25.4922, Review: Semantics; Syntax: Scheffler (2013)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-25-4922. Fri Dec 05 2014. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 25.4922, Review: Semantics; Syntax: Scheffler (2013)

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Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 12:24:30
From: Tim Hirschberg [hirschberg at zas.gwz-berlin.de]
Subject: Two-dimensional Semantics

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-491.html

AUTHOR: Tatjana  Scheffler
TITLE: Two-dimensional Semantics
SUBTITLE: Clausal Adjuncts and Complements
SERIES TITLE: De Gruyter Linguistische Arbeiten 549
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2013

REVIEWER: Tim Hirschberg, ZAS Berlin

Review's Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

The book presents case studies of relevance (a.k.a. biscuit) conditionals,
sentence adverbs, speech act uses of causal connectors, sliftings, and German
verb second complement clauses. Scheffler argues that these theoretically
challenging constructions, which give rise to peculiar interpretative effects,
can be given a unified account in terms of Potts’s (2005) logic for
conventional implicatures (CIs). It is thus proposed that they convey their
meaning via an independent semantic dimension. This predicts both semantic
unembeddability (none of these constructions seem to interact with negative,
interrogative, or modal operators) and the availability of interpretations
that go beyond the possibilities of the standard variants (regular
conditionals, etc.).

The book is a revised version of Scheffler’s 2008 dissertation. Most examples
are from English or German but the author expects her results to be language
independent for the most part. The target audience are linguists with an
interest in semantics, especially ones who focus on non-standard embedding
phenomena and questions of compositionality. Some basic knowledge of semantics
(e.g. at the level of the Heim & Kratzer 1998 textbook) will be sufficient to
follow the discussion.

After the introductory section (chapter 1), Potts’s two-dimensional theory is
presented (chapter 2). The main motivation for the existence of a further
semantic dimension comes from constructions that do not affect truth
conditions, although they appear to be syntactically integrated. They rather
contribute side comments on the main assertion. Often cited examples are
nominal appositives, non-restrictive relative clauses, and expressive
modifiers (e.g. damn). The CI dimension entails the following characteristics:
CIs are necessarily understood as commitments made by the actual speaker
(speaker orientation), they convey discourse new meaning (in contrast to
presuppositions), and they do not engage scope interactions (semantic
unembeddability). 

In chapter 3, Scheffler uses a set of diagnostic tools to demonstrate that
these characteristics hold for evaluative (e.g. unfortunately) and utterance
modifying (e.g. frankly) adverbs. The strategy for showing CI status will
remain the same for all construction types discussed in the book. In German,
there are both syntactically integrated and disintegrated adverbs that behave
like CIs:

(1)  Leider hat er es nicht ernst gemeint.

‘Unfortunately he didn’t mean it.’

(2)  *Wer schläft leider hier? 

‘Who sleeps here, unfortunately?’

(3)  Mal ehrlich, er ist wirklich nicht so schlau.

‘Honestly, he isn’t really that smart.’

The adverb leider ‘unfortunately’ occurs in the so called prefield (Vorfeld)
in (1), which is taken as evidence for its integrated status. Nevertheless, it
cannot be embedded under question operators, as shown in (2). By contrast, mal
ehrlich ‘honestly’ is not able to precede the finite verb in (3). The prefield
is filled by the subject pronoun er ‘he’ and the adverb appears to be
structurally orphaned. The syntactic difference correlates with an
interpretative difference: while the integrated type takes a propositional
argument, the disintegrated type comments on a whole utterance. Importantly,
it is the shift to the CI dimension that enables modification of utterance
relations, according to Scheffler.

Chapter 4 is dedicated to causal connectors in German. Scheffler summarizes
the controversial discussion on the distribution of denn and weil (both
regular weil with verb last word order and the informal variant with verb
second word order (weil-V2)). She observes that there exists a superset
relation. While denn can be applied both to propositions and to speech acts,
weil is restricted to the first option:

(4)  ??Ist vom Mittag noch etwas übrig? Weil ich schon wieder Hunger habe.

(5)  Ist vom Mittag noch etwas übrig? Denn ich habe schon wieder Hunger.  

‘Is there anything left over from lunch? Because I’m already hungry again.’

Scheffler derives the wider application range of denn from its CI status. In
principle, it has the same causal meaning as weil. However, denn contributes
its causal component through a different meaning dimension so that it can
target illocutionary operators. In German, the shift to the CI dimension is
not only triggered lexically but also syntactically. V2 second word allows
weil to have speech act readings too:

(6)  Die Antwort ist auf Seite 242, weil du findest sie ja selbst nie.

‘The answer is on page 242, since you will never find it yourself.’

Chapter 5 expands the CI analysis to relevance conditionals. Scheffler’s main
argument against previous accounts is that they do not capture semantic
unembeddability. According to her, the if-clause of a relevance conditional
takes the form of a side comment which is completely irrelevant for the
truth-conditions of the main assertion:

(7)  a: If you’re hungry, there’s pizza in the fridge.

At Issue Content: There’s pizza in the fridge.

CI: If Addressee is hungry, a utters (There’s pizza in the fridge)

Despite the fact that no regular conditional meaning can be recognized in (7),
a conditional operator is present. Its interpretative effect becomes active in
the CI dimension, thereby establishing a condition for the relevance of the
consequent.

Chapter 6 is an intermediate summary. Scheffler emphasizes that her analysis
gives a principled explanation for the intuition that there exist parallels
between non-standard usages of conditionals, adverbs, and clausal connectors.
In every case, an operator is lifted to the CI dimension, what enables
interpretations above the propositional level. She also explains why some
constructions are not only semantically but in addition syntactically
separated from their matrix clause. According to her, syntactic disintegration
marks CI status (besides comma intonation or lexicalized CI triggers).

In chapter 7, German verb second complement clauses and so called sliftings
(Max is a Martian, I feel) are compared. Scheffler rejects previous attempts
to derive these constructions from each other. While both trigger conventional
implicatures and involve the same meaning components, there exist important
differences. For instance, in sliftings, the attitude verb has a parenthetical
status. By contrast, the attitude verb acts as the head of the main clause in
verb second complements. Chapter 7 also addresses the pertinent question of
which verbs allow verb second complements in German.

Chapter 8 concludes the book.

EVALUATION

Scheffler shows convincingly how one and the same mechanism might be decisive
for a divergent group of constructions. She fruitfully applies Potts’s CI
theory to a number of controversial phenomena. In particular,  the complex
verb-second vs. verb-last data from German are discussed in a well-balanced
manner. Moreover, the book is written clearly and concisely. Some areas,
however, should have been treated more thoroughly. Chierchia &
McConnel-Ginet’s (2000) ‘family of sentences’ has motivated the CI
diagnostics, but there is no reference to it. More importantly, Potts’s
framework is presented rather uncritically. Scheffler only briefly mentions
problems related to stacked CIs (footnote on p. 43). However, there exists an
ever-growing array of potential empirical counterevidence to the CI theory
(see Amaral et al. 2007; Schlenker 2010a/b; Sæbø 2011; Wang et al. 2004; among
others). Even Scheffler admits that relevance conditionals do not always
behave as expected with regard to . semantic unembeddability:

(8)  John said that if you need him later he’ll be in 418.

The relevance conditional in (8) is not anchored to the actual speaker but to
John, i.e. it appears to be embedded under the verb say. Scheffler tries to
solve this contradiction by assuming that CIs form a mixed class (p. 112).
According to her, at least some CIs allow embedding in a limited way. Speaker
orientation, however, is the hallmark feature of CIs and if one weakens the
definition, it will be difficult to keep CIs and informative (i.e.
accommodated) presuppositions apart. I think it would be preferable to
reconsider the scope based analysis of attitude verbs and their complements
instead. Perspective shifts may very well occur independent of scope (cf.
Harris & Potts 2009). 

Note that Scheffler’s generalization that the availability of high readings
(epistemic, speech-act, etc.) comes along with scopelessness and speaker
orientation does not necessarily speak in favor of the CI account. It could
also be the other way round, i.e. whenever meaning components are used to
apply to discourse information directly (making the source of the information
transparent, showing why something is relevant, etc.) they project over
semantic operators. This is roughly the idea behind Simon et al.’s (2011)
information structural approach to projection. This approach is also more
flexible and can easily deal with exceptions from the ban on scope
interaction. 

REFERENCES

Amaral, P., Roberts, C., Smith, E. (2007): Review of ‘The Logic of
Conventional Implicatures’ by Chris Potts.  Linguistics and Philosophy 30:
707-749.

Chierchia, G., McConnel-Ginet, S. (2000): Meaning and Grammar.. Cambridge, MA.

Harris, J., Potts, C. (2009): Predicting perspectival orientation for
appositives. CLS 45.

Heim, I., Kratzer, A. (1998): Semantics in Generative Grammar. Oxford.

Potts, C. (2005): The Logic of Conventional Implicatures. Oxford.

Schlenker, P. (2010a/b): Supplements within a unidimensional semantics. (a)
Scope and (b) Epistemic status and projection. In: Proceedings of the
Amsterdam Colloquium 2009 (a) & Proceedings of NELS 2009 (b).

Simons, M. et al. (2011): What projects and why. In: Proceedings of SALT 20.
Online publication  
[http://elanguage.net/journals/index.php/salt/issue/view/220]. 3090–327.

Sæbø, K. (2011): Appositives in modal contexts. In: I. Reich et al. (eds.),
Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 15. Saarbrücken 79-100.

Wang, L., McCready, E., Brian, R. (2004): Nominal appositives in context. In:
M. Martínez, A. Alcázar and R. Hernandéz (eds.), Proceedings of Western
Conference on Linguistics [WECOL]. California State University. 411-423.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Tim Hirschberg is a Ph.D. candidate at ZAS Berlin. He is currently writing his
dissertation on how discourse relations influence scope in embedded clauses.
His research interests includes semantics and pragmatics.








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