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  • Events and plurality: The Jerusalem lectures by Fred Landman
  • Sharbani Banerji
Events and plurality: The Jerusalem lectures. By Fred Landman. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000. Pp. 381. ISBN 0792365682. $162.

The aim of this book is to account for the semantics of plurality in an event-based theory in a neo-Davidsonian framework. The ten lectures that make up the book were delivered by Fred Landman at the Hebrew University in 1992. L’s conviction regarding Davidsonian theory stems from the fact that it can capture the deep parallels between the nominal and verbal domains. The unified theory that L presents reduces both distributivity and cumulativity to semantic plurality. The unique role requirement (URR), which plays a central role in his theory, assumes that thematic roles are partial functions that specify at most one bearer of that role per event.

Lecture 1, ‘Arguments for the Davidsonian theory’ (1–30), argues that Terence Parsons’s modifier argument is the most convincing one. Lecture 2, ‘The neo-Davidsonian theory, the unique role requirement, and the language of events’ (31–55), shows that URR can solve the problem posed by neo-Davidsonian theory, which allows swapping of roles if one event is characterized by two different verbal predicates. L then introduces a type-theoretic language, incorporating the type of events. Lecture 3, ‘The neo-Davidsonian theory and its rivals’ (56–95), argues that URR not only allows for a superior analysis of the interaction between passivization and passive-sensitive adverbs, but also predicts the consequences in the analysis of collectivity and distributivity. In Lecture 4, ‘Scha’s theory of plurality’ (96–141), L extensively discusses the first modern analysis of plurality, Remko Scha’s theory of plurality. In Lecture 5, ‘Distributivity, collectivity and cumulativity’ (142–76), L discusses the earlier theories of plurality. Largues that distributivity should be analyzed as semantic plurality, and collectivity as semantic singularity. He proposes a collective criterion to distinguish collective readings from non-collective readings.

Lecture 6, ‘Plural roles, scope, and event types’ (177–221), introduces the language of events and plurality. The central concept is that of a plural role. Cumulativity is regarded as the two- (or more)-place [End Page 781] case of distributivity, both being reduced to semantic plurality. Finally, cover readings are discussed. In Lecture 7, ‘Maximalization on event types’ (222–80), L develops a theory in which numerical noun phrases have two parts to their meaning: a conservative part, which is contributed at the level where the numerical noun phrase becomes an argument of the verb, and a scalar part, which is integrated at the level of the (bare) event type through an operation of scalar maximalization. In Lecture 8, ‘Maximalization on argument state types’ (281–309), L shows that the theory of maximalization needs to account for non-upward-entailing noun phrases taking wide scope. L argues for a theory where there can be a switch between a ‘property’ perspective and a ‘state’ perspective. He introduces a set of n-place argument states, states on which n argument roles are defined, and a correspondence function, which associates with each n-place relation a set of n-place argument states. The new scope mechanism operates differently on scopal and nonscopal noun phrases. Lecture 9, ‘Against binary quantifiers’ (310–49), argues against theories of nominal binary quantification dealing with cumulativity. In L’s theory, cumulative readings are derived without invoking any scope mechanism. Lecture 10, ‘Dependent event types’ (350–67), accounts for adverbial distributivity. The scope in these cases is contributed adverbially through a dependency relation.

Sharbani Banerji
Ghaziabad, India
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