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Wenn-Sätze als propositionale Argumente
No full textIt is well known that in German (and many other languages) clauses headed by a conditional complementizer can appear as (apparent) arguments of some verbs, including preference predicates and factive verbs. In most of the recent literature, indirect analyses are advocated according to which in such cases the clauses headed by wenn ('if') are adverbial clauses with a conditional interpretation and not real argument-clauses of the embedding verb. I argue in this paper that an argument-analysis is more advantageous for a systematic group of cases. I will propose a slight modification of the semantics of the standard conditional complementizer which will allow to capture its natural distribution between the two other main argument complementizers: dass ('that') and ob ('whether'). The paper strongly focuses on German but also discusses some distributional facts from other European languages such as English, French, Romanian and Hungarian
Why indefinites can escape scope islands
No full textOne of the big questions about indefinites is why they can escape scope islands (Fodor and Sag, in Linguist Philos 5:355-398, 1982). In the recent approach of Brasoveanu and Farkas (Linguist Philos 34(1):1-55, 2011) scopal relations with syntactically dominating quantifiers are hard wired into the semantic definition of the existential quantifier, which immediately explains why the semantic scope of indefinites may exceed their syntactic scope. In this paper, I argue for the revival of an alternative approach which places the explanatory burden on the idea that indefinites are essentially referential expressions, similar to definites, and not plain existential quantifiers. I propose one fully explicit variant of such theories and argue that it comes with a number of conceptual and empirical advantages over competing theories.German Initiative for Excellenc
The nearly missed account of narrative suspense
No full textAbstract In this paper, we specify features of a narrative that are responsible for its suspensefulness. Taking Noël Carroll’s account of erotetic narrative as our point of departure, we argue that a narrative is experienced as suspenseful because it gives rise to so-called potentially inquiry terminating questions. Such questions suggest to readers that they are just about to get the information they are reading for. Due to this highly specific erotetic structure, suspenseful narratives trigger cognitive and emotional mechanisms that are associated with what has been called a “near miss” in studies on gambling behavior: a situation which suggests a player that she has almost achieved a favorable result. In spelling out the details of the theory, we propose both a causal explanation of narrative suspense and defining properties, such that instances of suspense can be distinguished from instances of other states of readerly excitement
Corrigendum: Early ERP Evidence for Children's and Adult's Sensitivity to Scalar Implicatures Triggered by Existential Quantifiers (Some)
No full textEarly ERP Evidence for Children’s and Adult’s Sensitivity to Scalar Implicatures Triggered by Existential Quantifiers (Some)
No full textHow quickly do children and adults interpret scalar lexical items in speech processing? The current study examined interpretation of the scalar terms some vs. all in contexts where either the stronger ( some = not all ) or the weaker interpretation was permissible ( some allows all ). Children and adults showed increased negative deflections in brain activity following the word some in some -infelicitous versus some -felicitous contexts. This effect was found as early as 100 ms across central electrode sites (in children), and 300–500 ms across left frontal, fronto-central, and centro-parietal electrode sites (in children and adults). These results strongly suggest that young children (aged between 3 and 4 years) as well as adults quickly have access to the contextually appropriate interpretation of scalar terms.How quickly do children and adults interpret scalar lexical items in speech processing? The current study examined interpretation of the scalar terms some vs. all in contexts where either the stronger ( some = not all ) or the weaker interpretation was permissible ( some allows all ). Children and adults showed increased negative deflections in brain activity following the word some in some -infelicitous versus some -felicitous contexts. This effect was found as early as 100 ms across central electrode sites (in children), and 300–500 ms across left frontal, fronto-central, and centro-parietal electrode sites (in children and adults). These results strongly suggest that young children (aged between 3 and 4 years) as well as adults quickly have access to the contextually appropriate interpretation of scalar terms.Open-Access-Publikationsfonds 202
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