Jeffrey C. King

Though these expressions are often called “names of months”, there is good reason to hold that they are not names at all. Syntactically, these words behave as count nouns. They combine with determiners such as ‘every’, ‘many’, ‘exactly three’ etc. to form restricted quantifiers:3 (1) Every January I go skiing. (2) I spent many Januarys at Squaw Valley. (3) I wasted exactly three Januarys in Bakersfield. Like other count nouns, they can take relative clauses in constructions such as (1)-(3): (1a) Every January that you visited we went skiing. (2a) I spent many Januarys that I will never forget at Squaw Valley. (3a) I wasted three Januarys that seemed interminable in Bakersfield. They also combine with the copula, indefinite article and adjectival modifiers to form predicates in the way that other count nouns do: (4) The first full month I lived in Northern California was a pleasant July. Further, it is generally held that only constituents of the same syntactic category can be conjoined. And as the following example shows, ‘January’ can be conjoined with other count nouns:4 (5) All Januarys and funerals last too long. Thus distributional evidence strongly suggests that ‘January’, ‘February’, etc. are count nouns. Since in general we take count nouns to express properties, we ought to take ‘January’, ‘February’ etc. to express properties as well.5 We shall return to the question of what properties such words express below. For now, we shall stick with syntax

Semantics is the discipline that studies linguistic meaning generally, and the qualification ‘formal’ indicates something about the sorts of techniques used in investigating linguistic meaning. More specifically, formal semantics is the discipline that employs techniques from symbolic logic, mathematics, and mathematical logic to produce precisely characterized theories of meaning for natural languages or artificial languages. Formal semantics as we know it first arose in the twentieth century. It was made possible by certain developments in logic during that period. This article chronicles those developments and how they led to the development of formal semantics.

It is generally believed that natural languages have lots of contextually sensitive expressions. In addition to familiar examples like ‘I’, ‘here’, ‘today’, ‘he’, ‘that’ and so on that everyone takes to be contextually sensitive, examples of expressions that many would take to be contextually sensitive include tense, modals, gradable adjectives, relational terms , possessives and quantifi ers . With the exception of contextually sensitive expressions discussed by Kaplan [1977], there has not been a lot of discussion as to the mechanism whereby contextually sensitive expressions get their values in context, aside from vague references to speakers’ intentions. In a recent paper, I proposed a candidate for being this mechanism and defended the claim that it is such. Because, as I suggested, these issues have been most extensively discussed in the case of demonstratives, I focused on these expressions by way of contrasting the mechanism I proposed with others in the literature. In the present work, I simply state what I claim is the mechanism by means of which demonstratives secure semantic values in contexts without defending the claim that it is so. I then consider some claims made by Kent Bach, and arguments for those claims, which would undermine the account I propose of how demonstratives secure semantic values in context

This Handbook brings together contributions from leading scholars of constitutional theory, with backgrounds in law, philosophy, and political science. Its 60 chapters not only offer an exceptional survey of the field but also provide a major contribution to it. The book explores three main areas. Firstly, the values upheld by a constitution, including rights, freedom, equality, dignity and well-being. Secondly, the modalities of a constitutional system, such as the separation of powers, democratic representation, and the rule of law. Finally, the institutions through which it operates, both legal and political; including courts, elections, parliaments and international organisations. It also considers the challenges confronting constitutional arrangements from growing inequality, populism, climate change and migration.

It is generally agreed that some anaphoric pronouns with quantifier antecedents occur outside the syntactic scope of their antecedents. First, there is “donkey anaphora,” of both the conditional and relative clause varieties:If Sarah owns a donkey, she beats it.Every woman who owns a donkey beats it.Without going through the details, let me just assert that there is good reason to think that the pronouns in and do not occur in the syntactic scope of the quantifier’ a donkey’. A second sort of case in which a pronoun with a quantified antecedent occurs outside the syntactic scope of its quantifier antecedent is one in which the pronoun and its antecedent occur in different sentences.A second sort of case in which a pronoun with a quantified antecedent occurs outside the syntactic scope of its quantifier antecedent is one in which the pronoun and its antecedent occur in different sentences. Examples of such “discourse anaphora,” from the very simple to the slightly complex, include:A man is following Sarah. He is from the Internal Revenue Service.A man is following Sarah. Melanie believes he is from the Internal Revenue Service.It is possible that several students flunked at most five exams. Melanie believes they didn’t study for them.Suzi ought to apologize to most of Ann’s dinner guests. It is certain that she insulted them. But it is unclear whether they noticed.

Lots of contextually sensitive expressions appear to have context invariant meanings that do not by themselves suffice to secure semantic values for those expressions in context. For example, suppose I say 1. She is smart. where I do not demonstrate any female, I don’t intend that some female is the semantic value of my use of ‘she’, no female is uniquely salient in the context of utterance, and no female has been under discussion. It would appear in such a case that the context invariant meaning of ‘she’ does not secure a semantic value in context for my use of ‘she’, resulting in infelicity. After all, what would that semantic value in context be? This appears to show that the context invariant meaning of ‘she’ does not by itself secure semantic values in context for it. The class of expressions that are like ‘she’ in this respect is quite large. It arguably includes simple and complex demonstratives, tense, expressions taking implicit arguments, gradable adjectives, quantifiers, ‘only’, possessives, conditionals, modals and more. I call these expressions supplementives to highlight the fact that their context invariant meanings need to be supplemented in context for them to secure semantic values in context. I claim that supplementives differ from each other in the following two ways: 1. The degree to which normal speakers are explicitly aware that the expression is contextually sensitive. 2. The degree to which ordinary speakers are explicitly aware of what sort of semantic value in context the expression takes. I hold the view that semantic values in context for supplementives are fixed by recognizable speaker intentions. However, I argue that given the differences between supplementives with respect to 1 and 2, the intentions fixing the semantic values in context of supplementives that differ with respect to 1 and 2 will themselves be different, while still all being speaker intentions that some entity o be the semantic value of the use of the supplementive in context.

Adult rat hypothalamo-pituitary axis and choroid plexus are rich in basic fibroblast growth factor which likely has a role in fluid homeostasis. Towards this end, we characterized the distribution and modulation of FGF2 in the human and rat central nervous system. To ascertain a functional link between arginine vasopressin and FGF2, a rat model of chronic dehydration was used to test the hypothesis that FGF2 expression, like that of AVP, is altered by perturbed fluid balance.Immunohistochemistry and confocal microscopy were used to examine the distribution of FGF2 and AVP neuropeptides in the normal human brain. In order to assess effects of chronic dehydration, Sprague-Dawley rats were water deprived for 3 days. AVP neuropeptide expression and changes in FGF2 distribution in the brain, neural lobe of the pituitary and kidney were assessed by immunohistochemistry, and western blotting.In human hypothalamus, FGF2 and AVP were co-localized in the cytoplasm of supraoptic and paraventricular magnocellular neurons and axonal processes. Immunoreactive FGF2 was associated with small granular structures distributed throughout neuronal cytoplasm. Neurohypophysial FGF2 immunostaining was found in axonal processes, pituicytes and Herring bodies. Following chronic dehydration in rats, there was substantially-enhanced FGF2 staining in basement membranes underlying blood vessels, pituicytes and other glia. This accompanied remodeling of extracellular matrix. Western blot data revealed that dehydration increased expression of the hypothalamic FGF2 isoforms of ca. 18, 23 and 24 kDa. In lateral ventricle choroid plexus of dehydrated rats, FGF2 expression was augmented in the epithelium but reduced interstitially.Dehydration altered FGF2 expression patterns in AVP-containing magnocellular neurons and neurohypophysis, as well as in choroid plexus epithelium. This supports the involvement of centrally-synthesized FGF2, putatively coupled to that of AVP, in homeostatic mechanisms that regulate fluid balance.

The dissertation is an attempt to provide a formal semantics for occurrences of anaphoric pronouns and definite descriptions whose quantifier antecedents occur in sentences other than those in which the anaphoric pronouns and descriptions themselves occur, . The predominant view of anaphoric pronouns whose quantifier antecedents occur in the same sentence as they do is that they function as bound variables . Chapter 1 of this dissertation is constituted by a series of arguments against a bound variable treatment of q - terms and the observation that the semantic behavior of q - terms is similar to that of certain singular terms in English arguments. Given the similarity of semantic behavior between the latter and q - terms, it seems plausible to suppose that a theory of the semantic behavior of these singular terms in English arguments would provide a model for the eventual production of a semantic theory of q - terms. In Chapter 2, a formal semantics for these singular terms in arguments is produced. In Chapter 3, a formal semantics for q - terms is produced, on the model of the semantics in Chapter 2. Finally, in Chapter 4 it is shown that the formal semantics of Chapter 3 can be extended to handle pronouns in discourses containing verbs of propositional attitudes such as 'wants', 'dreams' etc. It is also shown that some occurrences of sentences containing q - terms have truth conditions not expressible by any quantified first order sentence. One must use finite partially ordered quantifiers to express the truth conditions of such occurrences of sentences. ;The dissertation contains two appendices: the first is a technical discussion of the formal semantics of Hans Kamp which shows that his theory cannot accomodate the linguistic data mine is designed to handle. The second examines the views of Gareth Evans, Charles Chastain and Keith Donnellan on certain anaphoric pronouns