Abstract
I have two aims for the present paper, one narrow and one broad. The narrow aim is to show that a class of data originally described by Lynsey Wolter (That’s that; the semantics and pragmatics of demonstrative noun phrases, PhD thesis, University of California at Santa Cruz, 2006) empirically undermine the leading treatments of complex demonstratives that have been described in the literature. The broader aim of the paper is to show that Wolter demonstratives, as I will call the constructions I focus on, are a threat not just to existing treatments, but to any possible theory that retains the uncontroversial assumptions that relative clauses always form a constituent with the nouns they modify, and that semantic composition proceeds sequentially and locally, with the inputs to interpretation having the structure syntax tells us they do.
Highlights
English demonstratives occur in two basic syntactic configurations
The narrow aim is to show that a class of data originally described by Lynsey Wolter (That’s that; the semantics and pragmatics of demonstrative noun phrases, PhD thesis, University of California at Santa Cruz, 2006) empirically undermine the leading treatments of complex demonstratives that have been described in the literature
The broader aim of the paper is to show that Wolter demonstratives, as I will call the constructions I focus on, are a threat not just to existing treatments, but to any possible theory that retains the uncontroversial assumptions that relative clauses always form a constituent with the nouns they modify, and that semantic composition proceeds sequentially and locally, with the inputs to interpretation having the structure syntax tells us they do
Summary
English demonstratives occur in two basic syntactic configurations. In the philosophical literature, examples of the first sort, illustrated by (1), are commonly called ‘simple demonstratives’, while examples of the second sort, illustrated by (2), are called ‘complex demonstratives’:. Despite the tremendous variety of semantic positions that have been described in the literature on complex demonstratives, there are essentially just two ways in which philosophers have attempted to explain the fact that what appears to be the very same word, ‘that’, can be used to produce this pair of distinctive readings.. The point has been made in several places, philosophers have been reluctant to acknowledge that a class of data originally described by Wolter (2006) fatally undermine both HOMOPHONY and HIDDEN ARGUMENTS.7 I will say more about STANDARD SYNTAX and LOCAL COMPOSITION below; for the key point is that holding them means accepting that in a sentence like (11), the determiner ‘that’ takes ‘current president of the United States’ as a single property-denoting argument. The result is a puzzle that has not, so far, been properly appreciated.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
