Journal of Semantics - Advance Access

Superlatives, NPIs and Most

Gajewski, J. — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 10:31:08 PST

The ability of English determiner most to license negative polarity items (NPIs) has long stood as a puzzle for theories that follow Ladusaw (1979) in claiming that NPIs must appear in the scope of downward entailing (DE) operators. Most licenses NPIs such as any and ever in its restrictor but is not downward, or upward, entailing with respect to its restrictor. In this paper, I argue that despite appearances to the contrary, NPIs in the restrictor of most are in the scope of a DE operator. I make crucial use of a recent proposal by Hackl (2009) to compositionally analyze determiner most as a superlative expression. When the semantics of the superlative morpheme is spelled out correctly, this derives the result that most licenses NPIs in its restrictor. In addition, I show that this approach correctly predicts the NPI-licensing properties of relative most, as in English the most students. Finally, I discuss some consequences of this approach for the proper integration of contextual restriction into the semantics of the superlative morpheme.

Meaning and Context in Children's Understanding of Gradable Adjectives

Syrett, K., Kennedy, C., Lidz, J. — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 06:31:23 PST

This paper explores what children and adults know about three specific ways that meaning and context interact: the interpretation of expressions whose extensions vary in different contexts (semantic context dependence); conditions on the felicitous use of expressions in a discourse context (presupposition accommodation) and informative uses of expressions in contexts in which they strictly speaking do not apply (imprecision). The empirical focus is the use of unmodified (positive form) gradable adjectives (GAs) in definite descriptions to distinguish between two objects that differ in the degree to which they possess the property named by the adjective. We show that by 3 years of age, children are sensitive to all three varieties of context–meaning interaction and that their knowledge of this relation with the definite description is appropriately guided by the semantic representations of the GA appearing in it. These findings suggest that children's semantic representations of the GAs we investigated and the definite determiner the are adult-like and that they are aware of the consequences of these representations when relating meaning and context. Bolstered by adult participant responses, this work provides important experimental support for theoretical claims regarding the semantics of gradable predicates and the nature of different types of ‘interpretive variability’, specifically semantic context dependence v. pragmatic tolerance of imprecision.

Anaphora and Semantic Innocence

Smit, J. P., Steglich-Petersen, A. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:22:01 PST

Semantic theories that violate semantic innocence, that is require reference shifts when terms are embedded in ‘that’ clauses and the like, are often challenged by producing sentences where an anaphoric expression, while not itself embedded in a context in which reference shifts, is anaphoric on an antecedent expression that is embedded in such a context. This, in conjunction with a widely accepted principle concerning unproblematic anaphora (the ‘Principle of Anaphoric Reference’), is used to show that such reference shifting has absurd consequences. We show that it is the widely accepted principle concerning anaphora that is to be blamed for these consequences and not the supposed sin of reference shifting.

On Reacting to Assertions and Polar Questions

Farkas, D. F., Bruce, K. B. — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:35:12 PDT

The aim of this paper is to capture the similarities and differences between assertions and polar questions so as to be able to account for the systematic partial overlap that exists in reactions to these speech acts in English and beyond. We first discuss the discourse components we assume and then define default assertions and default polar questions in a way that allows us to characterize two types of responses to these speech acts, confirming and reversing reactions. The common characteristics of assertions and polar questions are responsible for the fact that both allow these reactions; the differences between the two speech acts explain the different contextual effects confirming and reversing moves have depending on whether they react to an assertion or a polar question. We then examine the distribution of a set of ‘polarity’ particles in Romanian in terms of the notions defined in the rest of the paper and end with a series of predictions concerning polarity particles across languages.

Presupposition Triggering from Alternatives

Abusch, D. — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:27:57 PDT

This paper considers a set of presupposition triggers including focus, questions, ‘contrastive’ statives and an ‘affirmation/negation’ construction involving and not, where presuppositions are cancellable. It is proposed that these constructions, rather than having strict semantic presuppositions, have representations involving alternative sets in the sense of alternative semantics of questions and focus and that a default process generates a presupposition from the alternative set. Presupposition projection facts are dealt with by stating a default constraint referring to dynamic denotations. The analysis can be extended to other constructions and lexical items with defeasible presupposition-triggering behaviour, such as inchoatives, by hypothesizing a representation involving alternatives.