Homogeneity effects in natural language semantics

Abstract

Natural language sentences in which a property is ascribed to a plurality of objects have truth conditions that are not complementary with the truth conditions of the negations of such sentences. Starting from this observation, this paper presents an overview of so-called homogeneity effects. Arguably a pervasive feature of natural language, homogeneity has reflexes in various domains and opens up a prospect for a unified analysis of phenomena that were hitherto viewed in quite different terms.