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Intensional Verbs and Quantifiers

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Abstract

This paper discusses the semantics of intensional NP-taking verbs such as need, want, recognize, and hire. It proposes several new linguistic criteria for intensionality besides the traditional ones of failure of existential quantification and substitutivity, and it defends two different semantic analyses for different intensional verbs. For the majority of verbs, the paper argues for a partialized version of the intensional quantifier analysis originally proposed by Montague, but for a single class of verbs, verbs of comparison, it adopts the property analysis recently proposed as a general analysis of intensional verb constructions by Zimmermann (1992). The paper also includes a systematic classification of intensional verbs according to the type of lexical meaning they involve.

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Moltmann, F. Intensional Verbs and Quantifiers. Natural Language Semantics 5, 1–52 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008245409172

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