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Variables In Natural Language, Meredith Landman
Variables In Natural Language, Meredith Landman
Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014
A central goal of generative linguistics is to determine what constitutes a possible grammar of a natural language. This thesis works toward that goal in positing a constraint on the possible semantic types of variables in natural language. Specifically, I argue here that the logical forms (LFs) of natural languages do not contain higher-type variables, i.e., variables of a type higher than that of an individual, type e (see Chierchia (1984) and Baker (2003) for similar proposals). I refer to this constraint as the No Higher-Type Variables constraint (NHTV).
Assuming that the domain of individuals, D, includes at least objects, …