Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung
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On the Encoding of the Definite/Indefinite Distinction in Karitiana
Get PDFThis article discusses the role of noun phrases in Karitiana, especially in terms of the possibility that these phrases may express definiteness and indefiniteness in the language. As they are nominals without any overt functional morphemes, our claim is that they do not encode definiteness or indefiniteness in the language. Our claim is that the NPs in Karitiana only have the function of introducing a predicate and a variable in the logical form of a sentence, and that readings related to definiteness and indefiniteness are provided by the morphosyntactic or context in which the nominal phrase is used
Comparing to What is Possible
Get PDFA novel pragmatic account of Heim (2001) and Rullmann (1995) ambiguities in comparatives with possibility modals is proposed and compared to a structural approach. The new analysis builds on a proposal in Fox and Hackl (2006) to treat strong readings of possibility statements with ‘before’ clauses as a result of strengthening their literary meanings by a free choice implicature
Movement, Variables and Hamblin Alternatives
Get PDFSets of Hamblin alternatives are often used side by side syntactic movement and variable binding. Shan (2004) shows that previous attempts at defining a Predicate Abstraction rule for variable binding while using sets of alternatives face serious problems: they overgenerate alternatives and/or are incapable of handling binding into a wh-phrase. This paper provides a solution by assuming Poesio’s (1996) general type ??a,??,t? and by borrowing and extending Rullmann and Beck’s (1997) treatment of wh-phrases as definites
Pronouns, null arguments, and ellipsis in Mandarin Chinese
Get PDFThis paper argues that both overt and null pronouns in Mandarin are the elliptical counterparts of corresponding overt noun phrases. Specifically, null pronouns are the pronominal counterparts of bare nouns, which are typically restricted to unique definite environments, while overt pronouns are the pronominal counterparts of demonstrative descriptions, which are typically restricted to anaphoric definite environments. This result provides support for a hypothesis we call Determiner-Pronoun Parallelism: the idea that a language’s pronominal inventory is isomorphic to its determiners used for the expression of definiteness distinctions
Presupposing questions
Get PDFUtterances like and the parents are where? (declarative word-order, non-fronted wh-words, and a non-echo interpretation) in languages that in principle have obligatory wh-fronting present a challenge. I avoid ad-hoc stipulations by paying attention to the interplay between the semantics of the utterances and their dynamic update. I argue that, in English, such sentences are not interrogatives, but declaratives with vacuous content whose function is to indicate the speaker’s presupposition regarding the question to be answered. This system allows us to make predictions about their interpretation while keeping the semantics true to form
As ifs
Get PDFWe provide an event semantic analysis of as if-phrases in manner reports and other modification uses on which these adjuncts contribute hypothetical comparative properties of eventualities. When combined with the dynamic verb dance, for instance, an as if-phrase expresses that the reported dancing event resembles in some relevant respect its counterparts in the most normal worlds described by the clause embedded under as if. Towards the end of the paper, we extend our analysis to as if-complements of copy raising verbs in perceptual resemblance reports
P-HYPE: A monadic situation semantics for hyperintensional side effects
Get PDFP-HYPE is a hyperintensional situation semantics in which hyperintensionality is modelled as a ‘side effect’, as this term has been understood in natural language semantics, Charlow (2014); Shan (2007), and in functional programming. We use monads from category theory in order to ‘upgrade’ an ordinary intensional semantics to a possible hyperintensional counterpart. Hyperintensional side effects are analysed as a special type of perspective sensitivity. We combine Asudeh and Giorgolo’s (2016) perspective sensitive semantic theory with a hyperintensional situation semantics, HYPE (Leitgeb, 2018), a logic with connections of Barwise and Perry’s (1983) situation semantics, truthmaker semantics (Fine, 2017) and data semantics (Veltman, 1985). P-HYPE builds on the account of Asudeh and Giorgolo (2016), by carving out a notion of perspectives as special sets of situations which can be combined together via a fusion relation. In addition, we are able to capture the utterer’s perspective on other people’s perspectives, a phenomenon that plays a role in Asudeh and Giorgolo (2016) but which is not formally defined by them
Self-addressed questions and indexicality — The case of Korean
Get PDFKorean questions are marked as true questions (with final particle ni) or self addressed questions (SAQ, henceforth) (with final na/ka). SAQ are characterized as “uttered in the absence of addressee” in the literature. We argue in favour of a more detailed pragmatic profile, as SAQ can be uttered in the presence of other persons and can contain second person pronouns ‘you’ that refer to these. SAQ in Korean are however incompatible with the performative honorific upni (Jang and Kim, 1998). We propose that Korean refers to contexts with bystanders in addition to speaker and addressee. SAQ require that sp(c)=ad(c), and prohibit upni because the speaker cannot honorify herself. Second person ‘you’ refers to the most salient bystander, which can differ from ad(c) in SAQ. The account extends to theme-setting questions and other data
No explanation for the historical present: Temporal sequencing and discourse
Get PDFDiscourses in the historical (or narrative) use of the simple present in English prohibit backshifting, though they allow forward sequencing. Unlike both reference time theories and discourse coherence theories of these temporal inferences, we propose that backshifting has a different source from narrative progression. In particular, we argue that backshifting arises through anaphora to a salient event in the preceding discours
Scalar diversity and negative strengthening
Get PDFIn recent years, experimental research has demontrated great variability in the rates of scalar inferences across different triggering expressions (Doran et al. 2009, 2012, van Tiel et al. 2016). These studies have been taken as evidence against the so-called uniformity assumption, which posits that scalar implicature is triggered by a single mechanism and that the behaviour of one scale should generalize to the whole family of scales. In the following, we present an experimental study that tests negative strengthening for a variety of strong scalar terms, following up on van Tiel et al. (2016). For example, we tested whether the statement John is not brilliant is strengthened to mean that John is not intelligent (see especially Horn 1989). We show that endorsement rates of the scalar implicature (e.g., John is intelligent but not brilliant) are anti-correlated with endorsements of negative strengthening. Further, we demonstrate that a modified version of the uniformity hypothesis taking into account negative strengthening is consistent with van Tiel et al.’s data. Therefore, variation across scales may be more systematic than suggested by the van Tiel et al. study