Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung
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Only meets vagueness
Get PDFAn only sentence is construed to consist of the positive component, also referred to as the prejacent and the negative one. It is uncontroversial that the negative component is part of the literal meaning, or entailment of the only sentence. More controversial is the status of the prejacent, for it can be canceled (only epistemically, not directly) unlike the negative component; in the literature, it has been analyzed as entailment, presupposition, or conversational implicature. In this paper, novel data on the cancellability of the prejacent will be proffered to indicate that the prejacent is not always cancelable, but is sensitive to the vagueness of the main predicate, suggesting that the cancelability of the prejacent has nothing to do with the semantics of only per se. Indeed, couched in a dynamic semantic framework of vagueness, an alternative analysis of an only sentence will be presented, in which along with the negative component, the prejacent is part of the literal meaning of the sentence; however, sometimes, it will not be categorically asserted, or will be partly revoked as the speaker is aware of the possibility that the object in question does not satisfy the standard of the absolute use of the (vague) main predicate
"Surely that’s not a negative declarative question?" – Polar discourses in Swedish, German and English
Get PDFThis paper discusses questions that are declarative in form, contain a negative marker, and express epistemic speaker bias. Fronting of the negative marker in Swedish is taken as a starting point for a delineation of this type of question, termed ‘rejecting question’, against the background of theories of declarative questions. The discussion is expanded with data from German and English. I propose that rejecting questions are a type of tentative assertion without direct reference to the addressee, and that these tentative assertions express FALSUM focus
External and internal same: A unified account motivated by attitude reports
Get PDFI use empirical evidence from attitude reports to motivate a new characterization of natural language identity relation. More specifically, when de dicto attitude reports express an identity relation (e.g., John thinks A is B, John thinks A and B are the same), felicitous de re reports corresponding to them are systematically absent. This finding means that the identity relation encoded in natural language cannot be analyzed as a simple co-reference relation. Instead, I propose that in a given context, the identity relation between A and B means that contextually salient properties of A hold in certain worlds (e.g., in the belief worlds of an attitude holder) for B and vice versa. Based on this, I propose a new unified account for internal and external uses of same. Essentially, same is anaphoric: its antecedent is a plurality of individuals (i.e., res) and same means the intersection of contextually salient properties of each atomic individual involved in an identity relation
Genericity, exceptions and domain restriction: experimental evidence from comparison with universals
Get PDFGeneric statements are characteristically associated with two features that distinguish them from universally quantified statements: first, they are tolerant of exceptions, and, second, they are not associated with any overt quantifier or determiner. We present data from a timed Truth Value Judgement Task (TVJT) that investigates the consequences of these two features for processing. We discuss these results in the context of recent proposals that generic interpretations are a more \u27default\u27 or \u27basic\u27 kind of interpretation than universal quantification and argue that our results do not support these proposals
Back to basics: \u27more\u27 is always \u27much-er\u27
No full textBresnan (1973) posited that more is uniformly analyzed as much-er, whether it appears with adjectives (more intelligent, redder) or nouns (more soup). On the earliest degree-semantic analysis of such constructions, much appears but is semantically inert: it serves to morphologically mark the presence of the degree argument which is introduced by adjectives and nouns (Cresswell 1976). I present an alternative analysis, one suggested by Cresswell himself: on this account, the degree argument is introduced by much. I first show how the interpretation of this morpheme as a structure-preserving mapping to the domain of degrees is motivated by data from nominal and verbal comparatives, and then how it extends to adjectival comparatives. To accomplish this, I argue that adjectives are predicates of states, and interact with degrees only in composition with much. The upshot is a theory in which much universally provides the mapping to degrees for comparison by more, regardless of the syntactic category it combines with
How the Emergence of Propositions Separates Strict Interfaces from General Interface
Get PDFHow does a child utilize inferences in acquisition and ultimately separateinferences from implicatures from semantic composition? How exactly does a child recognize a truth-functional proposition? It is argued that the child begins with rich, free inferences that are systematically replaced by syntax/semantics compositional rules. Strict syntax/semantics interfaces are discussed and linked to the syntax of subject auxiliary inversion and acquisition evidence of copying (Is Bill is busy?) and long-distance movement in opaque contexts (What did she say she bought?). A connection between Tense, propositions, and Phase boundaries is argued to be a critical syntax/semantics interface
Nominal Reference in two Classifier Languages
Get PDFIn this paper, we first present observations that have been made concerningthe distribution and interpretation of nominals in Mandarin Chinese and propose an account for them.We will then contrast Mandarin Chinese with Vietnamese, and show that differences with respect to the syntax and semantics of noun phrases between these two languages can be reduced to the fact that they differ minimally in lexical resource. Implications of the analysis for a theory of semantic variation are also discussed
On the event semantics of nominals and adjectives - the one-argument hypothesis
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