How Many Readings?

Abstract

A perennial issue that arises with regard to sentences showing a collective/distributive ambiguity is that of how many readings they have. The answers that have been given range from one (effectively denying that the collective/distributive distinction comes from an authentic ambiguity at all) to arbitrarily many, allowing even for transfinite numbers of readings. Frequently, the kind of answer which is given reflects the type of analysis which is assumed: NP/S theorists may argue that the number of readings is dependent on the number of occurrences of and in the sentence; scope theorists may assume that it depends on the number of quantifiers or other operators, etc. Ontological concerns also sometimes play a role in this issue; the kind of answer one gives may have a bearing on what “groups” are like, and how they relate to individuals. We will try to keep both kinds of concern in mind as we review the options, though ontological issues will not be much of an explicit concern until Chapter 9. With luck, we shall arrive in the end at an analysis which both preserves the conclusions we have already come to with regard to the analysis of collectives and distributives, and affords us a reasonable and intuitive view as to what groups are like and how they relate to individuals.