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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that The collective-distributive ambiguity in sentences like 'John and Jane moved a piano' is not due to an ambiguity in the conjunction 'and'

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.A single lexical item can exhibit systematic polysemy such that its semantic contribution shifts contextually without rendering conjunction-reduced forms infelicitous.
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    • 2.If 'and' is polysemous between a collective-forming and a distributive-forming operator, speakers can pragmatically resolve each conjunct independently, preserving felicity in mixed readings.
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    • 3.The felicity argument in P2-P3 therefore underdetermines the locus of ambiguity, since polysemy in 'and' is compatible with the observed felicity data.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Link's (1983) mereological framework treats 'and' as uniformly denoting sum-formation over a domain that includes both individuals and pluralities, making the collective-distributive distinction a matter of predicate type rather than conjunction type.
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    • 2.If the distributive reading arises from a covert distributivity operator (D-operator) adjoined to the VP, as argued by Roberts (1987) and Lasersohn (1995), then the ambiguity is VP-level, not conjunction-level, and the supporting argument merely relocates rather than eliminates a structural ambiguity.
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    • 3.Showing the ambiguity does not reside in 'and' is thus consistent with, and even predicted by, syntactic theories that posit covert operators, leaving the claim compatible with structural ambiguity accounts the original argument was meant to preclude.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.If the ambiguity were due to 'and' sometimes acting as a sentential operator and sometimes as a term-forming operator, conjunction reduction of sentences with different readings would be infelicitous
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    • 2.The conjunction-reduced sentence 'John and Jane moved a piano and met for lunch' is felicitous with 'moved a piano' read distributively and 'met' read collectively
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    • 3.Felicity of the conjunction-reduced form indicates the ambiguity does not reside in the conjunction
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