This paper sets out to explain why the verb cause tends to occur with negative-sentiment complements (cause damage, cause problems), as observed by Stubbs 1995. Formalized using causal models (Pearl 2000, Halpern & Pearl 2005, Schulz 2011), the analysis hinges on the asymmetric inference patterns licensed by necessary versus sufficient causes in the common scenario where some variables in a causal model remain uncertain. States of certainty/uncertainty are captured by subdividing the traditional definitions of necessity and sufficiency into a local version (all other variables fixed at particular values) and a global version (all other variables unsettled). C causes E is argued to entail that that C is locally sufficient for E, and to implicate that C is at least possibly locally necessary for E. With this definition, it is shown that C causes E can be truthfully applied to more uncertain contexts when C is a globally sufficient cause of E rather than a globally necessary one. Cause thus tends to occur with outcomes depending on a single globally sufficient cause -- outcomes which are moreover shown to be negative in sentiment, reflecting the independently motivated “Anna Karenina Principle” that bad outcomes tend to require single sufficient causes, thus indirectly explaining why cause prefers negative-sentiment complements. The meaning and collocational sentiment of cause are used to illuminate one another. EARLY ACCESS
{"title":"Using the Anna Karenina Principle to explain why cause favors negative-sentiment complements","authors":"Lelia Glass","doi":"10.3765/sp.16.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.16.6","url":null,"abstract":"This paper sets out to explain why the verb cause tends to occur with negative-sentiment complements (cause damage, cause problems), as observed by Stubbs 1995. Formalized using causal models (Pearl 2000, Halpern & Pearl 2005, Schulz 2011), the analysis hinges on the asymmetric inference patterns licensed by necessary versus sufficient causes in the common scenario where some variables in a causal model remain uncertain. States of certainty/uncertainty are captured by subdividing the traditional definitions of necessity and sufficiency into a local version (all other variables fixed at particular values) and a global version (all other variables unsettled). C causes E is argued to entail that that C is locally sufficient for E, and to implicate that C is at least possibly locally necessary for E. With this definition, it is shown that C causes E can be truthfully applied to more uncertain contexts when C is a globally sufficient cause of E rather than a globally necessary one. Cause thus tends to occur with outcomes depending on a single globally sufficient cause -- outcomes which are moreover shown to be negative in sentiment, reflecting the independently motivated “Anna Karenina Principle” that bad outcomes tend to require single sufficient causes, thus indirectly explaining why cause prefers negative-sentiment complements. The meaning and collocational sentiment of cause are used to illuminate one another. EARLY ACCESS","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135887976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Consistent Agglomeration says that, when φ and ψ are consistent, ⌜ought φ⌝ and ⌜ought ψ⌝ entail ⌜ought (φ ∧ ψ)⌝; I argue this principle is valid for deontic, but not epistemic oughts. I argue no existing theory predicts these data and give a new semantics and pragmatics for ought: ought is an existential quantifier over the best partial answers to some background question; and presupposes that those best partial answers are pairwise consistent. In conjunction with a plausible assumption about the difference between deontic and epistemic orderings, this semantics validates Agglomeration for deontics but not epistemics. EARLY ACCESS
{"title":"Putting oughts together","authors":"David Boylan","doi":"10.3765/sp.16.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.16.5","url":null,"abstract":"Consistent Agglomeration says that, when φ and ψ are consistent, ⌜ought φ⌝ and ⌜ought ψ⌝ entail ⌜ought (φ ∧ ψ)⌝; I argue this principle is valid for deontic, but not epistemic oughts. I argue no existing theory predicts these data and give a new semantics and pragmatics for ought: ought is an existential quantifier over the best partial answers to some background question; and presupposes that those best partial answers are pairwise consistent. In conjunction with a plausible assumption about the difference between deontic and epistemic orderings, this semantics validates Agglomeration for deontics but not epistemics. EARLY ACCESS","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":"243 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135352565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sentences are standardly assumed to trigger scalar and ignorance implicatures because there are alternative utterances the speaker could have said. The central question in modeling these inferences is thus: what counts as an alternative utterance for a given sentence in a given context? In this paper, I will present two families of novel empirical observations related to inference and deviance patterns of embedded disjunction, based on which I will argue that (i) probabilistic informativeness plays a role in selecting the set of alternatives; and (ii) the role of prior world knowledge in evaluating probabilistic informativeness of alternatives is limited. EARLY ACCESS
{"title":"Probabilities and logic in implicature computation: Two puzzles with embedded disjunction","authors":"Milica Denić","doi":"10.3765/sp.16.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.16.4","url":null,"abstract":"Sentences are standardly assumed to trigger scalar and ignorance implicatures because there are alternative utterances the speaker could have said. The central question in modeling these inferences is thus: what counts as an alternative utterance for a given sentence in a given context? In this paper, I will present two families of novel empirical observations related to inference and deviance patterns of embedded disjunction, based on which I will argue that (i) probabilistic informativeness plays a role in selecting the set of alternatives; and (ii) the role of prior world knowledge in evaluating probabilistic informativeness of alternatives is limited. EARLY ACCESS","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135549001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this paper, I consider how, given mutual knowledge of the information codified in a compositional semantic theory, an assertion of a sentence serves to update the shared information in a conversation. There is a standard account, due to Stalnaker, of how such conversational updating occurs. While this account has much to recommend it, in this paper I argue that it needs to be revised in light of certain patterns of updating that result from certain natural discourses. Having argued for this, I present a new account of conversational updating that can be seen as a natural generalization of the standard account, and show how it can predict these patterns in a simple and principled manner. EARLY ACCESS
{"title":"Context Dynamics","authors":"Michael Caie","doi":"10.3765/sp.16.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.16.3","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, I consider how, given mutual knowledge of the information codified in a compositional semantic theory, an assertion of a sentence serves to update the shared information in a conversation. There is a standard account, due to Stalnaker, of how such conversational updating occurs. While this account has much to recommend it, in this paper I argue that it needs to be revised in light of certain patterns of updating that result from certain natural discourses. Having argued for this, I present a new account of conversational updating that can be seen as a natural generalization of the standard account, and show how it can predict these patterns in a simple and principled manner. EARLY ACCESS","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135590674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Questions with plural definites (QPDs) can receive responses that take the form of a pair-list. Following Dayal (1992, 1996) and Krifka (1992), these are generally treated not as genuine pair-list answers, but as pragmatically-motivated elaborations on underlyingly cumulative answers. I present new evidence against this view: pair-list answers can be available even in the absence of a corresponding felicitous cumulative answer. I argue that the pair-list form of such answers must be represented in the semantics, and that QPDs must permit both the “cumulation-and-elaboration” strategy and a genuine pair-list parse.
{"title":"Pair-list answers to questions with plural definites","authors":"W. Johnston","doi":"10.3765/sp.16.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.16.2","url":null,"abstract":"Questions with plural definites (QPDs) can receive responses that take the form of a pair-list. Following Dayal (1992, 1996) and Krifka (1992), these are generally treated not as genuine pair-list answers, but as pragmatically-motivated elaborations on underlyingly cumulative answers. I present new evidence against this view: pair-list answers can be available even in the absence of a corresponding felicitous cumulative answer. I argue that the pair-list form of such answers must be represented in the semantics, and that QPDs must permit both the “cumulation-and-elaboration” strategy and a genuine pair-list parse.","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41516570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The satisfaction theory of presupposition projection found in Heim 1983 has paved the way for a successful research tradition within dynamic semantics which has given rise to compositional analyses of a variety of projection behaviors. Since Geurts 1996, however, the promise of this research program has been called into question due to what Geurts dubs the “proviso problem”: satisfaction theory generates incorrect predictions in cases in which a presupposition ends up filtered which should not have been. I show that the satisfaction account of presupposition projection is nevertheless in good shape by revealing that the observations of Geurts are valid only under certain basic assumptions about how semantic composition works. To illustrate this, I present a satisfaction account of presupposition projection that incorporates a notion of scope-taking based on monads . The resulting composition scheme provides a setting in which the proviso problem does not arise, thus lending support to the scope theory of presupposition projection.
Heim 1983提出的预设投射的满足理论为动态语义学的一个成功的研究传统铺平了道路，这一传统催生了对各种投射行为的组合分析。然而，自Geurts 1996年以来，由于Geurts所称的“前提条件问题”，这一研究项目的前景一直受到质疑：在假设最终被过滤掉的情况下，满足理论会产生不正确的预测，而这些预测本不应该被过滤掉。我通过揭示格茨的观察结果只有在关于语义构成如何工作的某些基本假设下才是有效的，表明了预设投射的满足度是良好的。为了说明这一点，我提出了一个对预设投射的满意描述，其中包含了基于单子的范围选取概念。由此产生的构成方案提供了一个不出现前提条件问题的环境，从而为预设投射的范围理论提供了支持。
{"title":"Presupposition projection as a scope phenomenon","authors":"Julian Grove","doi":"10.3765/sp.15.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.15.15","url":null,"abstract":"The satisfaction theory of presupposition projection found in Heim 1983 has paved the way for a successful research tradition within dynamic semantics which has given rise to compositional analyses of a variety of projection behaviors. Since Geurts 1996, however, the promise of this research program has been called into question due to what Geurts dubs the “proviso problem”: satisfaction theory generates incorrect predictions in cases in which a presupposition ends up filtered which should not have been. I show that the satisfaction account of presupposition projection is nevertheless in good shape by revealing that the observations of Geurts are valid only under certain basic assumptions about how semantic composition works. To illustrate this, I present a satisfaction account of presupposition projection that incorporates a notion of scope-taking based on monads . The resulting composition scheme provides a setting in which the proviso problem does not arise, thus lending support to the scope theory of presupposition projection.","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41382750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Belief or consequences","authors":"Christopher Tancredi, Y. Sharvit","doi":"10.3765/sp.15.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.15.14","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46039356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
There is an important analogy between languages and games. Just as a scoresheet records features of the evolution of a game to determine the effect of a move in that game, a conversational score records features of the evolution of a conversation to determine the effect of the linguistic moves that speakers make. Chess is particularly interesting for the study of conversational dynamics because it has language-like notations, and so serves as a simplified study in how the effect of an assertion depends on, as well as evolves, the scoreboard. In this paper, we offer a compositional semantics for chess notation and a simple formal picture for determining the full information conveyed by an entry. We will also discuss an alternative model resembling accounts of centered assertion.
{"title":"Scorekeeping in a chess game","authors":"Bryan Pickel, B. Rabern","doi":"10.3765/sp.15.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.15.12","url":null,"abstract":"There is an important analogy between languages and games. Just as a scoresheet records features of the evolution of a game to determine the effect of a move in that game, a conversational score records features of the evolution of a conversation to determine the effect of the linguistic moves that speakers make. Chess is particularly interesting for the study of conversational dynamics because it has language-like notations, and so serves as a simplified study in how the effect of an assertion depends on, as well as evolves, the scoreboard. In this paper, we offer a compositional semantics for chess notation and a simple formal picture for determining the full information conveyed by an entry. We will also discuss an alternative model resembling accounts of centered assertion.","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44962887","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper presents a detailed description and formal semantic analysis of habitual sentences in Tlingit (Na-Dene; Alaska, British Columbia, Yukon). As in many other languages (Carlson 2005, 2012), there are two means in Tlingit for expressing a habitual statement, such as my father eats salmon . The first employs a relatively unmarked verb, realizing imperfective aspect. In the second type of habitual sentence, however, the verb bears special habitual morphology. Although there is a significant overlap in the use of these constructions, certain semantic contrasts do exist. Most notably, the special habitual marking cannot be used to express pure, unrealized dispositions/functions/duties (e.g., Mary handles any mail from Antarctica ). In other words, Tlingit habitual morphology — unlike imperfective aspect — requires the habituality in question to have actually occurred, an effect that has also observed for habitual morphology in a variety of other, unrelated languages (Green 2000, Bittner 2008, Boneh & Doron 2008, Filip 2018). I develop and defend a formal semantic analysis that captures these (and other) contrasts between imperfective and habitual verbs. In brief, imperfective aspect is argued to
{"title":"Two paths to habituality: The semantics of habitual mode in Tlingit","authors":"Seth Cable","doi":"10.3765/sp.15.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.15.11","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents a detailed description and formal semantic analysis of habitual sentences in Tlingit (Na-Dene; Alaska, British Columbia, Yukon). As in many other languages (Carlson 2005, 2012), there are two means in Tlingit for expressing a habitual statement, such as my father eats salmon . The first employs a relatively unmarked verb, realizing imperfective aspect. In the second type of habitual sentence, however, the verb bears special habitual morphology. Although there is a significant overlap in the use of these constructions, certain semantic contrasts do exist. Most notably, the special habitual marking cannot be used to express pure, unrealized dispositions/functions/duties (e.g., Mary handles any mail from Antarctica ). In other words, Tlingit habitual morphology — unlike imperfective aspect — requires the habituality in question to have actually occurred, an effect that has also observed for habitual morphology in a variety of other, unrelated languages (Green 2000, Bittner 2008, Boneh & Doron 2008, Filip 2018). I develop and defend a formal semantic analysis that captures these (and other) contrasts between imperfective and habitual verbs. In brief, imperfective aspect is argued to","PeriodicalId":45550,"journal":{"name":"Semantics & Pragmatics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42212931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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