This squib revisits observations on disjunctions with conflicting presuppositions. I argue that the major semantic theories of presupposition projection do not predict their behavior in such cases in a satisfactory way. Two possible reactions are discussed, although both face a potential concern.
While factive belief reports (x knows p) are said to presuppose p, Holton (2017) suggests that no language shows the opposite: there appear to be no CON-TRAFACTIVE belief verbs presupposing not-p. Recent work seeks to explain why not. In this squib, I suggest that a contrafactive could be defined in two different ways: (i) it could require not-p (i.e., that all worlds in the Context Set are not worlds); or (ii) it could require that the Common Ground is compatible with not (i.e., that some worlds in the Context Set are not-p worlds). So far no verb of type (i) has been demonstrated, but those of type (ii) arguably do exist-for example, Mandarin yiw & eacute;i, analyzed by Glass (2023). Refining the typology of (un)attested belief verbs, the question of "Why are there no contrafactives?" becomes: "Why there belief verbs requiring that p is or is not Common Ground, but none requiring that not-p is Common Ground?"
Theories of counterfactuals agree on the use of a comparative similarity relation, but disagree about the quantificational force of counterfactual modals. This study reports findings from two experiments designed to evaluate the predictions of three prominent approaches: universal theories, homogeneity theories, and single-world selection theories (supplemented with supervaluations over selection functions). To differentiate the predictions of these theories, we examined counterfactual sentences embedded under various quantifiers and elicited graded truth-value judgments from speakers. The results provide empirical support for selection-based theories, while posing challenges to universal and homogeneity approaches. Additionally, we argue that a more recent implicature-based theory also fails to align with our findings. We discuss the broader implications of these results, including the similarities and differences between counterfactuals and plural definites.
Mitrovic & Sauerland (2014, 2016) claim that, across languages, DP-conjunction decomposes into [JP [MuP [DP1 D] MU] [J'J [MuP [DP2 D] MU]]]. Their account, when combined with the independently motivated assumption that children better comprehend utterances which display a greater degree of 1-to-1 mapping between form and meaning (van Hout 2008, Guasti et al. 2023: a.o.), predicts that sentences where only J or MU are pronounced should be harder to comprehend relative to sentences where both J and MU are realized. We conducted an experiment testing this prediction by investigating children's comprehension of conjunctive expressions in Georgian and Hungarian. While, for Hungarian, we did not find any differences between the types of conjunctive expressions, for Georgian, we found evidence that J-MU expressions were harder for children to comprehend than J or MU expressions. Our results challenge the account by Mitrovic & Sauerland (2014, 2016) and cannot be captured by other existing accounts of conjunctive expressions either (Szabolcsi 2015, Haslinger et al. 2019).
Existential Free Choice Items (EFCIs) are interpreted as existential quantifiers in downward entailing contexts, but contribute stronger truth conditions when embedded under modals. When unembedded, their behavior differs: while Romanian vreun is ungrammatical (Falaus 2014), other EFCIs are grammatical and convey modality (Alonso-Ovalle & Menendez-Benito 2015b). Farsi yek-i DPs instantiate a new profile: they pattern with other EFCIs in downward entailing and modal contexts, but differ in unembedded contexts, where they are grammatical, but do not convey modality. The paper derives this profile within an alternative-and exhaustification-based analysis of EFCIs (Chierchia 2013). Under this framework, EFCIs introduce two types of alternatives: scalar and (pre-exhaustified) domain alternatives. The behavior of yek-i DPs argues for the independence of the two types of alternatives and the splitting of scalar and domain exhaustification.
This paper presents an intensional account of anaphoric accessibility, providing a unified analysis of anaphora with antecedents under negation and non- veridical operators. These include cases with double negation, bathroom-disjunctions, and modal subordination, which have previously received disparate analyses. Classic dynamic approaches (Kamp 1981, Heim 1982, Groenendijk & Stokhof 1991) miss the generalization that anaphora is possible whenever the antecedent referent exists in the local context, and they encounter a look-ahead problem. While no previous account addresses both issues, this work resolves them in a unified way. Building on analyses of modal subordination (Stone 1999, Brasoveanu 2006), the paper introduces a flat-update dynamic semantics, where expressions with the potential to introduce a discourse referent do so globally, regardless of their embedding context. Constraints on anaphora are derived based on discourse consistency and a pronominal existential inference interpreted relative to possible worlds in the local context. The analysis uses intensional representations of discourse referents, which store information about their embedding context, and its relationship to speaker commitments, explaining constraints imposed by negation and other non- veridical operators in terms of presuppositions about discourse referents.
In this paper, we formulate a new problem for any account of Free Choice (FC) inferences, which we dub FC with anaphora. According to the classical FC inference schema, given a sentence of the form Q(0 boolean OR t/), one can infer Q0 and Qt/. FC with anaphora involves cases where an anaphoric dependency spans 0 boolean OR t/. Anaphora is heavily constrained in disjunctions, but a negative existential statement in the initial disjunct can license a pronoun in the latter disjunct - so called bathroom disjunctions, for example, "Either there's no bathroom in this house, or it's in a funny place". We show that embedding a bathroom disjunction under an existential modal gives rise to a FC inference that doesn't follow from the classical schema - since the schema is stated in terms of the individual disjuncts, any information about anaphoric dependencies between disjuncts is lost. In order to capture FC with anaphora, we develop a new semantic account couched in the framework of Bilateral Update Semantics. We also introduce several related problems involving anaphora and inferences which we characterize as involving simplification more generally.
This short contribution addresses the question of whether distributivity and maximality are tied together in natural language quantification - and thus, more generally, the issue of which semantic properties are obligatorily correlated. It is well-known that quantifiers like English all require maximality but permit non-distributivity, but does the inverse case exist as well, i.e., are there distributive quantifiers that permit non-maximality? We argue that for some speakers, the German distance-distributive element jeweils does not require maximality, and contrasts in this respect with the DP-internal distributive quantifier jed- ('every','each') and its distance-distributive counterpart.
This paper introduces a novel scope paradox. Providing data from Farsi, I show that indefinites in the surface syntactic scope of negated intensional operators yield a reading in which the indefinite appears to take wider scope over the negation, and narrow scope with respect to the intensional operator. Genuine generalized quantifiers, in contrast, do not yield such readings. The uniqueness of indefinites in giving rise to such wide pseudo-scope de dicto readings, which are also found within a simple clause, provides evidence that indefinites differ from generalized quantifiers, not only in their ability to take exceptional scope across clause boundaries, but also in their local scopal properties. I argue that the existence of such wide pseudo-scope de dicto readings not only poses a problem for the generalized quantifier view of indefinites, but also for any approach that takes indefinites to scope via syntactic movement. In-situ accounts of indefinites, on the other hand, can straightforwardly account for the new data, without over-generating wide scope de dicto readings (a.k.a. the "fourth readings") which are widely believed to be impossible (von Fintel & Heim 2011, Keshet & Schwarz 2019, Elliott 2023). I argue that an account in terms of world-Skolemized choice functions is more successful in accounting for the full pattern of the wide pseudo-scope de dicto reading in Farsi, as well as cross-linguistic variation in the availability of such readings. EARLY ACCESS
We start with an observation about implicit quantifier domain restriction: certain implicit restrictions (e.g., restricting objects by location and time) appear to be more natural and widely available than others (e.g., restricting objects by color, aesthetic, or historical properties). Our aim is to explain why this is. That is, we aim to explain why some implicit domain restriction possibilities are available by default. We argue that, regardless of their other explanatory virtues, extant pragmatic and metasemantic frameworks leave this question unanswered. We then motivate a partially nativist account of domain restriction that involves a minimal view of joint planning around broad shared goals about navigating and influencing our environments augmented with cognitive heuristics that facilitate these. Finally, we sketch how the view can be extended to account for the ways non-default restriction possibilities become available when conversationalists have shared idiosyncratic goals.
Intensional operators are often treated as quantifiers over possible worlds, parallel to the treatment of determiners as quantifiers over individuals. Individuals introduced in intensional contexts cannot serve as antecedents to later pronouns as easily as those introduced in (merely) quantificational contexts, though. For instance, a quantified sentence like Everyone is eating a cheeseburger may be felicitously followed by an anaphoric statement like They are large , where they refers to the totality of cheeseburgers being eaten. However, as Stone (1999) points out, the quite similar Andrea might be eating a cheeseburger does not support later anaphoric references such as It is large or They are large . Stone (1999), Stone & Hardt (1999), and Brasoveanu (2010) solve this problem by restricting the value of pronouns: in their systems, a pronoun presupposes that its referent(s) exist in the world of evaluation, ruling out anaphora from non-veridical intensional contexts. And yet, we show in this paper (i) cases where such anaphora is disallowed even when the pronoun's referents clearly exist and (ii) cases where such anaphora is indeed allowed, even though the pronoun's referents might not exist. We argue instead that intensional anaphora is best captured using a description-based , rather than a value-based account. We propose that a pronoun presupposes that its corresponding antecedent description is instantiated in each world of the context set. For instance, there must be a cheeseburger being eaten by Andrea in every candidate world of the context set in order for It is large to be felicitous after Andrea might be eating a cheeseburger . We implement our proposal via a new logic (building on work by Keshet 2018, Abney & Keshet 2022) that we name Plural Intensional Presuppositional predicate calculus (or PIP). Each PIP formula translates directly into standard first-order predicate calculus with set abstraction, providing a classical foundation for this work.
