Semantic Form and Abductive Fixation of Parameters 1 Introduction

The present paper is concerned with the phenomenon that many linguistic expressions have a fixed set of readings which are extremely diverse but systematically related to one another. As pointed out by Nunberg (1979), such cases of multiple use can be roughly separated into two classes: First, the class of cases where we have no substantial reasons for assuming that one or another reading is prior, and, second, the class of cases where we have clear intuitions as to which readings are basic, and which are derived. To take an example that has been often mentioned, the DP the newspaper offers apparently conflicting perspectives on the world as it can be used to refer to entities of different ontological sorts. Consider the occurrences of the DP in sentences (1a) (1c).