Magdalena Schwager - Reconsidering Individual Concepts

Following Montague (1974), to account for noun phrases in core-intensional argument positions, common nouns are often taken to denote (sets of) individual concepts, which in the case of situation dependent functional concepts (FB1) can be non-constant.

(1)    The temperature is rising.

Answering well-known problems with this view (cf. Dowty, Wall, Peters 1981), Lasersohn (2005) challenges the status of individual concepts as coming from the lexicon and derives them compositionally from Fregean definite descriptions.
   I argue that neither view on individual concepts is correct and that individual concepts come in at the interface to pragmatics instead. With Lasersohn (2005), I assume that (after saturating possible relational arguments) common nouns uniformly denote sets of individuals at an index. But I follow Aloni (2000) in that quantification, belief attribution, and questioning always proceed with respect to a particular way of how the domain of individuals is conceived of. Technically, this is captured in terms of a conceptual cover: a set of individual concepts that (i) jointly, at each index pick up all individuals, and (ii) do not overlap at any index. I propose that quantification proceeds over that part of the contextually salient cover(s) that describes the domain restriction (e.g. the temperatures, bodyguards, mayors at the relevant indices).
   This accounts naturally for the influence of the conceptual type of the noun on the interpretation of change. mayor is understood as expressing a functional concept (at each index, one mayor per city), and (2) can be true if three cities exchange their mayors among themselves. bodyguard (of Arnold) is understood as describing a set of people at an index (relational), and (3) requires that the overall set has changed.

(2)    Three mayors have changed.
(3)    Three bodyguards (of Arnold) have changed.

In a context where bodyguards are thought of as coming with specific jobs each, the ‘change’ interpretation of (3) assimilates to (2), which is predicted by the approach in terms of conceptual covers. The pragmatic approach also makes correct predictions for cases with variable readings of constant nouns. What increases in (4) is the individual concept mapping each index onto the temperature in my office at that index, which is used to pick out the individual denoted by 34 degrees.

(4)    The temperature in my office is 34 degrees, but the 34 degrees will certainly increase.

What individual concepts form part of the conceptual cover is determined by relevance, consistency and informativity (cf. Aloni 2000) and depends, as shown by the contrast in (2) vs. (3) among other on the concept type of the noun.

References

Aloni (2000) Quantification under Conceptual Covers. Amsterdam.

Dowty, Wall & Peters (1981) Introduction to Montague Semantics. Dordrecht.

Lasersohn (2005) The temperature paradoxas evidence for a presuppositional analysis of definite descriptions. LI 36,127-144.

Montague (1974) The proper treatment of quantification in English. In: Thomason (Ed.) Formal Philosophy. Selected Papers of Richard Montague. New Haven/London, 247-365.