Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung
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You may like or dislike this paper, and we do care which. Sluicing and free choice
Get PDFIn this paper we study how different FC inferences are derived in cases of sluiced sentences that differ just by the verb embedding the sluice, improving on Fusco (2019). We propose to add a new economy condition to Rudin (2019) that is able to derive – together with other existing constraints – the desired sluices from certain syntactico-semantic properties (temporal orientation; Condoravdi 2001) of embedding verbs. We then present an analysis in which the attested FC inferences are derived from the different sluices through the interplay of scopal parallelism (Chung et al. 1995; Fusco 2019) and uniqueness presupposition of singular \u27which\u27 clauses (Dayal 1996)
English does too have a [REVERSE,+] polarity particle!
Get PDFThis paper argues that the refutational use of English \u27too\u27 is a polarity particle requiring a positive prejacent and a negative antecedent—that is, what Farkas and Bruce (2010) call a [REVERSE,+] particle. This places refutational \u27too\u27 in a class with well-known [REVERSE,+] particles in other languages, such as French \u27si\u27 and German \u27doch\u27. However, refutational \u27too\u27 exhibits a property that has not been observed in previous research on polarity particles crosslinguistically: It requires the addressee to have expressed an epistemic bias against the content of its prejacent. To account for this, this paper proposes that \u27too\u27 realizes a new polarity feature called [REFUTE], which presupposes that the negation of its prejacent is a member of the set of \u27projected addressee commitments\u27 introduced by Malamud and Stephenson (2015). The existence of the [REFUTE] feature opens new avenues for research on the typology of polarity particles
Proleptic constructions in Modern Greek
Get PDFWe investigate the semantics of an attitudinal construction in Modern Greek, where an attitude verb may take an accusative object followed by a CP (e.g. ‘Maria wants Yanis.ACCi[CP \u27proi\u27 only love her]’). Drawing on literature (Kotzoglou 2002; Kotzoglou and Papangeli2007; Kotzoglou 2017) arguing that the accusative object is base-generated in the matrix clause, we propose that this is an instance of prolepsis. Importantly, unlike proleptic constructionsdescribed in other languages, the proleptic object can have \u27de dicto\u27 readings, despite being base-generated in the matrix clause. We propose an analysis in terms of semantic lowering, along the lines of Dawson and Deal (2019), arguing that semantic lowering is not restricted to extensional, but can also apply to intensional types of pronouns. Finally, we describe an additional semantic restriction on the proleptic object, as well as the implications of the ModernGreek case for the broader function of prolepsis and the syntax-semantics interface
Pluractionality via competition: VV in Mandarin Chinese
Get PDFThis paper provides a pragmatic mechanism for deriving pluractionality of the Mandarin VV sequence formed with certain types of verbs. We propose: (i) Syntactically, VV is an instantiation of V-(NUMERAL)-CLASSIFIER, where the second V serves as a cognate verbal classifier. (ii) Semantically, VV denotes an unspecified quantity of events, with the unit of counting being the event itself. (iii) Based on this semantic analysis, pluractionality of VV formed with certain verbs can be derived through its competition with V-one-V. Meanwhile, we address the semantics of event-internal and event-external verbal classifiers (i.e., \u27xia\u27 vs. \u27ci\u27). Our analysis of cognate classifiers can be further extended to the nominal domain
Strict Logophors in Ewe, Yoruba, and Igbo
Get PDFLogophoric Pronouns (LOGPs) in some West-African Languages occur in attitude environments and are anaphorically linked to an attitude holder in a superordinate clause (\u27Maryi says/thinks/hopes [CP that\u27 ... LOGPi ...]). Existing accounts capture this dependency by treating a LOGP as a variable that is obligatorily bound by an operator at the edge of the embedded clause. Culy (1994) and Bimpeh and Sode (2021) however pointed out that from the viewpoint of the strict-sloppy ambiguity of pronouns, LOGPs in Ewe do not behave like bound variables, allowing both sloppy (bound) as well as strict (non-bound) readings. We strengthen this line of criticism by providing novel data indicating that LOGPs in Ewe, Igbo and Yoruba support strict readings in focus contexts. We offer an alternative account to existing approaches which builds on Bimpeh et al. (2023) and can capture both strict and sloppy interpretations of LOGPs
Vanilla rules: The “no ice cream” construction
Get PDFThis paper is about what we call Deontically-flavored Nominal Constructions (DNCs) in English, such as \u27No ice cream\u27 or \u27Dogs on leash only\u27. DNCs are often perceived as commands and have been argued to be a type of non-canonical imperative, much like root infinitives in German or Russian. We argue instead that DNCs at their core are declaratives that cite a rule but can be used performatively in the right context. We propose that DNCs contain an elided deontic modal, i.e., \u27allowed\u27, whose presence explains their distributional restrictions and interpretational properties. Among other things, we speculate on the licensing conditions of DNCs (the presence of \u27only\u27 or the negative determiner \u27no\u27), suggesting that these are tied to the properties of discourses in which rules can be used naturally
On the semantics of multiple wh-exclamatives in Bangla
Get PDFThe scope of this paper addresses multiple wh-exclamative structures in Bangla (a.k.a. Bengali; Eastern Indo-Aryan). Though exclamatives are widely studied, the phenomenon of multiple wh-exclamatives is rarely cited. At the onset of analysing multiple wh-exclamatives, this paper revisits the proposition-set theory approach (D’Avis 2002; Zanuttini and Portner 2003; Chernilovskaya 2010) that views wh-exclamatives as having a question-basedsemantics, and the degree approach (Miró 2006; Rett 2008a, 2011) that claims wh-exclamatives bear a degree component in their domain which is responsible for the surprising element of the clause. However, the degree approach rejects the idea of exclamatives with multiple wh-words (Rett 2008a, 2011). This paper proposes a new unified framework that accounts for the syntax-semantics of Bangla multiple wh-exclamatives and wh-exclamatives in general
Restrictiveness and the scope of adjectives
Get PDFI examine the compositional properties of nonrestrictive adjectives, those which are used not to identify referents but to provide additional information about them. By considering the interaction of nonrestrictive adjectives with non-intersective adjectives like \u27other\u27, I argue that some nonrestrictive adjectives must take scope over the DP they modify, following Potts (2005). I extend the analysis to account for nonrestrictively modified quantifier phrases, using an anaphoric semantics in line with recent approaches to nominal appositives (e.g. Nouwen 2014), whereby nonrestrictive modifiers are anaphoric to the entity they modify. I provide a compositional dynamic fragment based on Charlow (2014, 2015) that account for a variety ofsentences with nonrestrictive adjectives
Alternatives are blind to some but not all kinds of context: the view from Hurford Disjunctions
Get PDFHurford Disjunctions (HDs) are infelicitous disjunctions in which one disjunct entails the other (Hurford 1974). The infelicity of basic HDs has been successfully modeled by several competing approaches (Schlenker 2009; Meyer 2013; Katzir and Singh 2014; Anvari 2018). As first noticed by Singh (2008) however, HDs involving entailing scalar items like \u27all\u27 and \u27some\u27 are subject to an asymmetry: when the weaker scalar item linearly precedes the stronger one, the sentence seems to be rescued from infelicity. This fact is not readily accounted for by standard approaches, which treat the disjuncts in a symmetric fashion. Fox and Spector (2018) and Tomioka (2021) proposed different solutions to that problem and extensions thereof, but at the cost of positing relatively heavy and complex machineries. Here we propose a novel analysis of Singh’s asymmetry, based on the familiar process of alternative pruning (Fox and Katzir 2011; Crnič et al. 2015 a.o.). In particular, we claim that exhaustification targeting the weak disjunct operates on a set of formal alternatives that is sensitive to previously uttered material. This leads us to propose a new \u27dynamic\u27 constraint on alternative pruning, which ensures that the only remaining alternatives to a prejacent p are those which could be realistically entertained instead of \u27p, given the eventualities previously and overtly raised by the speaker\u27. Unlike other approaches, our account derives Singh’s asymmetry \u27via\u27 a direct computation, and not a global principle constraining either the insertion of the exhaustivity operator (Fox and Spector 2018), or the particular shape of the alternative set (Tomioka 2021)
Distribution relative to events in dynamic semantics
Get PDFThe goal of this paper is to introduce a new way of implementing distributivity to dynamic semantics. Novel evidence that supports the necessity of the new apparatus is provided from Japanese and English. The evidence comes from a split antecedence in conjunction, which has not been discussed or accounted for in the literature. The proposed system accounts for the referential dependency by distributing over events and, in turn, over the participants of events