Comparative Ellipsis and Variable Binding

In this paper, we discuss the question whether phrasal comparatives should be given a direct interpretation, or require an analysis as elliptic constructions, and answer it with Yes and No. The most adequate analysis of wide reading attributive (WRA) comparatives seems to be as cases of ellipsis, while a direct (but asymmetric) analysis fits the data for narrow scope attributive comparatives. The question whether it is a syntactic or a semantic process which provides the missing linguistic material in the complement of WRA comparatives is also given a complex answer: Linguistic context is accessed by combining a reconstruction operation and a mechanism of anaphoric reference. The analysis makes only few and straightforward syntactic assumptions. In part, this is made possible because the use of Generalized Functional Application as a semantic operation allows us to model semantic composition in a flexible way.Comment: Postscript, 15 page

'Most' vs. 'the most' in languages where 'the more' means 'most'

This paper focuses on languages in which a superlative interpretation is typically indicated merely by a combination of a definiteness marker with a comparative marker, including French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and Greek ('DEF+CMP languages'). Despite ostensibly using definiteness markers to form the superlative, superlatives are not always definite-marked in these languages, and the distribution of definiteness-marking varies from language to language. To account for the cross-linguistic variation, we iden- tify conflicting pressures that all of the languages in consideration may be subject to, and suggest that different languages prioritize differently in the resolution of these conflicts. What these languages have in common, we suggest, is a mechanism of Definite Null Instantiation for the degree-type standard argument of the comparative. Among the parameters along which languages are proposed to differ is the relative importance of marking uniqueness vs. avoiding determiners with predicates of entities that are not individuals.http://eecoppock.info/CoppockStrand-DAL.pdfhttp://eecoppock.info/CoppockStrand-DAL.pdfAccepted manuscrip

Logical Form in the Second Language: An Investigation into Quantification in Interlanguage

In coping with variability in morphological production in L2 acquisition, which represents a challenge for the parameter (re-)setting theories, Lardiere (2008) proposed the feature reassembly hypothesis in which sequential difficulty in L2 acquisition of morpho-syntactic features is captured by the processes of (re-)assembly and mapping of features onto their morphological realizations. Slabakova (2009, 2013) incorporated Lardiere’s proposal in establishing a scale of difficulty in learning semantic properties (e.g. definiteness) which is based on whether reassembly is needed and whether the universal meaning is obtained by overt morphology or context (See also Ramchand & Svenonius, 2008). In considering the truth-conditional aspect of meaning, the feature-based framework is not powerful enough to account for the variability of interpretations that L2 learners come to learn. Take as an example the acquisition of English comparatives by Japanese L2 learners. We discuss the L2 acquisition of a special type of syntaxsemantics mismatch in which in which a certain meaningprimitive (i.e., comparative and tense) is expressed using different truth conditions in the native and target language

Indeterminates in comparatives as free choice items

Japanese indeterminate pronouns have different interpretations depending on a particle that they appear with. Indeterminates may appear “bare” in the yori comparative, which leads to questions of whether they are existential quantifiers, negative polarity items (NPIs), universal quantifiers, or free choice items (FCIs), and of how they are licensed. We examine each possibility and argue that they are FCIs. We then provide novel evidence that the yori comparative has some properties of unconditional clauses, which corroborates our previous claim that indeterminate- based FCIs in Japanese are unconditional clauses

Proceedings of the Semantics of African, Asian and Austronesian Languages (TripleA) 2

TripleA is a workshop series founded by linguists from the University of Tübingen and the University of Potsdam. Its aim is to provide a forum for semanticists doing fieldwork on understudied languages, and its focus is on languages from Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania. The second TripleA workshop was held at the University of Potsdam, June 3-5, 2015

The Semantics of Paranumerals

The paper contrasts two semantic subclasses among expressions combining with numerals exemplified respectively by at least and more than, and contrasts these expressions with bare numerals. Even if truth conditions are often close, dynamic properties, especially anaphora and apposition, give a basis for distinguishing numerals, numerical comparatives (more than), and set comparators (at least). The paper makes the following claims : 1) bare numerals introduce in the representation a set of exactly n individuals; 2) “numerical comparatives” (more/less than n) only introduce in the representation the maximal set of individuals £x satisfying the conjunction of the NP and VP constraints, and compare the cardinality of this set to n ; “set comparators” (at least/at most) introduce two sets in the representation, £x, and a witness set, the existence of which is asserted, which is constrained as a set of n Xs, X being the descriptive content of the NP. The paper is presented in the framework of Discourse Representation Theory and is based on French data

Focus and Ellipsis in Comparatives and Superlatives: A Case Study

This research was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under Contract ONR N00014-90-C-0085 with the Office of Naval Research