Monday, April 12, 2010

Post-meeting with Prof. MacFarlane 4/12

A few quick suggestions:

A v B =? ~(~A & ~B)

try making scope REALLY REALLY obvious?

"The following is possible..."

"Either...or...."

"Either Joe said that..." [does this one work??...]

...And some summary of today's musings:

1) think of the need to add structure to possible worlds semantics (covers, partitions) and where it comes from. Is there motivation independently of this? Is independent motivation a good thing? Could it be that the difference between e.g. "a left hand or a right hand" and "a hand" is just pragmatic?

2) What motivations come from indefinites that is NOT like this?...Donkey sentences, scope-island escaping properties, etc.?

3) Need to address the semantic entry for "or" and whether scoping out all the way (when it's syntactically narrow) is really an option! This was not well-resolved (or at least not well-remembered.)


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