Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung
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An Experimental Investigation of Epistemic Modal Adverbs and Adjectives
Get PDFThis paper analyses epistemic modal adverbs and adjectives, both theoretically and experimentally, while addressing the prevalent conceptions of modality and context update. While modality is standardly viewed and represented uniformly, we show that epistemic modal adverbs and adjectives differ in various linguistic environments, and present experimental evidence that supports the claim that epistemic modal adverbs and adjectives differ in terms of cognitive processing. While context update is standardly viewed as a two-stage process composed of assertion and acceptance/rejection, we present experimental evidence that supports the claim that there is also a stage of evaluation, in which the hearer considers the content of the assertion and the implications of adding this content to the common ground
A Single-Type Semantics for the PTQ-Fragment
Get PDFIn (Montague, 1970), Montague defines a formal theory of linguistic meaning which interprets a small fragment of English through the use of two basic types of objects: individuals and propositions. In this paper, I develop a comparable semantics which only uses one basic type of object (hence, single-type semantics). Such a semantics has been suggested by Partee (2009) as a ‘minimality test’ for the Montagovian type system, which challenges the need for a bi-partitioned ontology. The proposed semantics captures the propositional interpretation of proper names, unifies Montague’s semantic ontology, and yields insight into the apparatus of types in formal semantics
On the context-dependent pragmatic strategies of Japanese self-diminutive shift
Get PDFIn Japanese, the phonological shift from [s] to [t?] triggers an implicature that “a speaker is uttering like a baby” and, depending on context, it can further induce the speaker’s emotion of (i) solidarity or (ii) emotional dependence. I argue that the Japanese diminutive shift shifts the speaker’s degree of maturity to the bottom at the level of conventional implicature (CI) and that the speaker’s emotion is determined by to whom the sentence is uttered. If the addressee is an adult, the diminutive shift triggers an emotion of dependency, while if the addressee is a baby, the diminutive shift triggers an emotion of solidarity. This paper shows that there is a type, “interpersonal expressive,” whose emotive meanings are dependent on the hearer
Direction and Obviation in plains Cree: A Referent Systems Approach
Get PDFWe present a calculus in which the variables occurring in semantic representations are associated with morphosyntactic information, and the semantic composition of two representations consists in the identification of variables with matching morphosyntactic information. Importantly, shared morphological information can lead to the identification of variables irrespective of the order of composition. This flexibility, we argue, is an important advantage in analysing the syntax-semantics interface of languages like Plains Cree, where the person and number properties of the arguments as well as the assignment of semantic roles to arguments is almost exclusively determined by the complex morphological properties of the verb
Pronoun Binding and Reflexivity in Kildin Saami
Get PDFThe article investigates the interpretation of two types of pronouns in Kildin Saami (Uralic, Northwestern Russia). We show that the interpretation of the pronouns s?n and iž’es’ as coreferential (strict) or bound (sloppy) under VP-ellipsis and in the scope of only-DPs shows some unexpected patterns when compared to English or German. The observable facts are derived from the interaction of two independent factors. The lexical specification of s?n and iž’es’ as syntactically free or bound in their local binding domain, and an interpretive principle SYN-SEM-BIND, which forces (locally) syntactically bound pronouns to be interpreted as semantically bound. While the new principle accounts for all the observable facts, we also show that standard interpretive principles introduced for the analysis of pronouns in English do not
Not Too Strong! Generalizing the Scope Economy Condition
Get PDFFox (1995, 2000) argued that covert scope shifting operations (CSSOs) such as QR or reconstruction are subject to a semantic economy condition: they are not licensed if they are semantically vacuous. In this paper, we argue for a generalization of this condition according to which a CSSO is ruled out not only if it is vacuous, but also if it leads to a reading that is strictly stronger than the surface-scope reading
Linking argumentativity and information structure in adversatives
Get PDFThis paper deals with the semantics of the adversative connective but. It argues for a unified description of the semantic opposition and denial of expectation uses of but. Our analysis is an attempt at reconciling approaches based on the focussensitivity of but and an argumentative description of its meaning. To show that both approaches are necessary, we rely on examples involving quantifiers. Throughout this work, we connect our account to works dealing with the derivation of scalar implicatures. We argue that our data are neutral towards the issue of the locality of these inferences, and that the semantics of but is not sensitive to the presence of scalar implicatures
Contradiction-free strengthening and alternative discharge: The case of Farsi -i indefinites.
Get PDFExistential Free Choice Items (EFCIs) differ from each other both within and across languages with respect to a number of parameters (Alonso-Ovalle and Mene´ndez-Benito, 2015; Chierchia, 2013). Our understanding of the possible variation within this class of items is rather limited, however, because the sample of EFCIs that have been studied in depth is also quite narrow. This paper contributes new data. We zoom in on a variety of indefinites in Farsi (Indo-Iranian), which we call -i indefinites (i-INDs for short), that share some core properties of EFCIs. The paper has two main goals. It discusses (a) where i-INDs fit crosslinguistically, and (b) how they fit within the type of alternative-based theory of EFCIs developed in Chierchia (2013). With respect to (a), the paper shows that i-INDs pattern with other EFCIs in modal and downward entailing contexts, but, surprisingly, with ordinary indefinites in unembedded contexts. With respect to (b), the paper shows that the behavior of i-INDs is predicted by an alternative-based theory if, as a last resort strategy, some EFCIs allow for the deactivation of some of the alternatives that they invoke, under the threat of deriving a contradiction