From hombre!uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu!lee Thu May 31 03:58:51 1990 Return-Path: Received: by marob.masa.com (/\=-/\ Smail3.1.18.1 #18.7) id ; Thu, 31 May 90 03:58 EDT Received: by hombre.MASA.COM (smail2.5) id AA04199; 31 May 90 04:04:23 EDT (Thu) Received: from ucsd.edu by rutgers.edu (5.59/SMI4.0/RU1.3/3.06) id AA09824; Wed, 30 May 90 08:50:51 EDT Received: from humu.nosc.mil by ucsd.edu; id AA22477 sendmail 5.61/UCSD-2.1-sun via SMTP Wed, 30 May 90 05:50:38 -0700 for marob.masa.com!cowan@rutgers.edu Received: by humu.nosc.mil (5.59/1.27) id AA20314; Wed, 30 May 90 02:49:44 HST Received: by pegasus.com (5.51/PEGASUS-1.0) id AA07779; Wed, 30 May 90 02:51:17 HST Received: by bigtuna.bio.hawaii.edu (4.12/BIGTUNA-1.2) id AA01270; Wed, 30 May 90 02:40:14 hst Message-Id: <9005300240.AA01270@bigtuna.bio.hawaii.edu> From: uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu!lee (Greg Lee) Date: Wed, 30 May 1990 02:22:54 GMT-10 In-Reply-To: bigtuna!pegasus!rutgers!marob.masa.com!cowan@ucsd.edu (John Cowan) "Re: possible readings of "John seeks a bike or a fish"" (May 29, 12:16pm) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.1.1 5/02/90) To: marob.masa.com!cowan (John Cowan) Subject: Re: possible readings of "John seeks a bike or a fish" Status: RO } } I do not understand your statements about "being in and out of several } scopes." Something can be definite at an inner scope and indefinite } at an outer scope, but not indefinite(definite(indefinite)), as far as } I can see. I don't understand your example, either. Please elucidate! I wasn't talking about definiteness. Definites without antecedents have wide scope. (But with antecedents may have scope confined within, for example, a negation.) In the narrow scope reading of `John seeks a bike', the description `a bike' is attributed to John, not the sayer of the sentence. In `Mary wants John to seek a bike', the appropriateness of the description `a bike' for the thing sought could be the responsibility of the speaker, Mary, or John: There is a bike that Mary wants John to seek. Mary wants for there to be a bike that John seeks. Mary wants John to try for it to be a bike that he finds. -- Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (lee@uhccux on Bitnet)