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Eventive modal projection: the case of Spanish subjunctive relative clauses Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2024-02-19 Luis Alonso-Ovalle, Paula Menéndez-Benito, Aynat Rubinstein
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Force shift: a case study of Cantonese ho2 particle clusters Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2024-02-05 Jess H.-K. Law, Haoze Li, Diti Bhadra
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Direct evidentiality and discourse in Southern Aymara Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2024-01-22 Gabriel Martínez Vera
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Is degree abstraction a parameter or a universal? Evidence from Mandarin Chinese Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2024-01-17 Ying Gong, Elizabeth Coppock
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Quantification, matching and events Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2024-01-11 Richard K. Larson
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When tense shifts presuppositions: hani and monstrous semantics Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2023-12-22 Furkan Dikmen, Elena Guerzoni, Ömer Demirok
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On the roles of anaphoricity and questions in free focus Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2023-11-21 Roni Katzir
The sensitivity of focus to context has often been analyzed in terms of focus-based anaphoric relations between sentences and surrounding discourse. The literature, however, has also noted empirical difficulties for the anaphoric approach, and my goal in the present paper is to investigate what happens if we abandon the anaphoric view altogether. Instead of anaphoric felicity conditions, I propose
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Counterfactual mood in Czech, German, Norwegian, and Russian Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2023-11-21 Kjell Johan Sæbø
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The Slavic suffix -in/-yn as partition shifter Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Olga Kagan
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Experimenting with every American king Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2023-10-26 Poppy Mankowitz
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On fatal competition and the nature of distributive inferences Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2023-09-25 Moshe E. Bar-Lev, Danny Fox
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Deriving presupposition projection in coordinations of polar questions: a reply to Enguehard 2021 Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2023-09-21 Alexandros Kalomoiros
This paper is a response to Enguehard (Natural Language Semantics 29(4):527–578, 2021), who observes that presuppositions project in the same way from coordinations of declaratives and coordinations of polar questions, but existing mechanisms of projection from declaratives (e.g. Schlenker in Theoretical Linguistics 34(3):157–212, 2008, Semantics and Pragmatics 2:1–78, 2009) fail to scale to questions
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The evidential future in Italian Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2023-08-21 Ilaria Frana, Paula Menéndez-Benito
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Remarks on exhaustification and embedded free choice Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2023-08-16 Sam Alxatib
Some sentences that contain disjunctions imply that their disjunct-alternatives are false, while others imply that they are true. Recent work on scalar implicature has been guided by the behavior of such constructions. In this paper I consider examples in which free choice disjunctions (phrases of the form allowed to A or B) appear in various intensional contexts. I discuss the significance of the
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Psycholinguistic evidence for restricted quantification Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2023-08-08 Tyler Knowlton, Paul Pietroski, Alexander Williams, Justin Halberda, Jeffrey Lidz
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Additivity, scalarity and Mandarin Universal wh’s Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2023-07-28 Mingming Liu
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Negating gradable adjectives Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2023-06-09 Chris Collins
In this short paper, I analyze the syntax and semantics of the prefix un- with gradable adjectives like unhappy and compare it to the syntax and semantics of not. Within the framework of Collins and Postal (2014), I propose that un- and not have the same semantics but negate different constituents, accounting for the differences in interpretation.
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Scalarity of the Japanese initial mora-based minimizer: a compositional (lexically unspecified) minimizer and a non-compositional (lexically specified) minimizer Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2023-06-05 Osamu Sawada
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Quantifier Raising out of Mandarin relative clauses Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2023-04-05 Huilei Wang
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Superlative displacement in ‘sandwich’ scenarios Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2023-04-03 Peter Hallman
This article seeks to reconcile the ‘movement’ account of the interpretation of superlative and comparative degree quantifiers with a class of apparent counterexamples. Superlative and comparative degree quantifiers compare the extent to which a target term and alternatives to the target instantiate a gradable property. On the movement analysis, the target and the gradable property are determined by
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On the scalar antonymy of only and even Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2022-12-09 Yael Greenberg
An old observation about the focus sensitive particles only and even is that they are in some sense scalar antonyms. We examine three schematic proposals raised in the literature to capture this observation, namely that only vs. even presuppose that the proposition denoted by their prejacent, p, is lower vs. higher, respectively (A) than what is EXPECTED/the default STANDARD (the ‘mirative/evaluative
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Isn’t there more than one way to bias a polar question? Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2022-12-05 Daniel Goodhue
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Relativized Exhaustivity: mention-some and uniqueness Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2022-05-25 Yimei Xiang
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Finding the force: How children discern possibility and necessity modals Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2022-05-19 Anouk Dieuleveut, Annemarie van Dooren, Ailís Cournane, Valentine Hacquard
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Challenges for independence-driven and context-repair responses to the proviso problem Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2022-04-27 Alex Silk
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Time and evidence in the graded tense system of Mvskoke (Creek) Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2022-04-04 Kimberly Johnson
In recent years, much attention has been given to the puzzling relationship between tense and evidence type found in languages where a single morpheme appears to encode both reference to time and to the evidential source for the assertion. In natural language, tense has long been understood as serving to locate the time at which the proposition expressed by the sentence holds. The two main theories
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Additive free choice items Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2022-04-01 Anamaria Fălăuş, Andreea C. Nicolae
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Scope splitting in Syrian Arabic Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2022-03-28 Peter Hallman
Sentences like Mary needs to make the fewest mistakes on the upcoming test have a ‘split scope’ reading roughly paraphrasable as ‘Mary exceeds all others in terms of how many mistakes she must not make’; that is, her situation is the most precarious. The structural approach to this phenomenon attributes to such sentences a logical form resembling this paraphrase, in which the superlative component
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Number in NPI licensing Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2022-03-23 Luka Crnič
The acceptability of any-DPs in existential modal sentences presents a challenge for theories of NPI licensing: existential modal sentences appear to differ substantially from other environments in which any-DPs are acceptable (in particular, they lack a downward-entailing operator). One approach to this challenge has been to, first, take any-DPs to be subject to an environment-based downward-entailingness
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Enough clauses, (non)finiteness, and modality Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2022-03-22 Thomas Grano
Infinitives are known to encode covert modality in certain environments including infinitival relatives and questions. Beyond these environments, however, the precise distribution and interpretation of infinitival modality remains poorly understood. In that light, this paper investigates infinitive-embedding enough/too sentences like Pat is tall enough to be the thief or Lee is too old to drive. These
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Contrast and verb phrase ellipsis: The case of tautologous conditionals Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2022-03-17 Richard Stockwell
This paper argues that verb phrase ellipsis requires contrast. The central observation is that ellipsis is ungrammatical in tautologous conditionals; e.g., *If John wins, then he does. Ellipsis is correctly ruled out by a focus-based theory of ellipsis (Rooth 1992a,b), but one that crucially imports focus’s requirement for contrast: an elliptical constituent must have an antecedent that is not merely
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Factive islands and questions about propositions Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2022-03-10 Matías Verdecchia
In this squib, I evaluate the contradiction analysis (Abrusán in Natural Language Semantics 19(3):257–321, 2011, in Weak island semantics, 2014) and the necessary infelicity analysis (Oshima in Washio et al. (eds.), New frontiers in artificial intelligence, 2007; Schwarz and Simonenko in Natural Language Semantics 26(3–4):253–279, 2018b) of factive islands in light of a pattern that has not been previously
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On logicality and natural logic Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2021-07-14 Salvatore Pistoia-Reda, Luca San Mauro
In this paper we focus on the logicality of language, i.e. the idea that the language system contains a deductive device to exclude analytic constructions. Puzzling evidence for the logicality of language comes from acceptable contradictions and tautologies. The standard response in the literature involves assuming that the language system only accesses analyticities that are due to skeletons as opposed
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Evidence for generalized quantifier semantics in the interpretation of the English neuter singular pronoun Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2021-07-13 Paul Elbourne
The English pronoun it can anaphorically take on the meaning of a salient generalized quantifier when it occurs in subject position followed by an elided Verb Phrase and (optionally) a VP-level operator. The extent to which theories of pronoun interpretation will have to be altered to take account of this finding will depend on whether the phenomenon is unique to English or part of a crosslinguistic
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The meaning of the tough-construction Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2021-07-13 John Gluckman
A formal semantic analysis of the tough-construction is provided building on the well-known observation that events play a central role. A close look at the semantic characteristics of the class of tough-predicates and the syntactic and semantic properties of nonfinite clauses reveals the link between these pieces, expanding on recent advances in the semantics of clauses (Moulton in Natural selection
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Explaining presupposition projection in (coordinations of) polar questions Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2021-07-12 Émile Enguehard
This article starts off with the observation that in certain cases, presuppositions triggered by an element inside a question nucleus may fail to project. In fact, in what looks like coordinated structures involving polar questions, presupposition projection patterns are exactly parallel to what is observed when the corresponding assertions are coordinated. The article further shows that these facts
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Mandarin wh-conditionals: A dynamic question approach Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2021-05-28 Haoze Li
Mandarin has a special construction widely known as a ‘wh-conditional’, in which both the antecedent clause and the consequent clause are wh-clauses. Wh-conditionals are of interest to linguists because the wh-expressions in a wh-conditional must co-refer. How to make sense of the fusion of a conditional and two wh-clauses, as well as the nature of the co-reference relation, have been long-standing
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Groups versus covers revisited: Structured pluralities and symmetric readings Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2021-05-18 Brian Buccola, Jeremy Kuhn, David Nicolas
A number of natural language constructions seem to provide access to structured pluralities — that is, pluralities of pluralities. A body of semantic work has debated how to model this additional structure and the extent to which it depends on pragmatics. In this article, after controlling for the distinction between ambiguity and underspecification, we present new data showing that structured pluralities
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Slurs and antipresuppositions Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2021-05-05 Nicolás Lo Guercio
It has been observed (Heim in Semantik: Ein internationales Handbuch der zeitgenössischen Forschung, 487–535, 1991) that when there is competition between alternative sentences with different presuppositional strength, use of the weaker alternative triggers an inference, sometimes called an antipresupposition, to the effect that the presupposition of the stronger alternative is not satisfied. Furthermore
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Conditional analysis of clausal exceptives Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2021-04-16 Ekaterina Vostrikova
In this paper I argue that English exceptive constructions introduced by except can be derived from full clauses by ellipsis. I offer a compositional analysis for this clausal exceptive construction. I propose that except introduces quantification over possible situations and the clause following it provides the restriction for this quantification. I show how the analysis developed here derives the
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Presuppositions, implicatures, and contextual equivalence Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2021-04-08 Paul Marty, Jacopo Romoli
Maximize Presupposition! (MP), as originally proposed in Heim (Semantik: Ein internationales Handbuch der zeitgenössischen Forschung, pp. 487–535, 1991) and developed in subsequent works, offers an account of the otherwise mysterious unassertability of a variety of sentences. At the core of MP is the idea that speakers are urged to use a sentence ψ over a sentence ϕ if ψ contributes the same new information
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Japanese free choice items as unconditionals Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2021-03-22 Hiromune Oda
This article examines syntactic and semantic properties of free choice items (FCIs) in Japanese. It is argued that Japanese FCIs, which have been considered to have a wh-item and a scalar focus particle demo, actually involve a clausal structure, which contains a null subject, a copula, and a subjunctive modal/mood. This proposal explains a number of puzzling issues regarding their distribution as
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Oddness, modularity, and exhaustification Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2021-02-09 Guillermo Del Pinal
According to the ‘grammatical account’, scalar implicatures are triggered by a covert exhaustification operator present in logical form. This account covers considerable empirical ground, but there is a peculiar pattern that resists treatment given its usual implementation. The pattern centers on odd assertions like #Most lions are mammals and #Some Italians come from a beautiful country, which seem
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On the presuppositional strength of interrogative clauses Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2021-01-31 Maayan Abenina-Adar, Yael Sharvit
A central question in the study of presuppositions is how a presupposition trigger contributes to the meaning of a complex expression containing it. Two competing answers are found in the literature on quantificational expressions. According to the first, a quantificational expression presupposes that every member of its domain satisfies the presuppositions triggered in its scope, and according to
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Higher-order readings of wh -questions Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2021-01-23 Yimei Xiang
In most cases, a wh-question calls for an answer that names an entity in the set denoted by the extension of the wh-complement. However, evidence from questions with necessity modals and questions with collective predicates argues that sometimes a wh-question must be interpreted with a higher-order reading, in which this question calls for an answer that names a generalized quantifier. This paper investigates
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Still going strong Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2021-01-06 Kai von Fintel, Anthony S. Gillies
In “Must ...stay ...strong!” (von Fintel and Gillies in Nat Lang Semant 18:351–383, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-010-9058-2), we set out to slay a dragon, or rather what we called The Mantra: that epistemic must has a modal force weaker than expected from standard modal logic, that it doesn’t entail its prejacent, and that the best explanation for the evidential feel of must is a pragmatic
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The nature of the semantic stimulus: the acquisition of every as a case study Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2020-12-15 Ezer Rasin, Athulya Aravind
We evaluate the richness of the child’s input in semantics and its relation to the hypothesis space available to the child. Our case study is the acquisition of the universal quantifier every. We report two main findings regarding the acquisition of every on the basis of a corpus study of child-directed and child-ambient speech. Our first finding is that the input in semantics (as opposed to the input
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Only , or , and free choice presuppositions Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2020-11-02 Sam Alxatib
Bar-Lev and Fox (Natl Lang Semant 28:175–223, 2020), B-L&F, redefine the exhaustification operator, Exh, so that it negates innocently excludable (IE) alternatives and asserts innocently includable (II) ones. They similarly redefine the exclusive particle only so that it negates IE-alternatives and presupposes II ones. B-L&F justify their revision of only on the basis of Alxatib’s finding (in: Proceedings
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Plurality and crosslinguistic variation: an experimental investigation of the Turkish plural Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2020-10-29 Agata Renans, Yağmur Sağ, F. Nihan Ketrez, Lyn Tieu, George Tsoulas, Raffaella Folli, Hana de Vries, Jacopo Romoli
In English and many other languages, the interpretation of the plural is associated with an ‘exclusive’ reading in positive sentences and an ‘inclusive’ reading in negative ones. For example, the plural noun tulips in a sentence such as Chicken planted tulips suggests that Chicken planted more than one tulip (i.e., a reading which ‘excludes’ atomic individual tulips). At the same time, however, the
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Desire, belief, and semantic composition: variation in mood selection with desire predicates Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2020-10-22 Paul Portner, Aynat Rubinstein
Mood selection properties of desire verbs provide a rich source of evidence regarding the semantics of propositional attitudes. This paper approaches the topic by providing an analysis of crosslinguistic variation in the selection patterns of the desire verbs ‘want’ and ‘hope’, focusing on Spanish and French. There is no evidence that the meanings of ‘hope’ and ‘want’ differ between these languages
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French polar response particles and neg movement Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2020-08-31 Jérémy Pasquereau
I present new data from European French involving embedded polar response particles (a.k.a. yes/no particles) in response to negative questions and develop a novel proposal which integrates the insights of previous analyses (e.g. Holmberg in Lingua 128:31–50, 2013; Roelofsen and Farkas in Language 91(2):359–414, 2015). The main puzzle has to do with the interpretation of non ‘no’ (bare or followed
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Gather / numerous as a mass/count opposition Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2020-03-13 Jeremy Kuhn
Predicates like gather and ones like be numerous have both been described as ‘collective predicates,’ since they predicate something of a plurality. The two classes of predicates differ, however, with respect to plural quantifiers (e.g. all), which are grammatical with gather-type predicates but ungrammatical with numerous-type predicates. Here, I show that the gather/numerous opposition derives from
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Free choice, simplification, and Innocent Inclusion Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2020-03-12 Moshe E. Bar-Lev, Danny Fox
We propose a modification of the exhaustivity operator from Fox (in: Sauerland and Stateva (eds) Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics, Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp 71–120, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230210752_4) that on top of negating all the Innocently Excludable alternatives affirms all the ‘Innocently Includable’ ones. The main result of supplementing the notion of
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Choice and prohibition in non-monotonic contexts Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2020-03-04 Nicole Gotzner, Jacopo Romoli, Paolo Santorio
Disjunctions in the scope of possibility modals give rise to a conjunctive inference, generally referred to as ‘free choice.’ For example, Emma can take Spanish or Calculus suggests that Emma can take Spanish and can take Calculus. This inference is not valid on standard semantics for modals in combination with a Boolean semantics for disjunction. Hence free choice has sparked a whole industry of theories
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Neg Raising and ellipsis (and related issues) revisited Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2020-02-15 Pauline Jacobson
There have been a variety of arguments over the decades both for and against syntactic Neg Raising (NR). Two recent papers (Jacobson in Linguist Inq 49(3):559–576, 2018; Crowley in Nat Lang Semant 27(1), 1–17, 2019) focus on the interaction of NR effects with ellipsis. These papers examine similar types of data, but come to opposite conclusion: Jacobson shows that the ellipsis facts provide evidence
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Definiteness projection Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2019-12-23 Matthew Mandelkern, Daniel Rothschild
We argue that definite noun phrases give rise to uniqueness inferences characterized by a pattern we call definiteness projection. Definiteness projection says that the uniqueness inference of a definite projects out unless there is an indefinite antecedent in a position that filters presuppositions. We argue that definiteness projection poses a serious puzzle for e-type theories of (in)definites;
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Origins of weak crossover: when dynamic semantics meets event semantics Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2019-12-14 Gennaro Chierchia
Approaches to anaphora generally seek to explain the potential for a DP to covary with a pronoun in terms of a combination of factors, such as (i) the inherent semantics of the antecedent DP (i.e., whether it is indefinite, quantificational, referential), (ii) its scope properties, and (iii) its structural position. A case in point is Reinhart’s classic condition on bound anaphora, paraphrasable as
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Doubling unconditionals and relative sluicing Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2019-11-20 Radek Šimík
Doubling unconditionals are exemplified by the Spanish example Venga quien venga, estaré contento ‘Whoever comes, I’ll be happy’ (lit. ‘Comes who comes, I’ll be happy’). This curious and little studied construction is attested in various forms in a number of Romance and Slavic languages. In this paper, I provide a basic description of these constructions, focusing especially on Spanish, Czech, and
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The * hope-wh puzzle Nat. Lang. Semantics (IF 1.524) Pub Date : 2019-10-23 Wataru Uegaki, Yasutada Sudo
Clause-embedding predicates come in three major varieties: (i) responsive predicates (e.g. know) are compatible with both declarative and interrogative complements; (ii) rogative predicates (e.g. wonder) are only compatible with interrogative complements; and (iii) anti-rogative predicates (e.g. hope) are only compatible with declarative complements. It has been suggested that these selectional properties