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Generic Interpretations Of Possessive Recursion In English-Speaking Children, Tyler Poisson, Jill De Villiers, Hirsto Kyuchukov, Bea Weinand, Lilly Young, Sofia Morales, Laisha Aniceto

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

Two-part s-possessives such as the dad’s kid’s bike admit at least two distinct interpretations: the dad has a kid who has a bike, or the dad has a bike that is made for kids. We propose that the former interpretation derives from recursively embedding DP-possessives, whereas the latter derives from representing kid’s bike asa generic NP-possessive. Accordingly, in the right context, two-part s-possessives are fully ambiguous for adults between ‘recursive’ and ‘generic’ readings. These readings can be disambiguated syntactically. Consider the difference in meaning when we insert a relative clause and extract the constituent kid’s bike—the kid’s bike that is …