Abstract
Depiction verbs such as paint license i(mage)- and p(ortrait)-readings; for instance,Ben painted a cow can convey that Ben produced an image of an unspecific cow or a portrait ofa specific cow. This paper takes issue with a property-based intensional analysis of depictionverbs (Zimmermann, 2006b, 2016) and instead argues for an extensional account. Accordingly,the i-reading is rooted in the introduction of worldly representations by the explicit noun cowas such, whereas the p-reading is rooted in the interpolation of an implicit representation viacoercion. This take on the ambiguity captures the following key traits. On i-readings, only representationsare accessible to quantifiers and anaphors; moreover, intensional effects such assubstitution failure disappear once ordinary objects and representations are adequately distinguished.P-readings, by contrast, involve representations that depend on the portrayed ordinaryobjects as particulars; correspondingly, only ordinary objects are accessible to quantifiers andanaphors. The proposal is spelled out in Asher’s (2011) Type Composition Logic.Keywords: depiction verbs, visual representations, intensional transitives, coercion, TypeComposition Logic.
Highlights
This paper is concerned with the interpretation of depiction verbs such as paint in combination with a direct nominal object
Combinations of depiction verbs such as paint with a nominal object are ambiguous between i(mage)- and p(ortrait)-readings
Their analysis should comply with the following key traits
Summary
This paper is concerned with the interpretation of depiction verbs such as paint (draw, sculpt, . . . ) in combination with a direct nominal object. According to the first reading, Ben produced a portrait of a cow of flesh and blood. According to the second reading, Ben produced an image of what cows visually amount to in general (that is, a cowpicture in Goodman’s words). ‘There is a specific cow that Ben produced an image of.’ b. Nouns presuppose the justification of disjoint types consisting of the object-type and its corresponding representation; that is, cow relates to either cows of flesh and blood or their representations. Depiction verbs such as paint select for representations, but license local coercion from objects to representations if a type-conflict arises.
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