An Antinomy about Anaphora

Abstract

Standard theories of so-called donkey anaphora (Kamp 1981, Heim 1982, Groenendijk and Stokhof 1991) predict that sentence (1) is truth conditionally equivalent to (2). (1) Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it. (2) Every farmer who owns a donkey beats every donkey that he owns. I will refer to the proposition expressed by (2) as the strong reading of (1). A nonstandard theory, defended by King (1993, 2004), predicts that (1) is equivalent to (3). (3) Every farmer who owns a donkey beats a donkey that he owns. The proposition expressed by (3) is the weak reading of (1). Although the authors I have referred to disagree about how best to interpret (1), they agree that (1) is not ambiguous; it semantically expresses no more than one reading. Not everyone shares this opinion, though. Schubert and Pelletier (1989), Kanazawa (1994), and Chierchia (1995) suggested that sentences relevantly like (1) are ambiguous. 2 Consider, for example, sentences (4)–(6). (4) Everyone who owns an umbrella leaves it at home on a sunny day. (5) Everyone who owns an umbrella uses it on a rainy day.