Universal Free Choice and Innocent Inclusion

The goal of this paper is to provide a global account of universal Free Choice (FC) inferences (argued to be needed in Chemla 2009b). We propose a stronger exhaustivity operator than proposed in Fox (2007), one that doesn't only negate all the Innocently Excludable (IE) alternatives but also asserts all the "Innocently Includable" (II) ones, and subsequently can derive universal FC inferences globally. We further show that Innocent Inclusion is independently motivated by considerations that come from the semantics of only (data from Alxatib 2014). Finally, the distinction between Innocent Exclusion and Innocent Inclusion allows us to capture differences between FC inferences and other scalar implicatures

De re tenses and Trace Conversion

I suggest a quantificational account for tenses in which the seemingly peculiar behavior of tenses that are interpreted de re (most notably the double access reading of English Present-under-Past sentences) falls out from a general Trace Conversion rule that applies to moved quantifiers, as in Fox 2002. I propose that de re tenses involve movement (following Ogihara 1989), and that the first argument of tenses is a property of times which characterizes the set of times that include the local evaluation time, such that the application of Trace Conversion to moved tenses yields an inclusion requirement with respect to the local evaluation time of the base position. Unlike previous analyses (Ogihara 1989; Abusch 1997), the current analysis predicts that a de re interpretation of a tense (Past or Present) involves inclusion of the attitude time. This is supported by the availability of simultaneous readings for Past-under-Past sentences in non-SOT languages such as Hebrew, and the unavailability of "mixed" (simultaneous and backward-shifted) readings for Past-under-Past constructions under universal quantification

Free choice, simplification, and Innocent Inclusion

We propose a modification of the exhaustivity operator from Fox (in: Sauerland and Stateva (eds) Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics, Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp 71–120, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230210752_4) that on top of negating all the Innocently Excludable alternatives affirms all the ‘Innocently Includable’ ones. The main result of supplementing the notion of Innocent Exclusion with that of Innocent Inclusion is that it allows the exhaustivity operator to identify cells in the partition induced by the set of alternatives (assign a truth value to every alternative) whenever possible. We argue for this property of ‘cell identification’ based on the simplification of disjunctive antecedents and the effects on free choice that arise as the result of the introduction of universal quantifiers. We further argue for our proposal based on the interaction of only with free choice disjunction

On fatal competition and the nature of distributive inferences

Abstract Denić (2018, 2019, To appear) observes that the availability of distributive inferences—for sentences with disjunction embedded in the scope of a universal quantifier—depends on the size of the domain quantified over as it relates to the number of disjuncts. Based on her observations, she argues that probabilistic considerations play a role in the computation of implicatures. In this paper we explore a different possibility. We argue for a modification of Denić’s generalization, and provide an explanation that is based on intricate logical computations but is blind to probabilities. The explanation is based on the observation that when the domain size is no larger than the number of disjuncts, universal and existential alternatives are equivalent if distributive inferences are obtained. We argue that under such conditions a general ban on ‘fatal competition’ (Magri 2009a,b, Spector 2014) is activated, thereby predicting distributive inferences to be unavailable

Universal Free Choice and Innocent Inclusion

The goal of this paper is to provide a global account of universal Free Choice (FC) inferences (argued to be needed in Chemla 2009b). We propose a stronger exhaustivity operator than proposed in Fox (2007), one that doesn’t only negate all the Innocently Excludable (IE) alternatives but also asserts all the ``Innocently Includable'' (II) ones, and subsequently can derive universal FC inferences globally. We further show that Innocent Inclusion is independently motivated by considerations that come from the semantics of only (data from Alxatib 2014). Finally, the distinction between Innocent Exclusion and Innocent Inclusion allows us to capture differences between FC inferences and other scalar implicatures