Across languages, we find indefinites that trigger modal inferences. This article contributes to a semantic typology of these items by contrasting Spanish algún with indefinites like German irgendein or Italian uno qualsiasi. While irgendein-type indefinites trigger a Free Choice effect (Kratzer and Shimoyama 2002; Chierchia 2006), algún simply signals that at least two individuals in its domain are possibilities. Additionally, algún, but not irgendein, can convey that the speaker does not know how many individuals satisfy the existential claim in the (...) world of evaluation. We contend that the two types of indefinites impose different constraints on their domain of quantification: irgendein and its kin are domain wideners (Kratzer and Shimoyama 2002), whereas algún is an ‘anti-singleton’ indefinite (its domain cannot be restricted to a singleton). This, together with the fact that algún does not require uniqueness, allows us to derive the contrast between irgendein and algún by using the pragmatic reasoning presented by Kratzer and Shimoyama. (shrink)

Across languages, we find indefinites that overtly mark a speaker’s lack of knowledge: they signal that the speaker is unable to give any further information about who or what satisfies her existential claim (Becker, 1999; Haspelmath, 1997). From now on, we will refer to the marking of the speaker’s lack of knowledge as an epistemic effect and to the indefinites that induce epistemic effects as epistemic indefinites.

This paper investigates the truth conditions of sentences containing indefinite noun phrases, focusing on occurrences in attitude reports, and, in particular, a puzzle case due to Walter Edelberg. It is argued that indefinites semantically contribute the (thought-)object they denote, in a manner analogous to attributive definite descriptions. While there is an existential reading of attitude reports containing indefinites, it is argued that the existential quantifier is contributed by the de re interpretation of the indefinite (as the de re reading adds (...) existential quantification to the interpretation of definites on Kaplan’s analysis). (shrink)

In recent years, many people writing on set theory have invoked the notion of an indefinitely extensible concept. The notion, it is usually claimed, plays an important role in solving the paradoxes of absolute infinity. It is not clear, however, how the notion should be formulated in a coherent way, since it appears to run into a number of problems concerning, for example, unrestricted quantification. In fact, the notion makes perfectly good sense if one endorses a dialetheic solution to the (...) paradoxes. It then morphs from a supposed solution to the paradoxes into a diagnosis of their structure. In this paper I show how. (shrink)

The paper proposes a novel solution to the problem of scope posed by natural language indefinites that captures both the difference in scopal freedom between indefinites and bona fide quantifiers and the syntactic sensitivity that the scope of indefinites does nevertheless exhibit. Following the main insight of choice functional approaches, we connect the special scopal properties of indefinites to the fact that their semantics can be stated in terms of choosing a suitable witness. This is in contrast to bona fide (...) quantifiers, the semantics of which crucially involves relations between sets of entities. We provide empirical arguments that this insight should not be captured by adding choice/Skolem functions to classical first-order logic, but in a semantics that follows Independence-Friendly Logic, in which scopal relations involving existentials are part of the recursive definition of truth and satisfaction. These scopal relations are resolved automatically as part of the interpretation of existentials. Additional support for this approach is provided by dependent indefinites, a cross-linguistically common class of special indefinites that can be straightforwardly analyzed in our semantic framework. (shrink)

Some hold that the lesson of Russell’s paradox and its relatives is that mathematical reality does not form a ‘definite totality’ but rather is ‘indefinitely extensible’. There can always be more sets than there ever are. I argue that certain contact puzzles are analogous to Russell’s paradox this way: they similarly motivate a vision of physical reality as iteratively generated. In this picture, the divisions of the continuum into smaller parts are ‘potential’ rather than ‘actual’. Besides the intrinsic interest of (...) this metaphysical picture, it has important consequences for the debate over absolute generality. It is often thought that ‘indefinite extensibility’ arguments at best make trouble for mathematical platonists; but the contact arguments show that nominalists face the same kind of difficulty, if they recognize even the metaphysical possibility of the picture I sketch. (shrink)

I argue that we can and should extend Tarski's model-theoretic criterion of logicality to cover indefinite expressions like Hilbert's ɛ operator, Russell's indefinite description operator η, and abstraction operators like 'the number of'. I draw on this extension to discuss the logical status of both abstraction operators and abstraction principles.

A temporal counterpart to Bell nonlocality would intuitively refer to the presence of non-classical correlations between timelike-separated events. The hypothesis of temporal nonlocality has received recent support in the literature, and its existence would likely influence the future development of physical theories. This paper shows how Adlam's principle of temporal locality can be violated within a protocol involving indefinite causal orders. While the derivations of Leggett-Garg inequalities or the temporal CHSH inequality are said to involve problematic assumptions preventing a targeted (...) probing of a well-defined notion of temporal nonlocality, the present test is free from such worries. However, it is shown that the test, in its current formulation, fails to be fully model-independent. We provide several considerations regarding the physicality of ICOs that could help alleviate this drawback. In the present work, a specific physical interpretation of ICOs in terms of retrocausal influences would explain the presence of temporally nonlocal correlations. It is argued that, as the physical underpinnings of temporal nonlocality might also account for standard Bell nonlocality, focusing on the former as a consequence of ICOs might support under-explored strategies to make sense of the latter. (shrink)

In this article, I consider Descartes’ enigmatic claim that we must assert that the material world is indefinite rather than infinite. The focus here is on the discussion of this claim in Descartes’ late correspondence with More. One puzzle that emerges from this correspondence is that Descartes insists to More that we are not in a position to deny the indefinite universe has limits, while at the same time indicating that we conceive a contradiction in the notion that the universe (...) has a limit. I reject one attempt to resolve this apparent conflict which appeals to Descartes’ admission to More that divine omnipotence requires that God can create a vacuum in nature, and focus instead on his response to More’s claim that this omnipotence requires the possibility of a completion of the division of matter that results in atoms. Finally, I distinguish Descartes’ indefinite from two other kinds of infinity with which it might well be confused. The first is an essentially incomplete ‘potential infinity’ that Descartes discusses in the Third Meditation, and the second is the sort of quantitative infinity that Leibniz – contrary to Descartes – denies can constitute a completed whole. (shrink)

This essay clarifies quantifier variance and uses it to provide a theory of indefinite extensibility that I call the variance theory of indefinite extensibility. The indefinite extensibility response to the set-theoretic paradoxes sees each argument for paradox as a demonstration that we have come to a different and more expansive understanding of ‘all sets’. But indefinite extensibility is philosophically puzzling: extant accounts are either metasemantically suspect in requiring mysterious mechanisms of domain expansion, or metaphysically suspect in requiring nonstandard assumptions about (...) mathematical objects. Happily, the view of quantifier meanings that underwrites quantifier variance can be used to provide an account of indefinite extensibility that is both metasemantically and metaphysically satisfying. Section 1 introduces the puzzle of indefinite extensibility; section 2 develops and clarifies the metasemantics of quantifier variance; section 3 solves section 1's puzzle of indefinite extensibility by applying section 2's account of quantifier meanings; and section 4 compares the theory developed in section 3 to several other theories in the literature. (shrink)

I argue that indefinite descriptions are referring terms. This is not the ambiguity thesis: that sometimes they are referring terms and sometimes something else, such as quantifiers . No. On my view they are always referring terms; and never quantifiers. I defend this thesis by modifying the standard conception of what a referring term is: a modification that needs to be made anyway, irrespective of the treatment of indefinites. I derive this approach from my speech-act theoretic semantics . The basic (...) thought is that referring terms have as their meanings speech-acts of a certain kind called proto-referring acts. These are acts in which speakers advertise or present intentions to denote, where denotation is a word-world relation, and advertising an intention is acting as if one has intentions, where it is open whether one has them or not, or whether the referring term used denotes or not. I show how this works for proper names. The meaning of a proper name is the speech-act proto-referring act type defined by a certain referential tree. This gives us the basis for an account of proper name meaning irrespective of denotation: a uniform treatment of full and empty names. Applied to indefinites, we can capture cases where speakers perform proto-acts—in which they advertise an intention to denote something—where they intend to denote, but others where they do not, but they still perform the proto-act: advertising an intention to denote. Two cases are ‘Fred saw a hippo’ and ‘Jane did not see a hippo’. In both cases U performs the same proto-act, represent it as Rpro, but possesses the advertised intention in the first case, but not in the second. In the first case, Rpro gains referential content—its descriptive content is expanded to include seen by Fred, whereas in its second token use it has no content augmentation or sentential determination of reference. In the second case ‘a hippo’ is an empty referring term, just as ‘Pegasus’ is empty in ‘Fred did not see Pegasus; he does not exist’. But in both sentences ‘a hippo’ functions in the same basic way: in both cases the basic proto-referring act Rpro is performed. Using this approach, I show how definite descriptions can be construed as indefinites with added meaning. (shrink)

Dummett’s notion of indefinite extensibility is influential but obscure. The notion figures centrally in an alternative Dummettian argument for intuitionistic logic and anti-realism, distinct from his more famous, meaning-theoretic arguments to the same effect. Drawing on ideas from Dummett, a precise analysis of indefinite extensibility is proposed. This analysis is used to reconstruct the poorly understood alternative argument. The plausibility of the resulting argument is assessed.

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 5, May 2022.

It is argued that an indefinite statement as introduced by Aristotle in De Int. 7 refers to a universal which may partly partake in contradictory accidental predicates together. This fact is mirrored on the semantic level by ascribing truth to some degree to both parts of a contradiction. Accordingly, Aristotle should be interpreted as saying in De Int. 9 that the statement that a certain individual object will be F at some time in its contingent future is to be taken (...) to be true to some degree. This is because an individual object cannot yet, with respect to its contingent future, be regarded as factual but only as - time-independently - exemplifying a universal. In this context, fundamental connections become apparent between indefinite statements on the one hand and Aristotelian modal logic, statistics and theory of science on the other. (shrink)

Indefinite probability statements can be analysed in terms of statements which attribute probability to propositions. Therefore, there is no need to find a special place in probability theory for them; once we have an adequate account of statements that straightforwardly attribute probability to propositions, we will automatically have an adequate account of indefinite probability statements.

A number of authors have noted that the key steps in Fitch’s argument are not intuitionistically valid, and some have proposed this as a reason for an anti-realist to accept intuitionistic logic (e.g. Williamson 1982, 1988). This line of reasoning rests upon two assumptions. The first is that the premises of Fitch’s argument make sense from an anti-realist point of view – and in particular, that an anti-realist can and should maintain the principle that all truths are knowable. The second (...) is that we have some independent reason for thinking that classical logic is not appropriate in this area. This paper explores these two assumptions in the context of Michael Dummett’s version of anti-realism, with particular reference to the argument from indefinite extensibility developed at various points in Dummett’s writings (e.g. Dummett 1991 Ch. 24). -/- Dummett argues that certain concepts, the indefinitely extensible concepts, are such that we cannot form a clear and determinate conception of all the objects that fall under them. The most familiar examples of indefinitely extensible concepts are mathematical. Dummett discusses the concepts ordinal number, real number, and natural number, which are indefinitely extensible because any conception that one might form of their complete extension can be extended to a more inclusive conception (as, for example, in Cantor’s proof of the non-denumerability of the set of real numbers). This paper argues that the concept of a truth is indefinitely extensible. This gives a Dummettian anti-realist an independent motivation for rejecting the classical understanding of the quantifiers in this area. At the same time, however, it places in doubt the admissibility of the knowability principle, which seems to involve quantification over the “totality” of truths. As Dummett is at pains to point out (1991: 316), some sentences that purport to quantify over the extension of an indefinitely extensible concept plainly have a truth-value (we can truly say, for example, that every ordinal number has a successor, even though when we say that we are not quantifying over the set of all ordinals). But is the knowability principle one of these sentences? (shrink)

The prototypes of definiteness and indefiniteness in English are the definite article the and the indefinite article a/an, and singular noun phrases (NPs)1 determined by them. That being the case it is not to be predicted that the concepts, whatever their content, will extend satisfactorily to other determiners or NP types. However it has become standard to extend these notions. Of the two categories definites have received rather more attention, and more than one researcher has characterized the category of definite (...) NPs by enumerating NP types. Westerståhl (1985), who is concerned only with determiners in the paper cited, gives a very short list: demonstrative NPs, possessive NPs, and definite descriptions. Prince (1992) lists proper names and personal pronouns, as well as NPs with the, a demonstrative, or a possessive NP as determiner. She notes, in addition, that “certain quantifiers (e.g. all, every) have been argued to be definite” (Prince 1992: 299). This list, with the quantifiers added, agrees with that given by Birner & Ward (1998, 114). Ariel (1988, 1990) adds null anaphoric NPs. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that the scope of indefinites is island insensitive, i.e., that, generally, an indefinite inside of a syntactic island, such as an adjunct clause, is capable of taking scope outside of that island. This paper challenges this assumption by studying the scope behaviour of the Spanish plural indefinite algunos ’). It presents an experimental study that shows that the scope of algunos is not free and depends on its syntactic environment, at least in the dialect of Spanish (...) studied here. The paper discusses some of the implications of the study for current theories of indefinite scope: it points out the problems that choice functions and singleton indefinites have with the Spanish data, and it also discusses the implications for Schwarzschild's solution to the so-called ‘Donald Duck’ problem. (shrink)

One of the big questions about indefinites is why they can escape scope islands. In the recent approach of Brasoveanu and Farkas :1–55, 2011) scopal relations with syntactically dominating quantifiers are hard wired into the semantic definition of the existential quantifier, which immediately explains why the semantic scope of indefinites may exceed their syntactic scope. In this paper, I argue for the revival of an alternative approach which places the explanatory burden on the idea that indefinites are essentially referential expressions, (...) similar to definites, and not plain existential quantifiers. I propose one fully explicit variant of such theories and argue that it comes with a number of conceptual and empirical advantages over competing theories. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a decompositional analysis of three kinds of plural indefinites in two related languages, European Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. The three indefinites studied are bare plurals, the unos (Spanish)/uns (Portuguese) type, and the algunos (Spanish)/alguns (Portuguese) type. The paper concentrates on four properties: semantic plurality, positive polarity, partitivity, and event distribution. The logic underlying the analysis is that of compositionality, applied at the subword level: as items become bigger in form (with the addition of morphemes), they (...) also acquire more semantic properties. The paper proposes the “indefinite hierarchy", which establishes a set of components for languages to build their indefinites with, in a particular order. (shrink)

Every member of the club was convinced that if a (particular) friend of his from Texas had died in the fire, he would have inherited a fortune.

Discourse dynamics, pragmatics, and indefinites Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-30 DOI 10.1007/s11098-012-9882-y Authors Karen S. Lewis, Department of Philosophy, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116.

We look at recent accounts of the indefinite extensibility of the concept set and compare them with a certain linguistic model of indefinite extensibility. We suggest that the linguistic model has much to recommend over alternative accounts of indefinite extensibility, and we defend it against three prima facie objections.

The principle of sufficient reason threatens modal collapse. Some have suggested that by appealing to the indefinite extensibility of contingent truth, the threat is neutralized. This paper argues that this is not so. If the indefinite extensibility of contingent truth is developed in an analogous fashion to the most promising models of the indefinite extensibility of the concept set, plausible principles permit the derivation of modal collapse.

Working on the assumption that ideas are embedded in socio-technical arrangements which actualize them, this essay sheds light on the way the Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) achieves the Lisbon strategic goal: to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world . Rather than framing the issue in utilitarian terms, it focuses attention on quantified indicators, comparable statistics and common targets resulting from the increasing practice of intergovernmental benchmarking, in order to tackle the following questions: how does (...) the OMC go about co-ordinating Member States through the benchmarking of national policies? And to what extent does this managerial device impact the path of European construction? Beyond the ideological and discursive construction of the competitive imperative, this technology of government transforms it into an indefinite discipline (Foucault) which constantly urges decision-makers to hit the top of the charts. This contribution thus argues that the practice of intergovernmental benchmarking is far from being neutral in purpose and effect. On the contrary, it lays the foundation for building a competitive Europe which unites Member States through competition. (shrink)

The view that mathematical objects are indefinite in nature is presented and defended, hi the first section, Field's argument for fictionalism, given in response to Benacerraf's problem of identification, is closely examined, and it is contended that platonists can solve the problem equally well if they take the view that mathematical objects are indefinite. In the second section, two general arguments against the intelligibility of objectual indefiniteness are shown erroneous, hi the final section, the view is compared to mathematical structuralism, (...) and it is shown that a version of structuralism should be understood as embracing the same view. (shrink)

The paper proves a conjecture of Solomon Feferman concerning the indefiniteness of the continuum hypothesis relative to a semi-intuitionistic set theory.

Descartes' philosophy contains an intriguing notion of the infinite, a concept labeled by the philosopher as indefinite. Even though Descartes clearly defined this term on several occasions in the correspondence with his contemporaries, as well as in his Principles of Philosophy, numerous problems about its meaning have arisen over the years. Most commentators reject the view that the indefinite could mean a real thing and, instead, identify it with an Aristotelian potential infinite. In the first part of this article, I (...) show why there is no numerical infinity in Cartesian mathematics, as such a concept would be inconsistent with the main fundamental attribute of numbers: to be comparable with each other. In the second part, I analyze the indefinite in the context of Descartes' mathematical physics. It is my contention that, even with no trace of infinite in his mathematics, Descartes does refer to an actual indefinite because of its application to the material world within the system of his physics. This fact underlines a discrepancy between his mathematics and physics of the infinite, but does not lead a difficulty in his mathematical physics. Thus, in Descartes' physics, the indefinite refers to an actual dimension of the world rather than to an Aristotelian mathematical potential infinity. In fact, Descartes establishes the reality and limitlessness of the extension of the cosmos and, by extension, the actual nature of his indefinite world. This indefinite has a physical dimension, even if it is not measurable. La filosofía de Descartes contiene una noción intrigante de lo infinito, un concepto nombrado por el filósofo como indefinido. Aunque en varias ocasiones Descartes definió claramente este término en su correspondencia con sus contemporáneos y en sus Principios de filosofía, han surgido muchos problemas acerca de su significado a lo largo de los años. La mayoría de comentaristas rechaza la idea de que indefinido podría significar una cosa real y, en cambio, la identifica con un infinito potencial aristotélico. En la primera parte de este artículo muestro por qué no hay infinito numérico en las matemáticas cartesianas, en la medida en que tal concepto sería inconsistente con el principal atributo fundamental de los números: ser comparables entre sí. En la segunda parte analizo lo indefinido en el contexto de la física matemática de Descartes. Mi argumento es que, aunque no hay rastro de infinito en sus matemáticas, Descartes se refiere a un indefinido real a causa de sus aplicaciones al mundo material dentro del sistema de su física. Este hecho subraya una discrepancia entre sus matemáticas y su física de lo infinito, pero no implica ninguna dificultad en su física matemática. Así pues, en la física de Descartes, lo indefinido se refiere a una dimensión real del mundo más que a una infinitud potencial matemática aristotélica. De hecho, Descartes establece la realidad e infinitud de la extensión del cosmos y, por extensión, la naturaleza real de su mundo indefinido. Esta indefinición tiene una dimensión física aunque no sea medible. (shrink)

This influence of accent has been taken as evidence that adverbial quantification is focus sensitive (cf. Rooth (1985)) or presupposition sensitive (cf. von Fintel (1994), Rooth (1995)). I will discuss a problem that has been identified by von Fintel and Rooth, the requantifiation problem. Roughly stated, standard accounts of indefinites as NPs that introduce new discourse referents are at odds with standard accounts of the focus sensitivity or presupposition sensitivity of (1), which force us to assume that indefinites may pick (...) up existing discourse referents and “requantify” over them. I will argue for a special class of indefinites that pick up existing discourse referents, which I will call non-novel indefinites, to explain the nature.. (shrink)

The Monist’s call for papers for this issue ended: “if formalism is true, then it must be possible in principle to mechanize meaning in a conscious thinking and language-using machine; if intentionalism is true, no such project is intelligible”. We use the Grelling-Nelson paradox to show that natural language is indefinitely extensible, which has two important consequences: it cannot be formalized and model theoretic semantics, standard for formal languages, is not suitable for it. We also point out that object-object mapping (...) theories of semantics, the usual account for the possibility of non intentional semantics, doesn’t seem able to account for the indefinitely extensible productivity of natural language. (shrink)

Of all the cases made against classical logic, Michael Dummett's is the most deeply considered. Issuing from a systematic and original conception of the discipline, it constitutes one of the most distinctive achievements of twentieth century British philosophy. Although Dummett builds on the work of Brouwer and Heyting, he provides the case against classical logic with a new, explicit and general foundation in the philosophy of language. Dummett's central arguments, widely celebrated if not widely endorsed, concern the implications of the (...) relation between meaning and use for both the inference rules that govern logical connectives and the relation between truth and its recognition. It is less often noted that Dummett has a further argument against classical logic, one based on the semantic and set-theoretic paradoxes. That is the topic of this paper. (shrink)

This paper stems from previous works of the authors in which a new measure of the simplicity of an explanation based on its degree of arbitrariness is proposed: The more the explanation is arbitray, the less appealing it is, with explanations having no arbitrariness – called constrained – being the preferred ones. In previous works, as commonly done in the literature of abductive logic programming, a set of hypotheses is not an explanation, unless it is definite, i.e. it explains all (...) the data belonging to the observation. In this paper, we follow a different perspective and define the concept of indefinite constrained explanations, i.e. constrained explanations that are not definite, but admit some indefiniteness. An indefinite constrained explanation captures the intuition of the existence of an explanation (indefinite explanation) that would best explain the given evidence, while not making arbitrary choices (constrained explanation). The main contribution of the paper is the study of abduction in indefinite deductive theories: specifically, the paper studies the framework of abductive logic programming extended with integrity constraints in the setting in which both the initial knowledge base and the abductive explanations are indefinite (may contain occurrences of null values) and the domain is possibly infinite. Furthermore, the paper discusses the complexity of problems concerning indefinite (constrained) explanations. (shrink)

Positive Polarity indefinites, such as some in English, are licensed in simplex negative sentences as long as they take wide scope over negation. When it surfaces under a clausemate negation, some can in principle take wide scope either by movement or by some semantic mechanism; e.g., it can take pseudoscope if it is interpreted as a choice function variable. Therefore, there is some uncertainty regarding the way in which PPI indefinites get licensed: can pseudoscope suffice? In this article we show, (...) using novel data from Hindi-Urdu and English, that pseudoscope is not sufficient, and that it is the syntactic position of PPI indefinites at LF, rather than their actual scope, which is relevant for licensing. These facts support a unified view of PPI indefinites as generalized quantifiers, and disfavor analyses where they are, or can be, interpreted as choice function variables. (shrink)

The paper investigates the scope properties of indefinites.

In previous work in 2010 we have dealt with the problems arising from Cantor's theorem and the Richard paradox in a definable universe. We proposed indefinite extensibility as a solution. Now we address another definability paradox, the Berry paradox, and explore how Hartogs's cardinality theorem would behave in an indefinitely extensible definable universe where all sets are countable.

Isaac Levi and I have different views of probability and decision making. Here, without addressing the merits, I will try to answer some questions recently asked by Levi (1985) about what my view is, and how it relates to his.

In his thought-provoking, carefully crafted, and impressively researched article, Don Scheid makes a compelling argument for an indefinite detention paradigm for “mega-terrorists.” Scheid's proposa...

In this paper I argue against grounding being necessarily well-founded, and provide some reasons to think it's actually not well-founded.

Classical physics and quantum physics suggest two meta-physical types of reality: the classical notion of a objectively definite reality with properties "all the way down," and the quantum notion of an objectively indefinite type of reality. The problem of interpreting quantum mechanics is essentially the problem of making sense out of an objectively indefinite reality. These two types of reality can be respectively associated with the two mathematical concepts of subsets and quotient sets which are category-theoretically dual to one another (...) and which are developed in two dual mathematical logics, the usual Boolean logic of subsets and the more recent logic of partitions. Our sense-making strategy is "follow the math" by showing how the mathematics of set partitions can be transported in a natural way to complex vector spaces where it yields the mathematical machinery of QM. And then we show how the machinery of QM can be transported the other way down to set-like vector spaces over ℤ₂ yielding a rather fulsome "toy" or pedagogical model of "quantum mechanics over sets." In this way, we try to make sense out of objective indefiniteness and thus to interpret quantum mechanics. (shrink)

The formal semantics that we have proposed for definite and indefinite descriptions analyzes them both as variable-binding operators and as referring terms. It is the referential analysis which makes it possible to account for the facts outlined in Section 2, e.g. for the purely ‘instrumental’ role of the descriptive content; for the appearance of unusually wide scope readings relative to other quantifiers, higher predicates, and island boundaries; for the fact that the island-escaping readings are always equivalent to maximally wide scope (...) quantifiers; and for the appearance of violations of the identity conditions on variables in deleted constituents. We would emphasize that this is not a random collection of observations. They cohere naturally with each other, and with facts about other phrases that are unambigously referential.We conceded at the outset of this paper that the referential use of an indefinite noun phrase does not, by itself, motivate the postulation of a referential interpretation. Our argument has been that the behavior of indefinites in complex sentences cannot be economically described, and certainly cannot be explained, unless a referential interpretation is assumed. It could be accounted for in pragmatic terms only if the whole theory of scope relations and of conditions on deletion could be eliminated from the semantics and incorporated into a purely pragmatic theory. But this seems unlikely. (shrink)