The structural approach to alternatives (Katzir in Linguist Philos 30(6):669–690, 2007; Fox and Katzir in Nat Lang Semant 19(1):87–107, 2011; Katzir in Semantics, pragmatics and the case of scalar implicatures, Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp 40–71, 2014) is the most developed attempt in the literature at solving the symmetry problem of scalar implicatures. Problematic data with indirect and particularised scalar implicatures have however been raised (Romoli in Snippets 27:14–15, 2013; Trinh and Haida in Nat Lang Semant 25(4):249–270, 2015). To address these problems, Trinh and Haida (2015) proposed to augment the theory with the Atomicity Constraint. Here we show that this constraint falls short of explaining minimal variants of the original problems, and moreover that it runs into trouble with the inferences of sentences involving gradable adjectives like full and empty. We furthermore discuss how the structural approach suffers at times from the problem of ‘too many lexical alternatives’ pointed out by Swanson (Linguist Philos 33(1):31–36, 2010), and at other times from the opposite problem of ‘too few lexical alternatives’. These three problems epitomise the challenge of constructing just enough alternatives under the structural approach to solve the symmetry problem in full generality. Finally, we also sketch another recent attempt at solving the symmetry problem, Bergen et al. (Semant Pragmat 9(20), 2016), which is based on relative informativity and complexity. We argue that Bergen et al. do not provide a general solution to the symmetry problem either, by pointing to some of the open problematic cases that remain for this approach as well. We conclude that while important progress has been made in the theory of alternatives for scalar implicatures in the last few years, a full solution to the symmetry problem has not yet been attained.

中文翻译：

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对称性问题：当前的理论和前景

替代方法的结构方法（Katzir in Linguist Philos 30（6）：669-690，2007; Fox and Katzir in Nat Lang Semant 19（1）：87-107，2011; Katzir在语义学，语用学和标量蕴涵的情况下） ，Palgrave Macmillan，伦敦，第40–71页，2014年）是解决对称性问题的文献中最发达的尝试。标量含义。然而，提出了带有间接和特定标量含义的问题数据（Romoli，摘录于摘录27：14-15，2013年； Trinh和Haida摘自Nat Lang Semant，25（4）：249-270，2015年）。为了解决这些问题，Trinh和Haida（2015）提出用原子性约束来扩充该理论。在这里，我们表明此约束不足以解释原始问题的最小变种，而且，在涉及可分级形容词（例如完整和空）的句子推论时遇到麻烦。我们还将进一步讨论结构方法如何有时会受到Swanson指出的“太多的词汇选择”问题的困扰（语言学家Philos 33（1）：31-36，2010），而有时又受到相反的问题“很少的词汇选择。这三个问题集中体现了在结构化方法下构造足够多的替代方案以全面解决对称性问题的挑战。最后，我们还概述了解决对称性问题的另一种最新尝试，Bergen等。（Semant Pragmat 9（20），2016），它基于相对的信息性和复杂性。我们认为，卑尔根等。也没有通过指出这种方法仍然存在的一些开放问题案例来提供对称问题的一般解决方案。