Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung
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Complement anaphora and negative polarity items
Get PDFBased on data from German, I call attention to a so far unnoticed relationship between data on complement set anaphora and strong negative polarity items (NPI). In particular, I show that if a quantified NP can serve as antecedent of a complement set anaphor, it can also license strong NPIs. I provide a lexical decomposition analysis using Discourse Representation Theory
Embedded evidentials in Bulgarian
Get PDFWe consider evidentials embedded in complement clauses with new data from Bulgarian. For Tibetan, Garrett has shown that embedded evidentials are always shifted to the perspective of the reported speech. In Bulgarian, we show that such a shift is almost never possible. This shows that Bulgarian evidentials should not be analyzed as modals, but rather as presuppositional
Multiple Modals Construction
Get PDFModal items of different semantic types can only be combined in a specific order. Epistemic items, for instance, cannot be embedded under deontic ones. I’ll argue that this fact cannot be explained by the current semantic theories of modality. A solution to this problem will be developed in an update semantics framework. On the semantic side, a distinction will be drawn between circumstantial information about the world and information about duties, whereas I’ll use Nuyts’ notion of m-performativity to account for certain use of the modal items
The Sortal Theory of Plurals
Get PDFThis paper explores the hypothesis of a semantics for plurals with no atomic partial order defined on the domain of quantification, and thus no ontological distinction between singular and plural individuals. The idea is that the work usually done in the semantics by the atomic partial order is instead done by the syntax, which makes available to the semantics a phonologically covert sortal which provides the suitable granularity. This sortal theory of plurals is compared to the standard atomic theory with the two case studies of partitives and distributivity
Substitution Puzzles and Substitutional Semantics
Get PDFSubstitution failure is usually said to occur when a change from one co-referential name to another affects the truth value of the sentence. Taking the idea seriously that non-referring names like ‘Superman’ and ‘Clark Kent’ are indeed names and that they do not refer (to anything whatsoever), it is argued that the usual characterization does not only give rise to theories which inflate ontology but that it falls short of capturing substitution puzzles about constructions which involve nonreferring terms. The paper suggests a more general characterization of substitution failure and proposes an account of (ignorant and enlightened) anti-substitution intuitions which does not invoke referents at all. The account is made formally precise in terms of associative substitutional semantics
Quantifier Acquisition: Presuppositions of “every”
Get PDFThree components of determiner meanings – truth conditions, implicatures, and presuppositions – have been identified. One of the major findings in acquisition, related to the truth conditions of the quantifiers, has been that children go through at least two stages of non-adult interpretation of the quantifier every (Philip, 1995). More recently, researchers (Noveck, 2001; Gualmini et al., 2001; Chierchia, 2001b; Papafragou & Musolino, 2003) have shown that children understand quantifiers logically in a context where adults derive scalar implicatures (for example, some vs. all ). In this paper, I focus on the third component of the determiner meaning, presupposition. Using Felicity Judgment Task, I argue that children acquire the lexical presupposition earlier than the implicated presupposition, and that the acquisition path of implicated presupposition resembles more closely that of scalar implicatures
Quantificational Variability Effects with Plural Definites
Get PDFIn this paper we give evidence that Quantificational Variability Effects (Berman (1991)) in sentences containing plural definites come about as an indirect effect of quantification over sum eventualities. Evidence for this claim comes from the fact that those sentences – in contrast to minimally varying sentences where the Q-adverb has been replaced by a quantificational determiner – have to obey two newly observed constraints in order to get QV-readings. We show that those constraints can be explained if an analysis that is based on Nakanishi/Romero’s (2004) analysis of the Q-adverb for the most part is combined with the results of Endriss/Hinterwimmer (to appear), where we offer an explanation for similar constraints in adverbially quantified sentences that contain singular indefinites
On Result Nominalization in German
Get PDFIt is well known that certain deverbal nouns like invention, forgery and disappointment allow a result interpretation while others like explosion and search do not. Result interpretation can mean two things: reference to a result object (forgery) or reference to a result state (disappointment). The present paper, whose focus is on deverbal nouns in German, investigates the semantical conditions the base verb must fulfill in order to allow a result object or a result state nominalization. In particular, we critically examine the criteria proposed by Ehrich and Rapp (2000)
A Semantic Explanation for Intervention Effects
Get PDFThis paper proposes a semantic analysis of intervention effects in wh-constructions. Wh-phrases are assumed to use the same interpretive mechanism as focus. Similar to a focus sensitive operator evaluating the contribution of focus, a question operator evaluates the contribution of a wh-phrase. An intervening focus sensitive operator interferes with this evaluation and renders the structure uninterpretable. Crosslinguistic variation in the appearance of intervention effects arises due to variation in the Logical Form of questions and of focus evaluation
Topic Interpretation and Wide Scope Indefinites
Get PDFIn recent years it has turned out that only a subclass of indefinites can scope out of syntactic islands. As data from German suggests, this class corresponds to the class of quantifiers that can be interpreted as topics and therefore it seems to be desirable to correlate topicality and specificity (i.e. wide scope). In this paper, we will argue that the specific interpretation of indefinites is the result of the application of an illocutionary operator TopAssert (Topic Assert) to sentences in order to update a common ground. As a consequence of this operation, the topic-marked constituent receives wide scope and relates to the rest of the clause in a way that corresponds to the intuitive content of the notion of aboutness topic. Thus the ability to be a topic and to be interpreted specifically is reduced to the application of one and the same operation to the respective constituents. For this reason, we predict that only those quantifiers that can take wide scope out of syntactic islands can be topics. The observation that wide scope phenomena are restricted to only a subclass of quantifiers (and even indefinites) will be explained by a Topic Condition. This condition tests the lexical semantics of quantifiers and determines the applicability of TopAssert on the basis of a comparison of the aboutness and familiarity definitions we propose