This chapter applies the treatments of world-binding and assignment-binding from Chapter 3 to several examples with attitude ascriptions. Semantically modal elements such as attitude verbs are treated as introducing quantification over assignments. The account captures phenomena with intensionality, shifted interpretations of world pronouns, and local/global readings of context-sensitive expressions via general mechanisms of movement and variable binding. Topics of discussion include quantification and assignment modification in the metalanguage, de re and de dicto readings, binding with pronouns vs. traces, and shifted interpretations of modals and proper names. A speculative predicativist analysis of names is developed; bare singular uses are analyzed as predicates with an implicit choice-function pronoun.

Chapters 9–10 explore how the assignment-variable-based treatments of relativization and pronominal anaphora with noun phrases may be extended to capture shifting phenomena in other clausal structures, such as conditionals, correlatives, and questions. This chapter develops a syntax/semantics for ‘if’-clauses as free relatives, interpreted as plural definite descriptions of assignments (possibilities). Clause-internal movement of a (possibly implicit) definite/maximality operator introduces quantification over assignments. The compositional semantics affords a uniform analysis of ‘if’-clauses in diverse types of conditionals—conditionals with ‘if’-clauses in post-nominal, sentence-final, and sentence-initial positions, and conditionals with/without an overt modal or ‘then’. The choice-function-based analyses of anaphoric pronouns as copies of a linguistic antecedent are extended to anaphoric proforms in correlatives. Comparisons between conditional correlatives and correlatives of individuals are briefly considered.

In this chapter, the framework proposed in Chapter 2 is applied to the history of French. The discourse markers studied are à la rigueur, à propos, à ce propos, alors, en fait, au fait, and enfin. The findings presented are in support of the hypothesis proposed in Section 1.5, according to which discourse markers are the joint product of two separate mechanisms, with each of the mechanisms accounting for specific properties of discourse markers.

This chapter develops an improved assignment-variable-based compositional semantics for head-raising analyses of restrictive relative clauses, and applies the account to certain types of pronominal anaphora. The speculative choice-function based analysis of names from Chapter 4 is extended to certain indefinites, relative words, and donkey pronouns. An analysis of donkey pronouns as copies of their linguistic antecedent is supported by crosslinguistic data. Nominal quantifiers are treated as introducing quantification over assignments. The proposed semantics for quantifiers helps capture linguistic shifting data in universal, existential, and asymmetric readings of donkey sentences. Additional composition rules or principles for interpreting reconstructed phrases aren’t required (e.g., Predicate Abstraction, Predicate Modification, Trace Conversion). The semantics is fully compositional. Critical challenges are discussed.

This chapter draws on independent work on the syntax–semantics interface to motivate a more complex clausal architecture for an assignment-variable-based theory. Binding across syntactic categories and semantic domains is captured uniformly from a generalized binder-index feature, which attaches directly to expressions undergoing movement for type reasons. World-binding (intensionality) arises from the complementizer, which moves from the world-argument position of the clause’s main predicate; assignment-binding arises from modal elements, which move from an internal assignment-argument position of the complementizer. The semantics is fully compositional. The remainder of the book develops the account and applies it to a range of constructions and types of linguistic shifting phenomena.

In this chapter, the framework proposed in Chapter 2 is applied to the history of Korean. The discourse markers studied are icey, makilay, maliya, and tul. The findings presented are in support of the hypothesis proposed in Section 1.5, according to which discourse markers are the joint product of two separate mechanisms, with each of the mechanisms accounting for specific properties of discourse markers.

This chapter takes stock of key developments in the book, and considers several avenues for future research.

This chapter proposes a framework for analyzing the history of discourse markers. The framework rests, on the one hand, on the analysis of historical text data as they were provided in previous research. On the other hand, it proposes two contrasting mechanisms that need to be distinguished in order to reconstruct the rise and development of discourse markers. These mechanisms are grammaticalization and cooptation. It is via cooptation that discourse markers are transferred to the level of discourse management, thereby losing their status as constituents of a sentence, no longer being a part of the syntax, semantics, and frequently also of the prosodical form of sentences.