JournalTOCs

Natural Language Semantics
Journal Prestige (SJR): 0.866

Citation Impact (citeScore): 1
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Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
ISSN (Print) 1572-865X - ISSN (Online) 0925-854X
Published by Springer-Verlag

[2468 journals]

On fatal competition and the nature of distributive inferences
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  Abstract: Abstract Denić (2018, 2019, To appear) observes that the availability of distributive inferences—for sentences with disjunction embedded in the scope of a universal quantifier—depends on the size of the domain quantified over as it relates to the number of disjuncts. Based on her observations, she argues that probabilistic considerations play a role in the computation of implicatures. In this paper we explore a different possibility. We argue for a modification of Denić’s generalization, and provide an explanation that is based on intricate logical computations but is blind to probabilities. The explanation is based on the observation that when the domain size is no larger than the number of disjuncts, universal and existential alternatives are equivalent if distributive inferences are obtained. We argue that under such conditions a general ban on ‘fatal competition’ (Magri 2009a,b, Spector 2014) is activated, thereby predicting distributive inferences to be unavailable.
  PubDate: 2023-09-25
Deriving presupposition projection in coordinations of polar questions: a
reply to Enguehard 2021
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  Abstract: Abstract This paper is a response to Enguehard (Natural Language Semantics 29(4):527–578, 2021), who observes that presuppositions project in the same way from coordinations of declaratives and coordinations of polar questions, but existing mechanisms of projection from declaratives (e.g. Schlenker in Theoretical Linguistics 34(3):157–212, 2008, Semantics and Pragmatics 2:1–78, 2009) fail to scale to questions. His solution involves specifying a trivalent inquisitive semantics for (coordinations of) questions that bakes the various asymmetries of presupposition projection into the lexical entry of conjunction/disjunction. However, we argue that such a move faces both theoretical and empirical issues. Instead, we show that the data can be handled without moving to such an asymmetric inquisitive denotation, by adapting the novel pragmatic theory of Limited Symmetry (Kalomoiros in Proceedings of the 52nd annual meeting of the North East linguistic society, GLSA, Amherst, 2022) to an inquisitive framework in a way that leaves the underlying semantics for conjunction symmetric and bivalent, while deriving the projection data.
  PubDate: 2023-09-21
The evidential future in Italian
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  Abstract: Abstract This paper provides a systematic description and analysis of the non-predictive use of the Italian future. Several authors claim that, on this use, the Italian future is an evidential (Squartini 2001, Mari 2010, Eckardt and Beltrama 2019, Frana and Menéndez-Benito 2019). Others argue that the non-predictive future does not directly contribute an evidential signal (e.g., Giannakidou and Mari 2018, Farkas and Ippolito 2022). We side with the evidential camp. From an empirical standpoint, we present the results of a battery of tests that show that the non-predictive future patterns with evidentials cross-linguistically. From a theoretical standpoint, we put forward an analysis that combines a slightly modified version of the proposal for evidentials in Davis et al. (2007) with Schlenker’s (2007) view of expressive content. On this account, the Italian evidential future (i) lowers the quality threshold required to perform a successful speech act (Davis et al. 2007) and (ii) triggers an evidential presupposition relativized to the speaker’s beliefs (modeled after Schlenker’s analysis of expressives). Our treatment of the evidential component as an expressive presupposition opens up a new perspective on the study of evidentiality and highlights the need for further detailed empirical studies exploring the extent to which this perspective is applicable cross-linguistically.
  PubDate: 2023-08-21
Remarks on exhaustification and embedded free choice
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  Abstract: Abstract Some sentences that contain disjunctions imply that their disjunct-alternatives are false, while others imply that they are true. Recent work on scalar implicature has been guided by the behavior of such constructions. In this paper I consider examples in which free choice disjunctions (phrases of the form allowed to A or B) appear in various intensional contexts. I discuss the significance of the findings in light of current views of exhaustification.
  PubDate: 2023-08-16
Psycholinguistic evidence for restricted quantification
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  Abstract: Abstract Quantificational determiners are often said to be devices for expressing relations. For example, the meaning of every is standardly described as the inclusion relation, with a sentence like every frog is green meaning roughly that the green things include the frogs. Here, we consider an older, non-relational alternative: determiners are tools for creating restricted quantifiers. On this view, determiners specify how many elements of a restricted domain (e.g., the frogs) satisfy a given condition (e.g., being green). One important difference concerns how the determiner treats its two grammatical arguments. On the relational view, the arguments are on a logical par as independent terms that specify the two relata. But on the restricted view, the arguments play distinct logical roles: specifying the limited domain versus supplying an additional condition on domain entities. We present psycholinguistic evidence suggesting that the restricted view better describes what speakers know when they know the meaning of a determiner. In particular, we find that when asked to evaluate sentences of the form every F is G, participants mentally group the Fs but not the Gs. Moreover, participants forego representing the group defined by the intersection of F and G. This tells against the idea that speakers understand every F is G as implying that the Fs bear relation (e.g., inclusion) to a second group.
  PubDate: 2023-08-08
Additivity, scalarity and Mandarin Universal wh’s
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  Abstract: Abstract This paper offers a compositional analysis of Mandarin universal wh’s in construction with an additive/scalar adverb ye ‘also/even’. In the analysis, universal force is derived from exhaustification of the subdomain alternatives activated by wh-items under stress, and the tendency of wh-ye to appear in negative sentences is explained by the interaction between ye and domain widening. Specifically, the ye in wh-ye is argued to be a scalar ye imposing a total order presupposition on its associated set of alternatives. In wh-ye it associates with the domain argument of the wh, and the requirement can be met by either an ordered wh or a two-point scale \(\langle D',D \rangle \) made available through domain widening, specifically by widening of QUDs. The negative preference follows from the fact that a QUD is most naturally widened when it is settled negatively, as in the case of negatively biased questions with minimizers/maximizers.
  PubDate: 2023-07-28
Negating gradable adjectives
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  Abstract: Abstract In this short paper, I analyze the syntax and semantics of the prefix un- with gradable adjectives like unhappy and compare it to the syntax and semantics of not. Within the framework of Collins and Postal (2014), I propose that un- and not have the same semantics but negate different constituents, accounting for the differences in interpretation.
  PubDate: 2023-06-09
  DOI: 10.1007/s11050-023-09204-1
Scalarity of the Japanese initial mora-based minimizer: a compositional
(lexically unspecified) minimizer and a non-compositional (lexically
specified) minimizer
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  Abstract: This study investigates interpretations of the Japanese initial mora-based minimizer “X.Y...”-no “X”-no ji-mo ‘lit. even the letter “X” of “X.Y...”.’ Although initial mora-based minimizers have a literal interpretation of ji ‘letter’, they have a non-literal interpretation as well. The non-literal interpretation has several distinctive features that are not present in ordinary minimizers. First, it is highly productive in that various expressions can appear in the form “X.Y...”-no “X”-no ji. Second, non-literal minimizers typically co-occur with predicates that relate to knowledge, information, concepts, thought, and habituality, as seen in the corpus data (Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese [BCCWJ]). I argue that in the non-literal use, X refers to the minimum on the scale of the main predicate concerning “X.Y...”. I suggest that the non-literal use was developed as a result of the conventionalization of the pragmatic inference derived from the literal reading, and that the co-occurrence with predicates related to knowledge, information, knowledge, concepts, thought, or habituality is due to the interpretation of “X.Y...”, which were originally interpreted as letters as an abstract concept. The theoretical implication of this study is that, in addition to a non-compositional (lexically specified) minimizer whose scale is lexically fixed (e.g., give a damn, lift a finger), there also exists a compositional (lexically unspecified) minimizer in natural language, whose scale is specified via the predicate with which the minimizer co-occurs. The last section of this paper briefly discusses similar/related phenomena in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Korean, and English from a cross-linguistic perspective.
  PubDate: 2023-06-05
  DOI: 10.1007/s11050-023-09203-2
Quantifier Raising out of Mandarin relative clauses
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  Abstract: Abstract Quantifier Raising usually exhibits finite-clause boundedness due to the syntactic and semantic constraints it is subject to (Fox 1995, 2000, Cecchetto 2004, a.o.). In this paper, I argue that QR out of a Mandarin prenominal pre-determiner RC is not only properly licensed, obeying both syntactic and semantic constraints, but also needed to account for the exceptional-scope effects observed across relative clause boundaries (Huang 1982, Aoun and Li 1993, a.o.). I further consider constructions where the exceptional-scope effects are not present, including relative clauses containing the focus-sensitive operator dou and full-sized subject RCs, and show that the absence of the exceptional-scope effects in these constructions follows directly from the proposed analysis.
  PubDate: 2023-04-05
  DOI: 10.1007/s11050-023-09202-3
Superlative displacement in ‘sandwich’ scenarios
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  Abstract: Abstract This article seeks to reconcile the ‘movement’ account of the interpretation of superlative and comparative degree quantifiers with a class of apparent counterexamples. Superlative and comparative degree quantifiers compare the extent to which a target term and alternatives to the target instantiate a gradable property. On the movement analysis, the target and the gradable property are determined by the scope of the degree quantifier in the syntactic structure. As a structural consequence, terms in the scope of the degree quantifier are indifferent to the presence of the degree quantifier. This leads to incorrect empirical predictions in some contexts, apparently undermining the movement account. I provide an analysis of these contexts in which the unexpected interaction of degree quantifiers with other terms in their scope is a side effect of quantification over situations inherent in the degree quantifier itself.
  PubDate: 2023-04-03
  DOI: 10.1007/s11050-023-09201-4
On the scalar antonymy of only and even
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  Abstract: Abstract An old observation about the focus sensitive particles only and even is that they are in some sense scalar antonyms. We examine three schematic proposals raised in the literature to capture this observation, namely that only vs. even presuppose that the proposition denoted by their prejacent, p, is lower vs. higher, respectively (A) than what is EXPECTED/the default STANDARD (the ‘mirative/evaluative antonymy’ view), (B) than SOME (salient) alternative in the set of contextually relevant focus alternatives, C, (the ‘existential antonymy’ view), or (C) than ALL alternatives in C (the ‘superlative antonymy’ view). To tease these views apart, we examine the behavior of only vs. even in a wide range of contexts and types of discourse, concentrating on the way the C set of contextually relevant alternatives with only (C) (p) and even (C) (p) is constrained by the interaction of (i) previously uttered sentences and (ii) the salient QUD. Based on these examinations we argue for the preferability of the ‘superlative antonymy’ view of only and even. In contrast, we argue that the ‘existential’ antonymy and the ‘mirative/evaluative’ antonymy between only and even are apparent. The former only holds in specific contexts where one alternative to p is made maximally salient. As to the latter, we show that while an evaluative (‘above the standard’ / ‘a lot’) inference is hardwired into the scalar presupposition of even, alongside the superlative inference, the mirror imaged one (‘below the standard’ / ‘a little’) is cancellable for only. We propose that this inference can be derived from the interaction of the superlative scalar presupposition of only and domain based constraints on alternatives in C.
  PubDate: 2022-12-09
  DOI: 10.1007/s11050-022-09200-x
Isn’t there more than one way to bias a polar question'
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  Abstract: Abstract I show that speaker bias in polarity focus questions (PFQs) is context sensitive, while speaker bias in high negation questions (HNQs) is context insensitive. This leads me to develop separate accounts of speaker bias in each of these kinds of polar questions. I argue that PFQ bias derives from the fact that they are frequently used in conversational contexts in which an answer to the question has already been asserted by an interlocutor, thus expressing doubt about the prior assertion. This derivation explains their context sensitivity, and the fact that similar bias arises from polar questions that lack polarity focus. I also provide novel evidence that the prejacents of HNQs lack negation, and thus only have an outer negation reading (see, e.g., Ladd in Papers from the seventeenth regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, vol. 17, pp. 164–171, 1981; Romero and Han in Linguistics and Philosophy 27(5):609–658, 2004; Krifka in Contrastiveness in information structure, alternatives and scalar implicatures, pp. 359–398, 2017; AnderBois in Questions in discourse, pp. 118–171, 2019; Frana and Rawlins in Semantics and Pragmatics 12(16):1–48, 2019; Jeong in Journal of Semantics 38(1):49–94, 2020). Based on a treatment of HNQs as denoting unbalanced partitions (Romero and Han in Linguistics and Philosophy 27(5):609–658, 2004), and competition with their positive polar question alternatives, I propose a novel derivation of speaker bias in HNQs as a conversational implicature. Roughly, if the speaker is ignorant, then a positive polar question will be more useful because it is more informative, so the use of an HNQ conveys that the speaker is not ignorant. The denotation of the HNQ then makes clear which way the speaker is biased. The result separates high negation from verum focus, and I argue that it is more parsimonious and has better empirical coverage than prior accounts.
  PubDate: 2022-12-05
  DOI: 10.1007/s11050-022-09198-2
Relativized Exhaustivity: mention-some and uniqueness
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  Abstract: Abstract Wh-questions with the modal verb can admit both mention-some (MS) and mention-all (MA) answers. This paper argues that we should treat MS as a grammatical phenomenon, primarily determined by the grammar of the wh-interrogative. I assume that MS and MA answers can be modeled using the same definition of answerhood (Fox in Mention-some interpretations, MIT seminar, 2013) and attribute the MS/MA ambiguity to structural variations within the question nucleus. The variations are: (i) the scope ambiguity of the higher-order wh-trace and (ii) the absence/presence of an anti-exhaustification operator. However, treating MS answers as complete answers in this way contradicts the widely adopted analysis of uniqueness effects in questions of Dayal (Locality in wh quantification: Questions and relative clauses in Hindi, 1996), according to which the uniqueness effects of singular which-phrases arise from an exhaustivity presupposition, namely that a question must have a unique exhaustive true answer. To solve this dilemma, I propose that question interpretations presuppose Relativized Exhaustivity: roughly, the exhaustivity in questions is evaluated relative to the accessible worlds as opposed to the anchor/utterance world. Relativized Exhaustivity preserves the merits of Dayal’s exhaustivity presupposition while permitting MS; moreover, it explains the local-uniqueness effects in modalized singular wh-questions.
  PubDate: 2022-05-25
  DOI: 10.1007/s11050-022-09197-3
Finding the force: How children discern possibility and necessity modals
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  Abstract: Abstract This paper investigates when and how children figure out the force of modals: that possibility modals (e.g., can/might) express possibility, and necessity modals (e.g., must/have to) express necessity. Modals raise a classic subset problem: given that necessity entails possibility, what prevents learners from hypothesizing possibility meanings for necessity modals' Three solutions to such subset problems can be found in the literature: the first is for learners to rely on downward-entailing (DE) environments (Gualmini and Schwarz in J. Semant. 26(2):185–215, 2009); the second is a bias for strong (here, necessity) meanings; the third is for learners to rely on pragmatic cues stemming from the conversational context (Dieuleveut et al. in Proceedings of the 2019 Amsterdam colloqnium, pp. 111–122, 2019a; Rasin and Aravind in Nat. Lang. Semant. 29:339–375, 2020). This paper assesses the viability of each of these solutions by examining the modals used in speech to and by 2-year-old children, through a combination of corpus studies and experiments testing the guessability of modal force based on their context of use. Our results suggest that, given the way modals are used in speech to children, the first solution is not viable and the second is unnecessary. Instead, we argue that the conversational context in which modals occur is highly informative as to their force and sufficient, in principle, to sidestep the subset problem. Our child results further suggest an early mastery of possibility—but not necessity—modals and show no evidence for a necessity bias.
  PubDate: 2022-05-19
  DOI: 10.1007/s11050-022-09196-4
Polymorphic distributivity
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  Abstract: Abstract This article describes a novel pattern of interpretations associated with universal determiners like ‘each’ and ‘every’. It is demonstrated that these canonically distributive quantifiers can give rise to surprising collective readings when they quantify into sub-clausal constituents, especially other Determiner Phrases. For instance, ‘two cards from each player’ can be understood to pick out a single assorted deck of cards, one whose contents co-vary with the players. Yet this deck as a whole may be said to participate in a range of collective activities (being shuffled together, being traded en masse, not fitting into a standard pack, etc.). Such examples are shown to differ from more familiar cumulative readings of the same quantifiers. A compositional analysis is offered that generalizes Krifka’s (2001) method of quantification into speech acts in order to accommodate quantification into a larger class of non-truth-denoting semantic objects, including in these cases, entities.
  PubDate: 2022-04-29
  DOI: 10.1007/s11050-022-09195-5
Challenges for independence-driven and context-repair responses to the
proviso problem
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  Abstract: Abstract This note presents challenge cases for prominent pragmatic responses to the proviso problem. I offer examples of uses of conditionals if \(\psi,\,\phi_{P}\) that seem to commit the speaker unconditionally to the presupposition P of the consequent clause ϕ, even though the sentence’s predicted semantic presupposition ψ⊃P is antecedently satisfied (contrary to context-repair accounts), and independence between ψ and P isn’t antecedently assumed (contrary to independence-driven accounts). The examples provided avoid problems with other examples from the literature used against pragmatic accounts. I leave the matter as an unresolved challenge for satisfaction theories of presupposition.
  PubDate: 2022-04-27
  DOI: 10.1007/s11050-022-09194-6
Zero N: Number features and ⊥
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  Abstract: Abstract In this paper I demonstrate that there is an explanation of the number marking we see on nouns when they combine with the numeral zero which combines Martí’s (Semant. Pragmat., 2020a, https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.13.3) account of the morphosyntax and semantics of the numeral-noun construction with Bylinina and Nouwen’s (Glossa 3(1):98, 2018) semantics for zero and which does not need to appeal to any further principles (e.g., agreement).
  PubDate: 2022-04-22
  DOI: 10.1007/s11050-022-09193-7
Time and evidence in the graded tense system of Mvskoke (Creek)
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  Abstract: Abstract In recent years, much attention has been given to the puzzling relationship between tense and evidence type found in languages where a single morpheme appears to encode both reference to time and to the evidential source for the assertion. In natural language, tense has long been understood as serving to locate the time at which the proposition expressed by the sentence holds. The two main theories of evidentials both agree that these morphemes serve to identify the type of evidence the speaker has for their assertion. In languages with evidential-tense morphology, these two categories of meaning are intertwined in ways that are unexpected given our understanding of both phenomena. Specifically, these evidential-tense morphemes appear to encode reference to a time that is linked to the situation in which the speaker gains evidence for their assertion. Two competing approaches have emerged in the literature as to whether these evidential-tense morphemes make crucial reference to the time evidence was acquired (Lee 2013; Smirnova 2013) or to the time and place of the speaker with respect to the event (Faller 2004; Chung 2007). This paper examines the temporal and evidential properties of the Mvskoke (or Creek) graded past tense system and finds novel support for the view in which evidential-tenses encode Evidence Acquisition Time (EAT). Mvskoke is shown to have three evidential-tenses which form part of its graded tense system, comprising recent, middle, and distant past. The main proposal is a formalization of EAT as a moment of belief-state change, i.e., the moment the speaker comes to believe the proposition. It is shown that Mvskoke’s evidential-tenses are compatible with a range of evidence types, and this distribution is explained through interactions with viewpoint aspect.
  PubDate: 2022-04-04
  DOI: 10.1007/s11050-022-09191-9
Additive free choice items
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  Abstract: Abstract In this paper, we aim to account for the distribution and interpretation of a novel class of free choice items in Romanian, which we refer to as additive free choice items (ADD-FCIs). We show that the internal composition of ADD-FCIs, as well as their distribution, differs from that attested for other free choice paradigms discussed in the literature. Morphologically, ADD-FCIs are a more complex variant of regular universal FCIs, by virtue of an additional morpheme. This morpheme plays an additive role when it functions as a stand-alone particle, and we propose that its role is similarly additive when it functions as an infix in ADD-FCIs. Couched in an exhaustification framework, we put forward a novel compositional account that can derive the interpretation of these ADD-FCIs. As for their distribution, these elements are only found in the presence of the conditional mood, as well as unconditional structures. We show how our analysis, coupled with the Viability Constraint used to explain the distribution of regular FCIs, can also account for their restricted distribution. In doing so, we further show how the pattern we investigate opens new perspectives regarding the licensing of free choice items in unconditionals.
  PubDate: 2022-04-01
  DOI: 10.1007/s11050-022-09192-8
Enough clauses, (non)finiteness, and modality
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  Abstract: Abstract Infinitives are known to encode covert modality in certain environments including infinitival relatives and questions. Beyond these environments, however, the precise distribution and interpretation of infinitival modality remains poorly understood. In that light, this paper investigates infinitive-embedding enough/too sentences like Pat is tall enough to be the thief or Lee is too old to drive. These sentences have a modal semantics whose compositional source is contested: on one approach, the infinitive encodes the modality, and on another approach, the enough/too morpheme itself is modal. To adjudicate this debate, I consider heretofore largely overlooked finite-clause-embedding enough sentences like Pat is tall enough that she might/must be the thief or Lee was fast enough that she won the race. They provide, I argue, novel support for the view that the modality is in the embedded clause (whether nonfinite or finite) and not in enough/too. I then compare the covert modality of nonfinite enough clauses to the covert modality of infinitival relatives, questions, and complements to attitude predicates and content nouns. I generalize that covert modality in nonfinite clauses never encodes epistemic necessity, and I tentatively hypothesize that this constraint reflects the marked status of nonfiniteness in the finite/nonfinite opposition.
  PubDate: 2022-03-22
  DOI: 10.1007/s11050-022-09190-w