Semantics of Plurals, Focus, Degrees, and Times

Daniel Altshuler is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Hampshire College. He received his PhD from Rutgers University in 2010, with his dissertation Temporal interpretation in narrative discourse and event internal reference. His research investigates how compositional semantics interacts with discourse structure and discourse coherence; a topic explored in his recent book Events, States and Times. He has also developed pedagogical texts that promote student centered learning, such as his forthcoming, co-authored textbook A course in semantics.  Jessica Rett is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at UCLA. She received her PhD from Rutgers University in 2008, with her dissertation Degree modification in natural language. She writes on degree semantics and the semantics/pragmatics interface; both topics are covered in her recent book The semantics of evaluativity. She is Vice-Chair of Graduate Studies at UCLA and a proud co-organizer of the Committee on the Status of Women in Linguistics' Pop-Up Mentoring program.

• Preface; D. Altshuler & J. Rett.- Part I: The semantics of nouns and plurals.- A Chapter in the History of Formal Semantics: Plurals; B.H. Partee.- Intensions, Types, and Models: Remarks on some developments in formal semantics; T.E. Zimmermann.- Singleton Inde_nites and the Privacy Principle: Certain Puzzles; V. Dayal.- Why is attributive `heavy' distributive? K. McKinney-Bock & R. Pancheva.-  Factivity meets polarity: On two differences between Italian vs. English factives;  G. Chierchia.- Part II: The semantics of focus; Topless and Salient - Convertibles in the Theory of Focus; D. Büring.- New vs. Given; A. Kratzer & E.Selkirk.- The semantics of degree.- Equatives and Maximality; L. Crnič & D. Fox.- The perils of interpreting comparatives with pronouns for children and adults; K. Syrett & V. Gor.- Differentials crosslinguistically; R. Bhatt & V. Homer.- Subjectivity and Gradability: on the semantics of the possessive property concept construction in Mandarin Chinese; X. Li.- Part III: The semantics of tense and aspect.- Did Socrates die? A note on the moment of change; S. Zucchi.- Adverbs of Change; T. Koev.- Since; K. von Fintel & S. Iatridou.