Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung
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Bounded rationality and logic for epistemic modals
Get PDFKratzer (1991) provides comparative epistemic modals such as ‘at least as likely as’ with their models in terms of a qualitative ordering. Yalcin (2010) shows that Kratzer’s model does not validate some intuitively valid inference schemata and validates some intuitively invalid ones. He adopts a model based directly on a probability measure for comparative epistemic modals. His model does not cause this problem. However, as Kratzer (2012) says, Yalcin’s model seems to be unnatural as a model for comparative epistemic modals. Holliday and Icard (2013) prove that not only a probability measure model but also a qualitatively additive measure model and a revised version of Kratzer’s model do not cause Yalcin’s problem. Suzuki (2013) proposes a logic the model of which reflects Kratzer’s intuition above, does not cause Yalcin’s problem, and has no limitation of the size of the domain. In the models of Holliday and Icard (2013) and Suzuki (2013), the transitivity of probabilistic indifference is valid. The transitivity of probabilistic indifference can lead to a sorites paradox. The nontransitivity of probabilistic indifference can be regarded as a manifestation of bounded rationality. The aim of this paper is to propose a new version of complete logic—Boundedly-Rational Logic for Epistemic Modals (BLE)—the model of the language of which has the following three merits: (1) The model reflects Kratzer’s intuition above in the sense that the model should not be based directly on probability measures, but based on qualitative probability orderings. (2) The model does not cause Yalcin’s problem. (3) The model is boundedly-rational in the sense that the transitivity of probabilistic indifference is not valid. So it does not invite the sorites paradox
Question agnosticism and change of state
Get PDFWe give an account of the selectional behavior of cognitive change-of-state verbs, such as decide, that attempts to reduce this behavior to their change-of-state event structure. In particular, we argue that, if a cognitive verb is change-of-state, it is Q-agnostic—i.e. it selects both declarative and interrogative clauses. This augments previous accounts of Q-agnosticism, which have tied the distribution of declarative and interrogative clauses to semanticopragmatic notions like factivity and veridicality but which fail on nonveridical predicates like decide
Only if: If only we understood it
Get PDFI argue that the puzzle that only if conditionals continue to pose is solved if their bare conditional prejacents are analyzed as having existential force. The existential conditional I propose is also argued to help shed light on the semantic behavior of conditionals under negative quantifiers and to explain why we often feel that the negation of an entire conditional is equivalent to the negation of its consequent
Unless: an experimental approach
Get PDFThe semantics of unless has posed a challenge for compositional theories of semantics, and its role as a restrictor of quantifiers is a source of empirical as well as theoretical controversy. We report on an experiment which tests the predictions of the prominent “exceptive” account of unless, in particular with respect to how it differs from if not. Our results reveal categorical as well as graded patterns of difference between the two conditionals. These patterns falsify previous accounts and motivate a new theoretical picture in which the compositionality issue does not arise, and presupposition and implicature play a central role
Do all languages make countability distinctions? Evidence from Nez Perce
Get PDFAt first glance, Nez Perce looks like a language lacking any correlate of the traditional mass-count distinction. All Nez Perce nouns behave like canonical count nouns in three ways: all nouns combine with numerals without an overt measure phrase, all NPs may host plural features, and all NPs may host adjectives like big and small. I show that Nez Perce nevertheless makes two countability distinctions in noun semantics. A sums-based (cumulativity) distinction is revealed in the interaction of quantifiers with plural; a parts-based (divisiveness) distinction is revealed in certain quantity judgments. Both types of evidence involve complex structures to which language learners likely have little to no actual exposure. I suggest that Nez Perce furnishes a poverty of the stimulus argument in favor of semantic countability distinctions as a language universal
Obligatory implicatures and the presupposition of “too”
Get PDFThe paper provides an analysis for the obligatory occurence of the presupposition triggers “too”, “again” and “know”. The claim is that these triggers are inserted to avoid a mandatory exhaustivity implicature that contradicts the context. Two main empirical arguments for why this account is to be preferred over analyses of these obligatory triggers that make use of a principle Maximize Presupposition will be presented
Applying Discourse Semantics and Pragmatics to Co-reference in Picture Sequences
Get PDFThis paper looks at co-indexing in pictorial narratives such as comics. Using aformal-semantic model of the content of pictures, it is argued that depicted objects are existentially quantified, and are identified post-semantically. A DRT model for pictorial narratives is proposed where discourse referents are constructed as areas of a picture
Imperatives as Future Plans
Get PDFDisjoint imperative sentences like (Nimm die) Hände hoch, oder ich schiesse!, literally (take your) hands up, or I’ll shoot! intuitively present the addressee with all her alternatives for action. The speaker informs that all future worlds, as far as the speaker can forsee, are such that the addressee raises her hands or gets killed. I propose a semantic/pragmatic analysis for sentences in the imperative mood that adopts this exhausitve description of future alternatives as a semantic backbone. Different contextual instantiations of alternatives capture a wide range of uses of sentences in imperative mood, as well as coordinations of imperative and declarative sentences, in a uniform way
Thematic Roles and the Interpretation ov \u27one-another\u27 Reciprocals
No full textThis paper proposes a novel neo-Davidsonian semantics of one another-reciprocals that appear in several Indo-European languages. Arguments are presented that suggest that such expressions be treated as compositionally complex, in contrast to standard approaches that treat them as primitive polyadic quantifiers. A theory of logical form for one another-reciprocals is developed that can account for a non-trivial range of their syntactic distribution as well as a wide range of the attested readings of reciprocal sentences
On the (In)compatibility of Non Neutral Adjectives and Measure Phrases
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