Showing papers in "Semantics and Linguistic Theory in 2008"
TL;DR: The proposal is this: for the utterance of an exclamation to be expressively correct, its content must be salient, the speaker must find thisentsurprising, and the exclamative must receive an ‘extreme degree’ interpretation.
Abstract: (2) a. (My,) How orange Sue’s shoes were! b. (Oh,) The shoes Sue wore! c. (Boy,) Did Sue wear orange shoes! This distinction is based on the empirical observation that the latter are subject to two semantic restrictions not applicable to the former. The proposal is this: for the utterance of an exclamation to be expressively correct, itscontentmustbesalient, andthespeakermustfind thiscontentsurprising. For the utterance of an exclamative to be expressively correct, its content must additionally be about a degree, and that degree must exceed a contextually relevant standard. I account for this difference by proposing that proposition exclamations and exclamatives are expressed with two different illocutionary force operators. These operators have different domains (one is a function from propositions, the other from degree properties) but the same value (an expression of surprise). This view of exclamatives helps characterize the syntactic constructions used to express exclamatives (which on first glance do not appear to form a natural class). Exclamatives are additionally interesting because, as Milner (1978) and G´ (1980) observe, they are different from any other expression because they can receive an extreme degree interpretation in the absence of overt degree morphology. The situation is even more compelling than this: as I argue, exclamatives must receive an ‘extreme degree’ interpretation. Although the discussion here bears quite a bit on what it means for an exclamative to force an ‘extreme degree’ reading, in the end I will have little to say about how this is so.
55 citations
TL;DR: This article showed that weak NPIs are sensitive to some but not all presuppositions, while strong NPIs were sensitive to all of them, and proposed a new theory of licensing based on strict downward entailingness.
Abstract: The main goal of this paper is to establish empirically that, contrary to the view best represented by von Fintel (1999), the licensing of NPIs can be disrupted by presuppositions. We provide original data in English and Romance, and make the novel observation that weak NPIs are sensitive to some but not all presuppositions, while strong NPIs are sensitive to all of them. Section 1 presents evidence in support of our claim; section 2 argues that presuppositions should be included in the meaning relevant for NPI licensing and draws a parallel with implicatures; section 3 exposes the flaws of Strawson-entailment, which ensures licensing in the presence of presuppositions; in section 4, we offer reasons to prefer our theory of licensing based on strict downward entailingness. As a preliminary clarification, we state the licensing condition we adopt in the paper:
41 citations
TL;DR: In the Hintikkan tradition, attitude verbs are treated uniformly as universal quantifiers over possible worlds, where the sole difference between various attitudes is in the accessibility relation that determines the set of worlds they quantify over as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In the Hintikkan tradition, attitude verbs are treated uniformly as universal quantifiers over possible worlds, where the sole difference between various attitudes is in the accessibility relation that determines the set of worlds they quantify over. Believe, want and say quantify respectively over worlds compatible with the beliefs, desires, claims of the attitude holder. In this paper, we discuss two distributional puzzles which argue against such a uniform picture. The first puzzle concerns the distribution of epistemic modals in the scope of attitudes: epistemics can appear in the complement of certain attitude verbs, but not others:
37 citations
Abstract: The focus of this paper is the interpretation of DP quantifiers in clausal comparatives, cf. (1). Recent work has greatly advanced our understanding of this topic (Schwarzschild & Wilkinson 2002, Schwarzschild 2004, Heim 2006a), yet several puzzles remain. In particular, though recent advances have rectified many of the problems encountered by earlier theories (von Stechow 1984, Rullmann 1995), it is unclear whether they retain all the benefits of these earlier theories. A case in point is the explanation of the unacceptability of downward entailing quantifiers in comparative clauses, illustrated in (2).
34 citations
TL;DR: The authors discuss the relationship between classifiers and number marking in Western Armenian and explore an alternative explanation: one that focuses on the nature of plural denotations cross-linguistically.
Abstract: What is the relationship between classifiers and number marking? Are they two different morphological realizations of the same semantic/syntactic position as suggested by Borer (2005) and Krifka (1995)? Are they in complementary distribution crosslinguistically as suggested by Chierchia (1998a)? Or is the relation between them much more complicated? In this paper, we discuss these types of issues with respect to Western Armenian. Contrary to Chierchia’s conjecture, Western Armenian is a language that has productive number marking and a classifier system. Although both types of marking appear within the same language, interestingly they cannot both appear within the same noun phrase. Borer (2005) takes this fact as supporting her hypothesis that number marking and classifiers compete for the same morpho-syntactic position. We explore an alternative explanation: one that focuses on the nature of plural denotations cross-linguistically. This alternative involves two hypotheses. (1) Classifiers are like measure nouns in English in that they require their complements to be interpreted as complete semi-lattices. (2) Unlike English plurals, Western Armenian plurals are not interpreted as complete semilattices. Putting these two conjectures together, one would not expect to find number marking on the nominal complements of classifiers. This possible alternative to Borer (2005) is supported by two additional pieces of evidence. First, unlike English plurals, Western Armenian plurals do not permit quantification over singulars in environments that license negative polarity items. For example, to a question such as Bezdig-ner uni-s? (“Do you have children?”), one would not answer yes if they only had one child. This fact contrasts with English where one would answer yes to a similar type of question. Second, unlike English plurals, Western Armenian bare plurals do not obligatorily scope under negation. For example, the sentence Bezdig-ner chi vaze-ts-in (“children didn’t run”) is ambiguous, meaning either there are some children who did not run (although others might have) or there are no children that ran. The equivalent sentence in English can only mean that there are no children that ran. These differences between English and Western Armenian suggest that number marking is not the same
27 citations
TL;DR: The dynamic approach solves the problem by postulating that the second conjunct is evaluated with respect to a local context, obtained by updating the global one with the content of the first conjunct; this explains why the presupposition of the second Conjunct is in this case automatically satisfied.
Abstract: A powerful intuition behind much recent research is that a presupposition must be satisfied in its context of evaluation. The relevant notion of context is, in Stalnaker’s terminology (Stalnaker 1978), the ‘context set’, which encodes what the speech act participants take for granted (we will say ‘context’ for short). But the simplest version of this analysis faces immediate difficulties with complex sentences: John is incompetent and he knows that he is does not require that the speech act participants already take for granted that John is incompetent, since this proposition is asserted, not presupposed. The dynamic approach solves the problem by postulating that the second conjunct is evaluated with respect to a local context, obtained by updating the global one with the content of the first conjunct; this explains why the presupposition of the second conjunct is in this case automatically satisfied. This analysis is captured by the dynamic rule stated in (1): the update of a context C with a conjunction is the successive update of C with each conjunct.
25 citations
TL;DR: The authors showed that children are sensitive to the context when they are interpreting a sentence containing a scope ambiguity, and the contextual property they take into account is the question that was raised in the context, usually referred to as the scope ambiguity.
Abstract: The starting point of this paper is an experiment by Hulsey et al. (2004), in which they show that children are sensitive to the context when they are interpreting a sentence containing a scope ambiguity. The contextual property they take into account is the question that was raised in the context, usually referred to as the
22 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that question words show striking similarities among the languages of the world: They are typically morphologically related to indefinites and they are typically, if not universally, focused.
Abstract: Question words show striking similarities among the languages of the world: They are typically morphologically related to indefinites and they are typically, if not universally, focused.1 These two properties have been semantically accounted for in various ways, but so far they have not been integrated into a single coherent theory. I will show that an integration can be achieved by combining two independently motivated accounts, which up to now have not been considered together. The analysis arrived at will be shown to yield a number of answerhood conditions that are left unexplained by the pertinent semantic theories of questions and to explain intervention effects in wh-questions.
21 citations
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TL;DR: The authors argue that in view of the presence of space inflection in Nez Perce, tense marking is best captured as a device for narrowing the temporal coordinates of a spatio-temporal located sentence topic.
Abstract: 1. Introduction: space as a verbal category Many languages make use of verbal forms to express spatial relations and distinc- tions. Spatial notions are lexicalized into verb roots, as in come and go; they are expressed by derivational morphology such as Ineseno Chumashmaquti 'hither and thither' or Shasta eh´ 'downward' (Mithun 1999: 140-141); and, I will argue, they are expressed by verbal inflectional morphology in Nez Perce. This verbal inflec- tion for space shows a number of parallels with inflection for tense, which it appears immediately below. Like tense, space markers in Nez Perce are a closed-class in- flectional category with a basic locativemeaning; they differ in the axis along which their locative meaning is computed. The syntax and semantics of space inflection raises the question of just how tight the liaison is between verbal categories and temporal specification. I argue that in view of the presence of space inflection in languages like Nez Perce, tense marking is best captured as a device for narrowing the temporal coordinates of a spatiotemporally located sentence topic.
20 citations
TL;DR: This paper presented a new approach to the projection problem for presuppositions with a number of distinctive predictions and theoretical properties, including over-generation and explanatory weakness, which fails to account for the apparent nonarbitrariness of pairings between normal truth-conditional content and projection behavior.
Abstract: This paper will present a new approach 1 to the projection problem for presuppositions with a number of distinctive predictions and theoretical properties. Although the new approach is interesting as an exercise in providing a purely semantic account of presupposition projection that does not make use of dynamic machinery (compare Peters 1977), its primary interest is in the methodological and empirical characteristics that distinguish it from most other theories. 1.1. Overgeneration and Predictive Theories Many theories of presupposition projection, including most in the popular dynamic semantics tradition (exeplified by Heim 1983), encode the projection behavior of a quantifier or connective in its lexical entry. While a dynamic meaning has no separate component that describes a projection property, dynamic theories do overgenerate dynamic meanings in the sense that, from the basic set-theoretic components regularly used to state dynamic meanings, we could build for any classical truth function or quantifier many different dynamic meanings that would agree with the classical function for static, bivalent, but would produce vastly different patterns of projection behavior. This overgeneration is a form of predictive and explanatory weakness, and it fails to account for the apparent non-arbitrariness of pairings between normal truth-conditional content and projection behavior. 2
18 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that the expression of the patient argument has an effect on the aspectual class of the predicate, and that the predicate is atelic when the patient is expressed as a DP that does not have quantized reference, or is omitted altogether.
Abstract: However, certain arguments in the predicate also enter into aspectual composition and partly determine the aspectual class of the predicate (Garey 1957, Verkuyl 1972, 1993, Tenny 1987, 1992, 1994, Krifka 1989, 1992, 1998, Dowty 1991, Jackendoff 1996). For example, for creation/consumption predicates (eat, drink, build) the expression of the patient argument has an effect on the aspectual class of the predicate. When the patient is expressed as a DP that has quantized reference (i.e. describes a specific quantity of the patient such that no subpart of the patient also has that quantity), then all else being equal the predicate is telic. If the patient is instead expressed as a DP that does not have quantized reference, or is omitted altogether, the predicate is atelic. This is shown in (2), where a glass of wine has quantized reference (no subpart of a glass of wine is also a glass of wine), and the predicate is telic, while wine does not have quantized reference (subparts of wine are still wine) and the predicate is atelic. I probe for telicity using the standard in and for temporal modifiers (Dowty 1979). Only telic predicates are compatible with in-modifiers, while atelic predicates are more natural with for-modifiers.
TL;DR: The authors showed that the semantics of third-person pronouns is cross-linguistically variable, and in particular that not all languages possess thirdperson pronouns which are definite, in the sense of displaying familiarity effects.
Abstract: In this paper I intend to establish that the semantics of third-person pronouns is cross-linguistically variable, and in particular, that not all languages possess thirdperson pronouns which are definite, in the sense of displaying familiarity effects. I will argue for this on the basis of data from St’at’imcets (Lillooet Salish). I will then account for the St’at’imcets data in terms of independently-established differences between St’at’imcets and more familiar languages such as English. First, some background. In English, third-person pronouns like she, it or they are definite. In Heim’s (1982) and Kamp’s (1981) frameworks, pronouns are necessarily familiar: they introduce variables which are already present in Dom(F) or the DRS. Many have proposed that pronouns, on at least some of their uses, are disguised definite descriptions; see Cooper (1979), Heim (1990), Neale (1990), von Fintel (1994), Chierchia (1995), Sauerland (2000), among others. And some have claimed that third-person pronouns are in fact definite determiners; see Postal (1966), and more recently Elbourne (2001, 2005), who argues that (1a) has ‘an LF almost or precisely identical to’ that of (1b) (Elbourne 2005:42).
TL;DR: This article showed syntactic and semantic similarities of two types of conditionals with fronted antecedents (normal indicative conditionals and biscuit conditionals) and left dislocation constructions in German.
Abstract: We show syntactic and semantic similarities of two types of conditionals with fronted antecedents (normal indicative conditionals and biscuit conditionals) and two types of left dislocation constructions in German (german left dislocation and hanging topic left dislocation), which mark two types of topicality (aboutness topicality and frame setting topicality). On basis of these similarities we argue that (the antecedent if-clauses of) ICs and BCs are aboutness topics and frame setting topics, respectively. Concerning our analysis, we first extend the approach to abountess topicality of Endriss (to appear) to frame setting topics to derive the semantic and pragmatic contribution for the left dislocation constructions. Then we apply it to the analysis of indicative conditionals of Schlenker (2004) and show how it accounts for both types of conditionals. We thus propose one uniform approach to the interpretation of topicality that accounts for the left dislocation constructions as well as the two types of conditionals.
TL;DR: A unified semantics for singular and plural superlative expressions that makes use of the ‘**’ (“double star”) distributivity operator (an operator whose role is to pluralize 2-place predicates) is proposed.
Abstract: In this paper we propose a unified semantics for singular and plural superlative expressions that makes use of the ‘**’ (“double star”) distributivity operator (an operator whose role is to pluralize 2-place predicates). The analysis aims to solve two problems: (a) the distributivity problem (the fact that a superlative expression doesn’t distribute over the atomic parts of the plural individual it is predicated of); and (b) the cut-off problem (the fact that a plural superlative expression cannot simultaneously be predicated of two distinct yet overlapping plural individuals). We argue that any solution to these problems that posits two distinct superlative morphemes, one corresponding to a superlative operator for singular individuals and one corresponding to a superlative operator for plural individuals, is challenged by the lack of cross-linguistic morphological evidence. We provide a unified analysis, and account for the differences between plural and singular superlative expressions by appealing to pragmatic principles.
TL;DR: This paper showed that paraphrases that include the verb have can be expressed as have-for-two-day verbs, such as get, give, and transitive want, and that the paraphrase can be seen as a formative event.
Abstract: Verbs like get, give, and transitive want incorporate a possession component, and hence receive paraphrases that include the verb have as given in (1): (1) a. John wants the car. ↔ John wants to have the car. b. John got the car. ↔ John came to have the car. c. Mary gave John the car. ↔Mary caused John to have the car. Evidence for an underlying “have” comes from durative adverbials, which may modify the “have” state (McCawley 1974, Ross 1976, Dowty 1979, inter alia): (2) a. John wants the car (for two days). (want or have for two days) b. John got the car (for two days). (have for two days) c. John gave me the car (for two days). (have for two days) Furthermore, with want both events can be modified at the same time as in (3a), something not possible with non-possession verbs as in (3b). (3) a. On Monday, John wanted a car Tuesday. (want Monday, have Tuesday) b. #On Monday, John painted a car Tuesday. This suggests these sentences have an underlying semantic ‘have’ formative. Two theories have been proposed for how this formative enters the picture. On one view it is in the lexical decomposition of the verb, as in (4a) for give (Dowty 1979, Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2008). The other posits a silent syntactic formative (McCawley 1974), as in the analysis of Harley (2003: 34, (3b)) in (4b), where Phave raises and adjoins to vcause, which Spells-Out as give (Harley 2003: 34, (3b)). (4) a. give := [ x CAUSE [ z HAVE y ] ] b. vP
TL;DR: An analysis is developed that treats “if”-conditionals and unconditionals as exactly the same species of adjunct that serve semantically to restrict the domains of operators in their scope.
Abstract: Unconditionals have much in common with “if”-conditionals. The structures of unconditional and “if”-conditional sentences are similar; we have a clausal adjunct that seems to take scope high in the main clause. Unconditionals, I will argue, are similar to “if”-conditionals in that both kinds of adjuncts trigger restrictions on the domains of operators in their scope (in the sense of Lewis 1975). However, it is obvious that unconditionals and “if”-conditionals are different in a range of ways. Unconditionals entail their consequent, whereas “if”conditionals typically do not. Unconditionals also convey what I will refer to as “indifference”: that e.g. it doesn’t matter who comes to the party. Previous work on unconditionals has focused on capturing the differences, without truly capturing the similarities. I develop an analysis that treats “if”-conditionals and unconditionals as exactly the same species of adjunct. Both, following Lewis 1975, Kratzer 1981, 1986, Heim 1982, serve semantically to restrict the domains of operators in their scope. The differences follow from their internal semantics.
TL;DR: A unified generalization will be proposed, stating that only strong DPs ever may receive a de re interpretation, involving a change in the semantic type system, under which only strong determiners may take situation pronouns.
Abstract: Linguists often assume that possible worlds and times are represented as pronouns in natural language (see Cresswell 1990, Percus 2000, Kusumoto 2005, Keshet 2008). This paper will construe such pronouns as world-time pairs, which will be referred to as situations, for simplicity. A predicate taking such a pair as an argument is evaluated in the world and the time specified by that situation, effectively determining whether it is de re or de dicto. Researchers such as Percus (2000) have noted that such a system overgenerates and proposed generalizations describing where this overgeneralization occurs. This paper will examine three such generalizations: Percus’s (2000) Generalization X, a generalization by Musan (1997), and a new generalization covering modifiers of nouns. Ultimately, a unified generalization will be proposed, stating that only strong DPs ever may receive a de re interpretation. An explanation for this generalization is offered, involving a change in the semantic type system, under which only strong determiners may take situation pronouns.
TL;DR: The present paper formalizes the openness of the future by leaving possible worlds generally undefined for the future, which affects the interpretation of tenses in modal/conditional constructions.
Abstract: This paper is about the interpretation of tenses in conditional sentences. It focuses on a particular cluster of data centering around the observation that tenses in the consequent of a conditional can obtain a non-deictic interpretation. As we will see, there is no need for something very extravagant or new to deal with these observations. We can do with the standard analysis of indicative conditionals using quantification over possible worlds (Kratzer 1979, 1981): a conditional If A, then C is true with respect to a set of possible worlds B if C is true at all, most or few worlds in B at which A is true. This standard analysis will be combined with a similarly well-known approach towards the meaning of the English tenses: a nondeictic, relative semantics, as, for instance, proposed in Abusch (1997) and Stechow (2005). The original contribution of this paper lies primarily in how it spells out the model theory for this standard semantics, particularly in the way it models the asymmetry between closed past and open future. In contrast to the standard position based on work of Kamp (1978), the present paper formalizes the openness of the future by leaving possible worlds generally undefined for the future. This shift in the conception of the future will have consequences for the temporal properties of modal bases B that enter the semantics of modal/conditional constructions. As will be shown below, this affects the interpretation of tenses in modal/conditional constructions. In particular, it will explain the cluster of observations that the paper intends to account for. There are many questions concerning the interpretation of conditional sentences that this paper is silent on (for instance, the interpretation of aspect in conditional constructions, presupposition projection and the issue of how to model counterfactual reasoning). The decision to leave these topics out results from the conviction that these issues are independent from the specific problem the paper does address. This is also the reason for why the present proposal is worked out within a very simple semantic framework. This will enable the reader to easily fit in his/her favored approach to deal with the issues of modal/conditional semantics that (s)he is working on.
TL;DR: In this paper, a theory of concealed questions (CQs) is presented, which is the first to provide a unified and principled account of definite, indefinite, and quantified CQs and CCQs.
Abstract: This paper presents a novel theory of concealed questions (CQs) The theory is the first to provide a unified and principled account of definite, indefinite, and quantified CQs and CCQs (CQ-containing CQs)
TL;DR: Average sentences provide new evidence that the compositional system of natural language must allow for the possibility that the nuclear scope of of a scope- taking term may serve as the argument of a third expression, rather than the scope-taking term itself, a relation that Barker (2007) refers to as PARASITIC SCOPE.
Abstract: The mystery of (1a-b) is that it seems that they can be true, even though there is no person in the world that is the reference of the noun phrases the average American and the average Freddie Voter, and no person in the world that has 23 children (1c) makes a similar point, though in a somewhat different fashion: while the property of seeing one’s doctor 75 times per year is not incoherent in the same way as the property of having 23 children, the truth of (1c) does not commit us to the existence of any individuals who actually have this property Both linguists and philosophers have used average sentences to draw dramatic conclusions of various sorts For example, Norbert Hornstein and Noam Chomsky have used this class of sentences to argue that semantic theory does not exploit a reference relation, a relation between words and things (Hornstein 1984, Chomsky 2000) Similarly, some philosophers have used these sentences to argue that singular reference is not ontologically committing Such conclusions are far too hasty Those who based dramatic conclusions about the nature of semantics or ontological commitment on average sentences are unfairly exploiting the lack of a compositional semantics for sentences of this sort In this paper, we provide the first such semantics Moreover, we show that within the referential approach to semantics one can provide a detailed compositional semantics of these constructions that reveals much of specific linguistic interest Specifically, average sentences provide new evidence that the compositional system of natural language must allow for the possibility that the nuclear scope of of a scope-taking term may serve as the argument of a third expression, rather than the scope-taking term itself, a relation that Barker (2007) refers to as PARASITIC SCOPE
TL;DR: This paper showed that there are comparative correlatives that are not comparative conditionals and that the semantics of such correlatives crucially involves a relation (possibly the identity relation) between differentials.
Abstract: The two goals of this paper are (i) to establish that there are comparative correlatives that are not comparative conditionals and that the semantics of such correlatives crucially involves a relation (possibly the identity relation) between differentials (against much of the previous literature, e.g., McCawley 1988, Beck 1997) and (ii) to argue that a unified analysis should be given for such non-conditional, differential-based comparative (and equative) correlatives and the more familiar, conditional-like comparative correlatives. Correlatives are “biclausal topic-comment structures [. . . ] [in which] the dependent clause introduces one or more topical referents to be commented on by the matrix clause, where each topical referent must be picked up by – correlated with – an anaphoric proform.” (Bittner 2001). Differentials, e.g., 2 cm in the comparative Gabby is 2 cm taller than Linus, specify the difference between two measures, e.g., between Gabby’s and Linus’s heights.
TL;DR: In this article, it was shown that temporal anaphora depends in part on the aspectual distinction between events and states, i.e., the times of the described events (i.e. John’s getting up, going to the window, raising the blind, going back to bed).
Abstract: Ever since the seminal work in (Kamp 1979, Hinrichs 1981; 1986, Kamp and Rohrer 1983, and Partee 1984), it has been generally held that temporal anaphora depends in part on the aspectual distinction between events and states. For example, consider Partee’s classic example in (1). Here, the times of the described events (i.e. John’s getting up, going to the window, raising the blind, going back to bed) correlate with the order of appearance, i.e. a narrative progression is invoked. On the other hand, the states described in (1) (i.e. being light out, not being ready to face the day, being depressed) hold throughout the described events, i.e. a narrative halt is invoked.
TL;DR: In this paper, the theoretical status of a structure containing an unlicensed polarity item has been investigated and the traditional answer has been that, when a polarity items does not cooccur with an appropriate licensor, the result is ungrammaticality or syntactically or semantically ill-formed.
Abstract: One of the core questions in the literature on polarity sensitivity is what Ladusaw (1996: 326) calls the Status Question: ‘[W]hat is the theoretical status of a structure containing an unlicensed polarity item?’ The traditional answer has been that, when a polarity item does not cooccur with an appropriate licensor, as with the classic negative polarity item any in (1b), the result is ungrammaticality — the sentence is either syntactically or semantically ill-formed. (For now, I use the asterisk as a general mark of unacceptability; a larger dossier of judgment marks will be introduced in §5.)
TL;DR: Directional prepositions are turned to and the role of directionality in numeral modification is investigated and an analysis in terms of a semantics for up to which expresses a homogeneity requirement is proposed.
Abstract: As far as I know, the semantics of such modified numerals has so far only been discussed in Corver and Zwarts (2006), who focus on the close relation between the locative spatial semantics of prepositions like under and their use in numeral quantifiers In this paper, I will turn to directional prepositions and investigate the role of directionality in numeral modification I will zoom in on the case of up to, as exemplified in (1-d), show that this modifier has a rather quirky distribution and claim that this can be explained by assuming that the use of a spatial preposition in the numeral domain is governed by the same constraints as is its use in the spatial or temporal domain The article is structured as follows First, in Section 2, I will motivate why looking at individual numeral modifiers is an interesting enterprise Then, I will give some background on prepositional numerals (Section 3), before turning to the crucial data in Section 4 In Section 5, I will propose an analysis in terms of a semantics for up to which expresses a homogeneity requirement Section 6 concludes
TL;DR: This work will present an alternative analysis of contrastive topic couched in the so-called partition semantics of questions proposed by Groenendijk & Stokhof 1984, and it will be seen that the proposed analysis has the best of both worlds so to speak, being empirically more adequate than the existing analyses of either approach.
Abstract: To the semantics and pragmatics of contrastive topic, there have been two approaches proposed in the literature: one is to take contrastive topic as an information-structural discourse regulating notion on a par with focus (Roberts 1996, Buring 1999, Kadmon 2001) and the other is to analyze a contrastive marker, phonetic or morphological as an focus-sensitive operator with its inherent semantic and pragmatic content (Lee 1999, 2006, Hara 2006, Oshima 2002). In the current work, we will review the two approaches and show that both of them have empirical problems; then, we will present an alternative analysis of contrastive topic couched in the so-called partition semantics of questions proposed by (Groenendijk & Stokhof 1984, Groenendijk 1999). It will be seen that the proposed analysis has the best of both worlds so to speak, being empirically more adequate than the existing analyses of either approach. A word is in order about the marking of Contrastive Topic. Crosslinguistically, there are more than one way of marking CT; by means of, e.g. a morpheme like –wa in Japanese and –nun in Korean and H*LH% or L+H*LH% tone (Pierrehumbert 1980) in English. In the following, a CT-marked constituent is marked with subscript CT or a CT-marker morpheme (wa in Japanese).
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present and analyze new empirical evidence suggesting that it actually is not the only pattern found across languages, and they use the same construction to convey the five different meanings of the mystery clause in Adyghe.
Abstract: Embedded clauses have many forms and meanings. In particular, relative clauses, embedded declaratives, and embedded interrogative clauses are assigned very different interpretations, despite their common clausal nature. A headed relative like which Adam cooked is standardly assumed to denote the set of individuals that Adam cooked (Quine 1960; Montague 1973); a free relative like what Adam cooked denotes the (plural) individual that Adam cooked (Jacobson 1995, Caponigro 2004); an embedded declarative like that Adam cooked vegetables denotes the proposition ‘that Adam cooked vegetables’; an embedded polar interrogative like whether Adam cooked vegetables denotes a set containing the proposition ‘that Adam cooked vegetables’ and/or its negation ‘that Adam did not cook vegetables’; finally, an embedded constituent interrogative like which food Adam cooked denotes the set of propositions that are (true) answers to the question ‘which food did Adam cook?’ (see Hamblin 1973 and Karttunen 1977 for the semantics of both types of interrogatives). These differences in meaning correspond to differences in the morphosyntax: the presence or absence of a wh-word, relative pronoun, or overt complementizer; syntactic transparency (embedded declaratives) or syntactic opacity (relatives and interrogatives); and differences in the nature of the complementizer (Rizzi 1990: ch. 2). While we are used to this pattern in familiar languages, our theories of grammar do not require it to be the only one possible or necessary. In this paper, we present and analyze new empirical evidence suggesting that it actually is not the only pattern found across languages. The evidence comes from Adyghe, a Northwest Caucasian language, which behaves very differently as far as clausal subordination is concerned. What looks like the same construction (for now we will refer to it as the “mystery clause”, MC) is used to convey the five different meanings above. This raises two questions: (i) what kind of construction the MC
TL;DR: The authors discusses the interpretation of Japanese sentences containing a numeral quantifier and the focus particle mo and gives an account as to how the pragmatic interpretation is derived for each case, and shows that the presupposition of mo is computed in accordance with the syntactic structure.
Abstract: This paper discusses the interpretation of Japanese sentences containing a numeral quantifier and the focus particle mo. A numeral quantifier (NQ) is a combination of a numeral and a classifier, i.e. the form [Num CL]; mo functioning as a focus particle is similar in meaning to English even. 1 When mo co-occurs with an NQ in a Japanese sentence, there are at least three different possible syntactic structures, and the scalar presuppositional effect differs depending on the structure. This is an interesting phenomenon since the pragmatic effect seems to be directly affected by syntax. In this paper, I will describe the relevant data and give an account as to how the pragmatic interpretation is derived for each case. Here we see how presupposition obeys syntax, and thus my claim will be that the presupposition of mo is computed in accordance with the syntactic structure. This indirectly supports Chierchia’s (2004) claim that scalar implicature computation is part of function compositional process of sentence interpretation.
TL;DR: This article proposed the notion of a "linguistic side effect" that occurs when a sentence is assigned some truth conditions, and the dynamic effect of uttering it partly consists in narrowing the common ground by excluding those possible worlds that do not meet the truth conditions.
Abstract: can be uttered when both the speaker and the hearer are looking at a picture of a woman wearing a lab coat and a stethoscope. Barker and Taranto state the following problem: if the evidence presented to every participant of the conversation (part of the common ground) already entails p, there is no need in stating p. The common ground, viewed as a set of possible worlds, does not change after the assertion of clarity is made.1 The solution proposed by Barker and Taranto involves the notion of a “linguistic side effect”. Every sentence is assigned some truth conditions, and the dynamic effect of uttering it partly consists in narrowing the common ground by excluding those possible worlds that do not meet the truth conditions (this is the “main effect” of uttering the sentence). However, some changes to the common ground may not be related to the outside world, but to the state of the communication itself.2 New discourse referents may be introduced. Standards may be set for vague predicates. For example,
TL;DR: In this article, a negative existential quantified phrase is taken to bind the pronominal subject in a manner similar to variable binding in predicate logic, where the subject is not referred to by the pronoun, but is instead taken to bound the subject's antecedent in a way similar to the cross-the-board binding.
Abstract: Example (1)’s pronominal’s antecedent is a negative existential quantified phrase. There’s nothing here for the pronoun to refer to, and so the quantified subject is instead taken to bind his in a manner akin to variable binding in predicate logic. Example (2) represents a case of so-called “across-the-board” (ATB) binding. On the indicated reading, (2) means that John loves John’s mother, and Bill hates Bill’s mother. The pronominal, then, is simultaneously “co-referential” with two antecedents—and hence actually referential to nothing. Argument-doubling binding, in particular that characteristic of Jacobson (1999)’s variable-free logic for anaphora, is well-suited to such cases, as shown explicitly in Jacobson (1996).
TL;DR: Evidence that meanings are not verification-agnostic truth conditions is provided, by showing that varying the suitability of a scene to some types of verification procedures affects participants’ accuracy in assigning truth values, whereas varying the set of procedures implementing the right function from worlds to truth values does not.
Abstract: The language faculty generates expressions that relate sounds and meanings, but it is not immediately obvious exactly what kind of formal object “meanings” are. A common assumption is that sentence meanings are truth conditions: unstructured functions from worlds to truth values. By looking at the relationship between language understanding and verification procedures, this paper explores the possibility that a sentence’s meaning could in fact be something strictly richer than a truth condition, which makes reference to certain kinds of algorithms or representations that may be used to determine the truth value of the sentence in a particular world. If this possibility is correct, then a sentence’s meaning will give some privileged status to a subset of the possible verification procedures. On the other hand, if a sentence’s meaning is nothing more than a bare truth condition, then all verification procedures implementing the right function from worlds to truth values will have equal status. We provide evidence that meanings are not verification-agnostic truth conditions, by showing that varying the suitability of a scene to some types of verification procedures affects participants’ accuracy in assigning truth values, whereas varying the suitability of a scene to some other types verification procedures does not. To address these questions we investigated English-speakers’ understanding of the word most. This was chosen as a starting point because the conventional truth-conditional semantics of most is relatively well-understood, and there exists a range of useful findings concerning the psychology of number and constraints on visual perception that we can bring to bear on experimental results. But there is no reason that the same questions we ask about most should not in principle be asked about any other expression of natural language. The rest of this paper is organised as follows. In Section 2 we outline the space of possible verification procedures for sentences of the form Most (of the) Xs (are) Y, and review some previous work addressing the relationship between the meaning and verification of these sentences. We then present two experiments.