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We present the results of four experiments concerning the evaluations people make of sentences involving many, showing that two sentences of the form many As are Bs and many As are Cs need not be equivalent when evaluated relative to a background in which B and C have the same cardinality and proportion to A, but in which B and C are predicates with opposite semantic and affective values. The data provide evidence that subjects lower the standard relevant to ascribe many for the more negatively valued predicate, and that judgments involving many are sensitive to moral considerations in a broad sense, namely to expectations involving a representation of the desirability as opposed to the mere probability of an outcome. We relate the results to similar semantic asymmetries discussed in the psychological literature, in particular to the Knobe effect and to framing effects. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.13 Supplementary materials, BibTeX info

This paper offers an analysis of a robustly attested semantic change in which progressive markers “spontaneously” emerge in languages, become entrenched in the grammatical system, and diachronically generalize by turning into imperfective markers. The pattern is cyclic in that the generalization is often followed by a re-emergence of new progressive markers. The analysis has a semantic component that characterizes the relation between the progressive and imperfective operators as a privative semantic contrast. Its dynamic component rests on the proposal that imperfective and progressive sentences crucially distinguish between two kinds of inquiries: phenomenal and structural inquiries (Goldsmith & Woisetschlaeger 1982). The trajectory — consisting of the recruitment of a progressive form, its categorical use in phenomenal inquiries, and its generalization to imperfective meaning — is modeled within the framework of Evolutionary Game Theory. The diachronic path is reconstructed as a cyclic pattern in which alternative communication strategies rise and fall in dominance over time due to the differences in communicative success and learnability associated with them. BibTeX info

A prevalent, but to date untested, assumption about lexicalized scalar implicatures such as those from some to not all, is that they fall into the class of GCIs and as such, constitute a homogeneous class of highly regularized and context-independent implicatures. This paper reports a test of this assumption in which linguistically untrained participants’ implicature strength judgments were collected for naturally occurring utterances containing the word some in a large-scale corpus-based web study. The results indicate that implicature strength is highly variable and systematically dependent on features of the linguistic context such as the partitive, determiner strength, and discourse accessibility. These results call into question the GCI status of scalar implicatures from some to not all and demonstrate the usefulness of corpora and web-based methods for challenging received wisdom, enriching the empirical landscape, and informing theory in pragmatics. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.11 BibTeX info

A challenge for the semantic and pragmatic analysis of modified numerals is how to account for ignorance implications about exact quantity. Superlative-modified numerals (at least/most six) systematically give rise to such implications while their comparative-modified counterparts (more/fewer than sixggy) do not, but the distribution of ignorance implications with superlative modifiers is sensitive to how the numeral interacts with modals and other operators. In this paper, I demonstrate that a "de-Fregean" semantic analysis of modified and unmodified numerals as second-order properties of degrees that differ only in the kind of ordering relation they introduce supports a neo-Gricean pragmatic account of ignorance implications as Quantity implicatures, and derives the pattern of interaction with modals as a scopal phenomenon. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.10 BibTeX info

The standard degree analysis of gradability in English holds that the function of degree morphology, such as the comparative, measure phrases, and degree adverbs, is to bind a degree variable located in the lexical semantics of gradable predicates. In this paper, I investigate gradation structures in Washo (isolate/Hokan), and claim that this language systematically lacks degree morphology of this sort. I propose that this gap in the functional inventory of Washo stems from a parameter on whether languages are able to introduce degree variables into the logical form that can be bound by such operators, providing further cross-linguistic support for a similar proposal made by Beck et al. (2009) for Motu (Austronesian). Specifically, I argue that gradable predicates in Washo do not introduce a degree variable. Consequently, if we assume that gradable predicates in English are type ⟨d, ⟨e, t⟩⟩, then Washo and English must differ in their lexical semantics for gradable predicates. Alternatively, if we want to maintain lexical uniformity between the two languages (i.e., that gradable predicates in English don’t themselves introduce degrees), then we must place variation at the level of a grammatical mechanism that introduces degrees in English for degree operators to bind, but which is lacking in Washo. The results of this investigation thus inform questions about the nature of cross-linguistic variation, specifically the division of labor between variation in functional categories and the lexicon. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.6 BibTeX info

This paper defends the view that common nouns have a dual semantic structure that includes extension-determining and non-extension-determining components. I argue that the non-extension-determining components are part of linguistic meaning because they play a key compositional role in certain constructions, especially in privative noun phrases such as fake gun and counterfeit document. Furthermore, I show that if we modify the compositional interpretation rules in certain simple ways, this dual content account of noun phrase modification can be implemented in a type-driven formal semantic framework. In addition, I also argue against traditional accounts of privative noun phrases which can be paired with the assumption that nouns do not have a dual semantic structure. At the most general level, this paper presents a proposal for how we can begin to integrate a psychologically realistic account of lexical semantics with a linguistically plausible compositional semantic framework. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.7 BibTeX info

This article shows that the deontic modals must, should and supposed to are all Positive Polarity Items which can raise in order to avoid being in an anti-licensing environment; it also establishes that should has a dual nature, i.e., it is not just a PPI, but it is also a neg-raising predicate, which can achieve wide scope through a homogeneity inference, and that supposed to, also a PPI, exhibits a neg-raising behavior under certain pragmatic conditions which shed new light on the neg-raising phenomenon. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.4 BibTeX info

This paper introduces and analyzes chimerical conditionals, a class of conditionals that are puzzling vis-à-vis the distinction between so-called 'biscuit' and hypothetical conditionals. An analysis of this distinction is developed which draws on the pragmatic account of Franke 2009. Building on this analysis, chimericity is then shown to derive from a systematic ambiguity of a definite and often implicit argument in the consequent of chimerical conditionals, between a rigid designator and an individual concept reading. This ambiguity is argued to arise from different ways in which context can resolve familiarity presuppositions. One consequence of the inquiry is that the notion of (in)dependence employed in much work on conditionals cannot be viewed as a relation between propositions, but must be made sensitive to the dynamics of information flow. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.2 BibTeX info

We present evidence from acceptability judgment experiments that there is systematic prosodic givenness marking in Czech in that discourse-salient elements avoid sentence stress, contra the claim in Kučerová (2007, 2012) that givenness is marked only syntactically---by establishing a word order in which all given elements precede all new ones---and not prosodically in Czech. We argue that the syntactic movement of given elements results from the need to avoid the rightmost position where sentence stress falls, and not from a syntactic ordering requirement. This is supported by the empirical finding that given objects need not scramble if they are not in sentence-final position, even if they are preceded by new elements (experiment 2). We also argue against Kučerová's claim that given elements are marked only if definite/presupposed in Czech by showing that irrespective of this property, all given objects tend to avoid the sentence-final position (experiment 1). Finally, our results reveal an interaction between presupposition and word order, in the sense of an acceptability penalty for utterances in which non-presupposed expressions precede presupposed ones (experiment 1 and 2). We propose to model the results by a set of weighted constraints that apply post-derivationally. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.3 BibTeX info

Recently, a number of theorists (MacFarlane (2003, 2011), Egan, Hawthorne & Weatherson (2005), Egan (2007), Stephenson (2007a,b)) have argued that an adequate semantics and pragmatics for epistemic modals calls for some technical notion of relativist truth and/or relativist content. Much of this work has relied on an empirical thesis about speaker judgments, namely that competent speakers tend to judge a present-tense bare epistemic possibility claim true only if the prejacent is compatible with their information. Relativists have in particular appealed to judgments elicited in so-called eavesdropping and retraction cases to support this empirical thesis. But opposing theorists have denied the judgments, and at present there is no consensus in the literature about how the speaker judgments in fact pattern. Consequently there is little agreement on what exactly a semantics and pragmatics for epistemic modals should predict about the pattern of judgments in these cases. Further theorizing requires greater clarity on the data to be explained. To clarify the data, we subjected eavesdropping and retraction cases to experimental evaluation. Our data provide evidence against the claim that competent speakers tend to judge a present-tense bare epistemic possibility claim true only if the prejacent is compatible with their information. Theories designed to predict this result are accordingly undermined. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.7.10 BibTeX info

This paper presents an analysis of a new scope puzzle that arises through the interaction of two lesser-studied constructions, dependent indefinites and verbal pluractionality. The result is a novel account of dependent indefinites that correctly predicts their grammaticality with pluractionals by recognizing two ways of establishing the covariation they require: (i) true distributive quantifiers, and (ii) pluractional operators that structure thematic dependencies. The core insight is that both routes, while compositionally different, lead to similar output structures in Dynamic Plural Logic (DPlL) (van den Berg 1996) or its closely related alternatives (Brasoveanu 2008, Nouwen 2003), which is what dependent indefinites constrain. The analysis not only permits a better understanding of dependent indefinites in Kaqchikel, an endangered and understudied Mayan language of highland Guatemala, but it clarifies their place in a crosslinguistic typology of similar expressions (e.g., Balusu 2006, Choe 1987, Farkas 1997a, 2002, Yanovich 2005). Along the way we produce the first description and analysis of these phenomena in Kaqchikel. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.7.6 BibTeX info

This paper discusses three potential varieties of update: updates to the common ground, structuring updates, and updates that introduce discourse referents. These different types of update are used to model different aspects of natural language phenomena. Not-at-issue information directly updates the common ground. The illocutionary mood of a sentence structures the context. Other updates introduce discourse referents of various types, including propositional discourse referents for at-issue information. Distinguishing these types of update allows a unified treatment of a broad range of phenomena, including the grammatical evidentials found in Cheyenne (Algonquian) as well as English evidential parentheticals, appositives, and mood marking. An update semantics that can formalize all of these varieties of update is given, integrating the different kinds of semantic contributions into a single representation of meaning. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.7.2 BibTeX info

An empirical argument is given in support of Percus & Sauerland's (2003) theory of 'de re' ascription, according to which the internal argument of "believe" is a function from concept-generators to propositions. The argument concerns pronouns in the scope of attitude verbs that are interpreted both 'de re' and as bound variables. It is argued that more traditional theories of 'de re' ascription --- specifically, theories that take the 'res' to be an internal argument of "believe" --- fail to account for such pronouns, because a pronoun cannot simultaneously be an argument of "believe" and bound by a quantifier in the scope of "believe". http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.7.3 BibTeX info

This paper investigates the distribution of epistemic modals in attitude contexts in three Romance languages, as well as their potential interaction with mood selection. We show that epistemics can appear in complements of attitudes of acceptance (Stalnaker 1984), but not desideratives or directives; in addition, emotive doxastics (hope, fear) and dubitatives (doubt) permit epistemic possibility modals, but not their necessity counterparts. We argue that the embedding differences across attitudes indicate that epistemics are sensitive to the type of attitude an attitude predicate reports. We show that this sensitivity can be derived by adopting two types of proposals from the literature on epistemic modality and on attitude verbs: First, we assume that epistemics do not target knowledge uniformly, but rather quantify over an information state determined by the content of the embedding attitude (Hacquard 2006, 2010, Yalcin 2007). In turn, we adopt a fundamental split in the semantics of attitude verbs between ‘representational’ and ‘non-representational’ attitudes (Bolinger 1968): representational attitudes quantify over an information state (e.g., a set of beliefs for believe), which, we argue, epistemic modals can be anaphoric to. Non-representational attitudes do not quantify over an information state; instead, they combine with their complement via a comparison with contextually-provided alternatives using a logic of preference (cf. Bolinger 1968, Stalnaker 1984, Farkas 1985, Heim 1992, Villalta 2000, 2008). Finally, we argue that emotive doxastics and dubitatives have a hybrid semantics, which combines a representational component (responsible for licensing epistemic possibility modals), and a preference component (responsible for disallowing epistemic necessity modals). http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.6.8 BibTeX info

A framework for pragmatic analysis is proposed which treats discourse as a game, with context as a scoreboard organized around the questions under discussion by the interlocutors. The framework is intended to be coordinated with a dynamic compositional semantics. Accordingly, the context of utterance is modeled as a tuple of different types of information, and the questions therein — modeled, as is usual in formal semantics, as alternative sets of propositions — constrain the felicitous flow of discourse. A requirement of Relevance is satisfied by an utterance (whether an assertion, a question or a suggestion) iff it addresses the question under discussion. Finally, it is argued that the prosodic focus of an utterance canonically serves to reflect the question under discussion (at least in English), placing additional constraints on felicity in context. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.5.6 BibTeX info

The analysis of contrastive topics introduced in Büring 1997b and further developed in Büring 2003 relies on distinguishing two types of constituents that introduce alternatives: the sentence focus, which is marked by a FOC feature, and the contrastive topic, which is marked by a CT feature. A non-compositional rule of interpretation that refers to these features is used to derive a topic semantic value, a nested set of sets of propositions. This paper presents evidence for a correlation between the restrictive syntax of nested focus operators and the syntax of contrastive topics, a correlation which is unexpected under this analysis. A compositional analysis is proposed that only makes use of the flatter focus semantic values introduced by focus operators. The analysis aims at integrating insights from the original analysis while at the same time capturing the observed syntactic restrictions. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.5.8 BibTeX info

Counterfactual attitudes like imagining, dreaming, and wishing create a problem for the standard formal semantic theory of de re attitude ascriptions. I show how the problem can be avoided if we represent an agent's attitudinal possibilities using "multi-centered worlds", possible worlds with multiple distinguished individuals, each of which represents an individual with whom the agent is acquainted. I then present a compositional semantics for de re ascriptions according to which singular terms are "assignment-sensitive" expressions and attitude verbs are "assignment shifters". http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.5.5 BibTeX info

Nouwen (2010) proposes that numeral modifiers like “at most” and “up to” belong to a natural class of expressions that share the same semantic interpretation. We identify several semantic contrasts between “at most” and “up to” that are inconsistent with this proposal. Moreover, we show that Nouwen’s semantics cannot be right for “at most”. In attempting to apply his semantics to “up to”, we propose an amendment intended to accomodate certain observations not captured in Nouwen’s original account. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.5.1 BibTeX info

This squib discusses metalinguistic modification, expressives, domain modification, hypallage, and conjunctive modification within verb phrase idioms. The examples presented here show that non-combining idioms, to use terminology based on that of Nunberg, Sag & Wasow 1994, allow for modifiers on their internal constituents, but only in certain circumstances. This observation is shown to be derived from the fact that the idiomatic reading of these non-combining idioms is associated with the entire verb phrase. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.4.7 BibTeX info

It is proposed that wh-islands with degree questions are unacceptable because they cannot be given a most informative true answer. Wh-islands thus are shown to be similar to other cases of weak islands which have been argued to result from Maximization Failure, in particular negative islands (cf. Fox & Hackl 2007). Permanent DOI link: http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.4.5 BibTeX info

According to operator theories, "if" denotes a two-place operator. According to restrictor theories, "if" doesn't contribute an operator of its own but instead merely restricts the domain of some co-occurring quantifier. The standard arguments (Lewis 1975, Kratzer 1986) for restrictor theories have it that operator theories (but not restrictor theories) struggle to predict the truth conditions of quantified conditionals like (1) a. If John didn't work at home, he usually worked in his office. b. If John didn't work at home, he must have worked in his office. Gillies (2010) offers a context-shifty conditional operator theory that predicts the right truth conditions for epistemically modalized conditionals like (1b), thus undercutting one standard argument for restrictor theories. I explore how we might generalize Gillies' theory to adverbially quantified conditionals like (1a) and deontic conditionals, and argue that a natural generalization of Gillies' theory -- following his strategy for handling epistemically modalized conditionals -- won't work for these other conditionals because a crucial assumption that epistemic modal bases are closed (used to neutralize the epistemic quantification contributed by "if") doesn't have plausible analogs in these other domains. doi:10.3765/sp.4.4 BibTeX info

Quantity implicatures are inferences triggered by an utterance based on what other utterances a speaker could have made instead. Using ideas and formalisms from game theory, I demonstrate that these inferences can be explained in a strictly Gricean sense as *rational behavior*. To this end, I offer a procedure for constructing the context of utterance insofar as it is relevant for quantity reasoning as a game between speaker and hearer. I then give a new solution concept that improves on classical equilibrium approaches in that it uniquely selects the desired "empirically correct" play in these interpretation games by a chain of back-and-forth reasoning about players' behavior. To make this formal approach more accessible to a wider audience, I give a simple algorithm with the help of which the model's solution can be computed without having to do heavy calculations of probabilities, expected utilities and the like. This rationalistic approach subsumes and improves on recent exhaustivity-based approaches. It makes correct and uniform predictions for quantity implicatures of various epistemic varieties, free choice readings of disjunctions, as well as a phenomenon tightly related to the latter, namely so-called "simplification of disjunctive antecedents". doi:10.3765/sp.4.1 BibTeX info

Conventionalist theories of scalar implicature differ from other accounts in that they predict strengthening of embedded scalar terms. Geurts and Pouscoulous (2009) argue that experimental support for this prediction is largely based on sentence comprehension tasks that inflate the frequency with which terms like 'some' are strengthened. Using a picture verification task, they observed no strengthening of embedded scalars. We present data from a multiple-choice picture verification task that is more sensitive to interpretation preferences, and find that readers do show a preference for strengthened interpretations even in embedded phrases. These data cast doubt on Geurts and Pouscoulous's empirical arguments against the existence of embedded implicatures. doi:10.3765/sp.3.7 BibTeX info

Geurts & Pouscoulous (2009) present experimental evidence that embedded implicatures are not systematically available and conclude that localist theories of implicatures cannot be maintained. I argue that this conclusion can be strengthened by showing that their findings cannot be reconciled with a localist theory even when the latter is supplemented with a formal way to predict when an embedded implicature will be preferred, as suggested in Chierchia, Fox & Spector (2008). doi:10.3765/sp.3.5 BibTeX info

The dynamic approach posits that a presupposition must be satisfied in its local context. But how is a local context derived from the global one? Extant dynamic analyses must specify in the lexical entry of any operator what its 'Context Change Potential' is, and for this very reason they fail to be sufficiently explanatory. To circumvent the problem, we revise two assumptions of the dynamic approach: we take the update process to be derivative from a classical, non-dynamic semantics -- which obviates the need for dynamic lexical entries; and we deny that a local context encodes what the speech act participants 'take for granted.' Instead, we take the local context of an expression E in a sentence S to be the smallest domain that one may restrict attention to when assessing E without jeopardizing the truth conditions of S. To match the results of dynamic semantics, local contexts must be computed incrementally, using only information about the expressions that precede E. This version of the theory can be shown to be nearly equivalent to the dynamic theory of Heim 1983 -- but unlike the latter, it is entirely predictive. We also suggest that local contexts can, at some cost, be computed symmetrically, taking into account information about all of S (except E); this leads to gradient predictions, whose assessment is left for future research. doi:10.3765/sp.2.3 BibTeX info

We propose that the antecedent of a donkey pronoun takes scope over and binds the donkey pronoun, just like any other quantificational antecedent would bind a pronoun. We flesh out this idea in a grammar that compositionally derives the truth conditions of donkey sentences containing conditionals and relative clauses, including those involving modals and proportional quantifiers. For example, an indefinite in the antecedent of a conditional can bind a donkey pronoun in the consequent by taking scope over the entire conditional. Our grammar manages continuations using three independently motivated type-shifters, Lift, Lower, and Bind. Empirical support comes from donkey weak crossover (*He beats it if a farmer owns a donkey): in our system, a quantificational binder need not c-command a pronoun that it binds, but must be evaluated before it, so that donkey weak crossover is just a special case of weak crossover. We compare our approach to situation-based E-type pronoun analyses, as well as to dynamic accounts such as Dynamic Predicate Logic. A new 'tower' notation makes derivations considerably easier to follow and manipulate than some previous grammars based on continuations. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.1.1 BibTeX info See also the interactive tutorial about the system in this paper

Sabine Iatridou (2000) and Katrin Schulz (2014) defend accounts of the past tense in subjunctive conditionals according to which the past tense has a modal reading that excludes the world of utterance or some set of epistemically possible worlds. I argue here that these views give an unsatisfactory treatment of certain subjunctive conditionals that contain embedded indicative clauses pertaining to the actual world. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.12 BibTeX info

Excessives (e.g., this pair of pants is too long) are often considered as a ‘degree construction’ in the literature, presumably because it is assumed that their semantics involves a comparison of degrees. This paper takes a cross-linguistic look at the excessive construction in Japanese and raises the question of whether degrees are a necessary ingredient in the semantics of comparison. Unlike any degree morpheme in English, -sugi ‘to exceed’ can combine with either a gradable adjective (e.g., naga ‘long’) or a non-gradable verb (e.g., yomi ‘to read’) to form an excessive construction. In each case, a semantically different type of phrase can be used as a differential: when -sugi combines with an adjective, a measure phrase can be used as a differential; when -sugi combines with a verb, a floating numeral quantifier can be used as a differential. Based on this observation, I put forward a non-degree based analysis in which -sugi is not a degree quantifier. Specifically, I argue that a V-sugi sentence describes a comparison of two sets of objects or events, whereas an Adj-sugi sentence describes a comparison of two sets of degrees. This analysis draws an interesting parallel to the A-not-A analysis of the comparative in the literature, and implies that the semantics of a ‘degree construction’ does not necessarily involve a comparison of degrees. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.8 BibTeX info

Distributive universals are unique among natural language quantifiers in the following three ways: (i) matrix interrogatives that contain them accept pair-list answers; (ii) indefinites and disjunctions in their scope may assume arbitrary functional readings; and (iii) they permit sentence-internal interpretations of a wide range of comparative adjectives, like "new" and "different". Because other quantifiers in the same environments do not give rise to these interpretations, the constructions provide a window into the semantic processes that underlie quantificational distributivity. In fact, both pair-list and internal readings have been independently argued to expose some of the compositional clockwork behind universal quantification, but the mechanisms they have been taken to reveal are entirely distinct. In contrast, I propose to explain pair-list phenomena, including a class of functional readings not previously recognized as such, and internal readings of comparative adjectives as two sides of the same coin; they are both side effects of incremental quantification. To make this precise, I analyze distributive universal quantifiers in terms of iterated, incremental update, in effect generalizing the sequential conjunction operator of standard dynamic semantics. I argue that this approach captures the tight empirical connection between pair-lists and internal adjectives, and at the same time provides a simpler and more robust account of the data than the specialized alternatives. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.9 BibTeX info

This paper motivates and develops a novel semantics for several epistemic expressions, including possibility and necessity modals and indicative conditionals. The semantics I defend constitutes an alternative to standard truth conditional theories, as it assigns sets of probability measures rather than sets of worlds as sentential semantic values. I argue that what my theory lacks in conservatism, it makes up for in strength — namely, the theory accounts for a host of distinctive and suggestive linguistic data collected and explored in this paper. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.5 BibTeX info

This paper investigates the processing of sentence-internal "same" with four licensors ("all", "each", "every" and "the") in two orders: licensor+"same (surface scope) and "same"+licensor (inverse scope). Our two self-paced reading studies show that there is no general effect of surface vs. inverse scope, which we take as an argument for a model-oriented view of the processing cost of inverse scope: the inverse scope of quantifiers seems to be costly because of model structure reanalysis, not because of covert scope operations. The second result is methodological: the psycholinguistic investigation of semantic phenomena like the interaction of quantifiers and sentence-internal readings should always involve a context that prompts a deep enough processing of the target expressions. In one of our two studies, participants read the target sentences after reading a scenario introducing the two sets of entities the quantifier NP and the same NP referred to and they were asked to determine whether the sentence was true or false relative to the background scenario every time. In the other study, the participants read the same sentences without any context and there were fewer follow-up comprehension questions. The relevant effects observed in the study with contexts completely disappeared in the out-of-context study, although the participants in both studies were monitored for their level of attention to the experimental task. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.1 BibTeX info

The semantics of the coordinator but does not fit neatly into the traditional distinction between entailments and conversational implicatures. In its counterexpectational use, but can convey an implication relating its two conjuncts, which Grice (1975) classifies as a conventional implicature because its behavior diverges from both entailments and conversational implicatures. I propose that this meaning component arises from but’s interaction with the discourse context – specifically, how it makes conventional reference to the question under discussion (QUD) in the sense of Roberts (1996/2012, 2004). This derives the variable interpretation of the implication in the counterexpectational use, as well as its absence in the corrective and semantic opposition uses of but. This account provides a new perspective on the relationship between the different uses of but as a type of modal polysemy (Kratzer 1981, 1991), and it suggests that other expressions that have been argued to have conventional implicatures might also make conventional reference to the QUD. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.7.4 BibTeX info

The German particle "überhaupt" exhibits a variety of uses with seemingly unrelated meanings. Correspondingly, only partial and non-unified theoretical accounts have been proposed. I show how the various intuitions and ostensibly different meanings can be derived from a unified characterization of "überhaupt" as a move to a higher-level question under discussion. The account explains how "überhaupt" could correspond to a single word in German, and it provides additional support for questions under discussion as an important aspect of contexts. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.7.1 BibTeX info

In American Sign Language (ASL), conjunction (‘and’) and disjunction (‘or’) are often conveyed by the same general use coordinator (transcribed as “COORD”). So the sequence of signs MARY WANT TEA COORD COFFEE can be interpreted as ‘Mary wants tea or coffee’ or ‘Mary wants tea and coffee’ depending on contextual, prosodic, or other lexical cues. This paper takes the first steps in describing the syntax and semantics of two general use coordinators in ASL, finding that they have a similar syntactic distribution to English coordinators and and or. Semantically, arguments are made against an ambiguity approach to account for the conjunctive and disjunctive readings; instead, I propose a Hamblin-style alternative semantics where the disjunctive and conjunctive force comes from external quantification over a set of alternatives. The pragmatic consequences of using only a prosodic distinction between disjunction from conjunction is examined via a felicity judgement study of scalar implicatures. Results indicate decreased scalar implicatures when COORD is used as disjunction, supporting the semantic analysis and suggesting that the contrast of lexical items in the scale plays an important role in its pragmatics. Extensions to other languages with potential general use coordination are discussed. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.6.4 BibTeX info

The proviso problem arises for theories of presupposition whose projection component fails to derive certain presuppositions that are contributed by their constituent sentences. Mismatch-based satisfaction theories respond to the difficulty by tying the emergence of the proviso problem to presupposition accommodation. Consequently, when the context entails the projected presupposition and no accommodation is required, mismatch-based satisfaction theories predict that the relevant inferences will be absent. Evidence for this predicted connection between the proviso problem and the need for accommodation is provided by Heim (1992, 2006). Against this conclusion, Geurts (1996) has provided evidence that the proviso problem arises even when the context does entail the sentence's projected presupposition. We will argue that there are confounds in both arguments. The goal of our note is to identify the relevant confounds and to characterize the data that can overcome them. Our attempts to construct examples that control for the confounds and obtain the crucial judgments will prove unsuccessful, leaving the debate unsettled and raising new challenges to constructing the right kinds of data. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.6.5 BibTeX info

We argue that the superlative modifiers at least and at most quantify over a scale of answers to the current question under discussion (and in this sense, resolve issues), and that they draw attention to the individual possibilities along the scale (and in this sense, raise issues for discussion). The point of departure is a simple analysis on which at least denotes what only presupposes, and at most denotes what only contributes as its ordinary atissue content. This analysis captures the truth conditions, focus-sensitivity, and distribution of superlative modifiers but leaves some pragmatic facts unexplained. We enrich the simple account with unrestricted inquisitive semantics in order to explain the fact that superlative modifiers give rise to ignorance implicatures while comparative modifiers like more and less do not, the fact that superlative modifiers do not give rise to scalar implicatures, and two puzzles concerning the interaction between superlative modifiers and deontic modals. We argue that this proposal provides the most empirically successful published account of superlative modifiers to date. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.6.3 BibTeX info

The aim of this paper is to present an explanation for the impact of normative considerations on people's assessment of certain seemingly purely descriptive matters concerning freedom, causation, and intentionality. The explanation is based on two main claims. First, the relevant judgments are modal: the sentences evaluated are contextually equivalent to modal proxies. Second, the interpretation of predominantly circumstantial or teleological modals is subject to normative constraints which make certain possibilities salient at the expense of others. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.6.1 BibTeX info

A prominent treatment of n-words such as nobody and never is as indefinite expressions occurring in the scope of a covert sentential negation operator. This paper presents three experiments using two novel strategies based on polarity particles and VP ellipsis to test the predictions of this treatment of n-words. The first experiment tests a particular prediction of recent accounts of polarity particles with respect to agreeing responses to negative assertions. The other two extend the inquiry to cases involving n-words. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.6.7 BibTeX info

This is the afterword to the 2012 republication of "Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics". See also the annotated bibliography on related topics at http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~croberts/QUDbib/. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.5.7 BibTeX info

The question of whether epistemic modals contribute to the truth conditions of the sentences they appear in is a matter of active debate in the literature. Fueling this debate is the lack of consensus about the extent to which epistemics can appear in the scope of other operators. This corpus study investigates the distribution of epistemics in naturalistic data. Our results indicate that they do embed, supporting the view that they contribute semantic content. However, their distribution is limited, compared to that of other modals. This limited distribution seems to call for a nuanced account: while epistemics are semantically contentful, they may require special licensing conditions. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.5.4 BibTeX info

This paper has two mutually motivating goals. The empirical goal is to demonstrate that definite plurals are expressions whose interpretation requires an approach that incorporates the goals of the speaker and hearer. The theoretical goal is to contribute to the development of a mathematical model of the pragmatic reasoning involved in the interpretation of underspecified utterances. I propose a decision-theoretic approach in which alternative interpretations of underspecified expressions are built up compositionally, and the resulting interpretation is the disjunction of maximally optimal alternatives. For definite plurals, this derives the correct interpretations in a variety of linguistic and situational contexts based on pragmatic and lexical cues. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.5.3 BibTeX info

The paper offers a formal account of the discourse behaviour of participles, which to some extent behave like main clauses in having semantically undetermined relations to their matrix clause, but which should nevertheless be integrated into the compositional semantics of complex sentences. The theory is developed on the basis of Ancient Greek participles and offers an account of their syntax, semantics and discourse behaviour (focusing on the temporal dimension of discourse), integrating Lexical-Functional Grammar, Compositional DRT and Segmented DRT using Glue semantics. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.4.8 BibTeX info

In Magri 2009a, I argue that a sentence such as '#Some Italians come from a warm country' sounds odd because it triggers the scalar implicature that not all Italians come from a warm country, which mismatches with the piece of common knowledge that all Italians come from the same country. If this proposal is on the right track, then oddness can be used as a diagnostic for scalar implicatures. In this paper, I use this diagnostic to provide one more argument that scalar implicatures are computed not only at the matrix level but also in embedded position. The argument is based on a puzzling pattern of oddness in downward entailing environments. Some apparently unrelated facts about restrictions on temporal modification with individual-level predicates are shown to fit into the pattern. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.4.6 BibTeX info

Heim's (1982, 1983b) dynamic semantics provides an attractive system for capturing the basic facts about presupposition projection. A long-standing criticism of this semantics is that it requires for each connective lexical stipulations that are not determined by its truth-conditional meaning. I give a precise formulation of this criticism in terms of what I call a "rewrite semantics". Then, I use this idea of a rewrite semantics to formulate a new version of dynamic semantics. This version does not require stipulations particular to individual connectives, but rather allows a derivation of the presupposition projection properties for each connective from its truth-conditional meaning. doi:10.3765/sp.4.3 BibTeX info

This paper is concerned with the conditions under which a person can be said to have told someone or predicted (the answer to a question like) 'who sang'. It is standardly claimed that while (i) the true answer must be completely specified, it is not necessary that (ii) it be specified *as being* the complete answer. Here the non-factive verbs 'tell' and 'predict' are said to differ from the factive verb 'know', which typically does impose the *strong exhaustivity* requirement in (ii). We argue for an intermediate reading of 'tell' and 'predict' that requires more than (i) but less than (ii). To account for this reading we claim that the exhaustivity requirement (ii) imposed by 'know' is due to an operator than can apply non-locally. Applying the operator above a non-factive verb derives the intermediate reading, whereas doing so is vacuous in the case of factives. Thus, we derive the intermediate reading, and differences in the exhaustivity requirements imposed by factives and non-factives, without lexical stipulation. doi:10.3765/sp.4.2 BibTeX info

In this extended commentary I discuss the problem of how to account for "conjunctive" readings of some sentences with embedded disjunctions for globalist analyses of conversational implicatures. Following Franke (2010, 2009), I suggest that earlier proposals failed, because they did not take into account the interactive reasoning of what else the speaker could have said, and how else the hearer could have interpreted the (alternative) sentence(s). I show how Franke's idea relates to more traditional pragmatic interpretation strategies. doi:10.3765/sp.3.11 BibTeX info

Free choice permission is a long-standing puzzle in deontic logic and in natural language semantics. It involves what appears to be a conjunctive use of "or": from "You may eat an apple or a pear", we can infer that "You may eat an apple" and that "You may eat a pear" -- though not that "You may eat an apple and a pear". Following Lokhorst (1997), I argue that because permission is a limited resource, a resource-sensitive logic such as Girard's Linear Logic is better suited to modeling permission talk than, say, classical logic. A resource-sensitive approach enables the semantics to track not only that permission has been granted and what sort of permission it is (i.e., permission to eat apples versus permission to eat pears), but also how much permission has been granted, i.e., whether there is enough permission to eat two pieces of fruit or only one. The account here is primarily semantic (as opposed to pragmatic), with no special modes of composition or special pragmatic rules. The paper includes an introduction to Linear Logic. doi:10.3765/sp.3.10 BibTeX info

The St'át'imcets (Lillooet Salish) subjunctive mood appears in nine distinct environments, with a range of semantic effects, including weakening an imperative to a polite request, turning a question into an uncertainty statement, and creating an ignorance free relative. The St'át'imcets subjunctive also differs from Indo-European subjunctives in that it is not selected by attitude verbs. In this paper I account for the St'át'imcets subjunctive using Portner's (1997) proposal that moods restrict the conversational background of a governing modal. I argue that the St'át'imcets subjunctive restricts the conversational background of a governing modal, but in a way which obligatorily weakens the modal’s force. This obligatory modal weakening -- not found with Indo-European non-indicative moods -- correlates with the fact that St'át'imcets modals differ from Indo-European modals along the same dimension. While Indo-European modals typically lexically encode quantificational force, but leave conversational background to context, St'át'imcets modals encode conversational background, but leave quantificational force to context (Matthewson, Rullmann & Davis 2007, Rullmann, Matthewson & Davis 2008). doi:10.3765/sp.3.9 BibTeX info

This paper provides a system capable of analyzing the combinatorics of a wide range of conventionally implicated and expressive constructions in natural language via an extension of Potts's (2005) L_CI logic for supplementary conventional implicatures. In particular, the system is capable of analyzing objects of mixed conventionally implicated/expressive and at-issue type, and objects with conventionally implicated or expressive meanings which provide the main content of their utterances. The logic is applied to a range of constructions and lexical items in several languages. doi:10.3765/sp.3.8 BibTeX info

This paper addresses the semantics and pragmatics of singular and plural nominals in languages that manifest a binary morphological number distinction within this category. We review the main challenges such an account has to meet, and develop an analysis which treats the plural morpheme as semantically relevant, and the singular form as not contributing any number restriction on its own but acquiring one when in competition with the plural form. The competition between singular and plural nominals is grounded in bidirectional optimization over form-meaning pairs. The main conceptual advantage our proposal has over recent alternative accounts is that it respects Horn's 'division of pragmatic labor', in that it treats morphologically marked forms as semantically marked, and morphologically unmarked forms as semantically unmarked. In our account, plural forms are polysemous between an exclusive plural sense, which enforces sum reference, and an inclusive sense, which allows both atoms and sums as possible witnesses. The analysis predicts that a plural form is pragmatically appropriate only in case sum values are among the intended referents. To account for the choice between these two senses in context we invoke the Strongest Meaning Hypothesis, an independently motivated pragmatic principle. Finally, we show how the approach we develop explains some puzzling contrasts in number marking between English "three/more children" and Hungarian "három/több gyerek" ('three/more child'), a problem that has not been properly accounted for in the literature so far. doi:10.3765/sp.3.6 BibTeX info