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Genitive Modifiers, Sorts, and Metonymy1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2008

Vladimir Borschev  and
Barbara H. Partee
Vladimir Borschev
Affiliation:
VINITI, Russian Academy of Sciences. E-mail: borschev@online.ru.
Barbara H. Partee
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003-7130, USA. E-mail: partee@linguist.umass.edu
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Abstract

Our long-term goal is to contribute to the integration of formal and lexical semantics. Our more immediate theoretical starting point is the idea of “text as theory”, within a model-theoretic semantic framework. We describe a set of empirical problems in the domain of genitive modifiers that offers a challenge to theories of the integration of lexical, compositional, and contextual information. After sketching a solution, we raise the issue of metonymy in the interpretation of genitives, and examine the role of sortal information in the specification of underspecified meanings and in processes of type-shifting and sort-shifting, including metonymy.

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Articles
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Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , December 2001 , pp. 140 - 160
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2001

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References

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