Journal of Semantics - recent issues

A New Look at the Semantics and Pragmatics of Numerically Quantified Noun Phrases

Breheny, R. — 2008-05-07

This paper presents some arguments against a unilateral account of numerically quantified noun phrases (NQNPs) and for a bilateral account of such expressions. It is proposed that where NQNP give rise to at least readings, this is the result of one of the two forms of pragmatic reasoning. To that end, the paper develops an independently motivated account of specificity and existential closure involving diagonalization.

An Epistemic Step for Anti-Presuppositions

Chemla, E. — 2008-05-07

Sentence (1) strongly suggests that the speaker does not have a sister: (1)John believes that I have a sister.a.Alternative:John knows that I have a sister.b.Actual inference:The speaker does not have a sister.c.Predicted inference:It is not common belief that the speaker has a sister.

According to Heim (1991), Percus (2006), and Sauerland (2006), this inference should follow from the comparison of (1) to (1a). However, such an analysis would only predict a very weak implicature: it is not common belief that the speaker has a sister. I propose to strengthen this prediction by two means. First, I rely on a precise understanding of the modern Stalnakerian view of presuppositions and common ground (Stalnaker 1998, 2002; von Fintel 2000; Schlenker 2006). Second, I argue that this inference depends on contextual factors. More precisely, I show that the Competence Assumption (see Spector 2003; van Rooij & Schulz 2004; Sauerland 2004) necessary to obtain secondary scalar implicatures should be supplemented with an Authority Assumption. I motivate this additional assumption on independent empirical grounds. Finally, I show how my proposal accounts for a wide variety of inferences with fine variations governed by (i) contextual differences and (ii) specific properties of the presupposition triggers involved.

What with? The Anatomy of a (Proto)-Role

Koenig, J.-P., Mauner, G., Bienvenue, B., Conklin, K. — 2008-05-07

This paper describes a comprehensive survey of English verbs that semantically allow or require an Instrument role. It sheds light on the nature of Instrument roles and instrumentality by examining the distribution in semantic space of those verbs. We show first that verbs that semantically require instruments are typically semantically more complex than predicted by current theories of the structural complexity of verb meanings. We also show that verbs that require or allow instruments constrain the end states of situations they describe more than they constrain the agent's initial activity. Our survey further suggests that the causal role played by the instrument is more varied than suggested by previous studies and requires the introduction of a new subtype of causal relation, which we dub helping. Finally, our survey demonstrates that verbs that semantically require an instrument cluster together more closely in semantic space and constrain the instrument's (causal) role and properties more than verbs that merely allow the presence of an instrument.

Coherence and Coreference Revisited

Kehler, A., Kertz, L., Rohde, H., Elman, J. L. — 2008-01-31

For more than three decades, research into the psycholinguistics of pronoun interpretation has argued that hearers use various interpretation ‘preferences’ or ‘strategies’ that are associated with specific linguistic properties of antecedent expressions. This focus is a departure from the type of approach outlined in Hobbs (1979), who argues that the mechanisms supporting pronoun interpretation are driven predominantly by semantics, world knowledge and inference, with particular attention to how these are used to establish the coherence of a discourse. On the basis of three new experimental studies, we evaluate a coherence-driven analysis with respect to four previously proposed interpretation biases—based on grammatical role parallelism, thematic roles, implicit causality, and subjecthood—and argue that the coherence-driven analysis can explain the underlying source of the biases and predict in what contexts evidence for each will surface. The results further suggest that pronoun interpretation is incrementally influenced by probabilistic expectations that hearers have regarding what coherence relations are likely to ensue, together with their expectations about what entities will be mentioned next, which, crucially, are conditioned on those coherence relations.

On the Meaning of Only

Ippolito, M. — 2008-01-31

This paper investigates the semantics of the focus particle only and is primarily concerned with the relation between the exclusive proposition and the proposition expressed by the prejacent (the only-less sentence). We argue that, in a sentence of the form only A is B, only triggers the conditional presupposition that if something is B, A is B. We show that in a positive-only sentence, the prejacent is a conversational implicature and therefore it is cancellable. Instead, in a negative-only sentence the prejacent is shown to be entailed by any context that satisfies the conditional presupposition and to which the (negative) assertion is added. Hence, the prejacent of a negative-only sentence is not cancellable. The entailment analyses, the strong presupposition analyses and the weak presupposition analyses of only are discussed, together with the problems that each type of theories faces.

Editors' Preface

Sedivy, J., Carston, R., Noveck, I., Geurts, B. — 2007-10-31

The Processing Consequences of the Imperfective Paradox

Baggio, G., Van Lambalgen, M. — 2007-10-31

In this paper we present a semantic analysis of the imperfective paradox based on the Event Calculus (van Lambalgen & Hamm 2004), a planning formalism characterizing a class of models which can be computed by connectionist networks. We report the results of a questionnaire that support the semantic theory and suggest that different aspectual classes of VPs in the progressive give rise to different entailment patterns. Further, a processing model is outlined, combining the semantic analysis with the psycholinguistic principle of immediacy in the framework of recurrent networks. The model is used to derive predictions concerning the electrophysiological correlates of the computations described by the Event Calculus.

The Psychological Reality of Classical Quantifier Entailment Properties

Politzer, G. — 2007-10-31

A test of directional entailment properties of classical quantifiers defined by the theory of generalized quantifiers (Barwise & Cooper 1981) is described. Participants had to solve a task which consisted of four kinds of inference. In the first one, the premise was of the form ‘Q–hyponym–verb–blank predicate’, where Q is a classical quantifier (e.g. ‘Some cats are [ ]’), and the question was to indicate what, if anything, can be concluded by filling the slots in ‘...–hyperonym–verb–blank predicate’ (e.g. ‘... animals are [ ]’). The second kind of inference was the same, except that the hyperonym was in the premise and the hyponym in the conclusion. The third and fourth kinds of inference differed from the first two by the position of the hyperonym (respectively hyponym) which occupied the place of the predicate (e.g. ‘some [ ] are animals’). It was observed that if the directional entailment holds people respond accordingly in most cases and that if the entailment does not hold they correctly fail to produce it. These results provide elementary, but essential empirical support to this semantic approach to quantification, and are a prerequisite for its application to the study of reasoning with quantifiers. The implications for the psychology of reasoning are discussed.

Suppression in Metaphor Interpretation: Differences between Meaning Selection and Meaning Construction

Rubio Fernandez, P. — 2007-10-31

Various accounts of metaphor interpretation propose that it involves constructing an ad hoc concept on the basis of the concept encoded by the metaphor vehicle (i.e. the expression used for conveying the metaphor). This paper discusses some of the differences between these theories and investigates their main empirical prediction: that metaphor interpretation involves enhancing properties of the metaphor vehicle that are relevant for interpretation, while suppressing those that are irrelevant. This hypothesis was tested in a cross-modal lexical priming study adapted from early studies on lexical ambiguity. The different patterns of suppression of irrelevant meanings observed in disambiguation studies and in the experiment on metaphor reported here are discussed in terms of differences between meaning selection and meaning construction.

Processing Presupposed Content

Schwarz, F. — 2007-10-31

This paper presents three experimental studies investigating the processing of presupposed content. The first two experiments employ the German additive particle auch ‘too’, and the third uses English also. In experiment 1, participants were given a questionnaire containing biclausal, ambiguous sentences containing auch. The presupposition introduced by auch was only satisfied on one of the two readings, which corresponded to a syntactically dispreferred parse of the sentence. The prospect of having the auch presupposition satisfied made participants choose this syntactically dispreferred reading more frequently than in a control condition. Experiment 2 used the self-paced reading paradigm and compared the reading times on clauses containing auch, which differed in whether the presupposition of auch was satisfied or not. Participants read the clause more slowly when the presupposition was not satisfied. Experiment 3 followed up a number of issues that arose from experiment 2 and confirmed the results found there. These studies show that presuppositions play an important role in online sentence comprehension and affect the choice of syntactic analysis. Some theoretical implications of these findings for the semantic analysis of auch/also and dynamic accounts of presuppositions as well as for theories of semantic processing are discussed.

Editor's Note

2007-10-31