*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
    
                       SEMANTICS/PRAGMATICS WORKSHOP

                             Makoto Kanazawa
                         Chiba University & CSLI

                          Tuesday, October 6th 
                                11:00 AM

                    Room 126, Linguistics Department
                           Margaret Jacks Hall

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Donkey Anaphora: Singular vs. Plural

A certain prima facie implausible idea about the semantics of donkey
pronouns has found a surprising number of adherents (Davies 1981, Lappin
1989, Neale 1990, Lappin and Francez 1994, Yoon 1994, 1996, Krifka 1996) 
and even crept into a textbook (Larson and Seagal 1995).  According to
this idea, a singular donkey pronoun like `it' in (1)

(1)  Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it

is `semantically numberless' so that (1) gets identical semantics as (2): 

(2)  Every farmer who owns one or more donkeys beats them.

Using Krifka's (1996) theory, where I think the idea is most forcefully
put forward, as my target of criticism, I show that the idea (i) is not
well-motivated, (ii) makes wrong predictions in many cases, and (iii) does
not do the job it is intended to do in some cases---in short, it is
unsatisfactory in every respect. 

**************************************************************************