A proof-theoretic non-scalar account of scalar inferences

Handout d'une communication à Preferably Non-Lexical Semantics Paris Conference, Université de Paris 7, 28-30 mai 1998Aim of the talk : provide an explanation for the existence of systematic asymmetries in sentence pairs of the form X mais/but Y vs (#Y') where we feel that, in some sense X is conducive to Y'. In which sense

Les impliquestions

Dans cet article j'utilise le néologisme « impliquestion » pour désigner une interprétationparticulière des questions sincères. Une question posée par un locuteur L est sincère lorsque Lne connaît pas la réponse à la question (même s'il peut avoir son idée sur les réponsesplausibles). Une impliquestion est une question sincère qui est en quelque sorte « impliquée »par une proposition mentionnée avant la question. Syntaxiquement, les impliquestions n'ontrien de particulier. Par exemple, elles peuvent être des questions oui-non (ou questions« totales »), comme en (1a), ou des qu-questions (questions « partielles »), comme en (1b).L'interprétation intuitive qui caractérise les impliquestions est qu'une certaine informationaffecte les réponses plausibles ou la pertinence de la question. Ainsi, dans (1a), le fait queJean n'avait aucun ennemi rend difficile la réponse à la question « qui l'a assassiné ? » et,dans (1b), le même fait rend la possibilité qu'on l'ait assassiné improbable. Dans (1c), le faitque la marge financière est faible rend la question d'autant plus pertinente

Objects of attitudes

The standard relational analysis of attitude verbs assumes that they denote a relation between an experiencer and an abstract object. The fact that these objects have only a shadowy linguistic manifestation has led to a rejection of this kind of analysis.I show here that the relational view can be preserved if one complicates substancially the lexical constraints which control the construction of semantic interpretation and separates in particular the lexical objects selected by the verbs from the ontlogical objects of attitude, which lead a more secret life, apart from the lexicon, inside rich interpretation structures, a fact which accounts for their well-known resistance to ordinary linguistics tests

Any and eventualities

The fact that any has both a Free Choice and a Polarity Sensitive profile has been the source of many controversies.In this paper, we have proposed that the different uses of any are manifestations of the general constraint NI. All the cases we have reviewed concern the wayin which any links individuation and eventualities. As noted in [11], the French item le moindre, whose scalar origin is clear, has a very similar distribution.Future work will have to say whether scalarity plays a central role for any, as advocated in [5], and, more generally, for items which have both a PS and a FCsensitivity

Discourse 'Major Continuatives' in a Non-Monotonic Framework

International audienceDelattre (1966) proposed a classification of French basic melodic contours. He defined in particular 'major continu atives' as melodic rises that mark the frontier between higher constituents in a hierarchy of clausal and sentential constituents. Although Delattre's empirical basis for his classification has been discussed, there is a strong intuition that some sort of melodic rise can be used in French at the frontier between discourse constituents. The go al of this paper is to explore this possibility in two directions. First, we provide experimental evidence that, taken in isolation, major continuatives are not sig nificantly discriminated from interrogative contours by 'naïve' subjects, having no training in phonetics. Second, we try to account for the fact that, in real discourse, people do not confuse major continuatives and interrogative contours, by controlling the interactions between interpretation constraints using a non - monotonic logic in the general framework of Answer Set Programmin

Free choiceness as non-locality specification

In this talk we propose to consider free-choiceness as a constraint which can be satisfied in several different way

Principles as lexical methods

Current research in lexical semantics has brought into focus (1) the existence of general tendencies across laguages or inside language families, (2)the existence of numerous exceptions to these tendendies. To reconcile these two facts, it seems natural to endorse a general conception of principles, usually cashed on a form of default logic. This leaves open the question of how to identify and manage the exceptions in a more precise way. In this paper, we analyze different examples where complex cases can be handled explicitly, and show that principle-based approaches require, as a natural complement, to be controlled by more local information

When widening is too narrow

International audienceCurrent proposals that characterise the widening effect of F(ree) C(hoice) I(tems) as an implicature all require additional stipulations and leave a number of observations unexplained. We propose instead that free choiceness results from ensuring that every member of the restriction is equivalent to every other member with respect to the scope. Whereas this general profile is subject to lexical variations within and across languages, it accounts for the family resemblance of FC

True to fact(s)

There is a long-standing controversy in the philosophy of language concerning the nature of facts. Linguists have used the term to categorize a type of semantic argument.The philosophical approaches oscillate between a realistic conception and a more abstract conception. In linguistics, it is unclear whether fact labels sentential arguments which can be paraphrased by the fact that S or arrays of distributional and semantic properties. the problem partly stems from a confusion between the lexical content of the word and the category of facts. In this paper, we address the semantic and ontological status of the singular noun "fait" (fact) in French