Linguistics

In this paper, I discuss a particle in Hebrew which has been termed Pron by Doron (1983). While its surface form is that of a pronoun, its distribution resembles that of a copula – it appears between the subject and the predicate in nonverbal present-tensed sentences. However, its distribution is limited in unexpected ways for a copula, which gained it some attention in the literature. Contra the standard line of analysis, I argue that Pron is in fact a resumptive pronoun left by the subject as it raises to a higher position. I show that this analysis ties together many of Pron’s prima facie-surprising distribution patterns.

Homogeneity inferences arise whenever an assertion implies a universal positive (every/both) and its denial implies a universal negative (no/neither). I present an account of homogeneity inferences based on two assumptions which together constrain the behavior of negation: rejection is non-classical, and vacuous models may be omitted (Neglect Zero). If both assumptions are enforced, the only definable negatives are universal (no/neither), predicting the homogeneity gap.

Modified and unmodified gradable adjectives give rise to two distinct and opposing varieties of pragmatic enrichment: scalar implicature and understatement. While earlier work in pragmatics took these to be complementary inferences derived from opposing conversational principles, more recent work in the formal tradition has placed the focus firmly on scalar implicature and related phenomena, with no attempt to also account for understatement. In this paper I argue that there are good reasons to pursue a unified treatment of the two, and outline one possible way of doing so, framed within the commitment approach to assertion, where I take the commitments that come with asserting a proposition..

In uttering a subjective opinion like Donuts are tasty, is a speaker expressing her own opinion or also making a generalization about people-in-general? While researchers largely agree that generic readings of subjective predicates exist, there is no consensus on how central genericity is for theories of subjective meaning. We report a psycholinguistic study that tests what influences the level of prevalence that comprehenders attribute to opinions, expressed with subjective predicates, about unfamiliar information. Specifically, if you overhear an alien expressing an opinion about an unfamiliar virus (e.g. The zorgavirus is dangerous), how many other aliens do you think share this alien's o..

Cross-linguistically, morphological material that expresses comparison (e.g. more) appears to be colexified with aspectual (“phasal”) adverbs that, under negation, encode the termination of some eventuality (CESSATIVEs, e.g. *(not)...anymore). Using data drawn from the Diyari language of central Australia, we propose a diachronic trajectory for the lexical item marla ‘very, truly’. This word first developed a comparative semantics and, subsequently, a cessative reading restricted to negative polar contexts. This proposal moves us towards a lexical entry that permits for the unification of comparative and aspectual readings for items which exhibit this polysemy and—on the basis of r..

This paper is devoted to an analysis of anaphoric dependencies in disjunctive sentences, and consequences for the understanding of the ∃/∀ ambiguity observed with donkey anaphora. The primary focus is on donkey disjunctions, which are sentences where a (negated) existential in an initial disjunct appears to bind a pronoun in a later disjunct, such as "Either there's no bathroom, or its upstairs". The main empirical focus is that donkey disjunctions, like donkey anaphora, exhibit the ∃/∀ ambiguity, and more generally oscillate between homogeneous and heterogeneous readings in a context-sensitive fashion. The paper then proceeds in two steps: first, a principled analysis of donkey disj..

By default, only (p) presupposes the ‘prejacent’ p, as predicted by the classical analysis in Horn 1969. Yet, in some cases, only (p) instead presupposes a weaker existential claim that some alternative is true (e.g. Klinedinst 2005). What is the mechanism by which the presupposition of only is weakened? Crniˇc (2022) takes the presupposition of only to involve quantification, and derives weakening from domain restriction. We present a challenge to this approach, and offer an alternative. In Alonso-Ovalle & Hirsch 2022, we proposed that the grammar makes available a covert operator, which can occur in the complement of only, weakening its argument. We show that this approach offers ..

This paper deals with an unexpected contrast between demonstrative descriptions and definite descriptions on their anaphoric uses. If two (or more) discourse referents are introduced in the preceding sentence, it is perfectly natural to refer to one of them in the following sentence using a definite description. Use of demonstrative descriptions in the same context, however, is degraded, with existing accounts of anaphoric demonstratives and definites providing no explanation for this contrast. We present experimental evidence from two languages, one with definite determiners (English) and one without (Turkish), and show that the acceptability of demonstratives depends independently both on ..

Bumford (2015) argues that universal quantification in dynamic semantics should be analyzed as generalized dynamic conjunction for empirical benefits. However, this analysis is incompatible with the existing telescoping analyses, which use a pluralized dynamic system (van den Berg 1996; Nouwen 2003; Brasoveanu 2007: a.o.). This study aims to resolve this conflict. It is proposed that quantification over events and their participants allows us to account for telescoping without the pluralized dynamic system.

In this paper, I evaluate two ways to model the notion of live possibilities: the supervaluation-based approach, and the alternative-based approach. I argue that the alternative-based approach is more promising in fulfilling certain desirable constraints governing live possibilities. However, the existing alternative-based accounts fail to be fully satisfactory. To address this inadequacy, I devise a new alternative-based framework and explore its logical features.

We propose a redundancy-based solution to the puzzle of Hurford con- ditionals. We argue that the puzzle goes away once we recognise that negated and unnegated Hurford disjunctions are not on par. We develop a theory, dubbed super-redundancy, that captures this contrast, and investigate how it can be paired with different approaches to conditionals. It turns out that under super-redundancy, the Hurford conditional paradigm follows under the material implication and strict semantics approaches to conditionals, but not under the variably strict semantics. Finally, we extend our theory to capture some puzzling cases of Hurford phenom- ena that have recently received attention in Marty & Rom..

DPs with quantity nouns (QDPs), like that amount of nuts, can combine with predicates of quantities, as in That amount of nuts is low, or with predicates of entities, as in Bo ate that amount of nuts. One account of such selectional flexibility, inspired by Selkirk (1977) and Rothstein (2009), assumes that the two types of predication are transparently encoded through two types of syntactic structures. In this paper, we draw attention to a syntactic challenge for this account of QDPs, viz.that in certain cases it requires two interpreted occurrences of an entity noun like nuts even though only one is pronounced. We argue, however, that this challenge mustbe met and cannot be avoided by aband..

Nominals can be used to refer to or quantify over individuals, while clauses convey propositional content, with the exception of set-denoting restrictive headed relative clauses. This well-attested crosslinguistic syntax/semantics mapping needs to be broadened. Recent crosslinguistic findings show that headless relative clauses—embedded argument or adjunct clauses with a missing constituent—are widely attested and are used to refer to or quantify over individuals, similar to nominals. The present work contributes to the investigation of the syntax/semantics interface of different varieties of headless relative clauses and begins to develop a much-needed close comparison with the syntax/s..

Since at least Vendler 1967, one of the most widely discussed data points, often viewed as the ultimate test for (a)telicity, is the behavior of durative modifiers with respect to different VP types as in John killed mosquitos/*a mosquito for an hour. In the present paper, I explore a new blend of the two most widespread approaches to this issue, namely (i) the view of durative modifiers as universal quantifiers (e.g., Dowty 1979, a.o.) and (ii) their view as aspect sensitive measure adverbials (e.g., Krifka 1998, a.o.). The blend explored here is based on an economy constraint specific to the scope of adverbial quantification (‘do not weaken’ cf. Bassa Vanrell 2017) combined with the id..

The few existing accounts of the semantics of ordinal numbers attribute to them all or almost all of the semantic properties of superlatives. This work discusses a construction problematic for existing theories of ordinals: the ordinal superlative construction (e.g. Joel climbed the third highest mountain). Existing theories give ordinals and superlatives such similar semantics that they struggle to explain how an ordinal and a superlative could join together and form a complex modifier. As an alternative, I propose a semantics according to which ordinals are exceptive modifiers of superlatives. For example, the n-th highest mountain is the mountain that, with n - 1 exceptions, is the highes..

Arguments and conditionals are powerful means natural languages provide us to reason about possibilities and to reach conclusions from premises. These two kinds of constructions exhibit several affinities—e.g., they both come in different varieties depending on the mood; they share some of the same connectives (i.e., ‘then’); they also allow for similar patterns of modal subordination. In the light of these affinities, it is not surprising that prominent theories of conditionals—old and new suppositionalisms and dynamic theories of conditionals—as well as certain reductive theories of arguments tend to semantically assimilate conditionals and arguments. In this paper, I shall marsh..

This is more complicated than I realized. How are we to understand the status of realize's complement in a sentence like this? What sort of relationship must this complement bear to its matrix environment, in light of realize's status as a cognitive factive or semifactive predicate (Kiparsky & Kiparsky 1970; Karttunen 1971)? Comparative constructions, I suggest, do much to illuminate the nature of semifactives and the semantic–pragmatic status of their clausal complements. Specifically, I propose that semifactives support graded awareness—knowledge of something less, but not more, than the full truth with respect to some question or issue—while requiring that their complement be in..

This paper describes a novel class of biscuit conditional, the 'perspectival biscuit', which arises when an if-clause containing a generic pronoun (e.g., generic you) is used to shift perspective for the interpretation of a perspective-sensitive item in the consequent: e.g., fixing the directionality of behind in "If you're at the door, the cat is behind the desk." This sentence is like a biscuit conditional in that it entails a fully-specified, propositionally stable consequent describing the spatial configuration of cat and desk, but this reading vanishes in favor of a conditional dependence reading when the antecedent contains any non-generic DP, a prediction that is not straightforwardly..

I explore the semantics/pragmatics of plural pronouns by discussing the partial plurality inference that arises under quantificational subordination. I propose an anti-presupposition account coupled with Sudo’s (2023) dynamic implicature approach to plurality inferences based on plural information states, i.e. sets of variable assignments (van den Berg 1996). I further discuss the implications of the proposed analysis to the locality of anti-presupposition calculation and difference between animate instances and inanimate instances of plural pronouns in English.

Novel fieldwork data from Shan (Kra-Dai) adds to the cross-linguistic account of comparative constructions, especially Exceed-type comparatives. Shan can form comparative expressions from adverbs, which had not been analyzed in previous accounts of Exceed-type comparatives (Bochnak 2013; Howell 2013; Clem 2019; a.o.). Synthesizing previous semantic accounts of phrasal comparatives can account for the presented data.

We examine whether several challenges for transparent evaluation theories of de re can be accounted for by a single mechanism of propositional substitution. We provide necessary conditions for replacing the prejacent of an attitude with another salient proposition, and review some merits and weaknesses of this approach.

There is general agreement that the distribution of any is unrestricted in polar questions. I argue that this is not the case: in contexts where there is epistemic bias in favor of the prejacent of a polar question, the question exhibits the same behavior as a declarative with respect to the licensing of any. I provide an account for this observation in terms of intervention: epistemic bias forces polar questions to be parsed as having a silent modal E which intervenes between any and the question operator whether that otherwise licenses any.

Recent experimental literature has investigated across-scale variation in scalar implicature calculation: lexical scales significantly differ from each other in how likely they are to be strengthened (e.g., old → not ancient vs. smart → not brilliant). But in existing studies of this scalar diversity, not enough attention has been paid to potential variation introduced by the carrier sentences that scales occur in. In this paper, we carry out the first systematic investigation of the role of sentential context on scalar diversity. Focusing on scales formed by two grad- able adjectives, we manipulate the comparison class, specifically whether a noun is likely to have the property describe..

This paper deals with the interaction of modals and exceptives as in Every student passed, except possibly Ann. Arguments are put forward motivating a parse for at least some such sentences combining features of the two standard analyses for exceptive constructions, namely the phrasal and clausal analyses. A novel approach based on the well-known idea of exception as set subtraction coupled with exhaustification contributed by an operator EXH is proposed. Crucially, on this approach the prejacent S of EXH is conjoined with [ modal EXH S ]. That is, the modal is only present in the second conjunct where it takes scope over the clause EXH S, which is partially elided. This leads us to consider..

This paper explores a famous puzzle about English positive polar questions introduced by Buring and Gunlogson 2000: while in many contexts they seem to indicate nothing whatsoever about what the speaker takes for granted or thinks likely, in contexts that provide evidence against the content proposition of the question, they are infelicitous. This pattern, which I term the "evidence asymmetry", has been particularly troubling for standard accounts of polar questions that treat the positive and negative answers on par with each other. However, given that polar questions are felicitous in neutral contexts, it doesn't have an easy solution: polar questions in general don't seem to place constra..

Many languages have systems of collective and singulative derivational morphology (e.g., de Vries 2021; Dali & Mathieu 2021b). Recent research on Slavic collectives (Grimm & Dočekal 2021; Wągiel 2021a) and singulatives (Kagan & Nurmio to appear; Kagan, Geist & Erschler to appear) shows the significance of these data for the study of linguistic mechanisms of individuation. In this paper,we contribute by investigating the semantics of two derivational morphemes in Ukrainian: the collective suffix -j- and the singulative suffix -yn-, and the interaction between the two in secondary singulatives, e.g., pero ‘a feather’⇒pirja ‘clustered feathers’⇒pirjina ‘a (small)..

We develop a new proposal about the historical connection between the durative and concessive readings of English still and Hebrew ʕadain, a connection that shows striking parallels in the two languages. Building on a corpus study of Hebrew (Rubinstein forthcoming), we argue that durative 'still' precedes the concessive 'still' and that the latter first arises in bridging contexts (and earlier than previously thought). In contrast to previous literature, our proposal places the temporal-to-concessive development squarely in the semantics. We argue that concessive 'still' emerges when an originally durative 'still' gets "infected" with a concessive meaning that is expressed explicitly in the..

This paper motivates a new view on the typology of definiteness that integrates (quasi-)names. The primary data is drawn from Cantonese and Bangla, where both bare classifier constructions and bare nominals are recruited for definite expressions. We argue that these bare nominals, while often analyzed as the so-called “weak”/unique definites in other languages, are indeed name-like expressions akin to the quasi-name Mom in English, in contrast with the definite descriptions denoted by bare classifier constructions. We propose that quasi-names, as well as proper names, are derived by a definite determiner that encodes a functional relation between the discourse participants and the refere..

In this paper, I argue for the relevance of structured part-whole configurations in the domain of events. The evidence comes from the well-known event-internal/external distinction, which concerns mutliplicative adverbials quantifying either over separate occasions or occasion-internal acts, respectively (e.g., Cusic 1981, Andrews 1983, Cinque 1999, Zhang 2017). In order to capture this distinction, I postulate that the relationship between the two categories is based on a part-whole relation. In particular, inspired by proposals advocating the role of eventive higher-order units (Landman 2006, Henderson 2017) and building on the theories of (Grimm 2012) and (Mazzola 2019), I propose to exte..

Abstract Chierchia (1998) developed a cross-linguistic extension to Carlsons seminal work on bare nouns (BNs), producing the most influential theory of argument formation to date, henceforth the Kinds Approach (KA). The core achievements of the KA included the derivation of the generalized narrow scope behavior of BNs and of the existence of generalized classifier languages. There are cracks in the picture, though. The narrow scope behavior of BNs is more fine-grained than is generally assumed and the KA lacks the flexibility to deal with it (Le Bruyn & Swart 2022). The appeal of the KAs derivation of the existence of generalized classifier languages heavily relied on all nouns in these ..