The paper argues that two distinct and independent notions of plurality are involved in natural language anaphora and quantification:
plural reference (the usual non-atomic individuals) and
plural discourse reference, i.e., reference to a quantificational dependency between sets of objects (e.g., atomic/non-atomic individuals) that is established
and subsequently elaborated upon in discourse. Following van den Berg (PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam, 1996), plural
discourse reference is modeled as plural information states (i.e., as sets of variable assignments) in a new dynamic system
couched in classical type logic that extends Compositional DRT (Muskens,
Linguistics and Philosophy, 19, 143–186, 1996). Given the underlying type logic, compositionality at sub-clausal level follows automatically and standard
techniques from Montague semantics become available. The idea that plural info states are semantically necessary (in addition
to non-atomic individuals) is motivated by relative-clause donkey sentences with multiple instances of singular donkey anaphora
that have mixed (weak and strong) readings. At the same time, allowing for non-atomic individuals in addition to plural info
states enables us to capture the intuitive parallels between singular and plural (donkey) anaphora, while deriving the incompatibility
between singular (donkey) anaphora and collective predicates. The system also accounts for empirically unrelated phenomena,
e.g., the uniqueness effects associated with singular (donkey) anaphora discussed in Kadmon (
Linguistics and Philosophy, 13, 273–324, 1990) and Heim (
Linguistics and Philosophy, 13, 131–177, 1990) among others.
Keywords Plurals - Anaphora - Weak and strong donkey readings - Uniqueness effects - Compositional dynamic semantics - Type logic