Deriving De Re/De Dicto Interpretations in Online Sentence Processing

This paper reports the results of an experiment designed to adjudicate between two theoretical accounts of de re/de dicto ambiguity: the scope account (Montague 1973; Russell 1905) and the world variable binding account (Percus 2000; von Fintel & Heim 2011). The results are partly compatible with the scope account and completely incompatible with the world variable account, thus seeming to favour the former. This conclusion is not without complications, and I suggest there are two potential sources for the problematic results: a learning effect or a lexical surprisal effect. Once we take these factors into consideration, the observed incompatibility may not be as problematic as first thought.