{"title":"The most, the fewest and the least: On the relative readings of quantity superlatives","authors":"E. Wilson","doi":"10.3765/sp.14.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.14.9","url":null,"abstract":"This paper makes the empirical observation that so-called ‘NP-internal relative readings’ are available for certain speakers of English (as well as Dutch) for quantity superlatives but never for superlatives of other gradable adjectives. Previous accounts of this phenomenon in other languages attribute the availability of this type of reading to the absence of a definite article or DP layer. Contra the predictions of such accounts, in English, it is when the nominal expression containing the quantity superlative appears to be definite that these readings are generated. I account for these readings by building on the theory that many/much and their antonyms are fundamentally degree-predicates of scalar intervals, not degree-predicates of individuals. This leads me to propose a novel syntactic configuration in which the definite article forms a measure phrase constituent with the quantity superlative to the exclusion of the focused element. The NP-internal relative reading is derived through focus-association, with the superlative morpheme remaining in situ inside the definite measure phrase. The proposal adds to an emerging consensus that the quantity expressions much, many, few and little and their crosslinguistic counterparts are of a distinct type and are syntactically more complex than other gradable adjectives. It also provides indirect support for an in situ approach to deriving the relative readings of superlatives in definite contexts. \u0000 \u0000EARLY ACCESS","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42320643","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":"Presuppositional exhaustification","authors":"Itai Bassi, Guillermo Del Pinal, U. Sauerland","doi":"10.3765/sp.14.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.14.11","url":null,"abstract":"Grammatical theories of Scalar Implicatures make use of an exhaustivity operator exh , which asserts the conjunction of the prejacent with the negation of excludable alternatives. We present a new Grammatical theory of Scalar Implicatures according to which exh is replaced with pex , an operator that contributes its prejacent as asserted content, but the negation of scalar alternatives at a non-at-issue level of meaning. We show that by treating this non-at-issue level as a presupposition , this theory resolves a number of empirical challenges faced by the old formulation of exh (as well as by standard neo-Gricean theories). The empirical challenges include projection of scalar implicatures from certain embedded environments (‘ some under some ’ sentences, some under negative factives), their restricted distribution under negation, and the existence of common ground-mismatching and oddness-inducing implicatures. We argue that these puzzles have a uniform solution given a pex -based Grammatical theory of implicatures and some independently motivated principles concerning presupposition projection, cancellation and accommodation.","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42200580","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 landscape of speech reporting","authors":"Corien Bary, E. Maier","doi":"10.3765/SP.14.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/SP.14.8","url":null,"abstract":"Languages offer various ways to report what someone said. There is now a vast but heterogeneous literature on speech report constructions scattered throughout the semantics literature. We offer a bird’s eye view of the entire landscape of reporting and propose a classification along two dimensions: at-issue vs. not-at-issue, and eventive vs. non-eventive. This bird’s eye perspective leads to genuinely new insights, for instance on the nature of quotative evidentials and reportative moods, viz., that they are both eventive, and hence semantically more like some types of direct and indirect speech than reportative evidentials and modals are. \u0000 \u0000EARLY ACCESS","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43276914","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":"A variably exhaustive and scalar focus particle and pragmatic focus concord in Burmese","authors":"M. Erlewine, Keely New","doi":"10.3765/SP.14.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/SP.14.7","url":null,"abstract":"The Burmese particle hma expresses cleft-like exhaustivity in some contexts but a scalar, even -like meaning in other contexts. We propose that hma is uniformly a not-at-issue scalar exhaustive, with semantics similar to that proposed for English it -clefts in Velleman, Beaver, Destruel, Bumford, Onea & Coppock 2012. When hma takes wide scope, it leads to an exhaustive interpretation which is not scale-sensitive. When hma takes scope under negation, the resulting expression will have a scale-sensitive felicity condition due to a Non-Vacuity constraint. We show that hma makes reference to alternatives ordered by likelihood, but cannot use other contextual orderings such as rank-orders. \u0000 \u0000We also analyze the sentence-final mood marker ta/da , which frequently but not always appears in scalar hma utterances, in a manner similar to focus concord effects in other languages. We propose that ta/da is a marker of propositional clefts and argue that the semantics of hma and the pragmatic requirements of propositional clefts together derive this apparent focus concord effect, as well as its exceptions. \u0000 \u0000EARLY ACCESS","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43391065","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":"Explaining gaps in the logical lexicon of natural languages: A decision-theoretic perspective on the square of Aristotle","authors":"Émile Enguehard, Benjamin Spector","doi":"10.3765/SP.14.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/SP.14.5","url":null,"abstract":"Across languages, certain logically natural concepts are not lexicalized, even though they can be expressed by complex expressions. This is for instance the case for the quantifier not all . In this paper, we propose an explanation for this fact based on the following idea: the logical lexicon of languages is partly shaped by a tradeoff between informativity and cost , and the inventory of logical expressions tends to maximize average informativity and minimize average cost. The account we propose is based on a decision-theoretic model of how speakers choose their messages in various situations (a version of the Rational Speech Act model). \u0000 \u0000EARLY ACCESS","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46356199","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":"On believing and hoping whether","authors":"Aaron Steven White","doi":"10.3765/SP.14.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/SP.14.6","url":null,"abstract":"Theories of clause selection that aim to explain the distribution of interrogative and declarative complement clauses often take as a starting point that predicates like think , believe , hope , and fear are incompatible with interrogative complements. After discussing experimental evidence against the generalizations on which these theories rest, I give corpus evidence that even the core data are faulty: think , believe , hope , and fear are in fact compatible with interrogative complements, suggesting that any theory predicting that they should not be must be jettisoned. \u0000 \u0000EARLY ACCESS","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43542030","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":"Does intonation automatically strengthen scalar implicatures?","authors":"John M. Tomlinson, C. R. Ronderos","doi":"10.3765/SP.14.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/SP.14.4","url":null,"abstract":"Two mouse-tracking experiments tested predictions from two different models of scalar implicature as to whether exhaustive interpretations are computed prior to ignorance implicatures. We use different German in-tonational patterns to probe the availability of these interpretations (Experiments 1 and 2) and add a speaker competence manipulation in Experiment 2. Results from Experiment 1 found that deriving exhaustive interpretations with an L+H* was delayed to ignorance implicatures with an L*+H contour. Experiment 2 replicated this finding even with a strengthened competence assumption about the speaker. We interpret our processing data as providing constraints on the computational mechanisms underlying the interpretation of scalar implicatures.","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45856789","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":"Formal properties of now revisited","authors":"Una Stojnić, D. Altshuler","doi":"10.3765/SP.14.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/SP.14.3","url":null,"abstract":"The traditional view is that now is a pure indexical, denoting the utterance time. Yet, despite its initial appeal, the view has faced criticism. A range of data reveal now allows for discourse-bound (i.e., anaphoric) uses, and can occur felicitously with the past tense. The reaction to this has typically been to treat now as akin to a true demonstrative, selecting the prominent time supplied by the non-linguistic context or prior discourse. We argue this is doubly mistaken. The first mistake concerns the semantic value of now which is not a time, but a state --- the consequent state of a prominent event. The second is that now is a pure indexical after all, insofar as its interpretation is determined without recourse to extra-linguistic supplementation. Specifically, we argue that any occurrence of now selects the consequent state of the most prominent event, where event-prominence is linguistically maintained through prominence-affecting updates contributed by coherence relations. Our analysis accounts straightforwardly for a wide range of discourse initial and discourse bound uses of now while giving it a simple indexical meaning. \u0000 \u0000EARLY ACCESS","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42615785","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":"NPIs, intervention, and collectivity","authors":"Brian Buccola, Luka Crnič","doi":"10.3765/SP.14.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/SP.14.2","url":null,"abstract":"Negative polarity items are subject to so-called intervention effects (Linebarger 1980, 1987). Specifically, they are unacceptable in the immediate scope of certain non-downward-entailing operators, even if they occur in the scope of a (higher) downward-entailing operator. By studying the behavior of any in configurations with collective predicates, we provide new empirical arguments that the descriptive condition concerning intervention must be stated with reference to the content of the clausal constituents in which NPIs may occur, and not merely with reference to operators c-commanding them. This is in line with recent arguments for environment-based formulations of NPI licensing conditions (e.g., Homer 2008, Gajewski 2011). We conclude by discussing how the condition fits in with some recent theories of intervention (especially Guerzoni 2006, Chierchia 2013).","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43507291","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":"Fine-grained semantics for attitude reports","authors":"H. Lederman","doi":"10.3765/SP.14.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/SP.14.1","url":null,"abstract":"I observe that the “concept-generator” theory of Percus and Sauerland (2003) , Anand (2006), and Charlow and Sharvit (2014) does not predict an intuitive true interpretation of the sentence “Plato did not believe that Hesperus was Phosphorus”. In response, I present a simple theory of attitude reports which employs a fine-grained semantics for names, according to which names which intuitively name the same thing may have distinct compositional semantic values. This simple theory solves the problem with the concept-generator theory, but, as I go on to show, it has problems of its own. I present three examples which the concept-generator theory can accommodate, but the simple fine-grained theory cannot. These examples motivate the full theory of the paper, which combines the basic ideas behind the concept-generator theory with a fine-grained semantics for names. The examples themselves are of interest independently of my theory: two of them constrain the original concept-generator theory more tightly than previously discussed examples had. \u0000 \u0000EARLY ACCESS","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43051800","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}