Comparing exhaustivity operators
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It is proved that whenever the set of alternatives relative to which exhaustification takes place is semantically closed under conjunction, the two operators are necessarily equivalent.Abstract:
In this paper, I investigate the formal relationships between two types of exhaustivity operators that have been discussed in the literature, one based on minimal worlds/models, noted exh-mw (van Rooij & Schulz 2004, Schulz & van Rooij 2006, Spector 2003, 2006, with roots in Szabolcsi 1983, Groenendijk & Stokhof 1984), and one based on the notion of innocent exclusion, noted exh-ie (Fox 2007). Among others, I prove that whenever the set of alternatives relative to which exhaustification takes place is semantically closed under conjunction, the two operators are necessarily equivalent. Together with other results, this provides a method to simplify, in some cases, the computation associated with exh-ie, and, in particular, to drastically reduce the number of alternatives to be considered.
Besides their practical relevance, these results clarify the formal relationships between both types of operators.
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Children interpret disjunction as conjunction: Consequences for theories of implicature and child development
TL;DR: The authors showed that preschool children oftentimes understand disjunctive sentences as if they were conjunctive, and that children tend to strengthen disjunctions to conjunctions, in matrix and embedded positions (under every).
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Economy and embedded exhaustification
Danny Fox,Benjamin Spector +1 more
TL;DR: A constraint on exhaustification (an economy condition) is proposed which restricts the conditions under which an exhaustivity operator can be licensed and allows for a number of generalizations, such as the ‘Implicature Focus Generalization’.
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Consistency preservation in Quantity implicature: The case of at least
TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that sentences with unembedded at least instantiate the relevant configuration, hence that the standard Neo-Gricean account incorrectly predicts inconsistent inference sets for those cases.
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The symmetry problem: current theories and prospects
TL;DR: The structural approach to alternatives for scalar implicatures is the most developed attempt in the literature at solving the symmetry problem of scalar-implicatures as discussed by the authors, but it is not a general solution to the problem in full generality.
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Focus Association by Movement: Evidence from Tanglewood
TL;DR: The authors argue for the existence of covert focus movement in English focus association with only Tanglewood configurations of the form in Kratzer 1991, and show that Tanglewoods co...
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