Issues on Distributive and Collective Readings

Abstract

The formal semantics of plurals — which goes back to at least Bennett (1974) — has the work of Link (namely, 1983 and 1984) as a crucial landmark. His ideas about a lattice-theoretical definition of the domain of discourse undoubtedly shed a new light on the thought about plurality in natural languages and was the origin of a rich literature. However, several questions that derive precisely from the wealth of the denotations made available by Link’s new framework have not yet, to my knowledge, been addressed in a systematic way and thus remain unanswered. Three of such questions will be addressed here: (i)given the variety of individuals that can be in the denotations of nominals — simple atoms, complex atoms and i-sums -, what individuals can count for a distributive reading (henceforth, DR), or, reducing to the really puzzling point, can i-sums be the relevant individuals in A ∩ B, where A and B are the sets denoted by the relevant nominal and the relevant predicative expression? (ii)under what (linguistic) circumstances can — atomic or non-atomic — individuals in the denotation of a nominal structure become parts of a plural individual being considered in a collective reading (henceforth, CR)? (iii)what are the factors that determine whether or not an NP can be assigned a DR, a CR or both?