Modelling Selectional Super-Flexibility

The selectional flexibility of some attitude verbs (e.g. know, realize, report) between declarative and interrogative complements has been the subject of much recent work in formal semantics. However, little attention has been paid to verbs (e.g. see, remember, observe) that embed an even wider variety of complements (incl. subject-controlled gerundive small clauses and concrete object-denoting DPs). Since the familiar types of some of these complements resist an embedding in the type for questions [= sets of propositions], these verbs challenge Theiler, Roelofsen & Aloni’s (2018) uniform interpretation strategy for the complements of responsive verbs. My paper answers this challenge by uniformly interpreting the different complements of selectionally super-flexible verbs like remember in a generalized type for questions, viz. as parametrized centered questions. It shows that the resulting semantics captures the intuitive entailment pattern of these verbs.

(Non-)factive (non-)islands and meaning-based approaches

A key question in the literature on factive Weak Islands has been whether the effect is syntactic or semantic. Since Szabolcsi & Zwarts (1993), a key argument for the semantic nature of Weak Islands is the observation that the effect requires not just factivity, but also that the property described by the embedded clause is non-iterable with respect to the extracted argument (uniqueness). We present twocaveats concerning the notion of factivity needed in meaning-based approaches. First, we present novel data on factive non-islands showing that certain lexically factive verbs do not (always) lead to islandhood when combined with uniqueness. Second, recalling data from Cattell (1978), we argue that certain non-factive islands can be captured by the same meaning-based explanation. The emerging picture is that lexical factivity of the embedding verb is neither necessary nor sufficient to induce weak islands in combination with uniqueness; rather, what matters is whether or not there is a contextual entailment, pragmatic or lexical, that the complement proposition is true.

A post-suppositional account of associative plurals in Burmese

I investigate the interpretation of the associative plural tó/dó in Colloquial Burmese based on original fieldwork. I report that in a conjunction of associative plurals, there is an available reading where the named individuals in the conjunction internally satisfy the plural requirement. I call this the internal plural reading, a reading which has not been previously observed in the literature. I propose that the named individuals in a conjunction of associative plurals can satisfy each other's plural requirement if the Burmese associative plural has a meaning that ixs post-suppositional. The proposal is inspired by Brasoveanu & Szabolcsi 2013's treatment of conjunctions of additive phrases in some languages, but our proposals crucially differ in that associative plurals contribute assertive meaning rather than not-at-issue meaning.

The dual life of embedded CPs: Evidence from Russian čto-clauses

With the data from clauses with the complementizer čto in Russian, I argue that embedded finite clauses with the same morphosyntactic appearance can receive two different denotations depending on the argument that they modify. I show that čto-clauses can combine with both nouns like mysl’ ‘thought’ and nouns like situacija ‘situation’, and that they do not have the same interpretation in these two cases. I propose that when čto-clauses combine with predicates of contentful individuals (like mysl’ ‘thought’), they describe the propositional content that these individuals have (Moltmann 1989, Kratzer 2006, Moulton 2015, a.o.). However when they combine with predicates of situations (like situacija ‘situation’), they provide the proposition that these situations exemplify. I furthermore show that the two meanings of čto-clauses can be detected when they occur with verbs as well, and sketch out a more decompositional view of how the two interpretations arise based on comparison with -(n)un-clauses that modify nouns in Korean.

Zero, Null Individuals, and Nominal Semantics in Cantonese

It has been convincingly argued that English zero provides evidence for introducing null individuals into the ontology of natural language (Bylinina & Nouwen 2018). We examine ‘zero’ in Cantonese, where it provides evidence that such null individuals are a matter of crosslinguistic variation. Cantonese zero has a more restricted distribution. It occurs widely in a number of contexts, but it is systematically ruled out with ordinary classifiers. These facts, coupled with assumptions about the nature of measurement and nominal semantics, demonstrate despite its extensive use in the language, zero is impossible in precisely the uses that require null individuals. Cantonese seems to be telling us that such null individuals are simply absent from its ontology, implying an interesting difference in natural language metaphysics between the languages—and perhaps a different perspective on what theoretical shape crosslinguistic variation can take.

Contextual restrictions on cumulativity

This paper revisits the semantic variability of sentences with simple plural (in)definites in English and German, which permit distributive, cumulative and paired-cover construals. I argue that this variability reflects context-dependency rather than LF ambiguity (Schwarzschild 1996) and that the selection of a particular construal in context is driven by the QUD in the same way as the choice between maximal and non-maximal construals of plural definites (Malamud 2012; Križ 2015; Križ & Spector 2020). I then develop a new semantics for plural predication on which non-distributive and non-maximal construals form a natural class. The system extends the idea that non-maximality involves truth-value gaps (e.g. Križ 2015) to non-distributive construals by making use of Schmitt’s (2019) ‘plural projection’ framework, in which plural sentences involve special composition rules.

Q-particles in embedded declaratives, mood, and clausal complementation

Q-particles are functional items that are used to form alternative-related constructions. This paper investigates a hitherto understudied use of the Japanese Q-particle ka in which it occurs immediately below the declarative complementizer and imposes constraints on the doxastic state of the attitude holder. I show that this use of ka is licensed only under a limited range of attitude predicates, and once licensed, it encodes the presupposition that the attitude holder is 'uncertain' regarding the truth value of the proposition denoted by the embedded sentence.

Imprecision, personae, and pragmatic reasoning

Recent work at the interface of semantics and sociolinguistics showed that listeners reason about the semantic/pragmatic properties of linguistic utterances to draw social inferences about the speaker (Acton and Potts 2014; Beltrama 2018; Jeong 2021). These findings raise the question of whether reverse effects exist as well, i.e., whether (and how) social meanings can also impact the interpretation of semantic/pragmatic meanings. Using (im)precision as a case study, we provide experimental evidence that (i) numerals receive stricter interpretations when utteredbyNerdy(vs. Chill) speakers; and that (ii) this effect is stronger for comprehenders who don’t (strongly) identify with the speaker, suggesting that pragmatic reasoning is crucially shaped by social information about both the speaker and the comprehender. These findings suggest that different layers of meanings inform one another in a bi-directional fashion – i.e., semantic information can invite social inferences, and Misocial information can guide meaning interpretation.

Toward a unified semantics for English "either"

This paper proposes that the additive and disjunctive uses of English either share a semantic core. Formulated in Inquisitive Semantics, this core involves a requirement that either apply to an inquisitive proposition, which accounts for either’s co-occurrence with disjunction. It also includes an additive presupposition that is more flexible than has previously been assumed in the literature, which allows the analysis to account for novel data in which additive either conveys that a proposition is unexpected or undesirable. The inability of either to appear in alternative questions is also pointed out and accounted for.

Connoisseurial Contradictions: Expertise modulates faultless disagreement

We report the results of an experiment investigating faultless disagreement by manipulating the relative expertise of the interlocutors. Our findings show that expertise differences affect judgments of faultless disagreement. We discuss ramifi- cations for prior accounts, and propose a novel account of faultless disagreement in a relativist framework making reference to standards of taste.