Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung
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Zu einer semantischen Klassifikation der intransitiven haben - und sein - Verben im Deutschen
Get PDFDie Literatur hat gezeigt, dass die syntaktischen Kriterien der Unakkusativ-/Unergativ-Distinktion durch semantische Kriterien zumindest unterstützt, wenn nicht gar ersetzt werden können. In diesem Beitrag werde ich mich auf eines der Unakkusativitätskriterien, die Auxiliarselektion, konzentrieren. Es soll gezeigt werden, dass die Wahl von haben- und sein- Perfekt bei intransitiven Verben im Deutschen semantisch zu motivieren ist. Fasst man das haben- Perfekt als Defaultfall auf, so lassen sich für die Wahl des sein-Perfekts spezifische semantische Kriterien aufstellen, die anhand von Beispielen vorgestellt und erläutert werden sollen. Die Kriterien können zu einem übergreifenden Basiskriterium zusammengefasst werden, das auch solche Fälle von sein-Perfekt einschließt, die für eine semantische Klassifikation bisher als problematisch angesehen worden sind
Returning to non-entailed presuppositions again
Get PDFRecent work by Sudo (2012) and Klinedinst (2016) proposes a new perspective on differences between classes of presupposition triggers, with an empirical split roughly mirroring Abusch’s (2002) hard vs. soft distinction and related notions. These two authors propose that triggers differ in whether or not their presuppositional content simultaneously affects the calculation of the presuppositions and of the entailments of the sentences in which they appear. Drawing on a proposal by Glanzberg (2005) we formulate the Removability/Independence Hypothesis: triggers that do not affect entailments are triggers that can be left out of sentences without affecting interpretability. We experimentally test the hypothesis by embedding return, (go) again and (go) back in non-monotonic environments, which Sudo argues to elicit differences in presuppositions and entailments. Our results provide clear evidence against the RI hypothesis: whereas only the trigger return is crucial for the sake of interpretability, all three triggers produced similar results. At the same time, data for the triggers stop and also, included as controls, lend further support in favor of Sudo’s entailment-contrast proposal
Subset Comparatives as Comparative Quantifiers
Get PDFThis paper is concerned with the meaning of the “subset comparative” construction: John saw more phonologists than just Mary seems to assert that John saw more than one phonologist, and presuppose that John saw Mary (the prejacent) and that Mary is a phonologist. Together, the assertion and the two presuppositions entail that John saw other phonologists in addition to Mary. In this paper, I argue that the meaning can be derived by an extension of the analysis originally proposed by Hackl (2000) for comparative quantifiers like more than three
On the focus-sensitive presupposition triggers "too, again, also, even"
Get PDFThis paper proposes to derive the presupposition of additive particles too, as well, also and the temporal particle again. It argues that the presuppositions of these particles can be predicted by the same presupposition triggering mechanism that was proposed for so-called soft triggers in Abrusán (2011). It is shown that presupposition suspension facts, characteristic of soft triggers, do not arise with additive particles because of their anaphoric and focus-sensitive nature. Finally, the paper proposes that the soft-hard presupposition distinction can be explained not in terms of differences in the nature of the presupposition but rather as a consequence of the anaphoric/focus-sensitive nature of various triggers
A Compositional Analysis for Subset Comparatives
Get PDFSubset comparatives (Grant 2013) are amount comparatives in which there exists a set membership relation between the target and the standard of comparison. This paper argues that subset comparatives should be treated as regular phrasal comparatives with an added resuppositional component. More specifically, subset comparatives presuppose that: a) the standard has the property denoted by the target; and b) the standard has the property denoted by the matrix predicate. In the account developed below, the presuppositions of subset comparatives result from the compositional principles independently required to interpret those phrasal comparatives in which the standard is syntactically contained inside the target. Presuppositions are usually taken to be licensed by certain lexical items (presupposition triggers). However, subset comparatives show that presuppositions can also arise as a result of semantic composition. This finding suggests that the grammar possesses more than one way of licensing these inferences. Further research will have to determine how productive this latter strategy is in natural languages
Evidence for online repair of Escher sentences
Get PDFIllusory “Escher” sentences (More people have been to Russia than I have) are a unique puzzle for theories assuming full and thorough grammatical analysis and semantic composition during processing, since people generally appear to accept them before noticing that the meaning is incoherent. Prior work has shown, however, that meaning is extracted from the illusion: in particular, reactions to the illusion are sensitive to whether a comparison of events is possible (Wellwood et al. 2009, 2012), suggesting that the perception of grammaticality is related to the fact that determiners may sometimes count events (Krifka 1990). The series of selfpaced reading experiments reported here suggest the illusion is ambiguous between an individual and a (less salient) event quantification interpretation, since reading times are generally slower for comparatives with plural predicates. Reading times indicate that the meaning of the illusion is plausibly shifted to a comparison of events at the point of anomaly – a costly process that causes observably slowed reading times. The success of this operation determines how felicitous an interpretation comprehenders can obtain for an essentially ungrammatical sentence
Optatives: Deriving Desirability from Scalar Alternatives
Get PDFA compositional analysis of optative sentences is challenging for atleast two reasons: they encode desirability without having any overt marker, and they are if-clauses with or without consequents, raising the question of whether they are actually conditionals. In this paper I argue that optatives are conditionals even when they do not have overt consequents. With respect to desirability, I argue that in optatives modality is pragmatically derived. The investigation of optatives sheds light on the interaction between syntax, pragmatics and discourse
Identity and Definiteness in Chinese wh-Conditionals
Get PDFPrevious studies of Chinese wh-conditionals leaveseveral issues unresolved, including (i) definiteness effects; (ii) apparent violations of the novelty condition and (iii) accounting for the range of readings of Chinese wh-conditionals. We attempt to resolve some of these issues by analysing wh-indefinites as unique indefinites and wh-conditionals as special instances of topic-comment structures (i.e. wh-conditionals are topic-comment structures with an identity relation). Chinese wh-conditionals can refer to either a single situation or multiple situations, leading to either a definite interpretation or a generic interpretation respectively
Focus Marking via Gestures
Get PDFThis paper contributes to the recent investigations of speechaccompanyinggestures under a formal semantic view. We show that gestures can serve to disambiguate a sentence with respect to its possible focus domains. We provide a statistical evaluation of data gained from a corpus annotated with gestures and information structure. The language under investigation is German. We argue that a sentence that, in isolation, is ambiguous concerning the extension of its focus domain is disambiguated via speech-accompanying gestures. Gesture thus is a means to mark information structure next to intonation and word order
Events in Adjectival Passives
Get PDFThe paper presents a new analysis of the semantics of adjectival passives mainly concentrating on the status of the implicit event, its agent participant and the dependency relation between eventive base and derived property. On the basis of data from two questionnaire studies it proposes an adjectival ?-affix, modifying Maienborn’s (2009) analysis in two respects: First, it does not involve existential quantification over an event particular but reference to an event kind. Second, the dependency relation between the event kind and the property denoted by the participle of an adjectival passive sentence is not a causal or temporal one. It is a relation of lexical supervenience in the sense of Kim (1990) which leaves room for the pragmatic character of adjectival passives, for their specific ‘surplus in meaning’