Meetings this semester are Thursdays 10-11:30am, and are held in room 32-D831.
Ayaka Sugawara
The English suffix -ish as a degree head
In this talk, I would like to discuss the semantics of the English suffix -ish. Little theoretical work has been done on the nature of the English suffix -ish, whose suffixation is highly productive (see Morris (2009) for descriptive work). Intuitively -ish modifies the degree of the base it appends to. Contrary to this naive view, I will argue that -ish is a degree head of type ??d, ?e, t??, ?e, t?? (cf. “pos” of Kennedy (2007)). I will also discuss the consequences of this analysis on the semantic theory of gradable adjectives, especially their scale structures and the semantics of their positive forms. I will focus on -ish in Adjective-ish, but would like to discuss briefly Adverb-ish (such as now-ish or ?regularly-ish) and Noun-ish (such as childish or toy-ish).
Guillaume Thomas
Mbyá tense
Since I didn’t have time to address the main point of my work on tense in Mbyá during my ling-lunch talk, I will do it during this LFRG session—although I won’t assume that you have been to my ling-lunch talk. (1) and (2) both entail that there is a time before the time of utterance (TU) at which Juan is a teacher, but (2) also entails that Juan is not a teacher at TU, while (1) only implicates it. I propose that -kue is interpreted as a simple past tense in both cases, and that both (1) and (2) implicate that Juan is not a teacher at TU, but that this implicature can be canceled only in (1). During this session, I want to discuss (a) how we can generate this implicature and (b) how we can make sure that it stays in place in (2).
(1) Juan o-iko va?e-kue ñombo?ea.
Juan 3-be REL-PAST teacher
Juan was a teacher.
(2) Juan ñombo?ea-kue
Juan teacher-PAST
Juan is an ex-teacher.
Sarah Ouwayda (USC)
The Mass-Like Behavior of Plurals of Mass
Plural marking, when it occurs on a noun that is typically mass, usually results in a plural count DP (1). This has been used to show the flexibility of nouns’ occurrence in both mass and count contexts and to argue for a universal packager (cf. Pelletier 1975, Chierchia 1998, Borer 2005 inter alia).
1. (much) oil -> (three) oils
In some cases, Levantine Arabic follows suit (2), but in others, the addition of a plural marker (specifically, the sound feminine plural), results in DPs that trigger plural agreement, but do not admit cardinals (3), and allows primarily an amount comparison (in the sense of Barner and Snedeker 2005).
2. (ktiir) zeit —> (tlat) zyuut
(much) oil (three) oil-plb
much oil three oil types
3. (ktiir) zeit —> (*tlat) zayt-eet Tayyb-iin
(much) oil (*three) oil-plf tasty-pl
much oil tasty oil (but not three oils)
The mass-like behavior of this type of mass+pl nouns has been taken to suggest that the plural marking is epiphenominal (Tsoulas 2006, for Greek), that the plural marking is lexical/idiosyncratic (Alexiadou 2010, for Greek), or that mass/count is not a strictly binary distinction (Acquaviva 2008, 2010, for Levantine Arabic).
I show that in Levantine Arabic, such DPs (a) do not allow kind or generic readings, (b) must be specific, (c) do not occur with measure words (e.g. ‘a cup of’, ‘a bag of’), and (d) do not allow comparison unless definite. Based on these and other restrictions independent of the mass-count distinction, I propose that the same thing (specifically, that DPs like those in (3) are count but are also specified for quantity) is responsible both for (a)-(d) and for the misleading mass-like behavior.
Alex Silk (University of Michigan/MIT)
Information-Sensitivity in Deontic ‘Ought’ and ‘Must’
There is a growing literature on how deontic modals can be interpreted with respect to bodies of information or evidence. However, previous treatments of information-sensitivity in deontic modals focus exclusively on ‘ought’ and ignore important differences between weak necessity modals like ‘ought’ and strong necessity modals like ‘must’. In this paper I attempt to delineate and capture such differences in information-sensitivity between ‘ought’ and ‘must’. Drawing on and revising a suggestion by Aynat Rubinstein, I argue that ‘ought’ and ‘must’ exhibit different conventional signals vis-à-vis common ground assumptions: ‘ought’, unlike ‘must’, conventionally signals that the truth and acceptance of the necessity claim—currently and throughout the evolution of the conversation—relies on certain assumptions not currently established in the global discourse context. This hypothesis helps generate correct predictions concerning the contrasting felicity conditions of ‘ought’- and ‘must’- sentences and meanings of ‘ought’- and ‘must’- conditionals. It also correctly predicts that certain types of modus ponens violations can occur because of the presence of ‘ought’ but not because of the presence of ‘must’.
Speaker: Mitcho Erlewine
Association with traces and the copy theory of movement (practice talk for GLOW)
In this talk I give a principled account for the observation that exclusive only must associate with a focus within its complement (Tancredi’s (1990) Principle of Lexical Association; PLA), utilizing the copy theory of movement and associated work on the interpretation of traces. Previous explanations for this fact come from the idea that traces cannot be F-marked. I argue contra Beaver and Clark (2008) that traces (lower copies of movement chains) can in fact be F-marked and that this is exemplified in F-marking contained in quantifiers which undergo QR. Instead, PLA effects arise through the interpretation of the predicate in both the higher and lower copies of of the moved constituent.
Wataru Uegaki
Japanese alternative questions are matrix disjunctions of Q-marked clauses
Authors in the previous literature disagree on whether ellipsis is involved in alternative questions and (if it is) how large the elided material is (e.g., Han & Romero 2004, Beck & Kim 2006, Pruitt & Roelofsen 2011). In this talk, I present my ongoing analysis of Japanese alternative questions, and argue that they are best analyzed as disjunctions of Q-marked clauses with ellipsis in the first disjunct. The argument is based on the restricted syntactic distribution of alternative questions in Japanese: DP disjunction under the Q morpheme “ka” does not induce alternative question reading (i.e. yes/no-question reading is obligatory) while VP disjunction under “ka” allows (in fact strongly prefers) alternative question reading, as exemplified in (i) below.
(i)
a. watashi-wa [Mary-ga [John ka Sue]-o yonda-ka] shitteiru
1sg-Top Mary-Nom John Disj Sue-Acc called-Q know
*’I know whether it is John or Sue that Mary called.’ (*alt Q)
‘I know whether or not Mary called [John or Sue].’ (Y/N Q)b. watashi-wa [Mary-ga [John-o yonda ka Sue-o yonda]-ka] shitteiru
1sg-Top Mary-Nom John-Acc called Disj/Q Sue-Acc called-Q know
‘I know whether it is John or Sue that Mary called.’ (alt Q)
? ‘I know whether or not Mary called [John or Sue].’ (? Y/N Q)
I show that this fact straightforwardly falls out as a consequence of a restriction on the deletion operation in the first disjunct, given a unified semantic analysis of the disjunction marker “ka” and the Q-particle “ka” as a polyadic operator that creates alternative possibilities (cf., e.g., Zimmermann 2000, Alonso-Ovalle 2006). If time allows, I would also like to talk about possible sources of cross-linguistic variation in the distribution of alternative questions.
Igor Yanovich
Modal hopes and fears: A diachronic study
In Modern English, may and might are generally modals of epistemic possibility and permission. That, however, cannot explain its uses in sentences like (1) or (2) (from BNC).
(1) The contrast illustrates that music moves on, the NME moves on, grudges don’t last forever, and I hope this may be so for at least another 40 years.
(2) Omar learnt that he was related to the Sultan, and we hoped that we might persuade him to provide us with a guide to Aussa.
One possible explanation of such facts is to say that may/might in such examples is a mood indicator rather than a full-fledged modal, cf. Portner 1997. But, as Portner notes, the mood-indicating may is not productive in the present-day English. If the mood analysis is correct, then it should be possible to explain the present-day distribution of may in historical terms.
In this talk, I will discuss how may/might first started to appear in the complements of verbs hope and fear, and what consequences that has for our understanding of modal meaning development in general, and of the ‘mood hypothesis’ concerning today’s distribution in particular.
Nadine Bade (Harvard, Tübingen)
Obligatory Presuppositions and Exhaustive Interpretation
I will provide an analysis for the obligatory occurrence of some presupposition triggers in certain contexts which is based on formal non-Gricean approaches to implicatures (Chierchia (2004), Fox & Hackl (2006), Fox (2007), Chierchia, Fox & Spector (2011)). Presupposition triggers are obligatory in contexts in which it is clear that their presupposition is met. Examples of the phenomenon are given below.
(1) John came to the store.
(a) # Bill came to the store.
(b) Bill came to the store, too.
(2) Yesterday Jenna went ice skating.
(a) #She went ice skating today.
(b) She went ice skating today, again.
(3)
(a) The sun is shining.
(b) # A sun is shining.
(4) It is raining.
(a) #John believes it.
(b) John knows it.
Usually these facts are explained by exploiting a principle “Maximize Presupposition” (Heim (1991), Schlenker (2006), Sauerland (2008b), Percus (2006), Chemla (2008), Singh (2011)). Most of these proposals assume that lexical items or sentences are ordered on a scale with regard to their presuppositional strength. They predict that the sentence or item that is presuppositionally weaker will lead to a specific inference called “antipresupposition” or “implicated presupposition”. I argue that the obligatory insertion of a presupposition trigger follows from the fact that people have to interpret exhaustively in certain contexts. I assume that the trigger is inserted to avoid a contradiction that arises due to the implicature that is the result of this exhaustive interpretation. The present account is hence based on an independently needed mechanism and does not need to assume lexical scales of presuppositional strength or inferences with special status. Moreover, it provides an explanation for the fact that most triggers are not obligatory under negation which “Maximize Presupposition” fails to account for.
Anastasia Smirnova (Tufts University)
Evidentiality in Bulgarian: epistemic modality and temporal relations
Bulgarian has a designated morphological paradigm that expresses evidentiality, a linguistic category that encodes the source of information (Aikhenvald 2004). In this talk, I discuss the properties of the Bulgarian evidential system from a cross-linguistic perspective and present a formal semantic analysis of the Bulgarian evidential construction. The analysis is motivated by a number of facts that went unnoticed in the literature on evidentiality in Bulgarian and that cannot be explained by the previous analyses (Izvorski 1997; Sauerland and Schenner 2007; Koev 2011). First, I show that the same evidential construction in Bulgarian can express direct, reportative, and inferential information sources. These data not only challenge the current analysis of the Bulgarian evidential as indirect (Izvorski 1997), but also argue against the assumption that evidential systems cross-linguistically distinguish between direct and indirect information sources (Willett 1988; Aikhenvald 2004). Second, I show that the Bulgarian evidential expresses temporal meaning: it functions as a relative tense. Finally, while I retain the insights of Izvorski’s modal analysis, I substantially change the modal component to account for reports of false information in reportative contexts (I analyze them as reports de dicto). Ultimately, I argue that the evidential construction in Bulgarian has a tripartite meaning: it encodes information source, temporality and epistemic modality. This paper addresses the question about the ontological status of evidentiality in relation to epistemic modality and contributes to the understanding of the semantics of evidentials cross-linguistically (cf. Faller 2002, McCready and Ogata 2007, Matthewson et al. 2007) by showing how the interaction of the modal and the temporal components affects the distribution and meaning of evidentials in discourse.
Yasutada Sudo
Gender Presuppositions and Anaphora in Quantified Sentences
Presupposition projection in quantified sentences has been known as a recalcitrant problem for theories of presupposition projection, and many different accounts have been put forward (Karttunen & Peter 1979, Heim 1983, van der Sandt 1992, Krahmer 1998, Beaver 2001, Beaver & Krahmer 1998, Schlenker 2008, 2009, George 2008, Fox 2008, 2010, Chemla 2009, Sudo, Romoli, Hackl & Fox 2012). I will show that the gender presuppositions of bound pronouns pose a serious challenge to the existing theories of presupposition projection, and propose an analysis that solves the problem using the mechanism of cross-sentential anaphora. I will also claim that my analysis accounts for the different projection properties of different quantificational determiners in a uniform way.
