Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung
Not a member yet
1139 research outputs found
Sort by
Relative Specificity
Get PDFSemantic theories of specificity are based on the assumptions that a specific indefinite has wide scope and/or a referential reading. However, there are specific indefinites that are neither wide scope expressions nor referential expressions. I call this kind of specificity “relative specificy” and take it as the most general case of specific indefinites. I propose that indefinite NPs have a referential index, like modal or temporal indices. This index can be anchored to another expression in the discourse. If the index is anchored to another referential expression, the indefinite receives a specific reading
Signalling games select Horn strategies
Get PDFIn this paper I will discuss why (un) marked expressions typically get an (un)marked interpretation: Horn’s division of pragmatic labor. It is argued that it is a conventional fact that we use language this way. This convention will be explained in terms of equilibria of signalling games introduced by Lewis (1969) but now in an evolutionary setting. I will also relate this signalling game analysis with Blutner’s (2000) bi-directional optimality theory and with Parikh’s (1991, 2000) game-theoretical analysis of successful communication
Mandarin utterance-final particle ba (?) in the conversational scoreboard
Get PDFWe explore the meaning of the Mandarin particle ba (?) in interaction with the utterance to which it attaches (the “anchor”) and the context. Previous literature on ba contains no unified generalization – effects claimed by various scholars include uncertainty, soliciting agreement/confirmation, or politeness. To arrive at a unified descriptive generalization and clarify the distribution of the particle, we conducted a corpus study of ba using Mandarin-language television and film (95 tokens)
Loose talk, negation and commutativity: A hybrid static-dynamic theory
Get PDFThis paper investigates the interaction of phenomena associated with loose talk with embedded contexts. §1 introduces core features associated with the loose interpretation of an utterance and presents a sketch of how to theorise about such utterances in terms of a relation of ‘pragmatic equivalence’. §2 discusses further features of loose talk arising from interaction with ‘loose talk regulators’, negation and conjunction. §§3-4 introduce a hybrid static/dynamic framework and show how it can be employed in developing a fragment which accounts for the data surveyed in §§1-2
Discourse-structuring conditionals and past tense
Get PDFIn this paper I present some data that challenges the view that a unified semantics of biscuit conditionals and hypothetical conditionals is possible. There is a class of biscuit conditionals that cannot occur with past temporal reference. In these cases, the antecedent serves to structure the discourse and as such must be true of the discourse situation. I argue that this is the reason why the past tense is incompatible with these conditionals, and therefore we can nevertheless maintain a unified semantics for hypothetical and biscuit conditionals
The distributive ignorance puzzle
Get PDFWe observe that verbs like wonder do not just imply that their subject does not know the answer to the embedded question, but a stronger form of ignorance, which we call distributive ignorance. This is not predicted by existing work on the semantics of wonder, and we argue that it cannot be straightforwardly derived as a pragmatic inference either. We consider two possible semantic accounts, and conclude in favor of one on which the lexical semantics of wonder involves exhaustification w.r.t. structural alternatives as well as sub-domain alternatives of its complement
The Acquisition of Disjunctions: Evidence from German Children
Get PDFAdults’ interpretation of disjunction or depends on the sentential environment in which disjunction occurs. Putting aside numerous special cases (see e.g. Klinedinst and Rothschild 2012, Meyer 2012, 2016), adult behavior can be summarized as such: In downward entailing contexts, or is interpreted logically as the inclusive disjunction OR. But in upward entailing contexts, or is interpreted pragmatically as the exclusive disjunction XOR. Summarizing recent work on the acquisition of disjunction, children around age 5 seem to differ slightly: In downward entailing and free choice contexts, children seem to interpret disjunction like adults as inclusive OR (Chierchia et al. 2001, Crain 2008, Su and Crain 2013, Tieu et al. 2016). But in upward entailing, non free choice contexts, children have been found to interpret disjunction sometimes conjunctively as AND (Singh et al. 2016, Tieu et al. 2017)
Discourse Rationality and the Counterfactuality Implicature in Backtracking Conditionals
Get PDFThis paper contributes to current discussions of counterfactuality implicatures in would-conditionals. The empirical focus is on the contrast between forward looking and backtracking examples in Anderson-style ‘detective reasoning’ sequences. We show that differences regarding the cancellability of counterfactuality in these examples follow from general principles of discourse rationality and can be extended to provide a more general account of the cancellability of counterfactuality implicatures (e.g. in future-shifted examples)
The semantics of additive either
Get PDFFocus particles too and additive either have been analyzed as fully presuppositional elements that presuppose an existence or reference of some salient antecedent. In this paper, I propose an alternative account of too and either, where they are two-place predicates taking as arguments the overt proposition they adjoin to and a silent propositional anaphor. While too assertsa conjunction of the two arguments, either asserts a disjunction of the two arguments. The main advantages of this proposal are that too and either’s non-presuppositional behavior is accounted for, and that the conjunction-disjunction switch has implications on additive either’s NPI behavior
Coming to a doxastic agent
Get PDFFillmore (1975) proposes that using the English deictic motion verb come to describe a motion event is acceptable if some contextually given individual is present at the destination of the motion event. In this paper, I show that the individual must only believe herself to be located at the destination. I argue that the meaning of come thus includes a doxastic, modal component, and develop an analysis in the dynamic semantics of AnderBois et al. (2015)