Proceedings Published by the LSA (Linguistic Society of America)
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Past-as-Past in counterfactual desire reports: a view from Japanese
Get PDFThe semantic contribution of Fake Past in counterfactual expressions has been actively debated in recent semantic literature. This study deepens our current understanding of this natural language phenomenon by digging into the behavior of Past tense in Japanese counterfactual desire reports. We show that the Past-as-Past approach to Fake Past makes correct predictions about its semantic behavior
Ranges: composite measure phrases, modified numerals, and choice functions
Get PDFRange expressions such as between 3 and 8, from 3 to 8, and 3 through 8 resemble modified numerals such as at least 3 and have sometimes been mentioned under that rubric. This paper shows that they are crucially different in their distribution, the readings available to them, and their behavior with respect to quantifiers, and more generally that they have an intricate grammar of their own. We distinguish three classes of readings they can receive: singleton punctual readings, on which they often give rise to ignorance inferences; set punctual readings, which arise chiefly in the scope of quantifiers; and interval readings, where the range is interpreted exhaustively. We propose an analysis on which range expressions denote choice functions over degrees, which can in the right circumstances be parameterized
The presupposition of even
Get PDFI present a new observation with regard to the felicity of using even: There is no apparent focus/QUD congruence for even-sentences. For example, Even Mary came cannot be used to answer a question like who came or who was unlikely to come. Instead, the felicitous use of Even Mary came is to address issues like how successful the exhibition was, how enthusiastic people were, how urgent the matter was, etc. Thus I propose that the use of even is QUD-sensitive, always with regard to a contextually salient degree question. Even brings a degree-based presupposition of additivity, not an entity-based one (see also Greenberg 2018 for a similar view). An even-sentence presupposes that its prejacent is associated with a degree value, a benchmark value higher than the usual contextual threshold, resolving a degree question with an increasingly positive answer. E.g., under a relevant scenario about how popular a certain talk was, Even Mary came is roughly interpreted as (the talk was so popular) that Mary came. Under the current analysis, the entity-based additivity and likelihood-based scalarity of even, which are considered presuppositions under the traditional view, are now considered implicatures.
Restrictions on the position of exh
Get PDFThe grammatical approach to scalar implicatures attributes their introduction to a covert operator exh, which can be posited in various structural positions. By studying the interaction of scalar implicature calculation and the presuppositions of English also and again, we are able to pinpoint the structural position of exh. This diagnostic shows that some triggers of scalar implicature require exh to be adjoined as low as possible above them, whereas other triggers allow for more delayed adjunction of exh. We offer a concrete proposal for these behaviors in terms of syntactic feature-checking and show how it extends to cases involving ignorance inferences
Some remarks on the history of transfer in language studies
Get PDFTransfer is a notion that is pervasive in the modern field of second and third language acquisition. However, the definition of transfer is not easily found. Most of this paper is devoted to a historical overview of the notion of transfer and the changes the definition underwent over the years. At the end of this paper, I sketch a proposal which involves discarding the notion of “transfer” in favor of more computationally efficient options
Cessation implicature and simultaneous readings
Get PDFAltshuler & Schwarzschild (2013a, 2013b) provide an account of the simultaneous reading of past-under-past sentences in English (called the sequence-of-tense (SOT) phenomenon) based on a lack of cessation implicature. However, this analysis encounters empirical and technical issues in accounting for the English data in the same construction involving the future auxiliary would, the past perfect, and the future-under-future configuration. It also faces difficulty in accounting for the cross-linguistic data that concerns tense in verb complements. We are, therefore, led to conclude that the traditional solution to this problem (Abusch 1988, 1997, Ogihara 1996, von Stechow 1995, Stowell 1996, and Kratzer 1998) that renders structurally lower past tense morphemes in English semantically empty (or plain variables) is preferable. This system allows us to adopt the same semantic mechanism for both SOT languages such as English and non-SOT languages such as Japanese
Accounting for variability in the truth-evaluation of bare epistemic possibility statement
Get PDFIt is hotly debated whose perspective is relevant for defining the truth-value of bare epistemic possibility statements: the utterer or the assessor. Central to this debate are findings on truth-value judgments of ‘might p’ statements in “eavesdropping” scenarios where the statement is appropriately asserted from the point of view of the speaker but does not correspond to how in reality things are. We offer findings from two studies suggesting that in these scenarios English speakers disagree on the truth-value not only of ‘might p’ but also, surprisingly, of bare ‘p’. We argue that underlying this behavior is not a disagreement on the semantic content of the statements but a disagreement on how to interpret the meaning of the adjectives ‘true’ and ‘false’ when applied to a statement uttered by another agent. Specifically, we compare two potential accounts: the first account ascribes to the adjective ‘true’ an ambiguity between a ‘coherent’ sense – a statement uttered by A is true as long as the statement coheres with A’s evidence – and a ‘correspondentist’ sense - a statement as uttered by A is true as long as the statement correspond to reality; the second account treats ‘true’ as having only the correspondentist sense but ascribes to it an inherent relative nature – to decide if a statement as uttered by A is true one has to first decide a perspective (A or the assessor). Lastly, we discuss the implications of the findings for the semantics of epistemic ‘might p’ statements
On the aorist in conditional antecedents
Get PDFThis paper aims to render an explanation for the interpretations of the Turkish aorist when it occurs at the antecedent clause of a conditional. I argue that at the main predicate position the aorist marker has two main interpretations, namely the future-oriented and the characterizing ones. However, inside the antecedent clause, these readings are not readily accessible in the way that they are at the consequent clause, i.e., the main predicate of the conditional. I tackle this situation from two different perspectives and layout two proposals. Based on Kratzer’s (1986, 1991) well-known restrictor analysis of conditionals, my first proposal is that the aorist marker is licensed in the antecedent clause only if the consequent clause has one of its matrix clause interpretations. Nonetheless, various examples allow the aorist marker in the antecedent even though the consequent clause has neither the future-oriented nor the characterizing interpretations. Therefore, I change my approach and make a final proposal that satisfactorily describes both the cases that conform to my initial proposal and the ones that do not. I propose that the aorist in the antecedent either sets the evaluation time of the consequent to the future, in line with Schulz’s (2008) analysis or makes a quantification over situations, as von Fintel (1994) argues for.
Turkic Instrumental Case Marker in Tātic Language Group
Get PDFThis paper studies the morphological influence of language contact between Turkic and Tātic language group in Northwest Iran. The postposition under study is the Turkic –inan and how it has entered the morphological system of some Tāti dialects of Iran. In particular, it is shown which Tāti dialects are influenced in this regard and why. The data for this study were collected from interviews with native Tāti and Turkic speakers in Iran and also from descriptive grammars and Tāti-Farsi dictionaries. We have used Narrog\u27s (2010) instrumental semantic map to see which semantic functions are fulfilled with the instrumental-related postposition or case marker in both Tāti and Turkic dialects of Iran and whether they are the same or different in these languages
Typological gaps in iambic nonfinality correlate with learning difficulty
Get PDFThis paper discusses gaps in stress typology that are unexpected from the perspective of a foot-based theory and shows that the patterns pose difficulties for a computationally implemented learning algorithm. The unattested patterns result from combining theoretical elements whose effects are generally well-attested, including iambic footing, nonfinality, word edge alignment and a foot binarity requirement. The patterns can be found amongst the 124 target stress systems constructed by Tesar and Smolensky (2000) as a test of their approach to hidden structure learning. A learner with a Maximum Entropy grammar that uses a form of Expectation Maximization to deal with hidden structure was found to often fail on these unattested languages