Multiple Sluicing, Scope, and Superiority: Consequences for Ellipsis Identity

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 781-812 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hadas Kotek ◽  
Matthew Barros
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Scalar Implicatures ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
Question Under Discussion ◽  
The Common ◽  
Semantic Identity ◽  
Context Of Utterance

This article defends a semantic identity account of ellipsis licensing. The argument comes from examples of multiple sluicing, especially from Russian. Concentrating on antecedents that contain two quantified statements, we uncover a surprising asymmetry: surface scope antecedents can license a multiple sluice, but inverse scope antecedents cannot. We explain this finding in terms of semantic accounts of ellipsis licensing, where ellipsis is licensed when the sluice corresponds to an (implicit) question under discussion. We show that QUDs cannot be computed from the truth-conditional content of the antecedents alone; instead, they must be computed only after (scalar) implicatures have been calculated and added to the common ground, along with the context of utterance. We further discuss the commitments required of syntactic/LF identity accounts of ellipsis licensing in order to accommodate multiple sluicing with quantified antecedents, and argue that such accounts are practically untenable.

The Semantics of Evidentials

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Murray
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Formal Semantics ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
The Common ◽  
Issue Content

This book gives a compositional, truth‐conditional, crosslinguistic semantics for evidentials set in a theory of the semantics for sentential mood. Central to this semantics is a proposal about a distinction between what propositional content is at‐issue, roughly primary or proffered, and what content is not‐at‐issue. Evidentials contribute not‐at‐issue content, more specifically what I will call a not‐at‐issue restriction. In addition, evidentials can affect the level of commitment a sentence makes to the main proposition, contributed by sentential mood. Building on recent work in the formal semantics of evidentials and related phenomena, the proposed semantics does not appeal to separate dimensions of illocutionary meaning. Instead, I argue that all sentences make three contributions: at‐issue content, not‐at‐issue content, and an illocutionary relation. At‐issue content is presented, made available for subsequent anaphora, but is not directly added to the common ground. Not‐at‐issue content directly updates the common ground. The illocutionary relation uses the at‐issue content to impose structure on the common ground, which, depending on the clause type (e.g., declarative, interrogative), can trigger further updates. Empirical support for this proposal comes from Cheyenne (Algonquian, primary data from the author’s fieldwork), English, and a wide variety of languages that have been discussed in the literature on evidentials.

Lying and Fiction

2018 ◽  
pp. 302-314
Author(s):  
Emar Maier
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Semantic Framework ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
The Common ◽  
Maxim Of Quality

Lying and fiction both involve the deliberate production of statements that fail to obey Grice’s first Maxim of Quality (“do not say what you believe to be false”). The question thus arises if we can provide a uniform analysis for fiction and lies. This chapter discusses the similarities, but also some fundamental differences between lying and fiction. It argues that there is little hope for a satisfying account within a traditional truth-conditional semantic framework. Rather than immediately moving to a fully pragmatic analysis involving distinct speech acts of fiction-making and lying, the chapter first explores how far we get with the assumption that both are simply assertions, analyzed in a Stalnakerian framework, i.e., as proposals to update the common ground.

The Difference between Lying and Misleading

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Stokke
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
What Is Said ◽  
Conversational Implicatures ◽  
The World ◽  
Question Under Discussion ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Prosodic Focus

The notions of what is said and assertion, as relative to questions under discussion, are used to provide an account of the lying-misleading distinction. The chapter argues that utterances are sometimes interpreted relative to the so-called Big Question, roughly paraphrased by “What is the world like?” This observation is shown to account for the fact that, when conveying standard conversational implicatures, what is asserted is likewise proposed for the common ground. The chapter applies the resulting account of the lying-misleading distinction to ways of lying and misleading with incomplete predicates, possessives, presuppositions, pronouns, and prosodic focus. A formal notion of contextual questionentailment is defined which shows when it is possible to mislead with respect to a question under discussion while avoiding outright lying.

Echoicity and contrast in Spanish conditionals

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-635
Author(s):  
Elena Castroviejo ◽  
Laia Mayol
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Simple Analysis ◽  
Contrastive Topic ◽  
Pragmatic Function ◽  
Pragmatic Reasoning ◽  
Question Under Discussion ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One ◽  
Joint Occurrence

Abstract This paper is concerned with a conditional construction in Spanish, which we call echoic contrastive conditional, ecc for short. In eccs, the consequent is entailed, the antecedent echoes the content of a previous assertion, and both antecedent and consequent are marked with a Contrastive Topic. Our goal is to fit these properties in a formal explanation compatible with a simple analysis of conditionals. We claim that eccs are a subtype of biscuit conditional, in that antecedent and consequent are independent (i.e. do not express a hypothetical relation). Additionally, we assume that pragmatic reasoning has to explain why a conditional is used to express an adversative relation between the two clauses. First, a proposition that has already been proposed to increase the Common Ground is placed in the antecedent of a conditional in which there is no hypothetical relation between p and q. Thus, the addressee needs to reason as to the pragmatic function the speaker wants to achieve. Second, the Contrastive Topic marking signals that both conjuncts are answers to a multiple wh-question, proposed by the speaker as the current Question Under Discussion (QUD). Third, the answer provided by the second conjunct is a stronger argument for the speaker’s communicative goal than the one provided by the first conjunct. The joint occurrence of echoicity, lack of dependence and Contrastive Topic marking leads to an adversative rhetorical relation between the conjuncts.

Information Structure and the Landscape of (Non-)at-issue Meaning

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Horn
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Category Membership ◽  
Conventional Implicature ◽  
Variable Strength ◽  
Nature Of Information ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
The Common ◽  
Issue Content

This article examines cases that illustrate the relation of information structure to truth-conditional semantics, grammatical form, and assertoric force. Before discussing the interaction between information structure and (non-)at-issue meaning, it considers the nature of information and what constitutes information. It then looks at two aspects of the common ground, common ground (CG) content and CG management, as well as the criteria of category membership. The article also explores the varying degrees of at-issueness, the role of rhetorical opposition andbutclauses, as well as the variable strength of at-issue content. The landscape of non-at-issue meaning is presented, and the distinction between conventional implicature and assertorically inert entailments is highlighted using a range of distributional diagnostics. The article concludes by analysing the relation between structural focus and exhaustivity using the semantic and pragmatic approaches.

scholarly journals Discourse update at the service of mirativity effects: the case of the Discursive Dative

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal ◽  
Nora Boneh
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Inclusion Relation ◽  
Classic Model ◽  
Speech Event ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
The Common ◽  
Discourse Management

The classic model of conversation based on the Common Ground (CG), introduced by Karttunen (1974), Lewis (1979) and Stalnaker (1978), was shown to be insufficient for accounting for various conversational phenomena (inter alia Portner 2004, 2007, Farkas & Bruce 2009, Murray 2014). This paper further strengthens this line by analyzing a type of non-truth conditional non-core dative termed the Discursive Dative (DD) as a discourse management device (Krifka 2008, Repp 2013). The DD signals that the asserted proposition p constitutes an exception to a normative generalization believed by the speaker to be shared by the speech event participants. In order to capture the notion of exception we propose to divide the CG into two sets of worlds, those consistent with previous assertions and their presuppositions (CGA) and those consistent with generalizations (CGG). The DD signals a non-inclusion relation between the asserted proposition and the CGG. This enables us to distinguish between different types of mirativity effects, by drawing a distinction between adding a proposition p that was not previously in the speaker’s expectation-set (inter alia DeLancey 1997, 2001, Rett 2009, Peterson 2013, Rett & Murray 2013) and the present case of the DD, where p can very well be in the speaker’s expectation-set, but objectively expected that ~p. 

Contrast, Verum Focus and Anaphora: The Case of et pourtant si/non in French

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-41
Author(s):  
JOAN BUSQUETS
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Modal Operator ◽  
Question Under Discussion ◽  
The Common

This study examines the anaphoric status of the sequence et pourtant si/non in French. This sequence displays some properties not only of TP-Ellipsis but also of propositional anaphora. Consequently, the antecedent of this sequence can be recovered by means of either type of anaphoric process. I argue that the salient and relevant antecedent is constrained by the presence of a modalized environment. I claim that the discursive marker pourtant is assimilated to a modal operator (Jayez 1988, Martin 1987) expressing discourse contrast between two propositions anchored in two possible worlds that are not contradictory. Polarity Particles (POLPARTS) involved in this sequence are analyzed as emphasizing the truth of a proposition. As such, they are conveying semantic contrast between two polarities, that of a salient and accessible discourse antecedent and that of the missing part after et pourtant si/non. This is how POLPARTS upgrade the Common Ground. I develop a focus-based account for Verum Focus, building on alternatives along the lines of Hardt & Romero (2004). I suggest that the scope of an epistemic operator (Romero & Han 2004) and the conditions of use are relevant in order to reconstruct the adequate antecedent, which is not possible in an analysis based solely on lexical insertion and upgrading the Question Under Discussion (qud) by conditions governing the felicitous use of et pourtant si/non.

Can Groups Assert That P?

2019 ◽  
pp. 326-344
Author(s):  
Deborah Tollefsen
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Constitutive Rule ◽  
The Past ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Common ◽  
Declarative Statement ◽  
John Macfarlane

When a group or institution issues a declarative statement, what sort of speech act is this? Is it the assertion of a single individual (perhaps the group’s spokesperson or leader) or the assertion of all or most of the group members? Or is there a sense in which the group itself asserts that p? If assertion is a speech act, then who is the actor in the case of group assertion? These are the questions this chapter aims to address. Whether groups themselves can make assertions or whether a group of individuals can jointly assert that p depends, in part, on what sort of speech act assertion is. The literature on assertion has burgeoned over the past few years, and there is a great deal of debate regarding the nature of assertion. John MacFarlane has helpfully identified four theories of assertion. Following Sandy Goldberg, we can call these the attitudinal account, the constitutive rule account, the common-ground account, and the commitment account. I shall consider what group assertion might look like under each of these accounts and doing so will help us to examine some of the accounts of group assertion (often presented as theories of group testimony) on offer. I shall argue that, of the four accounts, the commitment account can best be extended to make sense of group assertion in all its various forms.

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