This paper presents a theory of modified numerals that derives a three-way distinction in the imp... more This paper presents a theory of modified numerals that derives a three-way distinction in the implicature profile between superlative modifiers, comparative modifiers, and bare numerals. In contrast to the recent proposal by Schwarz (2016b), and drawing on elements from Coppock and Brochhagen’s (2013) inquisitive analysis, the proposal decouples ignorance implicatures from upper-bounding implicatures, and thereby captures an important difference between more than and at least, which differ in their ignorance implicatures but both lack an upper-bounding implicature. At the same time, it accounts for the context-sensitivity in the ignorance implicatures of modified numerals found by Westera and Brasoveanu (2014), and addresses a problem with Coppock and Brochhagen (2013) pointed out by Schwarz (2016a). The key feature of the proposal is the fact that ignorance implicatures may arise in two different ways, namely, both from the Maxim of Quantity and from the Maxim of Quality.
This paper points out that the notion of meaning propounded by inquisitive semantics is not only ... more This paper points out that the notion of meaning propounded by inquisitive semantics is not only suited to capture both informative and inquisitive content, but also a sentence’s potential to draw attention to certain possibilities. This gives rise to a novel analysis of 'might'.
We are very grateful to Morgan Mameni and Matthijs Westera for helpful discussions of the issues ... more We are very grateful to Morgan Mameni and Matthijs Westera for helpful discussions of the issues addresses in this paper and many closely related topics.
Proceedings of the 11th Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge - TARK '09, 2009
This paper investigates a generalized version of inquisitive semantics (Groenendijk, 2008b; Masca... more This paper investigates a generalized version of inquisitive semantics (Groenendijk, 2008b; Mascarenhas, 2008). A complete axiomatization of the associated logic is established. The connection with intuitionistic logic is clarified and heavily exploited.
This paper develops a logic that combines the main features of dynamic epistemic logic with those... more This paper develops a logic that combines the main features of dynamic epistemic logic with those of inquisitive semantics. We argue that this merge helps both traditions a step further. From the viewpoint of dynamic epistemic logic, the main benefit lies in the fact that inquisitiveness does not only enter the picture at the level of speech acts, but already at the level of semantic content, which means in particular that it becomes possible to deal with embedded questions. From the viewpoint of inquisitive semantics, the main vantage point is that we inherit from dynamic epistemic logic a perspicuous way of representing the epistemic states of the conversational participants, and a way to specify explicitly how utterances and other speech acts affect these epistemic states. * This paper was presented at the 22 nd Workshop on Games, Logic, Language, and Computation in Amsterdam, December 1, 2011. I am very grateful for inspiring conversations with Yanjing Wang at the International workshop on Logic and Rational Interaction in Guangzhou, China, October 10-13, 2011, which triggered me to develop the ideas presented here.
In many natural languages, there are clear syntactic and/or intonational differences between decl... more In many natural languages, there are clear syntactic and/or intonational differences between declarative sentences, which are primarily used to provide information, and interrogative sentences, which are primarily used to request information. Most logical frameworks restrict their attention to the former. Those that are concerned with both usually assume a logical language that makes a clear syntactic distinction between declaratives and interrogatives, and usually assign different types of semantic values to these two types of sentences. A different approach has been taken in recent work on inquisitive semantics. This approach does not take the basic syntactic distinction between declaratives and interrogatives as its starting point, but rather a new notion of meaning that captures both informative and inquisitive content in an integrated way. The standard way to treat the logical connectives in this approach is to associate them with the basic algebraic operations on these new types of meanings. For instance, conjunction and disjunction are treated as meet and join operators, just as in classical logic. This gives rise to a hybrid system, where sentences can be both informative and inquisitive at the same time, and there is no clearcut division between declaratives and interrogatives. It may seem that these two general approaches in the existing literature are quite incompatible. The main aim of this paper is to show that this is not the case. We develop an inquisitive semantics for a logical language that has a clearcut division between declaratives and interrogatives. We show that this
Concealed questions are determiner phrases that are naturally paraphrased as embedded questions (... more Concealed questions are determiner phrases that are naturally paraphrased as embedded questions (e.g., John knows the capital of Italy % John knows what the capital of Italy is). This paper offers a novel account of the interpretation of concealed questions, which assumes that an entity-denoting expression a may be type-shifted into an expression ?z:PðaÞ, where P is a contextually determined property, and z ranges over a contextually determined domain of individual concepts. Different resolutions of P and the domain of z yield a wide range of concealed question interpretations, some of which were not noted previously. On the other hand, principled constraints on the resolution process prevent overgeneration.
This paper argues that the range of interpretations of concealed ques- tion (CQs) is much wider t... more This paper argues that the range of interpretations of concealed ques- tion (CQs) is much wider than has previously been assumed. It pro- poses a principled pragmatic account of this range of interpretations. The account deals with denite, indenite, and quantied CQs in a uniform way. It also explains Greenberg's (1977) observation and some related facts.
ABSTRACT The goal of this paper is to explain the meaning and distribution of indefinites in comp... more ABSTRACT The goal of this paper is to explain the meaning and distribution of indefinites in comparatives, focusing on English some and any and German irgend-indefinites. We consider three competing theories of comparatives in combination with an alternative semantics of some and any, and a novel account of stressed irgend-indefinites. One of the resulting accounts, based on Heim’s analysis of comparatives, predicts all the relevant differences in quantificational force, and explains why free choice indefinites are licensed in comparatives.
ABSTRACT This paper presents an experiment that is designed to quantify the negativity of sentenc... more ABSTRACT This paper presents an experiment that is designed to quantify the negativity of sentences with different types of negative operators (n-words like never and downward entailing operators like rarely) in different syntactic positions (adverb, subject, and direct object). In the experiment, participants were provided with a minimal context, then asked to choose one tag-question out of two; one of questions had a positive tag and the other had a negative tag. Clearly positive sentences (i.e., sentences without any negative operators) and clearly negative sentences (i.e., sentences with overt sentential negation and no other relevant operators present) were used as controls. The relative frequency of positive and negative tags was then taken as a measure of the sentential negativity of each experimental item. Our main finding is that sentential negativity is a graded notion, sensitive to both semantic and syntactic factors. With respect to semantics, we find that n-words contribute more negativity than downward entailing operators, confirming the logical distinction between anti-additivity and downward entailment identified in the previous semantic literature on NPI licensing. With respect to syntactic position, we find that negative items in subject or adverbial position contribute more negativity than negative items in direct object position.
ABSTRACT The goal of this paper is to explain the meaning and distribution of indefinites in comp... more ABSTRACT The goal of this paper is to explain the meaning and distribution of indefinites in comparatives, focusing on English some and any and German irgend-indefinites. We consider three competing theories of comparatives in combination with an alternative semantics of some and any, and a novel account of stressed irgend-indefinites. One of the resulting accounts, based on Heim’s analysis of comparatives, predicts all the relevant differences in quantificational force, and explains why free choice indefinites are licensed in comparatives.
Concealed questions are determiner phrases that are naturally paraphrased as embedded questions (... more Concealed questions are determiner phrases that are naturally paraphrased as embedded questions (e.g., John knows the capital of Italy % John knows what the capital of Italy is). This paper offers a novel account of the interpretation of concealed questions, which assumes that an entity-denoting expression a may be type-shifted into an expression ?z:PðaÞ, where P is a contextually determined property, and z ranges over a contextually determined domain of individual concepts. Different resolutions of P and the domain of z yield a wide range of concealed question interpretations, some of which were not noted previously. On the other hand, principled constraints on the resolution process prevent overgeneration.
This paper argues that the range of interpretations of concealed ques- tion (CQs) is much wider t... more This paper argues that the range of interpretations of concealed ques- tion (CQs) is much wider than has previously been assumed. It pro- poses a principled pragmatic account of this range of interpretations. The account deals with denite, indenite, and quantied CQs in a uniform way. It also explains Greenberg's (1977) observation and some related facts.
This paper presents a theory of modified numerals that derives a three-way distinction in the imp... more This paper presents a theory of modified numerals that derives a three-way distinction in the implicature profile between superlative modifiers, comparative modifiers, and bare numerals. In contrast to the recent proposal by Schwarz (2016b), and drawing on elements from Coppock and Brochhagen’s (2013) inquisitive analysis, the proposal decouples ignorance implicatures from upper-bounding implicatures, and thereby captures an important difference between more than and at least, which differ in their ignorance implicatures but both lack an upper-bounding implicature. At the same time, it accounts for the context-sensitivity in the ignorance implicatures of modified numerals found by Westera and Brasoveanu (2014), and addresses a problem with Coppock and Brochhagen (2013) pointed out by Schwarz (2016a). The key feature of the proposal is the fact that ignorance implicatures may arise in two different ways, namely, both from the Maxim of Quantity and from the Maxim of Quality.
This paper points out that the notion of meaning propounded by inquisitive semantics is not only ... more This paper points out that the notion of meaning propounded by inquisitive semantics is not only suited to capture both informative and inquisitive content, but also a sentence’s potential to draw attention to certain possibilities. This gives rise to a novel analysis of 'might'.
We are very grateful to Morgan Mameni and Matthijs Westera for helpful discussions of the issues ... more We are very grateful to Morgan Mameni and Matthijs Westera for helpful discussions of the issues addresses in this paper and many closely related topics.
Proceedings of the 11th Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge - TARK '09, 2009
This paper investigates a generalized version of inquisitive semantics (Groenendijk, 2008b; Masca... more This paper investigates a generalized version of inquisitive semantics (Groenendijk, 2008b; Mascarenhas, 2008). A complete axiomatization of the associated logic is established. The connection with intuitionistic logic is clarified and heavily exploited.
This paper develops a logic that combines the main features of dynamic epistemic logic with those... more This paper develops a logic that combines the main features of dynamic epistemic logic with those of inquisitive semantics. We argue that this merge helps both traditions a step further. From the viewpoint of dynamic epistemic logic, the main benefit lies in the fact that inquisitiveness does not only enter the picture at the level of speech acts, but already at the level of semantic content, which means in particular that it becomes possible to deal with embedded questions. From the viewpoint of inquisitive semantics, the main vantage point is that we inherit from dynamic epistemic logic a perspicuous way of representing the epistemic states of the conversational participants, and a way to specify explicitly how utterances and other speech acts affect these epistemic states. * This paper was presented at the 22 nd Workshop on Games, Logic, Language, and Computation in Amsterdam, December 1, 2011. I am very grateful for inspiring conversations with Yanjing Wang at the International workshop on Logic and Rational Interaction in Guangzhou, China, October 10-13, 2011, which triggered me to develop the ideas presented here.
In many natural languages, there are clear syntactic and/or intonational differences between decl... more In many natural languages, there are clear syntactic and/or intonational differences between declarative sentences, which are primarily used to provide information, and interrogative sentences, which are primarily used to request information. Most logical frameworks restrict their attention to the former. Those that are concerned with both usually assume a logical language that makes a clear syntactic distinction between declaratives and interrogatives, and usually assign different types of semantic values to these two types of sentences. A different approach has been taken in recent work on inquisitive semantics. This approach does not take the basic syntactic distinction between declaratives and interrogatives as its starting point, but rather a new notion of meaning that captures both informative and inquisitive content in an integrated way. The standard way to treat the logical connectives in this approach is to associate them with the basic algebraic operations on these new types of meanings. For instance, conjunction and disjunction are treated as meet and join operators, just as in classical logic. This gives rise to a hybrid system, where sentences can be both informative and inquisitive at the same time, and there is no clearcut division between declaratives and interrogatives. It may seem that these two general approaches in the existing literature are quite incompatible. The main aim of this paper is to show that this is not the case. We develop an inquisitive semantics for a logical language that has a clearcut division between declaratives and interrogatives. We show that this
Concealed questions are determiner phrases that are naturally paraphrased as embedded questions (... more Concealed questions are determiner phrases that are naturally paraphrased as embedded questions (e.g., John knows the capital of Italy % John knows what the capital of Italy is). This paper offers a novel account of the interpretation of concealed questions, which assumes that an entity-denoting expression a may be type-shifted into an expression ?z:PðaÞ, where P is a contextually determined property, and z ranges over a contextually determined domain of individual concepts. Different resolutions of P and the domain of z yield a wide range of concealed question interpretations, some of which were not noted previously. On the other hand, principled constraints on the resolution process prevent overgeneration.
This paper argues that the range of interpretations of concealed ques- tion (CQs) is much wider t... more This paper argues that the range of interpretations of concealed ques- tion (CQs) is much wider than has previously been assumed. It pro- poses a principled pragmatic account of this range of interpretations. The account deals with denite, indenite, and quantied CQs in a uniform way. It also explains Greenberg's (1977) observation and some related facts.
ABSTRACT The goal of this paper is to explain the meaning and distribution of indefinites in comp... more ABSTRACT The goal of this paper is to explain the meaning and distribution of indefinites in comparatives, focusing on English some and any and German irgend-indefinites. We consider three competing theories of comparatives in combination with an alternative semantics of some and any, and a novel account of stressed irgend-indefinites. One of the resulting accounts, based on Heim’s analysis of comparatives, predicts all the relevant differences in quantificational force, and explains why free choice indefinites are licensed in comparatives.
ABSTRACT This paper presents an experiment that is designed to quantify the negativity of sentenc... more ABSTRACT This paper presents an experiment that is designed to quantify the negativity of sentences with different types of negative operators (n-words like never and downward entailing operators like rarely) in different syntactic positions (adverb, subject, and direct object). In the experiment, participants were provided with a minimal context, then asked to choose one tag-question out of two; one of questions had a positive tag and the other had a negative tag. Clearly positive sentences (i.e., sentences without any negative operators) and clearly negative sentences (i.e., sentences with overt sentential negation and no other relevant operators present) were used as controls. The relative frequency of positive and negative tags was then taken as a measure of the sentential negativity of each experimental item. Our main finding is that sentential negativity is a graded notion, sensitive to both semantic and syntactic factors. With respect to semantics, we find that n-words contribute more negativity than downward entailing operators, confirming the logical distinction between anti-additivity and downward entailment identified in the previous semantic literature on NPI licensing. With respect to syntactic position, we find that negative items in subject or adverbial position contribute more negativity than negative items in direct object position.
ABSTRACT The goal of this paper is to explain the meaning and distribution of indefinites in comp... more ABSTRACT The goal of this paper is to explain the meaning and distribution of indefinites in comparatives, focusing on English some and any and German irgend-indefinites. We consider three competing theories of comparatives in combination with an alternative semantics of some and any, and a novel account of stressed irgend-indefinites. One of the resulting accounts, based on Heim’s analysis of comparatives, predicts all the relevant differences in quantificational force, and explains why free choice indefinites are licensed in comparatives.
Concealed questions are determiner phrases that are naturally paraphrased as embedded questions (... more Concealed questions are determiner phrases that are naturally paraphrased as embedded questions (e.g., John knows the capital of Italy % John knows what the capital of Italy is). This paper offers a novel account of the interpretation of concealed questions, which assumes that an entity-denoting expression a may be type-shifted into an expression ?z:PðaÞ, where P is a contextually determined property, and z ranges over a contextually determined domain of individual concepts. Different resolutions of P and the domain of z yield a wide range of concealed question interpretations, some of which were not noted previously. On the other hand, principled constraints on the resolution process prevent overgeneration.
This paper argues that the range of interpretations of concealed ques- tion (CQs) is much wider t... more This paper argues that the range of interpretations of concealed ques- tion (CQs) is much wider than has previously been assumed. It pro- poses a principled pragmatic account of this range of interpretations. The account deals with denite, indenite, and quantied CQs in a uniform way. It also explains Greenberg's (1977) observation and some related facts.
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