Abstract:
Von Fintel, Fox and Iatridou 2005/2012 argue that 'the NP' should not
be taken to refer to the largest NP-object, as is commonly thought, but
rather to the object x such that the proposition 'x satisfies NP'
is
maximally informative. In particular, they show that in some cases an
informativity-based treatment correctly predicts that 'the NP' should
refer to the smallest rather than to the largest NP-satisfying object
(= 'reversal'). We argue that their informativity-based treatment
should be extended to the maximality conditions which, according to
recent dynamic semantics, accompany most generalized quantifiers (e.g.
Brasoveanu 2008). Specifically, we replicate the argument from
'reversal' with indefinite antecedents: in the discourse A certain
amount of plutonium is sufficient to trigger a nuclear explosion. I
will obtain it., the pronoun it refers to the smallest rather
than to
the largest amount of plutonium sufficient to trigger a nuclear
explosion. This particular case could be handled in two ways: via
dynamic treatments that posit that the antecedent comes with a maximal
informativity condition; or via E-type analyses that adopt an
informativity-based analysis of definite descriptions and give the
pronoun it the semantics of a description. However, the same facts
extend to examples with symmetric ('bishop') antecedents that are not
easily handled by non-dynamic (E-type) treatments; this suggests that
the maximality conditions of quantifiers in dynamic semantics must be
given an informativity-based definition.