Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung
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Watch the attitude: Embedding and role-shift in ASL
Get PDFMuch of the work on attitude predicates, spawned by Hintikka (1962), treatsthem as a uniform class – quantifiers over possible worlds. However, recently a number of suggestions have been made that highlight different subclasses. Here we present novel data from American Sign Language (ASL) that support a differentiation made by Anand and Hacquard (2008) concerning the objectivity and subjectivity of their complements, while also bringing into focus a special property of Sign Languages – role shift
A single-event analysis for German eventive mit-modifiers
Get PDFGerman adverbial modifiers headed by the preposition mit ‘with’ can have eventive internal arguments. The combinatorics of these modifiers with their verbal target raises the question whether the modifying and the modified event description are to be considered as referring to one or to two events. I argue that eventive mit-modifiers and their targets refer to one event, but they conceptualize this event in two ways. Furthermore, the interpretation of the modified verbal projection depends on the position at which the modifier is integrated. More precisely, eventive mit-modifiers can target either the event kind contributed by the matrix predicate or the full-fledged event particular. This is implemented in an analysis in terms of accommodation of a dual aspect event within the framework of Type Composition Logic
Inverse linking and telescoping as polyadic quantification
Get PDFThe paper discusses two constellations in which one quantifier is embedded inside another but where the embedded quantifier seems to outscope its embedder: inverse linking and telescoping. Four phenomena are mentioned that support that idea that the two quantifiers behave neither like the higher nor like the lower quantifier but rather display a unit-like behavior. This motivates a polyadic analysis, which will be expressed in Lexical Resource Semantics. Interesting predictions for so far unnoticed data on negative polarity items follow from this treatment
A Hamblin Semantics for Alternative Questions in Yoruba
Get PDFAlternative and polar question interpretations of disjunctive questions in Yoruba (Niger-Congo, Nigeria) are syntactically disambiguated by obligatory fronting of the disjunction in the case of alternative but not of polar questions to a focus position at the left edge of the clause. This paper investigates the role of focus fronting and the accompanying focus particle ni in the compositional derivation of the alternative question set as well as for the triggering of a presupposition requiring mutual exclusivity of the two alternative propositions in the question set. The main claim is that movement to a designated focus position licenses the generation of alternatives which compose with the rest of the material in the question via Hamblin Function Application to derive an alternative question interpretation. The focus particle ni is argued to contribute a homogeneity presupposition both in alternative questions and elsewhere in the language which, when applied pointwise to each alternative in the question set, derives the mutual exclusivity requirement. The proposal developed here for Yoruba supports a view under which focus (marking the generation of alternatives) plays a stable role in deriving alternative question interpretations crosslinguistically, but differences in the semantic contribution of focus markers may yield subtle differences in the presuppositions they carry
Reluctant Acceptance of the Literal Truth: Eye Tracking in the Covered Box Paradigm
Get PDFSince Bott and Noveck (2004), there has been an ongoing discussion about whether scalar implicatures are delayed in online processing relative to literal meaning. Bott and Noveck (2004) provided Reaction Time evidence for such a delay, replicated in a number of later variations of their study (e.g., Bott et al., 2012). Breheny et al. (2006) found corresponding delays in self-paced reading. More recently, the issue has been investigated using the visual world paradigm, where results have been more mixed. Huang and Snedeker (2009, and subsequent work) have found delays for eye movements based on the ‘not all’ implicature of ‘some.’ But various others, (e.g., Grodner et al. (2010), Breheny et al. (2013), and Degen and Tanenhaus (2011)), report results which they argue show that implicatures are available immediately. Schwarz et al. (2015) added another angle to this picture, by using a sentence picture matching task using a Covered Picture (or Covered Box; henceforth CB; Huang et al., 2013), that allowed RT comparisons both within acceptance (target) and rejection (CB) responses. While replicating the delay for implicature-based rejection responses, they find the reverse pattern for acceptance responses, with faster RTs for implicature-compatible conditions. They propose that delays associated with literal acceptances and implicature-based rejections result from a conflict between the two possible interpretations, rather than reflecting a cost of implicature-calculation. The present experiment extends this approach beyond RTs by combining Visual World eye-tracking with the CB paradigm. The results a) are consistent with the notion that both literal and implicature interpretations are available in par-allel; b) show that literal acceptances are nonetheless only provided reluctantly, presumably due to a preference for implicature meanings, in line with Schwarz et al’s proposal; and c) suggest that for both literal acceptances and implicature-based rejections, there is a competition effect between the two interpretations. In addition, the RT data display an implicature-based block-priming effect, suggesting that the resolution of this conflict can be sped up through repeated task-exposure
Hurford disjunctions: embedded exhaustification and structural economy
Get PDFHurford’s Constraint, which bans disjunctions in which one disjunct entails the other, has been central to the debate between the pragmatic and the grammatical view on Scalar Implicatures. We provide evidence that Hurford’s Constraint should be derived from more basic principles, and we propose such a derivation using a pragmatic prohibition against redundant constituents. In a first, more conservative version, the redundancy is specific to disjunctions. In a second, more general version, redundancy is banned regardless of constituent type. Both versions make new predictions about the emergence of oddness in cases that are not covered by Hurford’s Constraint. The first version is too restricted. The second one is incorrect. We explore a revised architecture in which the relevant redundancy principle applies locally in the semantic computation. This perspective makes different predictions about oddness than the first two and has a potentially interesting extension to oddness in quantificational constructions, which we discuss. All our attempts to generalize Hurford’s Constraint require the grammatical theory of Scalar Implicatures
Downward monotonicity in questions
Get PDFI show that the hypothesis that downward monotonicity is required for the licensing of negative polarity items (Fauconnier 1975, 1979, Ladusaw 1979) can account for why they appear in interrogatives. In particular, I show that strong exhaustive answers to questions with negative polarity items are downward monotone using three ingredients: (i) interrogatives denote sets of propositions (Hamblin 1973, Karttunen 1977), (ii) negative polarity items introduce alternatives and thereby enrich this denotation, and (iii) an answer operator (Heim 1994, Beck and Rullmann 1999) delivers the strong exhaustive answer. Among other things this accounts for Guerzoni and Sharvit’s 2007 observation that only interrogatives embedded under predicates allowing for a strong exhaustive interpretation of that question license negative polarity items
Not all null \u27have\u27-clauses are alike
No full textThis paper provides a semantics for overt and phonologically-null have predicates. We present a typology that distinguishes null haves on two dimensions: prepositional/verbal status and stative/telic status. We argue that evaluative verbs such as like can select null have-clauses of the telic verbal class. We further argue that have semantically requires a relation that is supplied by the object nominal in a Pustejovskian framework
Appositives in Modal Contexs
Get PDFIt has recently been argued (by Harris and Potts 2009: 523–552) that so-called non-speaker oriented readings of appositives are a matter of pragmatic perspective shift and thus do not show that appositives contribute to descriptive content. In contrast, I argue that appositives are indeed building blocks of propositions and that non-speaker oriented readings are de dicto readings of classical presuppositions (definedness conditions on concepts) in modal contexts. Downward entailing modal contexts, like surprise contexts, provide the key to this conclusion: here, appositives provide a useful means to ensure that an individual retains its relevant properties across the modal space
