Alxatib Focus, Evaluativity, and Antonymy

A Study in the Semantics of Only and its Interaction with Gradable Antonyms
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-3-030-37806-6
Verlag: Springer Nature Switzerland
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 193 Seiten

Reihe: Social Sciences

This book uncovers properties of focus association with 'only' by examining the interaction between the particle and bare (or 'evaluative') gradable terms. Its empirical building blocks are paradigms involving upward-scalar terms like 'few' and 'rarely', and their downward-scalar antonyms 'many' and 'frequently', an area that has not been studied previously in the literature. The empirical claim is that associations of the former type give rise to unexpected readings, and the proposed theoretical explanation draws on the properties of the latter type of association. In presenting the details, the book deconstructs the so-called scalar presupposition of 'only' and derives it from constraints against its vacuous use. This view is then combined with a semantics of the evaluative adjectives 'many' and 'few' to explain why the unavailable (but expected) meanings of the given constructions are unavailable. The attested (but unexpected) readings of 'only+few/rarely' associations are derived from independently motivated LFs in which the degree expressions are existentially closed. Finally, the book provides new findings, based on the core proposal, about 'only if' constructions, and about the interaction between 'only' and other upward-scalar modified numerals (comparatives, and 'at most'). The book thus provides new data and a new theoretical view of the semantic properties of 'only', and connects it to the semantics of gradable expressions.

Sam Alxatib is assistant professor in the linguistics department at the CUNY Graduate Center. He holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia, an M.A. in Linguistics from Simon Fraser University, and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is interested in formal semantics, formal pragmatics, and the syntax-semantics interface, and has worked on issues of focus semantics, scalar implicature and exhaustification, gradability and vagueness, the semantics of tense, aspect, and modality, and (anti-)presupposition.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Alxatib, Sam

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Acknowledgements;7
2;Contents;8
3;1 Introduction;10
3.1;1.1 Overview;11
3.2;1.2 Three Illustrations of Empirical Claim;14
3.2.1;1.2.1 First Illustration: Betting Scenarios;14
3.2.2;1.2.2 Second Illustration: In Fact, and Downward Entailing Contexts;16
3.2.3;1.2.3 Third Illustration: Only as a Weakener;18
3.3;1.3 Consequences;18
3.4;1.4 Theoretical Implications;20
3.5;1.5 Book Overview;24
4;2 Only and Its Inferences;32
4.1;2.1 Chapter Preview;32
4.2;2.2 The Semantics of Only;33
4.2.1;2.2.1 The Exclusive Inference of Only;37
4.2.1.1;2.2.1.1 Scalar Only;39
4.2.1.2;2.2.1.2 Scalarity and Only's Disjunctive Presupposition;43
4.2.2;2.2.2 Interim Summary;46
4.2.3;2.2.3 Only and Its Scalar Presupposition;47
4.2.4;2.2.4 Only and the Ban Against Its Vacuous Use;53
4.2.5;2.2.5 The Scalar Presupposition as the Ban Against VacuousUse;57
4.3;2.3 Chapter Summary;60
5;3 The Positive Morpheme and Its Interaction with Only;62
5.1;3.1 Chapter Preview;62
5.2;3.2 Background: Many and Few as Gradable Adjectives;63
5.3;3.3 pos and the Evaluativity of Many and Few;66
5.3.1;3.3.1 N as a Modal in the Semantics of pos;71
5.4;3.4 Interim Summary;74
5.5;3.5 The Interaction of pos and Only: Answering the Missing Readings Question;75
5.6;3.6 Theory 1 of the Only-pos Interaction;77
5.6.1;3.6.1 Prediction: Negation;80
5.6.2;3.6.2 Prediction: Modals and Their Monotonicity;82
5.6.3;3.6.3 Section Summary;87
5.7;3.7 Theory 2 of the Only-pos Interaction;88
5.8;3.8 Chapter Summary;93
5.9;3.9 The Antonym-Pair Generalization;94
6;4 The Proposal;98
6.1;4.1 Chapter Preview;98
6.2;4.2 The Scoping Account: Decomposing Modified Numerals;99
6.3;4.3 The Closure Account;107
6.3.1;4.3.1 Van Benthem's Problem;109
6.3.2;4.3.2 Bypassing van Benthem's Problem by Constraining Alternatives;111
6.3.3;4.3.3 Bypassing van Benthem's Problem by Blind Exclusion;119
6.4;4.4 Summary;124
6.4.1;4.4.1 The Existence Inference and the Status of Only'sPrejacent;126
6.4.2;4.4.2 A Remark on the Distribution of Existentially-ClosedParses;127
6.5;4.5 Comparison with Other Accounts;128
6.5.1;4.5.1 POS as Comparative: Density?;128
6.5.2;4.5.2 BonomiCasalegno1993;129
6.5.3;4.5.3 Beck2012;134
6.6;4.6 Extension to Rarely;138
6.7;4.7 Chapter Summary;141
6.8;Appendix: Constraint on Formal Alternatives;142
7;5 Only if, Its Interaction with pos, and Its Scalar Presupposition;145
7.1;5.1 Chapter Preview;145
7.2;5.2 Only if as Only and a Conditional Prejacent;147
7.3;5.3 Only if and pos;154
7.4;5.4 Only if and Only's Scalar Presupposition;156
7.5;5.5 Chapter Summary;158
8;6 Conclusions and Extensions;160
8.1;6.1 Book Summary;160
8.2;6.2 Comparatives;163
8.2.1;6.2.1 Antonymy and the -er Morpheme;164
8.2.2;6.2.2 Subsethood in Measure-Phrase Comparatives;165
8.2.3;6.2.3 Innocent Exclusion and Density;169
8.2.4;6.2.4 LessP;173
8.2.5;6.2.5 Summary;174
8.3;6.3 At Least and At Most?;175
8.3.1;6.3.1 Alternativehood of Disjuncts and Association with Only;175
8.4;6.4 Another Case: Recently;182
8.4.1;Appendix;184
9;References;186
10;Index;192