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Thursday, July 20, 2006

Kamp/Vlach Sentences: Further Reflections

Here are some further reflections on today's discussion. Consider again Kamp's old example and some variations on it:

(1) A child was born who will become ruler of the world.
(2) A child who will become ruler of the world was born.
(3) A child was born who would become ruler of the world.
(4) A child who would become ruler of the world was born.

Where P is past, and F is future, I take it that the preferred readings of (1) - (3) are as follows (these are not necessarily the only readings):

(1a) There is an x such that (P(x is a child and x is born) and F(x is ruler of the world))
(2a) There is an x such that (x is a child and P(x is born) and F(x is ruler of the world))
(3a) P(there is an x such that (x is a child and x is born and F(x is ruler of the world)))

Notice that the future tense operator occurs within the scope of a past tense operator in (3a). In Priorean tense logic, a future tense operator in the scope of a past tense operator takes us to some time that is future relative to a past time. In (1a) and (2a) P and F do not occur within the scope of another tense operator.

Two questions: first, how do you propose to analyze (4)? In the same way as (3)? Second, why do we tend to read (1) and the stylistic variation in (2) differently? Any ideas?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Alan. This is very helpful! So you think (3) and (4) tend to receive different readings, right? Another question I have is this. Do you think that the reading where the birth and the ruling take place before the time of speech is salient mostly in journalistic/literary contexts?

Brit Brogaard said...

Thanks again, Alan! I think that is very interesting, even though I am not quite sure yet how the Priorean will be able to account for all of this.