descritiva usa lÃgicas para expressar os problemas e capturar classes de complexidade computacional no sentido de expressar todos, e apenas, os problemas desta classe. Dessa forma, a complexidade de um problema nÃo depende de fatores fÃsicos, como tempo e espaÃo, mas apenas da expressividade da lÃgica que o define. Resultados importantes da Ãrea mostraram que vÃrias classes de complexidade computacional podem ser caracterizadas por lÃgicas. Por exemplo, a classe NP foi mostrada equivalente à classe dos problemas expressos pelo fragmento existencial da LÃgica de Segunda Ordem. Este estreito relacionamento entre tais Ãreas permite que alguns resultados da Ãrea de LÃgica sejam transferidos para a de Complexidade Computacional e vice-versa. Apesar da importÃncia de algoritmos probabilÃsticos e da Complexidade Descritiva, existem poucos resultados de caracterizaÃÃo, por lÃgicas, das classes de complexidade computacional probabilÃsticas. Neste trabalho, buscamos mostrar caracterizaÃÃes para cada uma das classes de complexidade probabilÃsticas de tempo polinomial. Nos nossos resultados, utilizamos quantificadores generalizados de segunda ordem para simular a aceitaÃÃo das mÃquinas nÃo-determinÃsticas dessas classes. Achamos caracterizaÃÃes lÃgicas na literatura apenas para as classes PP e BPP. No primeiro caso, a lÃgica utilizada era a de primeira ordem adicionada de um quantificador maioria de segunda ordem. Com a abordagem criada neste trabalho, conseguimos obter uma prova alternativa para a caracterizaÃÃo de PP. Com essa mesma metodologia, tambÃm conseguimos caracterizar a classe ⊕P atravÃs de uma lÃgica com um quantificador de paridade. No caso de BPP, existia um resultado que utilizava uma lÃgica com semÃntica probabilÃstica. Usando nossa abordagem de quantificadores generalizados, conseguimos obter uma caracterizaÃÃo alternativa para essa classe. Com o mesmo mÃtodo, conseguimos caracterizar as classes probabilÃsticas semÃnticas RP, coRP, ZPP e a classe semÃntica NP∩coNP. Por fim, mostramos uma aplicaÃÃo dos resultados de Complexidade Descritiva na criaÃÃo de algoritmos atravÃs de uma especificaÃÃo lÃgica. / Many computable problems can be solved more efficiently or in a more natural way through probabilistic algorithms, which shows that the use of such algorithms is quite relevant in Computer Science. However, probabilistic algorithms may return a wrong answer with a certain probability. Also, the use of probabilistic algorithms does not solve problems that are not computable. In Computational Complexity, the complexity of a problem is characterized based on the amount of computational resources, such as space and time, needed to solve it. Problems that have the same complexity compose the same class. The computational complexity classes are related by a hierarchy. In Descriptive Complexity, a logic is used to express problems and capture computational complexity classes in order to express all and only the problems of this class. Thus, the complexity of a problem does not depend on physical factors, such as time and space, but only on the expressiveness of the logic that defines it. Important results of the area states that several classes of computational complexity can be characterized by a logic. For example, the class NP has been shown equivalent to the class of problems expressed by the existential fragment of Second-Order Logic. This close relationship between these areas allows some results about Logics to be transferred to Computational Complexity and vice versa. Despite of the importance of probabilistic algorithms and of Descriptive Complexity, there are few results on the characterization, by a logic, of probabilistic computational complexity classes. In this work, we show characterizations for each of the polinomial time probabilistic complexity classes. In our results, we use second-order generalized quantifiers to simulate the acceptance of the nondeterministic machines of these classes. We found Logical characterizations in the literature only for classes PP and BPP. In the first case, the logic employed was the first-order added by a quantifier most of second-order. With the approach established in this work, we obtain an alternative proof for the characterization of PP. With the same methodology, we also characterize the class ⊕P through a logic with a second-order parity quantifier. In the case of BPP , there was a result that used a logic with probabilistic semantics. Using our approach of generalized quantifiers, we obtain an alternative characterization for this class. With the same method, we were able to characterize the probabilistic semantic classes RP, coRP, ZPP and the semantic class NP ∩ coNP. Finally, we show an application of Descriptive Complexity results in the creation of algorithms from a logic specification.

Cette etude a une envergure bipartite: outre qu'elle se consacre aux quantificateurs flous avec une forte concentration sur certain(s), diver(s), differents(s), plusieurs et quelque(s), elle compare leurs emplois avec ceux du Dictionnaire des frequences. Avant tout, elle se veut descriptive et synchronique. Dans cette optique, elle se base sur un corpus clos, celui de l'idiolecte de l'anthropologue francais Claude Levi-Strauss. Ce corpus numerise compte dix sous-corpus d'inegale longueur, couvrant cinq decennies de la deuxieme partie du XX[sup e] siecle et totalisant 1 251 792 mots. Par ailleurs, il englobe 3872 occurrences des cinq quantificateurs flous en question. Dans un premier temps, il s'agit d'une analyse distributionnelle a laquelle s'ajoute une analyse componentielle. Nous mettrons en evidence les contextes d'apparition de chacun des cinq quantificateurs flous dans le corpus en plus de leur appliquer une batterie de tests semantiques et syntaxiques pour deceler leur fonctionnement dans la langue francaise. Pour ce qui concerne le semantisme, nous presenterons ce que d'autres linguistes tels Arrive, Gadet & Galmiche, Chevalier, Curat, Damourette & Pichon, Gondret, Grevisse, Gross, Mitterand, Riegel, Pellat & Rioul et Wilmet ont a dire a propos1 de ces cinq quantificateurs flous. Ce chemin parcouru, nous pourrons tester l'hypothese que divers, differents et plusieurs forment un sous-systeme au sein de la classe de quantificateurs flous alors que certains(s) et quelque(s) en forment un autre. La seconde partie de cette etude consiste en une analyse statistique. II s'agit d'une comparaison des frequences relatives des cinq quantificateurs flous dans le corpus de Levi-Strauss avec celles du Dictionnaire des frequences qui livre l'equivalent d'une norme de la langue: il totalise 70 317 234 mots, dont 37 653 685 relevent du XX[sup e] siecle. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

Dispersion of mass is a measure of the deviation of transportation of fluid in a reactor from ideal reactor behavior (perfect mixing or plug flow) caused by the combined effects of diffusion, convection and migration. Axial dispersion is always undesirable because it reduces the driving force of the reaction and therefore causes a lower level of conversion. On the other hand, transverse dispersion is often a desirable feature since good transverse mixing will reduce the transverse concentration and temperature gradients and hence improve the selectivity of a thermochemical reactor. Transverse dispersion of mass is of more importance in a three-dimensional flow-by electrochemical reactor than that in a thermochemical reactor because the potential drop is in the transverse direction and the reaction rate and selectivity are determined by the potential as well as concentration and temperature distributions. The transverse dispersion of mass is expected to have a more profound effect on the performance of a 3D electrochemical reactor due to the strong interaction among the concentration, temperature and potential distributions in the transverse direction. In the present work, the axial and transverse dispersion of mass were studied with a twodimensional dispersion model in two types of rectangular packed bed: i) randomly packed glass beads with the average bead diameter of 2 mm and a macroscopic bed porosity of 0.41; ii) a representation of a 3D flow-by electrode - consisting of a bed of carbon felt with the carbon fibre diameter of 20 urn and a macroscopic bed porosity of 0.95. A tracer stimulation-response system was set up and axial and transverse dispersion of In Blackfoot, DPs appear to take obligatory wide scope with respect to the universal quantifier while bare nouns take obligatory narrow scope with respect to the universal quantifier. I propose that the difference in scope-taking properties of Blackfoot nominals is a consequence of their syntactic position. I propose that over argument DPs are adjoined to the clause whereas bare nouns are base generated in an argument position. I suggest that the scope properties fall out from this distinction in the syntax. The Blackfoot universal quantifier, ohkan-, is a preverb. That is, ohkan- occurs as a part of the verb stem preceding the verb root itself. I propose that ohkan- is head of its own QP which takes the VP as its complement. I follow Sportiche (1998) in categorizing ohkan- as a stranded quantifier since it is base generated external to VP. Bare nouns, since they are generated within VP, are structurally inferior to ohkan-, since they are within its c-command domain. The adjoined DPs, however, are structurally superior to ohkan-, since they are adjoined to the clause. I propose that the structural superiority of DPs translates to their obligatory wide scope. Conversely, the structural inferiority of bare nouns translates to their obligatory narrow scope. Blackfoot is a relatively understudied Algonquian language spoken in Southern Alberta and Northern Montana. The Blackfoot data presented in this work come primarily from my own work with two Blackfoot speakers. Both of my language consultants hail from Southern Alberta speak and the Blood dialect of Blackfoot. / Arts, Faculty of / Linguistics, Department of / Graduate

A theoretical approach is presented to study the quantifiers like evidence of the languageof uncertainty. The following topics are considered: language and uncertainty, probabilistic reasoning, learning and evaluation of the quantifiers, and the study of the quantifiers like study of the meaning and the understanding of words, which constitutes the psycholinguis- tics of the quantifiers. We argue that the quantifiers, as words, are part of the language of uncertainty that is part of the probabilistic reasoning, but the mechanism of its learning is not known. We also consider that it is important to locate the study of the quantifiers within the study of the meaning as evidence of internal psychological processes. Future investigatio-ns will facilitate a better understanding of the use of the quantifiers. / Se presenta una aproximación teórica para estudiar los cuantificadores como evidencia del lenguaje de incertidumbre. Se consideran los siguientes temas: lenguaje e incertidumbre, razonamiento probabilístico, aprendizaje y evaluación de los cuantificadores, y estudio de los cuantificadores como estudio del significado y la comprensión de palabras, los cuales constituyen la psicolingüística de los cuantificadores. Nosotros argumentamos que los cuantificadores, como palabras, forman parte del lenguaje de incertidumbre que es parte del razonamiento probabilístico, pero el mecanismo de su aprendizaje es desconocido. También consideramos que es importante situar el estudio de los cuantificadores dentro del estudio del significado como evidencia de procesos psicológicos internos. Investigaciones futuras ayudarán a una mayor comprensión del uso de los cuantificadores.

The thesis comprises three foundational studies on the topics named in its title, together with an introduction. Ch. 1 argues against a popular combination of views in the philosophy of language: Propositionality, which says that the semantic values of natural language sentences (relative to contexts) are the propositions they express (in those contexts) and Compositionality, which says that the semantic value of a complex expression of a natural language (in a context) is determined by the semantic values its immediate constituents have (in that same context) together with their syntactic mode of combination. Ch. 1 argues that the Naïve Picture is inconsistent with the presence of variable-binding in natural languages. Ch. 2 criticizes the strategy of using “operator arguments” to establish relativist conclusions such as: that the truth values of propositions vary with time (Time Relativism) or that they vary with location (Location Relativism). Operator arguments purport to derive the conclusion that propositions vary in truth value along some parameter P from the premise that there are, in some language, sentential operators that operate on or “shift” the P parameter. I identify two forms of operator argument, offer a reconstruction of each, and I argue that both they rely on an implausible, coarse-grained conception of propositions. Ch. 3 is an assessment of the prospects for semantic internalism. It argues, first, that to accommodate Putnam’s famous Twin Earth examples, an internalist must maintain that narrow semantic content determines different extensions relative to agents and times. Second, that the most thoroughly worked out version of semantic internalism – the epistemic two-dimensionalism (E2D) of David Chalmers – can accommodate the original Twin Earth thought experiments but is refuted by similar thought experiments that involve temporally or spatially symmetric agents.

Os sistemas Q1 e Q2, desenvolvidos por Andréa Lopari?, perfazem três principais modificações na semântica clássica: primeiramente, o universo do discurso pode não estar limitado aos objetos que pertencem ao domínio de uma dada estrutura; em segundo lugar, a relação de identidade é determinada como a diagonal desse domínio (assim, tal relação pode não ser aplicável a todas as coisas sobre as quais a linguagem possa falar); em terceiro lugar, o quantificador existencial, em Q1, bem como o universal, em Q2, podem alcançar valores que estejam fora do domínio da estrutura. Como consequência, embora definida classicamente, a negação apresenta alguns comportamentos não clássicos - a negação de um predicado numa fórmula atômica, por exemplo, pode caracterizar algo maior que, e não tão bem definido quanto, o complemento da extensão desse predicado relativamente ao domínio. [...]. / The systems Q1 and Q2, developed by Andréa Lopari?, make up three main changes in classical semantics: first, the universe of discourse can be not limited by the objects that belongs to the domain of a given structure; second, the relation of identity is fixed as a diagonal of this domain (so, it may be not applicable to all things about what the language can speak); third, the existential quantifier in Q1, as well as the universal in Q2, may capture values out of the domain of the structure. As a consequence, although classically defined, the negation presents some non-classical behavior - a negated predicate in an atomic formula, for instance, may characterize something larger and not as well defined as the complement of the extension of this predicate relatively to the domain. [...].

The overall aim of the present study is to investigate syntactic variation in certain Present-day English noun phrase types including the quantifiers all, whole, both and half (e.g. a half hour vs. half an hour). More specific research questions concerns the overall frequency distribution of the variants, how they are distributed across regions and media and what linguistic factors influence the choice of variant. The study is based on corpus material comprising three newspapers from 1995 (The Independent, The New York Times and The Sydney Morning Herald) and two spoken corpora (the dialogue component of the BNC and the Longman Spoken American Corpus). The book presents a number of previously not discussed issues with respect to all, whole, both and half. The study of distribution shows that one form often predominated greatly over the other(s) and that there were several cases of regional variation. A number of linguistic factors further seem to be involved for each of the variables analysed, such as the syntactic function of the noun phrase and the presence of certain elements in the NP or its near co-text. For each of the variables, all factors were ranked according to their strength of correlation with particular variants. The study also discusses a possible grammaticalisation process concerning NPs with half and the possibility of all sometimes having another function than expressing totality: to express large quantity. The whole idea of grammatical synonymy has been questioned by some scholars, but the conclusion drawn in the present study is that there are variables that are at least very close to each other in meaning, and that a number of linguistic and non-linguistic factors influence our choices of variant. A great deal of the information obtained was too detailed to be useful for pedagogical purposes, but in several cases the results could clearly be used to improve school and reference grammars.