Research

I explore what modification and negation tell us about the logical form of resultatives: a resultative relates the events of its two parts, but is a predicate of a third event, a change, equal to neither. This is important for explaining the construction—most significantly, the direct object restriction—and understanding how it differs from others that seem similar. It also shapes how we might use resultatives in the analysis of synthetic causatives.

In my (2020) I defended an intentionalist understanding of Chomskyan linguistics whereby standard linguistic entities (“SLEs”) such as words, phrases and phonemes don’t exist, but are “intentional inexistents” merely represented in our brains. Reviewers complained this was in tension with “externalist” theories of representation that require the external existence of a representation’s referents. I argue that this requirement can be met by the kind of idealization to which Chomskyan theories appeal, and reference to highly idealized SLEs objects can be understood via idealized dispositions, along the lines of Quine’s (1960) invocation of Weierstrass’s “epsilondelta” strategy for defining a limit. Where such a strategy is available in a domain, it would seem to render the externalist/internalist distinction there explanatorily otiose.

Standard accounts of modals and conditionals fail to derive the correct meaning of anankastic conditionals like ‘If you want to go to Harlem, you have to take the A train’, where it seems as if the modal in the consequent is restricted by the embedded complement of want (you go to Harlem), rather than by the whole antecedent (you want to go to Harlem). This has led to proposals for a special semantics for want (Condoravdi and Lauer, 2016) or a covert purpose clause associated with teleological (goal-oriented) modality (von Fintel and Iatridou, 2005). In this paper, we show that the apparent non-compositionality of anankastic conditionals is more general, and can be replicated with other modal flavors and attitude verbs: all can trigger what we call “harmonizing readings”. We offer a pragmatic account that generalizes across modal flavors and attitudes. Specifically, we argue that harmonizing arises when the meaning of the antecedent together with background assumptions gives rise to a modal inference that matches in flavor with the consequent modal. Our account predicts when harmonizing is possible and when it isn’t, without relying on any lexical or syntactic idiosyncrasies.

It is commonly assumed that we conceive of the past and the future as symmetrical. In this book, Fabrizio Cariani develops a new theory of future-directed discourse and thought that shows that our linguistic and philosophical conceptions of the past and future are, in fact, fundamentally different. Future thought and talk, Cariani suggests, are best understood in terms of a systematic analogy with counterfactual thought and talk, and are not just mirror images of the past. Cariani makes this case by developing detailed formal semantic theories as well as by advancing less technical views about the nature of future-directed judgment and prediction. His book addresses in a thought-provoking way several important debates in contemporary philosophy, and his synthesis of parallel threads of research will benefit scholars in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, linguistics and cognitive science.

This book is a defense of a Chomskyan conception of language against philosophical objections that have been raised against it. It also provides, however, a critical examination of some of the glosses on the theory: the assimilation of it to traditional Rationalism; a supposed conflict between being innate and learned; an unclear ontology and the need of a "representational pretense" with regard to it; and, most crucially, a rejection of Chomsky's eliminativism about the role of intentionality not only in his own theories, but in any serious science at all. This last is a fundamentally important issue for linguistics, psychology, and philosophy that an examination of a theory as rich and promising as a Chomskyan linguistics should help illuminate. The book ends with a discussion of some further issues that Chomsky misleadingly associates with his theory: an anti-realism about ordinary thought and talk, and a dismissal of the mind/body problem(s), towards the solution of some of which his theory in fact makes an important contribution.

Children use correlations between the syntax of a clause and the meaning of its predicate to draw inferences about word meanings. On one proposal, these inferences are underwritten by a structural similarity between syntactic and semantic representations: learners expect that the number of clause arguments exactly matches the number of participant roles in the event concept under which its referent is viewed. We argue against this proposal, and in favor of a theory rooted in syntactic and semantic contents – in mappings from syntactic positions to thematic relations. We (i) provide evidence that infants view certain scenes under a concept with three participant relations (a girl taking a truck from a boy), and (ii) show that toddlers do not expect these representations to align numerically with clauses used to describe those scenes: they readily accept two-argument descriptions (“she pimmed the truck!”). This argues against syntactic bootstrapping theories underwritten by mappings between structural features of syntactic and semantic representations. Instead, our findings support bootstrapping based on grammatical and thematic content. Children’s earliest inferences may rely on the assumption that the syntactic asymmetry between subject and object correlates with a difference in how their referents relate to the event described by the sentence.

Quantificational determiners are often said to be devices for expressing relations. For example, the meaning of every is standardly described as the inclusion relation, with a sentence like every frog is green meaning roughly that the green things include the frogs. Here, we consider an older, non-relational alternative: determiners are tools for creating restricted quantifiers. On this view, determiners specify how many elements of a restricted domain (e.g., the frogs) satisfy a given condition (e.g., being green). One important difference concerns how the determiner treats its two grammatical arguments. On the relational view, the arguments are on a logical par as independent terms that specify the two relata. But on the restricted view, the arguments play distinct logical roles: specifying the limited domain versus supplying an additional condition on domain entities. We present psycholinguistic evidence suggesting that the restricted view better describes what speakers know when they know the meaning of a determiner. In particular, we find that when asked to evaluate sentences of the form every F is G, participants mentally group the Fs but not the Gs. Moreover, participants forego representing the group defined by the intersection of F and G. This tells against the idea that speakers understand every F is G as implying that the Fs bear relation (e.g., inclusion) to a second group.

“Analytic” sentences, such as “Pediatricians are doctors,” have historically been characterized as ones that are true by virtue of the meanings of their words alone and/or can be known to be so solely by knowing those meanings. They are contrasted with more usual “synthetic” sentences, such as “Pediatricians are rich,” (knowledge of) whose truth depends also upon (knowledge of) the worldly fortunes of pediatricians. Beginning with Frege, many philosophers hoped to show that the truths of logic and mathematics and other apparently a priori domains, such as much of philosophy and the foundations of science, could be shown to be analytic by careful “conceptual analysis” of the meanings of crucial words. Analyses of philosophically important terms and concepts, such as “material object,” “cause,” “freedom,” or “knowledge” turned out, however, to be far more problematic than philosophers had anticipated, and some, particularly Quine and his followers, began to doubt the reality of the distinction. This in turn led him and others to doubt the factual determinacy of claims of meaning and translation in general, as well as, ultimately, the reality and determinacy of mental states. There have been a number of interesting reactions to this scepticism, in philosophy and linguistics (this latter to be treated in the supplement, Analyticity and Chomskyan Linguistics); but, while the reality of mental states might be saved, it has yet to be shown that appeals to the analytic will ever be able to ground “analysis” and the a priori in quite the way that philosophers had hoped. (Note that all footnotes are substantive, but inessential to an initial reading, and are accessed in a separate file by clicking on the bracketed superscript. The mention vs. use of a term will be indicated either by quotation marks or italics, depending upon which is most easily readable in the context.)

Event Semantics (ES) says that clauses in natural languages are descriptions of events. Why believe this? The answer cannot be that we use clauses to talk about events, or that events are important in ontology or psychology. Other sorts of things have the same properties, but no special role in semantics. The answer must be that this view helps to explain the semantics of natural languages. But then, what is it to explain the semantics of natural languages? Here there are many approaches, differing on whether natural languages are social and objective or individual and mental; whether the semantics delivers truth values at contexts or just constraints on truth-evaluable thoughts; which inferences it should explain as formally provable, if any; and which if any grammatical patterns it should explain directly. The argument for ES will differ accordingly, as will the consequences, for ontology, psychology, or linguistics, of its endorsement. In this chapter I trace the outlines of this story, sketching four distinct arguments for the analysis that ES makes possible: with it we can treat a dependent phrase and its syntactic host as separate predicates of related or identical events. Analysis of this kind allows us to state certain grammatical generalizations, formalize patterns of entailment, provide an extensional semantics for adverbs, and most importantly to derive certain sentence meanings that are not easily derived otherwise. But in addition, it will systematically validate inferences that are unsound, if we think conventionally about events and semantics. The moral is, with ES we cannot maintain both an ordinary metaphysics and a truth-conditional semantics that is simple. Those who would accept ES, and draw conclusions about the world or how we view it, must therefore choose which concession to make. I discuss four notable choices.

This book is about permissive consent--the moral tool we use to give another person permission to do what would otherwise be forbidden. For instance, consent to enter my home gives you permission to do what would otherwise be trespass. This transformation is the very thing that philosophers identify as consent--which is why we call it a normative power. It is something individuals can do, by choice, to change the moral or legal world. But what human acts or attitudes render consent? When do coercive threats, offers, or lies undermine the transformative power of consent? What intentions or conventions are necessary to render consent meaningful?

This book develops a novel theory that explains the moral features of consent in some of the most central domains of human life--but that also serves as a study in how to theorize normative power. It argues that consent is a moral mechanism with exactly the set of features that, when triggered, prevents another person's behavior from constituting a certain kind of wrongdoing. What kind of wrongdoing? It depends on what sort of permission is being granted. Sometimes consent permits others to enter, occupy, or act within some bounded domain wherein the consent-giver holds moral authority. In these cases, consent operates to prevent what the book calls: Invasive Wrongdoing. By identifying the moral features that underlie this special wrongdoing, we can learn what it takes to render consent.