Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung
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Protagonist-Mediated Perspective
Full text linkThere are two main competing analyses of Free Indirect Discourse: bicontextual accounts, which posit two separate context parameters (Schlenker, 2004; Eckardt, 2014; Reboul et al., 2016), and quotation accounts (Maier, 2015, 2016, 2017b). In this paper, we show that the bicontextual approach is not powerful enough to explain the range of perspective-taking behavior in Free Indirect Discourse. We highlight overlooked data on how grammatically perspectival expressions like \u27come\u27 are interpreted in Free Indirect Discourse, showing that these perspectival expressions can be anchored to any perspective that is accessible to the protagonist. To account for this data, the bicontextual account requires a significant enrichment: two separate assignment functions in addition to two context parameters. Formalizing quotation using a \u27store update model\u27, we argue that modifying the bicontextual account in this way makes the two competing accounts strikingly similar to each other
Inherently context-sensitive gradable adjectives
Full text linkIn most analyses of languages that are argued to have degrees as semantic primitives (e.g., Cresswell 1976; von Stechow 1984), gradable adjectives (GAs) receive context-independent denotations. When evaluativity (i.e., norm-relatedness) arises, it is added to the meaning of GAs by a covert operator (e.g., \u27pos\u27 in Cresswell 1976, von Stechow 1984; EVAL in Rett 2007, 2008) or a pragmatic process (Rett 2014). In this paper, I argue that Japanese takes the opposite route to evaluativity: Japanese GAs are inherently context-dependent, and evaluativity arises by default. Empirical evidence comes from 1) obligatory differential readings of measure phrases (MPs) occurring with positive forms of GAs and 2) evaluativity of equatives and degree questions involving GAs. In fact, cross-linguistically, the two phenomena, the unavailability of absolute MP readings occurring with a GA and evaluativity of that GA in equatives and degree questions, are observed to be related (Bierwisch 1989; Winter 2005; Krasikova 2009; Sassoon 2011; Breakstone 2012; Bochnak 2013), which motivated proposals that (some) relative GAs in English are inherently context-dependent (Sassoon 2011; Breakstone 2012). I demonstrate that all relative GAs in Japanese exhibit this link and motivate their inherently context-dependent denotations
A Puzzle about ‘if’, Update and Compositionality
Full text linkAccording to dynamic approaches to meaning, meanings are context change potentials: ways in which an assertion of a sentence affects the context or the common ground of a conversation. In this paper I will argue that it is not straightforward to square the idea that meanings are context change potentials with an adequate theory of the discourse dynamics of conditionals and the idea that meanings are compositional. As I will argue, there is a tension between providing a prima facie plausible theory of the discourse dynamics of indicative conditionals while holding on to a popular and widespread notion of what it is for meanings to be compositional. The tension disappears, if we reject the view that meanings are context change potentials. That said, I will close the paper by discussing what I take to be the two most promising routes defenders of a dynamic approach to meaning could take in order to resolve the tension
Problem solving with Japanese \u27beki\u27
No full textExpressions of prioritizing modality vary within and across languages in the criteria they can encode (rules, goals, or desires) and the directive or expressive speech acts they can perform. Crucial parameters include source of evaluation, endorsement, modal strength, and counterfactuality implicatures. Japanese \u27beki\u27 is a prioritizing modal which, unlike the better studied Indo-European modals, lacks epistemic readings and interacts with tense transparently, allowing us to isolate modal and temporal effects of past marking
Degrees of confidence are not subjective probabilities
Full text linkWe assume that \u27confident\u27 reports have their standard degree-based truth conditions: to be \u27confident\u27 that \u27p\u27 is to have a degree of confidence that \u27p\u27 which is at least as high as some contextually determined threshold; to be \u27more confident\u27 that \u27p\u27 than that \u27q\u27 is to have a degree of confidence that \u27p\u27 that is higher than one’s degree of confidence that \u27q\u27; and so on. But what are degrees of confidence? The standard answer is that agents’ degrees of confidence are simply their Bayesian subjective probabilities: for example, how confident one is that it’s raining = how likely one thinks it is that it’s raining. We raise a number of challenges for this Bayesian account, and propose an alternative. This new account supports a pragmatic explanation of the apparent equivalence of degrees of confidence and subjective probabilities, and offers a more integrated picture of how different doxastic attitudes fit together
Imprecision, structural complexity and the Gricean maxim of Manner
Full text linkSeveral recent approaches to imprecision in the plural domain entail that it is possible for a sentence with a definite plural and its alternative with an \u27all\u27-type quantifier to express contextually equivalent truth conditions. This raises the question of why we can use \u27all\u27 in such contexts, given that “needless” structural complexity leads to unacceptability in other cases, such as Hurford disjunctions. This paper proposes an account in terms of trade-offs between pragmatic preferences, including a preference for simpler structures and a preference for avoiding imprecision. When combined with certain assumptions about when two sentences compete, this perspective can account for the markedness asymmetry between plural definites and \u27all\u27-type QPs, and the lack of a similarly consistent asymmetry between definites and indefinites
On the peculiar distribution of the Japanese epistemic adverb \u27masaka\u27
No full textThis study addresses the distribution of the Japanese epistemic adverb \u27masaka\u27. In declaratives, it must co-occur with a negated epistemic modal. It can occur in polar questions but not in \u27wh\u27-questions. We propose that \u27masaka\u27 differs from ordinary epistemic adverbs in that it expresses the modal claim that the prejacent is certainly at the not-at-issue level, while leaving the at-issue content intact. This semantics predicts that the at-issue and not-at-issue contents contradict each other in cases where \u27masaka\u27 is not licensed. Furthermore, several remaining issues are discussed. First, negated epistemic attitude verbs such as \u27omow\u27 ‘believe’ also license \u27masaka\u27. Second, the Japanese exclamative markers \u27nante/towa\u27 also license \u27masaka\u27. Herein we present tentative ideas for accommodating these cases. Finally, we demonstrate that the projection properties of \u27masaka\u27s\u27 semantic contribution as not-at-issue content is complicated
On the relation between expressive meaning and information structure: Exploring focus-marking with emoji
Full text linkWritten digital communication (e.g. text messages, email) lacks prosody, but innovations like emoji have emerged to enrich this communicative channel. In speech, prosody can indicate information structure, e.g. contrastive or new-information focus. In this paper I investigate the relation between focus and emoji, and propose that (i) one class of emoji (e.g. sparkles, pointing hands, what I call ‘plain focus emoji’) act as semantically flexible focus signalers, and (ii) another class (e.g. angry-face, heart-eyes-face, what I call ‘affective focus emoji’) can signal focus while also resembling linguistic expressives (e.g. yay, damn) in conveying information about speakers’ attitudes, in a way that I show to be scopally dissociable from their focus-related behavior
Revisiting stativity in pictorial narratives
Full text linkThis paper revisits the issue of stativity in pictorial narratives, specifically those found in comics and manga. The standard model holds that the contents of a picture, as defined by geometric projection, are semantically stative and integrated via a Dowty-style narrative interpretation. Here, I propose an alternative interpretation of pictorial narratives. Under this account, most pictorial narrative cases remain stative, as is posited in Abusch. When pictorial narratives include movement lines, however, additional supplemental content generates an eventive interpretation of pictorial representations. This is not pragmatically enriched content. The content contributed by movement lines is treated as semantic because movement lines are non-veridical in the way projection-style pictorial interpretations must be. Ultimately I argue for a dynamic, non-stative interpretation of pictorial narratives that include movement lines
The evidential reading of German locative \u27an\u27
No full textGerman inferential perception verbs license an evidential reading of PPs headed by an: They refer to the information source of an inference and to directly perceived entities (Müller, 2020). This paper aims to show that this reading of \u27an\u27 is derivable from its basic locative meaning by compositional means. This is achieved by analyzing evidential \u27an\u27PPs as event-internal modifiers in the framework of Two-level-semantics (Lang and Maienborn, 2019). Results of a corpus study show that evidential \u27an\u27PPs refer to bearers of tropes which provide the contextually relevant information source and are perceivable on the bearer’s boundary surface. This is predicted by the locative meaning of \u27an\u27 as worked out in Carstensen’s (2000; 2015) cognitivist-attentional approach