Main clause phenomena and discourse moves: Mandarin incompleteness in subordinate clauses

This paper identifies a tense-aspectual phenomenon called “incompleteness” (Kong, 1994; Tang and Lee, 2000; Gu, 2007) as a novel case of Main Clause Phenomenon (MCP) based on its distribution in various kinds of subordinate clauses. I show that an existing pragmatic analysis of incompleteness in matrix clauses (Sun, 2021; 2023) can be extended to capture the full data pattern, together with Djärv (2022)’s claim that root-like clauses that host MCP share the conventional discourse effects of putting an issue on the Discourse Table (Farkas and Bruce, 2010). By contrast, a strictly syntactic account cannot straightforwardly capture the distribution of incompleteness in subordinate clauses. I conclude that the case of Mandarin incompleteness implicates that, at least for some MCP, a semantic-pragmatic component is necessary in the analysis, supporting the long-existing idea that MCP is related to the so-called “asserted” clauses (Hooper and Thompson, 1973; Heycock, 2006; De Cat, 2012, among others)

Cross-world reference

One way for semanticists to analyze truth in fiction is by relativizing propositions to fictional worlds. However, some sentences in natural language refer to individuals, events, or states from multiple worlds. These include referential cross-world sentences, where the name of an actor from the real world appears to replace the name of the fictional character they play (downward), or vice versa (upward). The conventional analysis claims that in these cases, the name of the actor refers to the fictional individual, or vice versa. I present several empirical asymmetries between upward and downward cross-world reference that make this analysis problematic. Instead, I propose a covert operator FICT, which takes a predicate P, and returns a predicate that roughly means ‘plays a character of whom P is true in a fictional world.’ FICT can be applied to sentential predicates to form downward referential cross-world sentences, or within DPs to form upward referential cross-world sentences. In addition, this accounts for apparent differences between English and languages like Italian and Russian in how gender is handled in referential cross-world sentences, as well as for some previously studied facts about dream reports, which I analyze as a type of referential cross-world sentence. Finally, I explore how this analysis might be expanded to include account for facts about the treatment of fictional times and events

Viewpoint matters: Prototypical vs. non-prototypical co-speech gestures in the VP domain

The present paper extends Ebert et al.’s (2020) theory of the semantic contribution of co-speech gestures to the VP domain by investigating differences between prototypical and non-prototypical iconic co-speech gestures. Drawing from Ebert et al. (2022) and Ebert and Hinterwimmer (2022), we propose a formalism where a prototypical gesture denotes an event type which is not interpreted iconically, whereas non-prototypical gestures depend on a viewpoint variable and are interpreted iconically. Moreover, Ebert et al.’s (2020) similarity predicate SIM is spelled out for the verbal domain. We argue that viewpoint is, in the verbal domain, one factor the similarity predicate can depend on

Higher-order plurality: To what degree?

Recent work by Grimau (2020) and Buccola et al. (2021) has rekindled the debate on the extent to which natural language allows for the construction of higher-order (or structured) pluralities (HOPs) — that is, pluralities of pluralities (Link, 1983; Landman, 1989; Schwarzschild,1996). Over the decades, research on HOP has focused on ordinary entity-denoting plurals, yet the typology of semantic entities is generally assumed to be diverse (Rett, 2022), arguably including events, worlds, times, degrees, and more. At least some of these domains arguably have the same or similar mereology as the ordinary entity domain, most famously events (Bach, 1986), and more recently degrees (Dotlačil and Nouwen, 2015). A natural question that arises is: do any of these other semantic entities allow for HOP? I argue that the answer is yes, using reciprocal degree constructions as a case study (cf. Schwarz, 2007; Hsieh, 2021)

More \u27again\u27 readings and more \u27again\u27 morphemes: A structural analysis of Kanien’kéha \u27again\u27

This paper examines again readings in Kanien’kéha, shining new light on the debate between structural and lexical analyses of again ambiguity. In addition to previously analyzed repetitive, restitutive, and counterdirectional readings, Kanien’kéha has two novel phenomena through which present potential challenges to past analyses. First, Kanien’kéha again gives rise to typologically rare objectless repetitive readings in which a similar event containing the same verb but a different internal argument is presupposed. Second, Kanien’kéha possesses two, co-occurring again morphemes. In investigating these phenomena, I argue that a structural approach most naturally accounts for the Kanien’kéha facts, with one major implication. To account for the availability of objectless repetitive presuppositions under such an approach, I argue for the severing of the internal argument (contra, e.g., Kratzer 1996). With this in place, I propose that a single repetitive operator with variable scope can give rise to the full array of again readings in Kanien’kéha, as predicted by a structural approach

Contracted attitudes

Certain emotive factive reports and knowledge reports appear to violate their entailment relations in both embedded and unembedded environments. To account for these cases, I propose that these problematic attitude reports should be understood as instances of non-literal speech and, therefore, as cases that trigger a pragmatic mechanism of content subtraction. By adopting an analysis that employs this mechanism, this paper argues that the problematic cases ultimately convey unproblematic propositions that do not violate any entailments

Clause-internal causal inferences: Evidence from nouns

A substantial body of pragmatics research has explored discourse-level coherence inferences — the links between clauses and even larger units that bind a series of utterances into a narrative. Hobbs (2010) proposed that there are also Clause-internal Coherence (CIC) inferences, such as that in, ‘A jogger was hit by a car,’ where one is likely to infer that the car accident occurred while the jogger was jogging. Recently, Sasaki and Altshuler (2022, 2023) and Yao et al. (2024) have provided experimental evidence that CIC inferences can be drawn between verbs and adjectives. We provide further evidence for CIC inferences, this time between verbs and nouns. Our findings from three ratings studies in English suggest that both deverbal nouns like ‘jogger’ and non-deverbal nouns like ‘widow’ can give rise to causal CIC inferences. This result is significant because it demonstrates the robustness and pervasiveness of CIC inferences, and raises the question of how proposition-like content may be extracted from a nominal element. We propose a formal analysis of CIC inferences with nouns that adopts the key claim of Pure Event Semantics (Schwarzschild, 2024), namely that nouns always describe eventualities. We synthesize this with a core assumption of Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (Asher & Lascarides, 2003), namely that the arguments of coherence relations are eventuality descriptions. We argue that this provides us with at least two pathways to formally model CIC with nouns

Projection without lexically-specified presupposition: A model for \u27know\u27

We present an analysis—formalized as a computational cognitive model—of the projection of the content of the clausal complement of know in utterances of negated declaratives. Our model, formulated within the Bayesian Rational Speech Act framework (Frank and Goodman, 2012), derives projection from lexical entailments of know and sensitivity to the Question Under Discussion (QUD; as do Abrusán, 2011, and Simons et al., 2017), as well as reasoning about utterance informativity relative to private speaker assumptions (Qing et al., 2016; Warstadt, 2022). Crucially, our model predicts projection for know without encoding the inference via a lexically-specified constraint on the Common Ground. The model goes beyond existing analyses by also making predictions about the projection of the content of the clausal complement of nonfactive think, as well as other types of inferences. We find support for three qualitative predictions of our model in two experiments that measured the projection inferences participants draw about utterance content

Definite plurals in comparatives

This paper investigates the interpretation of comparative constructions containing definite plurals. We identify an asymmetry between the matrix clause and the than-clause. In the matrix clause, definite plurals give rise to a homogeneity effect, as expected by all theories of homogeneity. In contrast, definite plurals in the than-clause do not trigger such an effect; instead, their interpretation is typically similar to than-clauses containing universal quantifiers. Adopting the truth-value gap approach to homogeneity, we propose that the homogeneity presupposition is locally accommodated within the than-clause, yielding complementary truth conditions for affirmative and negative comparative constructions

Clefts can address wh-questions in referential anchoring contexts

Cleft constructions are considered infelicitous responses to wh-questions, compared to canonical focus declaratives. This study argues for a more fine-tuned generalization, by showing clefts are indeed a viable response to a question query when the discourse establishes an identifiable witness to the queried property. Using a judgment task, we tested the acceptability of cleft versus declarative answers across three conditions: unanchored (no identifiable witness), anchored (with an identifiable witness), and corrective (revises a misidentified antecedent in prior discourse). Results showed that clefts were rated on par with declarative focus both in an anchored condition and in a corrective condition. As predicted, lower acceptability ratings were found in an unanchored context