Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung
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Future orientation & free choice
Get PDFEpistemic necessity modals cannot be future-oriented. Previous attempts to explain this ban tie the constraint directly to speakers’ intuitions about the metaphysics of the future. As a result, they fail to predict the range of cross-linguistic variation attested in the domain of temporal orientation. This paper defends a fully grammatical approach to the phenomenon. I assume, with much of the recent literature on temporal orientation, that future orientation stems from a covert temporal morpheme. Then, I proceed to show that in English and in Brazilian Portuguese there is substantial overlap between the distribution of this morpheme and the distribution of Universal Free Choice Items (∀-FCIs), like \u27any\u27 in some of its uses.Based on these similarities, I sketch an account of temporal orientation that employs tools from the literature on polarity sensitivity
Local accommodation is also backgrounded
Get PDFTwo generally agreed upon characteristics of presuppositions are projection and backgroundedness. Yet, presuppositions sometimes fail to project. To derive the necessary local interpretations, standard semantic local accommodation accounts posit an operation that, inside the scope of an embedding operator, turns content lexically marked as presupposed into non-backgrounded content and conjoins it with the clause’s entailed content (Heim 1983). Such accounts, as well as syntactic operator accounts descended from them (Beaver and Krahmer 2001), predict that locally accommodated presuppositions differ from projecting presuppositions in lacking not just projectivity, but also the second basic presuppositional property of backgroundedness. Recent pragmatic accounts arrive at a parallel prediction via their claim that all and only backgrounded material projects (Simons et al. 2010; Tonhauser et al. 2018). To date, though, this prediction, that non-projecting presuppositional content is also not backgrounded, has not been systematically tested, perhaps due to challenges in testing embedded material for backgroundedness directly. Using reduced cognitive salience as a proxy for presuppositional backgroundedness in a picture-matching task (Schwarz 2016), we test indirectly for differences in backgroundedness among the locally accommodated presupposition of \u27also\u27, its explicit, non-backgrounded conjunction paraphrase as posited by semantic/syntactic accounts, and equivalent non-presuppositional elisions. Standard local accommodation accounts predict equivalence among these three constructions. However, in two experiments, we find, to the contrary, that locally interpreted content contributed by also reflects greater presuppositional backgroundedness than equivalent explicit entailed content and, to a lesser degree, than more surface-similar elisions. Our task elicits a similar pattern with examples including global, rather than local, accommodation, supporting parallel backgroundedness across these cases. We briefly discuss the theoretical implications of these findings in general terms
Comparing contextual shifts in partial/total predication and plural non-maximality
Get PDFWe investigate a potential analogy between the varying quantificational strength of partial/total predicates and plural predication. Using the predicates \u27wet\u27 and \u27dry\u27 as a casestudy, we ask whether partial/total adjectives show a property characteristic of plurals, namely homogeneity effects. As far as part quantification is concerned, these predicates do exhibit homogeneity. But for degree quantification, a new contrast emerges between partial and total predicates: only partial predicates show homogeneity
Negativity without negation
Get PDFThis paper addresses the anaphoric polarity sensitivity of negativity-tags, challenging the idea that they are only licensed by sentential negation (e.g., Klima 1964; Kramer and Rawlins 2009; Farkas and Bruce 2010; Brasoveanu et al. 2013, 2014; Roelofsen and Farkas 2015), arguing instead that they are sensitive to counterfactual propositional content in discourse. This is supported by data showing that negativity-tags are licensed without overt negation and their acceptability is influenced by contextual factors. The emerging notion of discourse-polarity has theoretical implications: The discourse-effect of negation is tied to its anti-veridical semantics, and characterizing negative antecedents requires a discourse-level representation that integrates information from both semantic representations and pragmatic inferences
Missing words and missing worlds
Get PDFIn this paper, we discuss how a non-lexical account of neg-raising can be extendedto explain a lexical gap in the domain of modals
It’s not about \u27about\u27 – comparatives, negation and intervals
No full textSolt (2014, 2018) discovered an intriguing pattern regarding the distribution of the approximator \u27about\u27. While \u27about n\u27 is typically infelicitous under negation, this pattern is reversed with \u27more than about n\u27, which is fine under negation, but not in a simple, unembedded context. Solt proposed an ingenious account based on certain assumptions about the meaning of \u27about\u27 and principles of language use, and, specifically, the fact that \u27about\u27 is an approximator that manipulates a granularity parameter. I argue that the pattern uncovered by Solt is not specifically tied to approximators, as it can be reproduced with disjunctions of numerals and interval-denoting expressions (\u27between n and m\u27), and is therefore part of a broader generalization. I offer an account based on (a) the universal density of measurement scales (Fox and Hackl 2006), (b) a semantic analysis of degree constructions that involves in a crucial way the notion of \u27maximal informativity\u27 (Buccola and Spector 2016, with roots in Rullmann 1995; Fox and Hackl 2006; Schlenker 2012; von Fintel et al. 2014) and (c) a pragmatic ban on redundant numerical expressions. I then discuss some limitations of the proposal, in comparison with Solt’s
Updating unexpected moves
Get PDFThis paper investigates the behaviours of the particle \u27ne\u27 in the sentence-final position along with its interactions with different clause types in Mandarin. I present novel data showing that \u27ne\u27 marks an \u27unexpected move\u27 in both declaratives and interrogatives. In declaratives the speaker believes that the content of the prejacent of \u27ne\u27 is not among what the addressee has expected in future discourse. In questions \u27ne\u27 marks that the current move is not in the standard flow of a conversation. I propose that \u27ne\u27 signals that the speaker believes that the current discourse move she makes is not \u27optimal\u27 for the addressee: the speaker chooses to use \u27ne\u27 when the discourse agents have conflicting beliefs, or the speaker wants to redirect/reset the conversational goals. The current account provides broader coverage of empirical data, and sheds light on the discourse dynamics on non-canonical/uncooperative conversations
The scope of supplements
Get PDFThis paper defends the bidimensional approach (Potts 2005) to the semantics of supplements against criticisms based on non-projecting supplements. We discuss the empirical and theoretical aspects of two opposing representatives, Martin (2017) and Schlenker (2023), and propose a bidimensional semantics where supplements take scope when needed. The proposals resolves the issues arising from non-projecting supplements while retaining the explanatory advantages of bidimensionalism
Table of contents - Foreword
No full textIt is our pleasure to present the \u27Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 27\u27. The conference took place on 14–16 September 2022 at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, making it the first edition of Sinn und Bedeutung in a country of the former Eastern Bloc. Of the 185 submissions, 38 were accepted as talks – presented in two parallel sessions – and 20 as posters, featuring altogether more than 100 authors. A total of 90 registered participants took part in the conference. The conference included a welcoming lecture by Eva Hajičová and four invited talks – by Mojmír Dočekal, Nicole Gotzner, Pritty Patel-Grosz, and Uli Sauerland. Most of the presentations have made it into these proceedings, which consist of 46 papers. It is worth noting that while these papers were not subject to centralized review, authors were encouraged to seek relevant peer feedback and incorporate it into their revised versions
(Some) Parentheses are focus-sensitive operators
Get PDFThe term parenthetical encompasses a range of constructions, including appositives, speaker-oriented adverbials, and speech report tags. Despite lending their name to the category, parenthesized parentheticals have been little discussed. We explore a parenthesized construction with two interesting properties: (1) it is less independent than previously studied parentheticals and (2) it gives rise to an implication absent from its non-parenthesized paraphrase: Sally drinks (herbal) tea implies Sally does not drink black tea. We show that this construction, which we call the Restrictive Parenthesized Parenthetical construction, differs from appositives and orthographic representations of focus. Instead, we propose an analysis that treats it as a focus-sensitive operator: its extra implication results from invoking and negating a set of alternatives to the content within the parentheses