UCLA

This paper proposes a dynamic approach to the problem of split antecedents, in which a pronominal element refers back to a disjunctive clause. First, I discuss the ambiguities disjunction gives rise to in intensional contexts, in particular their consequences for anaphoric possibilities. I pay special attention to the interaction of future tense and disjunction, showing the role of temporal structure in the availability of anaphora to a split antecedent. Second, I propose a dynamic binding account for split antecedents introducing the concept of `variable complexes'. These are syntactic constructs consisting of two variables that can be bound by two corresponding quantifiers. I implement variable complexes formally as an extension of Dynamic Predicate Logic (DPL; Groenendijk and Stokhof 1991). This provides better empirical coverage and also simplifies the status of disjunction in DPL by giving us an enriched view on the dynamic behavior of connectives.