On February 22, 2024, our fifth-year grad student Ido Benbaji-Elhadad gave an invited talk at the interdisciplinary colloquia series organized by the Linguistics Department at Tel Aviv University.
Title: Specific-opaque readings and the temporal interpretation of noun phrases
Abstract: Szabó (2010,2011) argues that in addition to their de dicto, de re and third readings, DPs in intensional contexts can have a fourth, specific-opaque reading in which their determiner scopes above an intensional operator while their restrictor is nevertheless interpreted opaquely, in the intensional environment created by the operator. Szabó provides examples of specific-opaque readings relative to the three main intensional operators, namely, attitudes, modals and tense, as evidence that natural language makes available a general, unrestricted mechanism to derive such “split” readings for DPs in intensional environments. We focus on specific-opaque readings relative to modals and tense and show that neither supports that conclusion; i.e., that both are restricted in meaningful ways and should be derived without a general mechanism. The discussion serves to highlight the ways in which modal and temporal operators differ with respect to the availability of the specific-opaque reading for DPs in the intensional environments that they create, providing new evidence that worlds and times differ in the kind of mechanisms that introduce them to the semantic composition.