23.04.2026 — Seminarium lingwistyki formalnej — godz. 12:00
Patrick Elliot (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf)
Streszczenie (autorskie):
Classically, the core contribution of negation is taken to be boolean. In this talk, I explore the possibilities afforded by an individual-level negation, building on recent philosophical work by Akiba (2009), Fine (2017), and Bledin (2024). In other words, alongside individuals such as 'Andreea' and 'Yasu', we may posit negative counterparts, 'not Andreea' and 'not Yasu', which behave, in all relevant respects, as individuals. I show how this ontological-enrichment allows for a uniform treatment of quantificational determiners as predicates of (plural) individuals, constituting a predicative alternative to the prevailing approach based on Generalized Quantifier theory. In the presentation, I'll primarily focus on exploring some new applications of the predicative theory to the following phenomena: exceptive constructions, exceptional scope phenomena, and the definiteness effect.
