On the proper treatment of opacity in certain verbs

This paper is about the semantic analysis of referentially opaque verbs like seek and owe that give rise to nonspecific readings. It is argued that Montague's categorization (based on earlier work by Quine) of opaque verbs as properties of quantifiers runs into two serious difficulties: the first problem is that it does not work with opaque verbs like resemble that resist any lexical decomposition of the seek ≈ try to find kind; the second one is that it wrongly predicts de dicto (i.e. narrow scope) readings due to quantified noun phrases in the object positions of such verbs. It is shown that both difficulties can be overcome by an analysis of opaque verbs as operating on properties.

[1]  Shadworth H. Hodgson,et al.  The Metaphysics of Experience. , 1899 .

[2]  Operations and Events in Russell's Empiricism , 1956 .

[3]  W. V. Quine.  Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes , 1956 .

[4]  Willard Van Orman Quine,et al.  Word and Object , 1960 .

[5]  Z. Vendler.  Linguistics in Philosophy , 1967 .

[6]  R. Montague.  On the Nature of Certain Philosophical Entities , 1969 .

[7]  Richard Montague,et al.  The Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English , 1973 .

[8]  Michael Ruisdael Bennett,et al.  Some extensions of a montague fragment of English , 1974 .

[9]  Daniel Gallin,et al.  Intensional and Higher-Order Modal Logic , 1975 .

[10]  David R. Dowty,et al.  Word Meaning and Montague Grammar , 1979 .

[11]  Saul A. Kripke,et al.  A Puzzle about Belief , 1979 .

[12]  D. Lewis.  Attitudes De Dicto and De Se , 1979 .

[13]  Saul A. Kripke,et al.  Naming and Necessity , 1980 .

[14]  Arnim von Stechow.  MODIFICATION OF NOUN PHRASES. A CHALLENGE FOR COMPOSITIONAL SEMANTICS , 1980 .

[15]  Arnim von Stechow,et al.  De re belief generalized , 1982 .

[16]  Irene Heim,et al.  The semantics of definite and indefinite noun phrases : a dissertation , 1982 .

[17]  Thomas Ede Zimmermann,et al.  Presuppositions and Quantifiers , 1983 .

[18]  Johan van Benthem,et al.  Questions About Quantifiers , 1984, J. Symb. Log..

[19]  Mats Rooth.  Association with focus , 1985 .

[20]  Thomas Ede Zimmermann,et al.  Intensional logic and two-sorted type theory , 1989, Journal of Symbolic Logic.