Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung
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When additive particles can associate with wh-phrases
Get PDFThe distribution of certain additive particles is restricted. It has been suggested that in wh-questions they can only associate with the wh-phrase if the question receives a showmaster interpretation (Umbach, 2012). I present novel data challenging this generalization and account for these data by lifting Beaver and Clark (2008)’s QUD-based account of additive particles to an inquisitive semantics setting, so that it captures the contribution of additive particles in assertions, polar questions and wh-questions
Being me, being you: Pronoun puzzles in modal contexts
Get PDFIn this paper I investigate the interpretation of pronouns in modal contexts. I focus on dream reports, taking Lakoff’s (1972) Brigitte Bardot examples as a starting point. I show that different pronouns behave differently in this context, and propose an analysis that makes use of Percus and Sauerland’s (2003) LF proposal, but is restricted to first person pronouns. I also show that to capture the full range of data, we need put restrictions on the counterpart relations available to individuals in a given context
Donkey pluralities: Plural information states vs. Non-atomic individuals
Get PDFThe paper argues that two distinct and independent notions of plurality are involved in natural language anaphora and quantification: plural reference (the usual non-atomic individuals) and plural discourse reference, i.e. reference to a quantificational dependency between sets of objects (e.g. atomic / non-atomic individuals) that is established and subsequently elaborated upon in discourse. Following van den Berg (1996), plural discourse reference is modeled as plural information states (i.e. as sets of variable assignments) in a new dynamic system couched in classical type logic that extends Compositional DRT (Muskens 1996). Given the underlying type logic, compositionality at sub-clausal level follows automatically and standard techniques from Montague semantics (e.g. type shifting) become available. The idea that plural info states are semantically necessary (over and above non-atomic individuals) is motivated by relative-clause donkey sentences with multiple instances of singular donkey anaphora. At the same time, allowing for non-atomic individuals over and above plural info states enables us to capture the intuitive parallels between singular and plural (donkey) anaphora, while deriving the incompatibility between singular donkey anaphora and collective predicates
Rhetorical questions as questions
Get PDFWe argue that rhetorical questions are semantically the same as ordinary questions. New data is presented to show that rhetorical questions allow for answers and the range of their answers is the same as ordinary questions. An analysis is proposed according to which rhetorical and ordinary questions only differ at the pragmatic level: a question is interpreted as a rhetorical question when its answer is known to the Speaker and the Addressee, while it is interpreted as an ordinary question when its answer it is not know to the Speaker. We model Speaker’s and Addressee’s mutual and individual knowledge by adopting Stalnaker’s (1978) notion of ‘Common Ground’ and enriching it, along the lines of Gunlogson (2001)
The posture verb progressive in Icelandic
Get PDFIn this paper I focus on a construction in Icelandic in which a coordination of two simple present/past verbs, where the first verb is a posture verb, gets a progressive reading. Those sentences indicate that the ‘two events’ take place simultaneously (at the reference time). That is, there is an event, which consists of two components, such as sitting and reading. The main question is: How does coordination with a posture verb yield a progressive reading? The proposed solution to this posture-verb progressive puzzle involves the claim that the conjunction og ‘and’ does not have the semantics of conjunction here, and that we do not have two events but one. Furthermore, I argue that the fact that posture verb coordinations get a progressive reading comes from a mismatch in the status of the external argument, building on Kratzer (1994). ‘Sitting’ is a state and calls for a ‘holder’ external argument, whereas ‘reading’ is an event which calls for an ‘agent’ argument. I assume that external arguments cannot at the same time be an agent and a holder of an event. However, this can be solved in two ways. One is by adding an external argument, such that we have both an agent-argument and a holder-argument. That results in two separate events, and doesn’t get a progressive reading. The other way of solving this is by coercing ‘read’ to be a state. Now one external argument, a holder, satisfies both verbs. Because of this coercion of an event to a state, the reading we get is that an event that is both a sitting and a reading holds at a certain time. As all states are imperfective this coercion of the event verb to a state makes it imperfective and as Icelandic doesn’t have an imperfective construction separate from the progressive Icelanders understand these sentences as progressive. This is why these posture verb co-ordinations result in a progressive reading rather than a perfective one
Reciprocal equatives
Get PDFA sentence like John and Mary are equally heavy conveys that John and Mary are as heavy as each other and can be characterized as a reciprocal equative. This paper discusses reciprocal equatives and inequatives in German. It explores the construction as novel source of evidence concerning the scopal properties of degree quantification. Specifically, reciprocal equatives are argued to provide evidence for the view that degree operators can take inverse scope over modal operators and can take scope outside DPs containing them at the surface (Heim 1999, 2001)
Semantic aspects of differential object marking
Get PDFMany authors have argued that there exists a relation between case morphology, on the one hand, and semantic interpretation, on the other. A recurrent pattern is that the presence of overt case corresponds with a strong interpretation, i.e., de?nite, speci?c, whereas the absence of case corresponds with a weak interpretation, i.e., inde?nite, non-speci?c. In this paper we argue on the basis of differential object marking (DOM) data that such an across- the-board correlation between semantic interpretation and case morphology often cannot be maintained as the association between a certain case and a certain interpretation can be counteracted by the requirement of this case to occur due to the animacy of a noun. The fact that animacy takes priority over de?niteness and/or speci?city in DOM systems can be explained by the fact that animacy, but not de?niteness/speci?city, is an inherent feature of nouns, a feature which cannot be changed
Mention Some of All
Get PDFIn the interpretation of natural language one may distinguish three types of dynamics: there are the acts or moves that are made; there are structural relations between subsequent moves; and interlocutors reason about the beliefs and intentions of the participants in a particular language game. Building on some of the formalisms developed to account for the first two types of dynamics, I will generalize and formalize Gricean insights into the third type, and show by means of a case study that such a formalization allows a direct account of an apparent ambiguity: the ‘exhaustive’ versus the ‘mention some’ interpretation of questions and their answers. While the principles which I sketch, like those of Grice, are motivated by assumptions of rationality and cooperativity, they do not presuppose these assumptions to be always warranted. Key words: natural language interpretation, dynamic semantics, semantics-pragmatics interface, Gricean pragmatics, epistemic logic, decision theory
On the Common Format of Eventives and \u27Too\u27-Comparatives
No full textShould events be conceived of as primitive or should they be decomposed into more basic elements with certain syntax? This talk presents new evidence for the latter view: If events are represented as contradictory propositional meanings representing their pre- and post states, a uniform analysis of certain eventive and certain too- comparative constructions is possible; this is wanted given striking parallels between the two types of structure. The analysis goes some way, among other, toward explaining ‘repetetive/restitutive’ asymmetries familiar from eventive constructions (von Stechow 1996) but similarly arising in too- comparative constructions