Linguistics and Philosophy

Readings of scalar particles: noch / still Abstract The paper develops a uniform compositional analysis of the various readings of the scalar particle still and its German counterpart noch. Noch/still is a presuppositional scalar particle that gives rise to implicatures. Interpretive possibilities arise through different choices for the scale that the particle associates with, different attachment sites in the syntax, and interaction with focus. These interpretive parameters allow for a wide range of possible sentence interpretations, which overlap, but do not coincide for still and noch. The contrastive perspective allows us to examine the role of scales in the grammar. The implicatures triggered by the scalar item open an interesting perspective for the generation of implicatures in general.

Generics and typicality: a bounded rationality approach Abstract Cimpian et al. (2010) observed that we accept generic statements of the form ‘Gs are f’ on relatively weak evidence, but that if we are unfamiliar with group G and we learn a generic statement about it, we still treat it inferentially in a much stronger way: (almost) all Gs are f. This paper makes use of notions like ‘representativeness’, ‘contingency’ and ‘relative difference’ from (associative learning) psychology to provide a uniform semantics of generics that explains why people accept generics based on weak evidence. The spirit of the approach has much in common with Leslie’s cognition-based ideas about generics, but the semantics will be grounded on a strengthening of Cohen’s (1999) relative readings of generic sentences. In contrast to Leslie and Cohen, we propose a uniform semantic analysis of generics. The basic intuition is that a generic of the form ‘Gs are f’ is true because f is typical for G, which means that f is valuably associated with G. We will make use of Kahneman and Tversky’s Heuristics and Biases approach, according to which people tend to confuse questions about probability with questions about representativeness, to explain pragmatically why people treat many generic statements inferentially in a much stronger way.

What the metasemantics of know is not Abstract Epistemic contextualism in the style of Lewis (in Aust J Philos 74:549–567, 1996) maintains that ascriptions of knowledge to a subject vary in truth with the alternatives that can be eliminated by the subject’s evidence in a context. Schaffer (in Philos Stud 119:73–103, 2004, in Oxford Stud Epistemol 1:235–271, 2005, in Philos Phenomenol Res 75:383–403, 2007, in Philos Issues 18(1):1–19, 2008, in: Schaffer, Loewer (eds) A companion to David Lewis, pp 473–490. Wiley, Hoboken, 2015), Schaffer and Knobe (in Noûs 46:675–708, 2012), and Schaffer and Szabó (in Philos Stud 168(2):491–543, 2014) hold that the question under discussion or qud always determines these alternatives in a context. This paper shows that the qud does not perform such a role for know and uses this result to draw a few lessons about the metasemantics of context-sensitivity.

Denn as a highlighting-sensitive particle Abstract This paper develops an account of the German discourse particle denn that captures the meaning contribution of this particle in polar questions, wh-questions, and certain conditional antecedents in a unified way. It is shown that the behavior of denn exhibits an asymmetry between polar and wh-interrogatives, which can be captured by treating the particle as sensitive to the property highlighted by its containing clause, in the sense of Roelofsen and Farkas (Language 91(2):359–414, 2015). In addition, the paper argues that highlighting-sensitivity should be incorporated in the account of another discourse particle, German überhaupt, and discusses how the proposed account of discourse particle denn may be extended to also cover the use of denn as a causal conjunction.

The many readings of many : POS in the reverse proportional reading Abstract Besides their ordinary cardinal and proportional meanings, many and few have been argued to allow for a ‘reverse proportional’ reading (Westerståhl in Linguist and Philos 8:387–413, 1985). This reading has later been characterised in two opposite directions: Cohen’s (Nat Lang Semant 69:41–67, 2001) reading where the proportion \(|P\cap Q|:|P|\) matters and Herburger’s (Nat Lang Semant 5:53–78, 1997) where it does not. We develop a compositional analysis that derives the correct truth conditions for both characterisations of Westerståhl-style sentences while (i) maintaining conservativity, (ii) assuming a standard syntax/semantics mapping and (iii) reducing their context-dependence to mechanisms independently needed for degree constructions in general. In a nutshell, mirroring the decomposition of other degree expressions like tall, many is decomposed into the parametrized determiner many and the operator POS, where POS combines with a contextually salient comparison class C matching the alternatives triggered by some element X\(_{\text {ALT}}\) in the sentence. Non-reverse readings obtain when X\(_{\text {ALT}}\) is external to the original host NP and reverse readings when X\(_{\text {ALT}}\) is internal to the host NP. Cohen’s (2001) (amended) truth conditions for Westerståhl-style sentences are derived as a (true) reverse proportional reading and Herburger’s (1997) interpretation as a sub-case of the non-reverse cardinal reading.

Neo-Davidsonian ontology of events Abstract Recent Neo-Davidsonian accounts of the semantics of progressive constructions of action verbs (‘John is building a house’) reflect an ontological distinction between processes or incomplete events on the one hand, and complete events on the other. This paper has two goals. First, it attempts to show that this putative ontological distinction is beset with problems. The second goal of this paper is to offer the beginnings of a positive proposal that seeks to show how the ontologically austere Davidsonian can account for the truth conditions of progressive constructions without the need for an enriched ontology.

Definite descriptions of events: progressive interpretation in Ga (Kwa) Abstract This paper demonstrates that the progressive interpretation in Ga is an effect of the interaction between the imperfective aspect and a definite description of events. Crucially, the data from Ga point to the consequences of the view that definite descriptions of events encode the familiarity of the discourse referent and its uniqueness in bearing the property in question. Namely, they yield direct evidentiality and the necessary ongoingness of the event at the topic time. Thus, the paper identifies previously unattested variation in the semantics of the progressive in a cross-linguistic perspective and shows that not only lexical but also grammatical aspect exhibits striking parallelisms with the nominal domain.

Situations, alternatives, and the semantics of ‘cases’ Abstract This paper argues that NPs with case as head noun stand for situations in their role as truthmakers within a sentential or epistemic case space. The paper develops a unified semantic analysis of case-constructions of the various sorts within a truthmaker-based version of alternative semantics.

A posteriori necessities in one dimension Abstract Arguably, the proposition that Mark Twain is Samuel Clemens and the proposition that water is H2O are both a posteriori. Nevertheless, they both seem to be necessary. Ever since Davies and Humberstone (Philos Stud 38(1):1–31, 1980), it has been known that two-dimensional semantics can account for this fact. But two-dimensionalism isn’t the only theory on the market that purports to do so. In this paper, I will look at two alternatives, one by Scott Soames and one by Kathrin Glüer-Pagin and Peter Pagin, and argue that both of them fail. Regarding the former, I argue that the conceptually possible but metaphysically impossible worlds one is required to postulate are hard to conceive of on closer inspection. As for the latter, the proposal doesn’t work for certain modal sentences, and I show that it cannot be easily amended.

Counterfactuality and past Abstract Many languages have past-and-counterfactuality markers such as English simple past. There have been various attempts to find a common definition for both uses, but I will argue in this paper that they all have problems with (a) ruling out unacceptable interpretations, or (b) accounting for the contrary-to-fact implicature of counterfactual conditionals, or (c) predicting the observed cross-linguistic variation, or a combination thereof. By combining insights from two basic lines of reasoning, I will propose a simple and transparent approach that solves all the observed problems and offers a new understanding of the concept of counterfactuality.