Structural triggers of the loss of scopelessness

This paper presents a structural account of the shift from directly referential to non-directlyreferential interpretation of nominal expressions with strong definite articles in Austro-Bavarian Germanand demonstratives in English. I propose that such DPs involve a functional projection headed by arelational predicate which can host either a silent individual pronoun, which gives rise to the directlyreferential behaviour, or a restrictive relative clause, which gives rise to covarying interpretations. Thepaper thus translates into structural terms the recent proposals that DPs with demonstratives/strongarticles have a greater semantic complexity than “regular” Fregean definites (Nunberg 1993, Elbourne2008a, Schwarz 2009, Elbourne 2013). Previous approaches to this problem did not take into accountthe role of relative clauses, which are present in the overwhelming majority of non-directly referentialuses of English complex demonstratives (King 2001, Dever 2001, Powell 2001).This paper presents a structural account of the shift from directly referential to non-directlyreferential interpretation of nominal expressions with strong definite articles in Austro-Bavarian Germanand demonstratives in English. I propose that such DPs involve a functional projection headed by arelational predicate which can host either a silent individual pronoun, which gives rise to the directlyreferential behaviour, or a restrictive relative clause, which gives rise to covarying interpretations. Thepaper thus translates into structural terms the recent proposals that DPs with demonstratives/strongarticles have a greater semantic complexity than “regular” Fregean definites (Nunberg 1993, Elbourne2008a, Schwarz 2009, Elbourne 2013). Previous approaches to this problem did not take into accountthe role of relative clauses, which are present in the overwhelming majority of non-directly referentialuses of English complex demonstratives (King 2001, Dever 2001, Powell 2001).C