Abstract
Vendler [19] described derived nominals (DNs) like the collapse/ing of the Germans as ambiguous between event denoting expressions and proposition denoting expressions. DNs can combine with event-selecting predicates (1a), like gradual, which bona fide propositional that-clauses or fact-denoting expressions cannot (1c), and have event-readings. ((1a) can be paraphrased as ‘the event of the Germans collapsing was gradual’.) DNs can also combine with proposition-selecting predicates like aware of (2a) which always also allow finite complements (2b) and, in such cases, have propositional readings—(2a) and (2b) are synonymous. We call DNs in the latter cases Concealed Propositions (ConPs), and we defend the idea that they are analogous in important respects to concealed questions (CQs). Here we argue against Vendler’s Ambiguity Hypothesis (3) and defend an analysis of DNs in which they uniformly denote (or quantify over) events. In doing so, we overcome a challenge, discovered by Zucchi [20], to the unambiguous event approach, and provide an analysis to both definite and quantified DNs. We show that a copy-theoretic account overcomes the problem and aligns ConPs with concealed questions (CQs) in the analysis of Frana [4, 5].
This project was supported in part by a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant (#435-2015-0454) awarded to Junko Shimoyama and Keir Moulton.
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Notes
- 1.
One must be careful with the gerundive forms. As Vendler points out, the verbal gerunds (with an accusative-case marked object rather than of) are not possible as arguments of occur and slow e.g. John’s singing *(of) the Marseillaise was slow. ([12, p. 90]). Our discussion is limited to derived nominalizations and nominal gerunds.
- 2.
Here, we use the terms transparent/opaque in the sense of [2]: an expression is said to be transparent if its descriptive content is evaluated at the utterance world.
- 3.
Barwise discusses examples in which the type of complement taken by perceptual see, whether a naked infinitive or a that-clause, disambiguates between epistemic and non-epistemic readings of the predicate, with only the former allowing for non-epistemic interpretations:
- \((\mathrm{i})\qquad \mathrm{a}.\):
-
Ralph saw a spy hiding a letter under a rock, but thought she was tying her shoe.
- \(\,\,\,\,\qquad \mathrm{b}.\):
-
Ralph saw that a spy was hiding a letter under a rock, #but thought she was tying her shoe.
- 4.
For people unconvinced by this premise, Zucchi offers the following example:
-
\(\begin{array}{cl} (\mathrm{i})\qquad \mathrm{a.}&{} \hbox {Oedipus was informed of the arrival of Jocasta.}\\ \,\,\,\,\qquad \mathrm{b.}&{}\hbox {Unbeknownst to Oedipus, Jocasta is his mother. Hence, the arrival of } \\ &{} \hbox {Jocasta is the arrival of Oedipus mother. }\\ \,\,\,\,\qquad \mathrm{c.}&{} \hbox {Oedipus was informed of the arrival of his own mother.} \end{array}\)
-
- 5.
In some examples, Zucchi contrasts arrival of Jocasta with arrival of Oedipus’ mother. These are also co-extensional event descriptions, in virtue of the co-extensionality of Jocasta and Oedipus’ mother. But this co-extensionality could arise by interpreting these object nominal expressions transparently (i.e. “at the utterance evaluation world”). We really need to check the event description, since generally the “main” predicate must be interpreted opaquely in opaque environments (i.e. its world argument can’t be supplied by the utterance context).
- 6.
There is a literature of so-called wide scope, opaque interpretations [18]. We may be seeing instances of such thing, although we leave this for future research.
- 7.
An event-concept analysis could also be given for verbs of communication; we won’t do this here, however, for reasons of space.
- 8.
We are aware, however, that the derived truth conditions feel a little too strong for ConPs. For instance, it seems in some cases that all one needs to know if one knows of the death of Caesar is to know that such an event occurred, not that one knows which event is a death of Caesar. While we ourselves share this reservation, we think rejecting a concept approach as above might be too hasty, since similar issues arise for a concept-based analysis of CQs. After all, for one to know what the capital of Italy is, it would be sufficient, in most cases, to know its name, e.g. one may know the capital of Italy in the sense that they know its name is Rome, without necessarily being able to recognize the capital of Italy in any other way. Since events, do not bear names, it is harder to imagine under which mean of presentations these events are identified. We leave this issue and the issue of the way events are located and identified across worlds for future research.
- 9.
Null or absurd individuals have been employed in the choice function literature to resolve the empty NP-restrictor problem.
- 10.
Zucchi argues that surprise allows contextually-supplied properties in place of occur.
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Frana, I., Moulton, K. (2018). Derived Nominals and Concealed Propositions. In: Arai, S., Kojima, K., Mineshima, K., Bekki, D., Satoh, K., Ohta, Y. (eds) New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. JSAI-isAI 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10838. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93794-6_18
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