Nominal Restriction

Jason Stanley

I begin by explaining a theory of quantifier domain restriction introduced in a forthcoming paper by myself and Zoltan Szabo. According to this theory, each nominal expression comes with a domain restricting index. So, the fact that 'Every fireman is tired' can be used to convey the proposition that every fireman in Syracuse, NY is tired is due to the fact that 'fireman' occurs with a domain restricting index that restricts the interpretation of 'fireman' to the fireman in Syracuse. The central purpose of this paper is to investigate the consequences of this theory for other constructions. In the first section, I explain the theory, and provide several new arguments for it. In the second section, I argue that the theory resolves the following long-standing puzzle about adjectives. Consider the sentence, "Fred built a large snowman", relative to a context in which Fred is seven years old, and the snowman he built is large only for one built by a seven year old. Relative to this context, the sentence is still true. The conclusion in the semantics literature has been that the context-dependence of such sentences cannot be resolved simply by appeal to the nominal complement of the adjective. I argue that, given the theory of domain restriction discussed in the first section, this conclusion is unwarranted. In the final section, I show how the theory accounts for the context-sensitivity of terms such as "water". In some contexts, the stuff in a dirty puddle counts as part of the extension of "water", whereas in other contexts, only pure H20 does. The theory of domain restriction discussed explains these facts, and also has several implications of independent philosophical interest for the literal meaning of terms such as "water".