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125Measure adverbialsLinguistics and Philosophy 14 (6). 1991.This papers argues that the apparent constraint of adverbials like 'for two hours' (or 'throughout the house') should not be viewed as a restriction to telic events or event predicates, but should be explained entirely in terms of the quantificational status of such adverials, acting as quantifiers over (contextually individuated) parts of a time interval (or spatial region).
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404Coordination and ComparativesDissertation, MIT. 1992.This thesis explores the syntax and semantics of coordinate structures on the basis of three-dimensional syntactic structures. In particular it gives an analysis of sentences of the sort 'a man came and a woman left who knew each other well' on the basis of implicit coordination of NPs, made available within three-dimensionional syntactic structures..
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45The most common analyses of comparatives make use of degrees, abstract objects that form a total ordering. In this paper, I will explore a novel analysis of comparatives in which the central notion is not the notion of a degree, but rather the notion of a concrete property manifestation, a particularized property, or a trope, as it is most commonly called in contemporary metaphysics. This trope-based analysis, I argue, has some major conceptual and empirical advantages over a degree-based accoun…Read more
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780The semantics of existenceLinguistics and Philosophy 36 (1): 31-63. 2013.The notion of existence is a very puzzling one philosophically. Often philosophers have appealed to linguistic properties of sentences stating existence. However, the appeal to linguistic intuitions has generally not been systematic and without serious regard of relevant issues in linguistic semantics. This paper has two aims. On the one hand, it will look at statements of existence from a systematic linguistic point of view, in order to try to clarify what the actual semantics of such statement…Read more
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538Unity and Plurality. Philosophy, Logic, and SemanticsOxford University Press. 2016.This volume brings together new work on the logic and ontology of plurality and a range of recent articles exploring novel applications to natural language semantics. The contributions in this volume in particular investigate and extend new perspectives presented by plural logic and non-standard mereology and explore their applications to a range of natural language phenomena. Contributions by P. Aquaviva, A. Arapinis, M. Carrara, P. McKay, F. Moltmann, O. Linnebo,…Read more
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275Relative Truth and the First PersonPhilosophical Studies 150 (2). 2010.In recent work on contextdependency, it has been argued that certain types of sentences give rise to a notion of relative truth. In particular, sentences containing predicates of personal taste and moral or aesthetic evaluation as well as epistemic modals are held to express a proposition (relative to a context of use) which is true or false not only relative to a world of evaluation, but other parameters as well, such as standards of taste or knowledge or an agent. Thus, a sentence like chocol…Read more
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456Propositions, attitudinal objects, and the distinction between actions and productsCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume on Propositions, Edited by G. Rattan and D. Hunter 43 (5-6): 679-701. 2013.This paper argues that attitudinal objects, entities of the sort of John's judgment, John's thought, and John's claim, should play the role of propositions, as the cognitive products of cognitive acts, not the acts themselves.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
PhD, 1992
La Terrasse, Rhone-Alpes, France
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |