{"id":6476,"date":"2014-10-14T05:00:13","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T09:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=6476"},"modified":"2014-10-13T23:09:39","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T03:09:39","slug":"lfrg-1017-david-nicolas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2014\/10\/14\/lfrg-1017-david-nicolas\/","title":{"rendered":"LFRG 10\/17 - David Nicolas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker: <a href=\"http:\/\/d.a.nicolas.free.fr\/\">David Nicolas<\/a> (ENS) <\/br><br clear='none'\/>\nDay\/time: Friday, 17 October, 3:30pm <\/br><br clear='none'\/>\nLocation: 32-D461<\/br><br clear='none'\/>\nTitle: Two and a half apples<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>With some count nouns, we understand expressions of the form \u0093a half N\u0094 and \u0093half of an N\u0094 and sentences like this one:<\/p>\n<p>(1) Two and a half apples are on the table.<\/p>\n<p>This is true, for instance, if on the table there are two apples and one half apple (half of an apple).<\/p>\n<p> If instead of \u0093two and a half\u0094 we use a simple cardinal like \u0093two\u0094, the truth conditions of a similar sentence can be stated like this:<\/p>\n<p> (2) Two apples are on the table <\/br><br clear='none'\/>\nis true iff exists x (apple(x) & card(x) = 2 & on_the_table(x)) {\u0093at least\u0094 semantics}<\/p>\n<p> This \u0093at least\u0094 semantics of cardinals just asserts the existence of two things. An \u0093exact semantics\u0094 would assert the existence of exactly two things and no more.<\/p>\n<p> Whether one adopts an \u0093at least\u0094 semantics or an \u0093exact\u0094 semantics, these kind of truth conditions are inadequate for (1) for two reasons (Salmon 1997, Liebesman 2014):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> Half an apple is not in the denotation of \u0093apples\u0094, so it cannot be in the denotation of two and a half apples if one just \u0093intersects\u0094 the meaning of \u0093apples\u0094 with that of \u0093two and a half\u0094.\n<li> The function card() returns the cardinality of a plurality or set, which can never be a fractional number.\n<\/ul>\n<p> So what are the truth conditions of the sentence and how do we get them?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker: David Nicolas (ENS) Day\/time: Friday, 17 October, 3:30pm Location: 32-D461 Title: Two and a half apples With some count nouns, we understand expressions of the form \u0093a half N\u0094 and \u0093half of an N\u0094 and sentences like this one: (1) Two and a half apples are on the table. This is true, for instance, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-talks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6476"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6480,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6476\/revisions\/6480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}