{"title":"Using the Anna Karenina Principle to explain why cause favors negative-sentiment complements","authors":"Lelia Glass","doi":"10.3765/sp.16.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.16.6","url":null,"abstract":"This paper sets out to explain why the verb cause tends to occur with negative-sentiment complements (cause damage, cause problems), as observed by Stubbs 1995. Formalized using causal models (Pearl 2000, Halpern & Pearl 2005, Schulz 2011), the analysis hinges on the asymmetric inference patterns licensed by necessary versus sufficient causes in the common scenario where some variables in a causal model remain uncertain. States of certainty/uncertainty are captured by subdividing the traditional definitions of necessity and sufficiency into a local version (all other variables fixed at particular values) and a global version (all other variables unsettled). C causes E is argued to entail that that C is locally sufficient for E, and to implicate that C is at least possibly locally necessary for E. With this definition, it is shown that C causes E can be truthfully applied to more uncertain contexts when C is a globally sufficient cause of E rather than a globally necessary one. Cause thus tends to occur with outcomes depending on a single globally sufficient cause -- outcomes which are moreover shown to be negative in sentiment, reflecting the independently motivated “Anna Karenina Principle” that bad outcomes tend to require single sufficient causes, thus indirectly explaining why cause prefers negative-sentiment complements. The meaning and collocational sentiment of cause are used to illuminate one another. EARLY ACCESS","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135887976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pair-list answers to questions with plural definites","authors":"W. Johnston","doi":"10.3765/sp.16.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.16.2","url":null,"abstract":"Questions with plural definites (QPDs) can receive responses that take the form of a pair-list. Following Dayal (1992, 1996) and Krifka (1992), these are generally treated not as genuine pair-list answers, but as pragmatically-motivated elaborations on underlyingly cumulative answers. I present new evidence against this view: pair-list answers can be available even in the absence of a corresponding felicitous cumulative answer. I argue that the pair-list form of such answers must be represented in the semantics, and that QPDs must permit both the “cumulation-and-elaboration” strategy and a genuine pair-list parse.","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41516570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Presupposition projection as a scope phenomenon","authors":"Julian Grove","doi":"10.3765/sp.15.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.15.15","url":null,"abstract":"The satisfaction theory of presupposition projection found in Heim 1983 has paved the way for a successful research tradition within dynamic semantics which has given rise to compositional analyses of a variety of projection behaviors. Since Geurts 1996, however, the promise of this research program has been called into question due to what Geurts dubs the “proviso problem”: satisfaction theory generates incorrect predictions in cases in which a presupposition ends up filtered which should not have been. I show that the satisfaction account of presupposition projection is nevertheless in good shape by revealing that the observations of Geurts are valid only under certain basic assumptions about how semantic composition works. To illustrate this, I present a satisfaction account of presupposition projection that incorporates a notion of scope-taking based on monads . The resulting composition scheme provides a setting in which the proviso problem does not arise, thus lending support to the scope theory of presupposition projection.","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41382750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Belief or consequences","authors":"Christopher Tancredi, Y. Sharvit","doi":"10.3765/sp.15.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.15.14","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46039356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Scorekeeping in a chess game","authors":"Bryan Pickel, B. Rabern","doi":"10.3765/sp.15.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.15.12","url":null,"abstract":"There is an important analogy between languages and games. Just as a scoresheet records features of the evolution of a game to determine the effect of a move in that game, a conversational score records features of the evolution of a conversation to determine the effect of the linguistic moves that speakers make. Chess is particularly interesting for the study of conversational dynamics because it has language-like notations, and so serves as a simplified study in how the effect of an assertion depends on, as well as evolves, the scoreboard. In this paper, we offer a compositional semantics for chess notation and a simple formal picture for determining the full information conveyed by an entry. We will also discuss an alternative model resembling accounts of centered assertion.","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44962887","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
M. Xiang, Christopher Kennedy, Weijie Xu, Timothy Leffel
{"title":"Pragmatic reasoning and semantic convention: A case study on gradable adjectives","authors":"M. Xiang, Christopher Kennedy, Weijie Xu, Timothy Leffel","doi":"10.3765/sp.15.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.15.9","url":null,"abstract":"Gradable adjectives denote properties that are relativized to contextual thresholds of application: how long an object must be in order to count as long in a context of utterance depends on what the threshold is in that context. But thresholds are variable across contexts and adjectives, and are in general uncertain. This leads to two questions about the meanings of gradable adjectives in particular contexts of utterance: what truth conditions are they understood to introduce, and what information are they taken to communicate? In this paper, we consider two kinds of answers to these questions, one from semantic theory, and one from Bayesian pragmatics, and assess them relative to human judgments about truth and communicated information. Our findings indicate that Bayesian accounts can model human judgments about what is communicated better than they can model human judgments about truth conditions, but the performance improves if the Bayesian approach is supplemented with the threshold conventions postulated by semantic","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48441758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The role of Alternatives in the interpretation of scalars and numbers: Insights Insights from the inference task","authors":"Chao-Fen Sun, R. Breheny","doi":"10.3765/sp.15.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.15.8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46303389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exceptional wide scope of bare nominals","authors":"Bert Le Bruyn, H. de Swart","doi":"10.3765/sp.15.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.15.7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45991744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}