I provide an overview of four current theories of scalar implicature: the pragmatic (or Gricean), the lexical, a combined pragmatic + lexical, and the grammatical theory. The empirical focus are ...global and local, but also intermediate implicatures. I argue that the grammatical theory is conceptually less well motivated than even the pragmatic + lexical theory, and that the grammatical theory therefore requires strong empirical support. I then focus on a novel empirical phenomenon – intermediate implicatures – which provides empirical support for the grammatical theory. I conclude that it seems necessary to adopt the grammatical theory.
This paper addresses the syntactic and semantic analysis of nominal measurement structures like
two liters of black coffee
in German. German allows the case-marking on the substance noun phrase
black ...coffee
to vary: it can appear in genitive case or in the same case as the measure noun
liter
. The choice of case lacks semantic import with absolute measures like
liter
, but a semantic distinction does arise for proportional measures like
percent
, with the interpretation in the case-matching configuration serving as a
prima facie
counterexample to Keenan and Stavi’s
Conservativity Hypothesis
of DP quantification. We argue that (
i
) measurement structures do not have different syntactic configurations depending on the choice of measure noun (e.g.,
liter
vs.
percent
); (
ii
) genitive and case-matching structures do, however, have different syntactic configurations; (
iii
) the semantic contrast between absolute and proportional measure nouns can be traced to their lexical interpretations; and (
iv
) the apparent violation of the Conservativity Hypothesis is only a surface-level phenomenon, and at LF all DP quantification is conservative.
The theory of language must predict the possible thought-signal (or meaning-sound or sign) pairings of a language. We argue for a Meaning First architecture of language where a thought structure is ...generated first. The thought structure is then realized using language to communicate the thought, to memorize it, or perhaps with another purpose. Our view contrasts with the T-model architecture of mainstream generative grammar, according to which distinct phrase-structural representations-Phonetic Form (PF) for articulation, Logical Form (LF) for interpretation-are generated within the grammar. At the same time, our view differs from early transformational grammar and generative semantics: We view the relationship between the thought structure and the corresponding signal as one of compression. We specify a formal sketch of compression as a choice between multiple possible pronounciations balancing the desire to transmit information against the effort of pronounciation. The Meaning First architecture allows a greater degree of independence between thought structures and the linguistic signal. We present three arguments favoring this type of independence. First we argue that scopal properties can be better explained if we only compare thought structures independent of the their realization as a sentence. Secondly, we argue that Meaning First architecture allows contentful late insertion, an idea that has been argued for in Distributed Morphology already, but as we argue is also motivated by the division of the logical and socio-emotive meaning content of language. Finally, we show that only the Meaning First architecture provides a satisfying account of the mixing of multiple languages by multilingual speakers, especially for cases of simultaneous articulation across two modalities in bimodal speakers. Our view of the structure of grammar leads to a reassessment of priorities in linguistic analyses: while current mainstream work is often focused on establishing one-to-one relationships between concepts and morphemes, our view makes it plausible that primitive concepts are frequently marked indirectly or unpronounced entirely. Our view therefore assigns great value to the understanding of logical primitives and of compression.
The Meaning First Approach offers a model of the relation between thought and language that includes a Generator and a Compressor. The Generator build non-linguistic thought structures and the ...Compressor is responsible for its articulation through three processes: structure-preserving linearization, lexification, and compression via non-articulation of concepts when licensed. One goal of this paper is to show that a range of phenomena in child language can be explained in a unified way within the Meaning First Approach by the assumption that children differ from adults with respect to compression and, specifically, that they may undercompress in production, an idea that sets a research agenda for the study of language acquisition. We focus on dependencies involving pronouns or gaps in relative clauses and wh-questions, multi-argument verbal concepts, and antonymic concepts involving negation or other opposites. We present extant evidence from the literature that children produce undercompression errors (a type of commission errors) that are predicted by the Meaning First Approach. We also summarize data that children's comprehension ability provides evidence for the Meaning First Approach prediction that decompression should be challenging, when there is no 1-to-1 correspondence.
Irene Heim in unpublished work proposed a new syntax-semantics interface for propositional attitude reports based on an ontology without transworld individuals, but counterpart functions instead. We ...show that the approach can capture the ‘de re’/‘de dicto’ distinction, but makes different predictions from accounts with transworld individuals. Specifically, the account uses non-invertible counterpart functions: a single individual in an alternative world can be the counterpart of many individuals of the real world. The directionality of counterpart functions predicts that a ‘de dicto’ interpreted DP cannot be an argument of a ‘de re’ interpreted predicate. We show that the predicted restriction is corroborated by existing work on restrictions on ‘de re’ interpretation. The derivation of constraints on ‘de re’ interpretation argues empirically for the counterpart ontology and Heim’s implementation thereof.
In several three cell paradigms, it has been observed that one logically conceivable pattern – ABA under some arrangement of cells – is unattested. Existing approaches assume that such *ABA ...generalizations provide evidence for feature inventories which are restricted to features that stand in containment relations, and are thus subject to Pāṇinian rule order. We present a novel approach to *ABA generalizations that derives from general properties of feature-based morphology. To this end, we develop a formal account of the widespread view that morphological paradigms derive from rules that relate abstract features from an inventory to morphological exponents. We demonstrate that the feature-based view restricts the space of typological patterns even without any further assumptions. We show furthermore that the feature-based theory derives *ABA as a special case of a broader class of generalizations if the number of features in the inventory must be minimal, and that these generalizations arise under a variety of general assumptions about feature-algebras (extrinsically ordered or Pāṇinian and with or without feature intersection). We discuss which explanation might be correct for actual cases of *ABA constraints, and we explore the consequences of the feature-based general approach for a range of paradigm sizes including those with more than three cells.
Quantity distinctions are morphologically indicated in the majority of languages.However, the marking of these distinctions exhibits a high degree of cross-linguistic variation with respect to the ...number of quantity categories, their agreement properties, and the morphemes themselves. Furthermore, number marking on numerically quantified nouns varies across languages: for instance, while German and English use plural number marking with numerals other than “one” (for example, “two books”), Turkish and Hungarian use singular number marking with all numerals. Recent work has discussed how to explain number marking with numerals. In particular, Bale and Khanjian (2014) propose that the quantity concepts of the two types of languages vary semantically. We present novel evidence from a cross-linguistic study of Hungarian, Turkish and German child language, and argue that the quantity concepts do not vary, and the variation between languages must have a morphosyntactic explanation.
We report data from an internet questionnaire of sixty number trivia. Participants were asked for the number of cups in their house, the number of cities they know and 58 other quantities. We compare ...the answers of familial sinistrals--individuals who are left-handed themselves or have a left-handed close blood-relative--with those of pure familial dextrals--right-handed individuals who reported only having right-handed close blood-relatives. We show that familial sinistrals use rounder numbers than pure familial dextrals in the survey responses. Round numbers in the decimal system are those that are multiples of powers of 10 or of half or a quarter of a power of 10. Roundness is a gradient concept, e.g. 100 is rounder than 50 or 200. We show that very round number like 100 and 1000 are used with 25% greater likelihood by familial sinistrals than by pure familial dextrals, while pure familial dextrals are more likely to use less round numbers such as 25, 60, and 200. We then use Sigurd's (1988, Language in Society) index of the roundness of a number and report that familial sinistrals' responses are significantly rounder on average than those of pure familial dextrals. To explain the difference, we propose that the cognitive effort of using exact numbers is greater for the familial sinistral group because their language and number systems tend to be more distributed over both hemispheres of the brain. Our data support the view that exact and approximate quantities are processed by two separate cognitive systems. Specifically, our behavioral data corroborates the view that the evolutionarily older, approximate number system is present in both hemispheres of the brain, while the exact number system tends to be localized in only one hemisphere.
The brevity maxim of Gricean pragmatics states that unnecessary prolixity should be avoided. We report a case in which 5-year-old children’s performance conforms better to Grice’s maxim than adults’ ...behavior. Our data come from a semi-spontaneous German relative clause production study that we carried out with 5- and 7-year-old children as well as adults. In particular, we focus on the pragmatics of the passive predicates that were produced. These constituted about a third of both child and adult productions in items that targeted an object relative clause structure. Since the expression of the agent is syntactically optional with passive predicates, the brevity maxim predicts that the agent should only be expressed when it is informative. We compare two conditions to test this prediction: one where the agent is informative and one where it is not. We find that 5-year-old children display significantly greater sensitivity to the brevity maxim than adults do. In two follow-up studies, we show that adults’ violations of brevity cannot be explained by priming of by-phrases expressing the agent and that there is an effect of age within children as well.
Teiwa, an Alor-Pantar language of the Trans-New Guinea family, has been characterized as expressing speech reports not with complementation, but with combinations of two clauses juxtaposed under a ...single intonation contour with no morphological indication for integration (Klamer 2010: A Grammar of Teiwa, Mouton de Gruyter). We argue, contra Klamer, that speech and attitude reports in Teiwa should be analyzed as embedding (or hypotaxis). We present evidence from intonation, syntax and semantics that speech reports are expressed by a single, monosentential structure in Teiwa with embedding of the speech report. Our results also show that purely morphological diagnostics can be unreliable for distinguishing between a monosentential or bisentential structure of speech reports. We describe several formal experiments from our fieldwork that provide more reliable tests. Our result has implications for both the ongoing theoretical discussions of clausal complementation, complementizer agreement, grammaticalization of complementizers and the historical evolution of complementation.
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