Our goal is to capture what the different instances of Gen/Nom and Gen/Acc have in common semantically while still respecting the multiplicity of factors involved and not predicting more uniformity than is actually found. Our main idea
is to treat Gen Neg and Gen Int as a “diathesis shift”, a “demotion” into a noncanonical subject or object position, semantically of type (e,t), thereby accounting for “decreased individuation/ referentiality”.
Author Biography
Barbara H Partee, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Distinguished Professor Emerita of Linguistics and Philosophy