Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung
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Modalizing commitment space semantics
Get PDFThis article discusses short-comings of commitment space semantics as introduced in Krifka (2015) with respect to assertions, confirmations, and contradictions. It proposes to transform commitment space semantics to a modal logical framework which allows not only for an elegant solution of these issues, but also for the accommodation of other phenomena central to any comprehensive model of human communication (this really being the main point behind going modal)
Is there any licensing in non-DE contexts? An experimental study
Get PDFWhy is weak NPI any sometimes, but not always, licensed in non-downward entailing environments? In this paper, we present a series of experiments, where we probe the role of context in licensing any in the scope of various quantifiers. We compare our results to predictions made by three theories of exceptional NPI licensing. We show that contextual reasoning plays a role in non-monotonic environments, but that it does not in the scope of upward entailing quantifiers. Surprisingly, our results also show individual differences between the non-monotonic environments created by different quantifiers
Individuating beliefs: DP objects of attitude verbs and their domains of quantification
Get PDFAttitude predicates can take DP arguments that seem to quantify over propositions. But letting the DPs range over arbitrary propositions predicts incorrect truth conditions when combined with a standard possible-worlds semantics for attitude verbs. Here, I develop a new descriptive generalization characterizing the relevant propositions: Each set S of propositions the determiner combines with is restricted to those propositions that partially answer a question in a certain set, and are ‘minimal’ within S among the partial answers to that question. The set of questions is derived from the Hamblin sets of questions raised in the context. While this paper does not provide a full analysis, I argue that the effects of this generalization are not limited to attitude predicates, suggesting that it reflects a more general property of DP quantification
Rhetorical imperatives: expressing anti-preferences
Get PDFAlmost all studies of rhetorical speech acts have exclusively focused on questions so far (Caponigro & Sprouse 2007, Biezma & Rawlins 2017, among others). This paper provides a detailed investigation of what we call Rhetorical Imperatives (RhIs). The hallmark of RhIs is that despite their imperative form without any negation, the speaker does not demand an action but rather conveys a flavor of a prohibition. In this paper, we propose that RhIs are imperatives that signal that content of a clause is already common-grounded in parallel to rhetorical questions, and that the speaker of a RhI has an anti-preference for the uttered content over alternatives
A note on the representation and learning of quantificational determiners
Get PDFThere is a tight, bidirectional connection between the formalism that defines how linguistic knowledge is stored and how this knowledge can be learned. In one direction, the formalism can be mapped onto an evaluation metric that allows the child to compare competing hypotheses given the input data. In the other direction, an evaluation metric can help the linguist to compare competing hypotheses about the formalism in which linguistic knowledge is written. In this preliminary note we explore this bidirectional connection in the domain of quantificational determiners (e.g., ‘every’ and ‘some’). We show how fixing an explicit format for representing the semantics of such elements – specifically, a variant of semantic automata – yields an evaluation metric, based on the principle of Minimum Description Length (MDL), that can serve as the basis for an unsupervised learner for such denotations. We then show how the MDL metric may provide a handle on the comparison of semantic automata with a competing representational format
Decomposing distributive numerals in ?ay?a?u??m (Comox-Sliammon Salish)
No full textIn this paper we examine distributive numerals in ?ay?a?u??m (a.k.a. Comox- Sliammon; Central Salish). We first show that unlike in neighbouring St’át’imcets (Northern Interior Salish), ?ay?a?u??m distributive numerals require specifically temporal distribution over sub-events, as opposed to over locations or event participants. We then provide a compositional analysis of the three morphological components of distributive numerals: the numeral itself; diminutive reduplication, which excludes alternatives in the denotation of the numeral; and a pluractional infix, which when applied to a numeral and a predicate of events yields temporally distributed sub-events, where the number of participants in each sub-event is given by the numeral. Finally, we point out that though our account handles core cases of distributed numerals, their syntactic distribution is extremely broad, mirroring precisely that of bare numerals: this causes non-trivial problems for compositionality
Adverbial responses to quantified utterances
Get PDFThis paper establishes a new empirical generalization concerning the interpretation of (Bare) Adverbial Responses (BARs) in English and supplements previous ellipsis-based accounts of BARs (Kramer and Rawlins, 2011) with an analysis taken from an account of polar responses presented in Pasquereau (in press)
Until-phrases as obligatory free choice items
Get PDFollowing Mittwoch (1977), Iatridou and Zeijlstra (to appear), I attempt a unified account of until (which has proven challenging for reasons I discuss). I propose a basic weak meaning, which obligatorily strengthens in upward-entailing environments in a manner similar to free-choice. Infelicity then results in cases where this strengthened meaning contradicts contextual knowledge about the sentences that the until phrase modifies. I argue that this account avoids the empirical problems of previous accounts, and also provides a way to understand until’s status as a ‘strong’ NPI: Its restricted distribution in (merely) Strawson downward-entailing environments can be explained with independently motivated mechanisms governing the interaction between presuppositions and implicatures
Implying or implicating not both in declaratives and interrogatives
Get PDFBoth disjunctive assertions and disjunctive questions can imply “not both”, i.e., that only one of the disjuncts is true. For assertions this is known to be part of what the speaker means (e.g., an implicature), whereas for questions this is instead a presupposition. This puzzle is challenging for predominant pragmatic and grammatical accounts of exhaustivity in the literature. This paper outlines a solution based on Attentional Pragmatics combined with (other) general pragmatic principles
Referring nouns in name-informing quotation: A copula-based approach
Get PDFIn name-informing constructions like The phenomenon is called a “sun halo”, the noun mentioned in the quotation (a “sun halo”) adopts a referring interpretation, as indicated by the determiner. As an account, we claim predicates like call to introduce a copular relation, which is the source of referring uses of nominals in name-informing quotation: To call y“n” entails that y is an n. Two copula types are argued to be covertly contained in name-in- forming constructions, an identificational copula and an equative copula, and we put forward linguistic evidence in support of this distinction. Further, corpus data show that nouns quoted in a name-informing construction are more prone to be used with quotes when accompanied by a determiner. We interpret this to reflect a pragmatic strategy employed to highlight theexpression’s mentioning use. Lastly, the quotations under discussion are differentiated from other types of quotation. Specifically, name-informing quotations are treated as instantiations of pure quotation, which we reason to be entailed compositionally and, although they can be referential hybrids, should not be subsumed either under open or mixed quotation