Direct compositionality and variable-free semantics: the case of Antecedent Contained Deletion

Abstract

Since at least as early as Sag (1976), the phenomenon of Antecedent Contained Deletion (hereafter, ACD) has generally been taken as strong evidence for a level of Logical Form or some other abstract syntactic representation mediating between the surface syntax and the model-theoretic interpretation of a sentence. In particular, it is often taken as a settled matter that ACD shows that at least sometimes a quantified NP in object position is not interpreted “in situ.” Rather, the semantic composition of a sentence like John read every book involves a level of representation in which the object is just a simple pronoun or trace interpreted as a variable. The purpose of this paper is to show that this received wisdom is mistaken. ACD is perfectly compatible with the view that quantified NPs are interpreted “in situ” – i.e. the meaning of read directly combines with the meaning of every book to give a VP meaning. What is at stake here is more important than just the question of how to interpret quantified NPs in object position: my main concern is to provide support for two broader hypotheses. The first is the hypothesis of direct compositionality: the syntactic combinatory operations “build” (i.e. define as well-formed) surface syntactic expressions while the semantics works in tandem to supply a model-theoretic interpretation for each expression as it is “built” in the syntax.