CHAPTER 3 Pronominal Reference to Sets Parts of this chapter appeared in the Journal of Semantics 20.1 (Nouwen 2003),
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@MISC{_chapter3,
author = {},
title = {CHAPTER 3 Pronominal Reference to Sets Parts of this chapter appeared in the Journal of Semantics 20.1 (Nouwen 2003),},
year = {}
}
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Abstract
Recall from the introduction that discourse pronouns have the ability to refer to not just one but several sets associated with a quantificational structure. Apart from the reference set, that is, the set of MPs attending the meeting in (3.1), reference to the complement set (the MPs not attending the meeting) and the maximal set (the MPs) also present themselves as potential antecedents for future plural pronouns. (3.1) Few MPs attended the meeting. Few(A, B) a. They decided not to discuss anything important. A ∩ B b. They stayed home instead. A − B c. But they all attended the drinks afterwards. A It seems that plural pronoun reference is very flexible. However, as we will see in this chapter, pronominal reference set reference, exemplified in (3.1a), is the only kind of pronominal anaphora with a quantificational antecedent which is robust. For instance, it is difficult to interpret the pronoun in (3.2) as referring to the maximal set. That is, it does not have
