On the unification of <i>which</i> -interrogatives and alternative-interrogatives

Intercultural Pragmatics · 2025-03-01

Abstract Some similarities between alternative-interrogatives and which -interrogatives seem to support a unifying analysis. The paper discusses two such analyses, and the challenges they face, and some advantages and shortcomings of a non-unifying approach.

Copular asymmetries in belief reports

Natural Language Semantics · 2024 · 8 citations

• Computer Science
• Linguistics
• Computer Science

"Whether or not anything" but not "whether anything or not"

RUNG · 2024-02-20

Recent studies on interrogatives indicate that some question embedding predicates (QEPs) cannot support strongly exhaustive inferences, contra Groenendijk and Stokhof (1982) (c.f. Berman 1991, Heim 1994, Sharvit 2002). Some verbs that support strongly exhaustive inferences are know, find out, and wonder. Among the predicates that can only support weakly exhaustive inferences we find verbs like surprise, disappoint,realize, and predict n% correctly.Previous views on this problem encode the above distinction either in different lexical semantic properties (see Beck and Rullmann 1999 and Sharvit 2002) or in different selectional restrictions of different QEPs (see Guerzoni 2003), but provide no independent motivation for either. This paper proposes a pragmatic account that improves on the existing proposals in two respects. On the one hand, it provides the independent motivation for the classification of different QEPs, which was missing from earlier approaches. On the other hand, it offers an understanding of a seemingly unrelated long lasting puzzle

NPIs in questions, disjunction and ellipsis

RUNG · 2024-02-21

Acquaintance Relations

Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2022-10-06 · 2 citations

We defend an acquaintance-based semantics for ‘de re’ attitude reports. We begin by surveying the philosophical literature on the logical form of the ‘de re’, with particular attention to how acquaintance relations solve the problem posed by so-called double vision scenarios. We reject the view that cognitive contact with the ‘res’ requires causal interaction: the causal conception of acquaintance is inadequately motivated in the philosophical literature on the ‘de re’. We then turn to other linguistic data. We show that the ‘de re’ analysis is needed to account for certain tense constructions. The success of this application provides a further reason to reject an exclusively causal conception of acquaintance, since the kind of cognitive contact relevant to ‘de re’ attitudes towards times cannot plausibly be causal. We discuss objections to the ‘de re’ analysis of tense, such as the apparent unavailability of double vision scenarios involving times. We consider various additional principles and constraints that further refine the theory’s predictions, and conclude that while further research is needed to fully vindicate the ‘de re’ analysis in this application, it offers the most unified and well-motivated account of the embedded tense data currently on offer.

Belief or consequences

Semantics and Pragmatics · 2022-10-12 · 2 citations

We argue for a new inference-based analysis of belief attribution in which the embedded proposition is inferable from, but need not directly identify, an underlying belief of the subject’s. The analysis accounts for attributions of belief in necessary truths and falsities, overcoming a major difficulty facing Hintikka (1962), and goes beyond Cresswell &amp; von Stechow (1982) in accounting for intuitively valid inferable belief attributions. The analysis is based on a novel subjective I-semantics in which extensions depend dually on extension conditions assigned by a judge, and on the judge’s beliefs about what satisfies those conditions. The interpretation of believe uses syntactic inference over logical formulas, with premises deriving from beliefs of both the attributor and the attributee, and the conclusion derived from the clause embedded under believe. Unlike nearly all prior analyses of belief attribution since Hintikka, our proposal makes no commitment to possible worlds while generating de dicto, de re, de qualitate, de translato and other interpretations, with the only formal semantic ambiguity deriving from what gets raised out of the embedded clause. EARLY ACCESS

On the presuppositional strength of interrogative clauses

Natural Language Semantics · 2021-01-31 · 4 citations

Negative Polarity Items in Definite Superlatives

Linguistic Inquiry · 2020 · 8 citations

• Computer Science
• Linguistics
• Computer Science

Ordinary superlative descriptions are well-known to provide safe harbor to negative polarity items (NPIs), as in the longest book anyone read. What is less well-known is that relative superlative descriptions also sometimes host NPIs, as in the loudest that anyone sang. We observe that this latter pattern is more general than has been previously described. In fact, relative superlatives can license NPIs outside of their own descriptions. On the one hand, we argue that this provides evidence that the superlative adjectives take sentential rather than nominal scope. But on the other, following insights in Howard 2014, we argue that traditional semantic accounts of scope-taking superlatives do not present the right monotonicity profile to account for the NPIs either. A recent, dynamic take on superlative semantics (Bumford 2017) is shown to do better.

Sequence of Tense

2020-11-04 · 2 citations

Two approaches to embedded tense are discussed. One approach recognizes underlying representations with present‐in‐non‐present‐disguise; the other does not. Both approaches attempt to explain the fact that, often, a tense does not make the same semantic contribution in embedded and non‐embedded positions.

Alternative interrogatives and Negative Polarity Items

Snippets · 2020 · 2 citations

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Traditional medicine

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