In this paper, we explore the behavior of one complex disjunction in Russian that has some special properties that set it apart from other simple and complex disjunctions: it never gives rise to free choice inferences in environments in which other disjunctions do and under universal quantifiers it behaves different from other disjunctions. We show that the data resist an analysis in terms of wide scope disjunction and propose that those special properties are due to obligatory ignorance inferences associated with this disjunction. The paper provides one more argument for a grammatical theory of ignorance along the lines of ( 7).
{"title":"Russian Disjunction To li To li and Obligatory Ignorance","authors":"Natalia Ivlieva","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffae013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffae013","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we explore the behavior of one complex disjunction in Russian that has some special properties that set it apart from other simple and complex disjunctions: it never gives rise to free choice inferences in environments in which other disjunctions do and under universal quantifiers it behaves different from other disjunctions. We show that the data resist an analysis in terms of wide scope disjunction and propose that those special properties are due to obligatory ignorance inferences associated with this disjunction. The paper provides one more argument for a grammatical theory of ignorance along the lines of ( 7).","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142193576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Negation typically has a contradictory effect on interpretation. At the same time, negated statements are often underinformative, which leaves room for pragmatic effects such as negative strengthening, where negated adjectives are pragmatically strengthened to convey their antonym (e.g., not large $leadsto $ ‘small’). Here, we investigate a theoretical controversy relating to the mechanism deriving negative strengthening effects. According to Horn's (1989) account negative strengthening arises on the basis of social considerations, whereas on Krifka's (2007) account it arises via complexity-based considerations, yielding distinct interpretation patterns. We applied Horn's (1989) and Krifka's (2007) accounts to three distinct cases of negated antonymic adjectives: informationally weak relative adjectives, informationally weak absolute adjectives, and informationally strong gradable adjectives. Our experimental results demonstrate different interpretation patterns for weak relative (large/small) and weak absolute gradable adjectives (clean/dirty) under negation. These results confirm the predictions stemming from Horn's (1989) account of negative strengthening effects and highlight the importance of a semantic extension gap between antonymic predicates for the occurrence of negative strengthening. In contrast, our experimental findings concerning strong antonymic adjectives (e.g., not gigantic/not tiny) prima facie present challenges for Horn's (1989) analysis, while they do not endorse any alternative account.
{"title":"The Interpretation of Relative and Absolute Adjectives Under Negation","authors":"Stavroula Alexandropoulou, Nicole Gotzner","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffae012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffae012","url":null,"abstract":"Negation typically has a contradictory effect on interpretation. At the same time, negated statements are often underinformative, which leaves room for pragmatic effects such as negative strengthening, where negated adjectives are pragmatically strengthened to convey their antonym (e.g., not large $leadsto $ ‘small’). Here, we investigate a theoretical controversy relating to the mechanism deriving negative strengthening effects. According to Horn's (1989) account negative strengthening arises on the basis of social considerations, whereas on Krifka's (2007) account it arises via complexity-based considerations, yielding distinct interpretation patterns. We applied Horn's (1989) and Krifka's (2007) accounts to three distinct cases of negated antonymic adjectives: informationally weak relative adjectives, informationally weak absolute adjectives, and informationally strong gradable adjectives. Our experimental results demonstrate different interpretation patterns for weak relative (large/small) and weak absolute gradable adjectives (clean/dirty) under negation. These results confirm the predictions stemming from Horn's (1989) account of negative strengthening effects and highlight the importance of a semantic extension gap between antonymic predicates for the occurrence of negative strengthening. In contrast, our experimental findings concerning strong antonymic adjectives (e.g., not gigantic/not tiny) prima facie present challenges for Horn's (1989) analysis, while they do not endorse any alternative account.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142193558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
X-marked want is identified by von Fintel & Iatridou (2023) (vF&I) as one of the crosslinguistic challenges for what they call X-marking, the kind of morphology traditionally referred to as ‘subjunctive’ or ‘counterfactual’. This paper’s main goal is to spell out vF&I’s idea that X-marking on want reflects a widening of want’s quantificational domain, thereby doing the same job as it does in conditionals under an influential view originating with Stalnaker (1975). With Sode (2021), but also Grano & Phillips-Brown (2022), the proposition $phi $ denoted by want’s complement is treated as the antecedent of a “hidden conditional” that Heim (1992) sees in want and desire-ascriptions more generally, a treatment in whose favor vF&I’s Conditional/Desire Pattern provides morphosyntactic evidence. In line with the Stalnakerian view, but also more recent ones under which X-marking is semantically vacuous (Crowley 2022; Leahy 2011, 2018), X-marking on want is treated as reflecting the absence of a presuppositional constraint that the O-marked counterpart comes with: a limitation of closest antecedent-worlds to the attitude holder’s belief set.
von Fintel & Iatridou (2023)（vF&I）认为，X-标记的 "想要"（X-marked want）是他们所谓的 "X-标记"（X-marking）的跨语言挑战之一，也就是传统上被称为 "从句"（subjunctive）或 "反事实"（counterfactual）的形态学。本文的主要目的是阐明 vF&I 的观点，即 "想要 "上的 X 标记反映了 "想要 "的量词域的扩大，从而与 Stalnaker（1975 年）提出的一种有影响力的观点在条件式中所做的工作相同。在 Sode（2021）和 Grano & Phillips-Brown（2022）那里，want 的补语所表示的命题 $phi $ 被视为 Heim（1992）在 want 和 desire-ascriptions 中更普遍地看到的 "隐藏条件 "的前置词，vF&I 的条件/欲望模式为这种处理提供了形态句法证据。与 Stalnaker 的观点一致，也与最近的观点一致，即 X 标记在语义上是空洞的（Crowley 2022；Leahy 2011，2018），"想要 "上的 X 标记被视为反映了没有 O 标记对应物所附带的预设限制：将最接近的前因世界限制在态度持有者的信念集合中。
{"title":"X- vs. O-marked want","authors":"Alexander Wimmer","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffae005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffae005","url":null,"abstract":"X-marked want is identified by von Fintel & Iatridou (2023) (vF&I) as one of the crosslinguistic challenges for what they call X-marking, the kind of morphology traditionally referred to as ‘subjunctive’ or ‘counterfactual’. This paper’s main goal is to spell out vF&I’s idea that X-marking on want reflects a widening of want’s quantificational domain, thereby doing the same job as it does in conditionals under an influential view originating with Stalnaker (1975). With Sode (2021), but also Grano & Phillips-Brown (2022), the proposition $phi $ denoted by want’s complement is treated as the antecedent of a “hidden conditional” that Heim (1992) sees in want and desire-ascriptions more generally, a treatment in whose favor vF&I’s Conditional/Desire Pattern provides morphosyntactic evidence. In line with the Stalnakerian view, but also more recent ones under which X-marking is semantically vacuous (Crowley 2022; Leahy 2011, 2018), X-marking on want is treated as reflecting the absence of a presuppositional constraint that the O-marked counterpart comes with: a limitation of closest antecedent-worlds to the attitude holder’s belief set.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142193559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this paper, I argue against two common claims about so-called privative adjectives like ‘fake’: first, I argue against the idea that their semantic complexity requires a richer notion of lexical meaning than the standard one (see, e.g., Del Pinal, 2018); second, I argue against the idea that ‘fake’ is a subsective adjective ‘in disguise’ and does not semantically negate its input (see, e.g., Partee, 2010). I propose that a fake P is (i) intended to resemble a P and (ii) is not a P. This makes correct predictions for multiple applications of ‘fake’, a task at which other theories fail. In cases of double application of ‘fake’, the interaction between its conjunctive meaning and the negation hard-coded into clause (ii) yields a complex meaning, compatible with a variety of objects, which aligns with intuitions about what should count as a fake N. While the core meaning of ‘fake’ is quite simple, its mode of composition bears some complexity. In line with Martin (2022), I propose that ‘fake’ can alternatively (a) combine directly with the noun via Functional Application or (b) saturate its property argument via an implicit, contextually provided variable via Functional Application and then combine with the noun via Predicate Modification. Mode of composition (a) is clearly visible in syntactic parses that only allow for Functional Application: for instance, in Italian, if pre-nominal, ‘fake’ can only directly take the noun as an input (cf. Cinque, 2010). Positing (b) correctly predicts readings where ‘fake’ is not apparently privative: ‘fake watch’ can designate a watch that is made to resemble a Rolex but isn’t one, i.e. a fake(-as-a-Rolex) watch. When the intersection between the $[![ mathit{fake} ]!] (*mathit{implicit argument}*)$ complex and the noun is empty, rescuing principles originally proposed by Partee kick in to rescue from vacuous modification: this explains why we can refer to a fake gun as a gun, as in the sentence ‘this gun is fake’. As a result, besides correctly predicting iterated ‘fake’, this theory provides clear predictions on when and how Partee’s pragmatic principles of noun modulation apply. I conclude the paper arguing that this view of privatives calls for a classification of adjectives in terms of their mode of composition, rather than in terms of their emergent entailment pattern.
{"title":"Keeping Fake Simple","authors":"Janek Guerrini","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffae010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffae010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In this paper, I argue against two common claims about so-called privative adjectives like ‘fake’: first, I argue against the idea that their semantic complexity requires a richer notion of lexical meaning than the standard one (see, e.g., Del Pinal, 2018); second, I argue against the idea that ‘fake’ is a subsective adjective ‘in disguise’ and does not semantically negate its input (see, e.g., Partee, 2010). I propose that a fake P is (i) intended to resemble a P and (ii) is not a P. This makes correct predictions for multiple applications of ‘fake’, a task at which other theories fail. In cases of double application of ‘fake’, the interaction between its conjunctive meaning and the negation hard-coded into clause (ii) yields a complex meaning, compatible with a variety of objects, which aligns with intuitions about what should count as a fake N. While the core meaning of ‘fake’ is quite simple, its mode of composition bears some complexity. In line with Martin (2022), I propose that ‘fake’ can alternatively (a) combine directly with the noun via Functional Application or (b) saturate its property argument via an implicit, contextually provided variable via Functional Application and then combine with the noun via Predicate Modification. Mode of composition (a) is clearly visible in syntactic parses that only allow for Functional Application: for instance, in Italian, if pre-nominal, ‘fake’ can only directly take the noun as an input (cf. Cinque, 2010). Positing (b) correctly predicts readings where ‘fake’ is not apparently privative: ‘fake watch’ can designate a watch that is made to resemble a Rolex but isn’t one, i.e. a fake(-as-a-Rolex) watch. When the intersection between the $[![ mathit{fake} ]!] (*mathit{implicit argument}*)$ complex and the noun is empty, rescuing principles originally proposed by Partee kick in to rescue from vacuous modification: this explains why we can refer to a fake gun as a gun, as in the sentence ‘this gun is fake’. As a result, besides correctly predicting iterated ‘fake’, this theory provides clear predictions on when and how Partee’s pragmatic principles of noun modulation apply. I conclude the paper arguing that this view of privatives calls for a classification of adjectives in terms of their mode of composition, rather than in terms of their emergent entailment pattern.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141925484","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper presents a formal judgment study of Mandarin intervention effects, that is, structures containing a wh-phrase c-commanded by a focus-sensitive or a quantificational expression. There has been significant disagreement in the literature regarding which type of wh-phrases gives rise to intervention, as well as which one among the c-commanding scopal operators is an intervener. There are competing empirical claims in the literature, which have to this day not been subject to experimental evaluation. The results of our study show that wh-nominals and wh-adverbials exhibit a similar pattern of degraded acceptability. Our results further show a clear distinction between why and other wh-phrases, favoring Ko’s (2005) idea that a separate, why-induced scope effect is disentangled from the garden-variety case of wh-intervention.
{"title":"Intervention Effects in Mandarin Chinese—An Experimental Study","authors":"Dawei Jin, Hanbo Yan","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffae006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffae006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper presents a formal judgment study of Mandarin intervention effects, that is, structures containing a wh-phrase c-commanded by a focus-sensitive or a quantificational expression. There has been significant disagreement in the literature regarding which type of wh-phrases gives rise to intervention, as well as which one among the c-commanding scopal operators is an intervener. There are competing empirical claims in the literature, which have to this day not been subject to experimental evaluation. The results of our study show that wh-nominals and wh-adverbials exhibit a similar pattern of degraded acceptability. Our results further show a clear distinction between why and other wh-phrases, favoring Ko’s (2005) idea that a separate, why-induced scope effect is disentangled from the garden-variety case of wh-intervention.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141401226","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Correction to: The Dynamics of Generics","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffae008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffae008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141126955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Correction to: The Hell With Questions","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffae007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffae007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140966518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This work investigates absolute adjectives in the not very construction and how their pragmatic interpretation depends on the evaluative polarity and the scale structure of their antonymic pairs. Our experimental study reveals that evaluatively positive adjectives (clean) are more likely to be strengthened than evaluatively negative ones (dirty), and that maximum standard adjectives (clean or closed) are more likely to be strengthened than minimum standard ones (dirty or open). Our findings suggest that both evaluative polarity and scale structure drive the asymmetric interpretation of gradable adjectives under negation. Overall, our work adds to the growing literature on the interplay between pragmatic inference, valence and semantic meaning.
这项研究调查了 not very 结构中的绝对形容词，以及它们的语用解释如何取决于其反义词对的评价极性和尺度结构。我们的实验研究表明，评价积极的形容词（clean）比评价消极的形容词（dirty）更有可能得到加强，而最高标准的形容词（clean 或封闭的）比最低标准的形容词（dirty 或开放的）更有可能得到加强。我们的研究结果表明，评价极性和量表结构共同驱动了否定条件下可分级形容词的非对称解释。总之，我们的研究为越来越多的关于语用推断、价效和语义之间相互作用的文献增添了新的内容。
{"title":"Negative strengthening: The interplay of evaluative polarity and scale structure","authors":"Nicole Gotzner, Diana Mazzarella","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffae004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffae004","url":null,"abstract":"This work investigates absolute adjectives in the not very construction and how their pragmatic interpretation depends on the evaluative polarity and the scale structure of their antonymic pairs. Our experimental study reveals that evaluatively positive adjectives (clean) are more likely to be strengthened than evaluatively negative ones (dirty), and that maximum standard adjectives (clean or closed) are more likely to be strengthened than minimum standard ones (dirty or open). Our findings suggest that both evaluative polarity and scale structure drive the asymmetric interpretation of gradable adjectives under negation. Overall, our work adds to the growing literature on the interplay between pragmatic inference, valence and semantic meaning.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140883510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper reports an investigation into the nature of Negative Polarity Item (NPI) licensing conditions from a processing perspective. We found that the processing cost of Downward Entailingness (a k a the Monotonicity Effect) is determined by the number of monotonicity reversals of NPI domains, rather than by the number of Downward-Entailing (DE) operators. This conclusion is not based on the standard judgment paradigm, but rather, on the measurement of continuous variables (error rates, Reaction Times (RTs)) in a verification task, in which the truth value of a sentence is determined against a scenario. We conducted two experiments with sentences that contained one or two DE operators, which featured in different syntactic configurations. We explored how RT is affected by the manipulation of both the number of DE operators, and the syntactic environments in which they reside. We ran these experiments in Hebrew and in English, with different participant populations and different testing methods. Despite the linguistic subtlety of the theoretical issues, our results were remarkably sharp, leading to two firm conclusions: (i) that processing time is determined not by the number of DE operators, but rather, by the monotonicity of the minimal constituent in which they reside; (ii) that DE-ness is not a property of operators, but of environments. We show how our results bear directly on the current debate about the nature of monotonicity, which we describe below. Finally, we provide quantitative tests of alternative, non-semantic explanations, and show how our results do not support them.
本文报告了一项从加工角度对负极性项目（NPI）许可条件性质的调查。我们发现，"向下必然性 "的处理成本（又称 "单调性效应"）是由 NPI 领域的单调性反转数量决定的，而不是由 "向下必然性"（DE）运算符的数量决定的。这一结论并非基于标准的判断范式，而是基于验证任务中对连续变量（错误率、反应时间（RT））的测量，在验证任务中，句子的真值是根据情景来确定的。我们用包含一个或两个 DE 运算符的句子进行了两次实验，这些句子具有不同的句法结构。我们探讨了语法运算符的数量以及它们所处的句法环境对 RT 的影响。我们用希伯来语和英语进行了这些实验，使用了不同的参与者群体和不同的测试方法。尽管理论问题在语言学上非常微妙，但我们的结果却非常清晰，并得出了两个坚定的结论：(i) 处理时间不是由 DE 操作符的数量决定的，而是由它们所在的最小成分的单调性决定的；(ii) DE-ness 不是操作符的属性，而是环境的属性。我们将展示我们的结果如何直接影响到当前关于单调性本质的争论，我们将在下文中对此进行描述。最后，我们将对其他非语义解释进行定量检验，并说明我们的结果如何不支持这些解释。
{"title":"The Domains of Monotonicity Processing","authors":"I-An Tan, Nir Segal, Yosef Grodzinsky","doi":"10.1093/jos/ffae003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffae003","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reports an investigation into the nature of Negative Polarity Item (NPI) licensing conditions from a processing perspective. We found that the processing cost of Downward Entailingness (a k a the Monotonicity Effect) is determined by the number of monotonicity reversals of NPI domains, rather than by the number of Downward-Entailing (DE) operators. This conclusion is not based on the standard judgment paradigm, but rather, on the measurement of continuous variables (error rates, Reaction Times (RTs)) in a verification task, in which the truth value of a sentence is determined against a scenario. We conducted two experiments with sentences that contained one or two DE operators, which featured in different syntactic configurations. We explored how RT is affected by the manipulation of both the number of DE operators, and the syntactic environments in which they reside. We ran these experiments in Hebrew and in English, with different participant populations and different testing methods. Despite the linguistic subtlety of the theoretical issues, our results were remarkably sharp, leading to two firm conclusions: (i) that processing time is determined not by the number of DE operators, but rather, by the monotonicity of the minimal constituent in which they reside; (ii) that DE-ness is not a property of operators, but of environments. We show how our results bear directly on the current debate about the nature of monotonicity, which we describe below. Finally, we provide quantitative tests of alternative, non-semantic explanations, and show how our results do not support them.","PeriodicalId":46947,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Semantics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140831996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Paul Marty, Jacopo Romoli, Yasutada Sudo, Richard Breheny
Sentences involving embedded disjunctions give rise to distributive and free choice inferences. These inferences exhibit certain characteristics of Scalar Implicatures (SIs) and some researchers have proposed to treat them as such. This proposal, however, faces an important challenge: experimental results have shown that the two inferences are more robust, faster to process, and easier to acquire than regular SIs. A common response to this challenge has been to hypothesise that such discrepancies among different types of SIs stem from the type of alternative used to derive them. That is, in contrast to regular SIs, distributive and free choice inferences are computed on the basis of sub-constituent alternatives, which are alternatives that are formed without lexical substitutions. This paper reports on a series of experiments that tested this hypothesis by comparing positive, disjunctive sentences giving rise to the two inference types to variants of these sentences involving either negation and conjunction, or negation and disjunction, for which the implicature approach predicts similar inferences on the basis of the same type of alternatives. The investigation also included deontic and epistemic modality, different positions of negation, and was extended to similar comparisons with simple disjunctions and the related ignorance inferences they give rise to. Our results show that, while the inferences are indeed quite robust in the disjunctive cases, regardless of whether negation is present or not, the inferences that their negative, conjunctive variants give rise to are not. These findings are challenging for the hypothesis that the type of alternatives involved in SI computation is a major factor responsible for differences in robustness. We outline two possible alternative explanations of our data.
涉及嵌入式分隔符的句子会产生分配推理和自由选择推理。这些推论表现出标量含义（SIs）的某些特征，因此一些研究人员提议将它们视为标量含义。然而，这一提议面临着一个重要的挑战：实验结果表明，这两种推论比常规的 SI 更稳健，处理速度更快，也更容易获得。应对这一挑战的常见方法是假设不同类型的 SI 之间的这种差异源于用于推导它们的替代方法的类型。也就是说，与常规 SI 不同，分配式推理和自由选择式推理是基于子成分替代物计算的，而子成分替代物是在没有词汇替换的情况下形成的。本文报告了一系列实验，通过比较产生这两种推理类型的正向、分词句子和涉及否定和连词或否定和分词的这些句子的变体来验证这一假设。调查还包括谓词性和认识性模态、否定的不同位置，并扩展到与简单分词及其引起的相关无知推理的类似比较。我们的研究结果表明，虽然在分词情况下，无论否定存在与否，推论都是相当稳健的，但其否定的连接词变体所引起的推论却并非如此。这些发现对以下假设提出了挑战：即 SI 计算中涉及的替代变量的类型是造成稳健性差异的主要因素。我们概述了我们的数据的两种可能的替代解释。
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