30.2418, Review: Pragmatics; Semantics: Sawada (2018)

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Subject: 30.2418, Review: Pragmatics; Semantics: Sawada (2018)

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Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2019 21:22:26
From: Brady Clark [bzack at northwestern.edu]
Subject: Pragmatic Aspects of Scalar Modifiers

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/29/29-837.html

AUTHOR: Osamu  Sawada
TITLE: Pragmatic Aspects of Scalar Modifiers
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: Brady Clark, Northwestern University

INTRODUCTION

Sentences can be used to express multiple propositions. A speaker who utters
''Sam regrets drinking yesterday” seems committed to the propositions that Sam
drank yesterday and that Sam regrets it. The second proposition is likely more
conspicuous than the first. A great deal of recent research has been devoted
to this multidimensionality.

Central to this research is the notion of (not-)at-issueness. At-issue
propositions are often described as the ''main point'' of the utterance and
not-at-issue propositions as ''backgrounded''. (Not-)at-issueness is dependent
on several factors, including convention and discourse. Ideally,
characterizations of (not-)at-issueness determine diagnostics for
(not-)at-issueness and the assumptions that underlie them. But research on
(not-)at-issueness ''did not proceed in this orderly fashion and formal
characterizations of at-issueness that go beyond calling at-issue content the
'main point' and not-at-issue content 'backgrounded' … have only recently been
developed''  (Tonhauser et al. 2018: 528).

Sawada (2018), the book reviewed here, investigates scalarity, focusing on
Japanese scalar modifiers. Roughly, the content of a scalar expression maps
its argument(s) onto a set of points ordered along some dimension (e.g.,
height). For instance, the adjective ''tall'' expresses a function from
objects to degrees, the degree to which the object is tall (at a certain time,
location, …). Many kinds of expressions express scalarity. Sawada (pg. 1)
claims some scalar expressions are ''dual-use'', ''where a degree
morphology/scalar concept used for expressing at-issue scalar meaning … can
also be used for expressing a not-at-issue scalar meaning.'' He examines
multiple scalar expressions in a ''multidimensional composition system'' (pg.
8).

Sawada's book is a significant contribution to the literature. He presents a
comprehensive description of a class of scalar expressions. This book will be
valuable for researchers interested in the expression of scalarity in
Japanese. Linguists interested in not-at-issue content will benefit from
Sawada's investigation. But there are problems with Sawada's descriptive
claims and theoretical proposals, some particular to Sawada's book, some
endemic to the (not-)at-issueness literature. These problems illustrate
challenges associated with analyzing (not-)at-issue content. To keep what
follows to a reasonable length, I focus the main body of the review on how
Sawada diagnoses not-at-issue content. 

SUMMARY

Chapter 1 is the introduction. Chapter 2: Sawada’s focus is conventional
implicature (CI) scalar content. He adopts Potts’s (2005) characterization of
CIs. A CI is not-at-issue content that comments on at-issue content. Unlike
conversational implicatures, CIs are semantically encoded. For example,
appositives like ''the dancer'' in ''Chris, the dancer, shouted” encode CIs
(Potts 2005). Sawada's primary claim regarding CI scalar content is that it is
''cross-dimensional'' (pg. 35). Japanese scalar expressions like ”totemo''
('very') are “dual-use” expressions that encode at-issue and not-at-issue
content which share a single semantic structure. 

Chapter 3: Sawada presents his characterization of CIs, building on Potts
(2005) and McCready (2010). Different semantic types distinguish at-issue
content and CIs. A sentence encoding a CI gives rise to at least two
propositions (Potts 2005); e.g., a speaker who utters ''Sam, who lost
millions, wept'' (containing the appositive ''who lost millions”) in response
to ''How’s Sam?” is committed to the at-issue proposition that Sam wept and
the CI that Sam lost millions. 

Chapters 4-7 investigate different scalar modifiers. Sawada proposes two types
of scalars: higher-level ones, which utilize pragmatic scales, and lower-level
ones, which recycle (pg. 8) the scale of an at-issue predicate. Chapters 4 and
5 concern higher-level scalar modifiers; Chapters 6 and 7, lower-level.
Chapter 4 explores the pronoun ''nani-yori-mo'' 'more than anything else’,
which expresses two kinds of comparison with indeterminateness. On the
“individual” reading, content like tennis is compared with a contextually
determined set of alternatives. On the ''noteworthy” reading, a proposition is
compared with alternative propositions in terms of noteworthiness. Sawada
argues that the noteworthy implication is a CI and the individual implication
at-issue, while positing scale structure sharing. 

Chapter 5 investigates polarity items ''chotto'' and ''sukoshi'', both
meaning, roughly, ‘a little'. Sawada argues they have the same at-issue
content but contribute different CIs: ''sukoshi”’s CI content is that the
speaker's measurement is precise, while ''chotto'''s is that the measurement
is imprecise. Sawada claims ''chotto'' but not ''sukoshi'' is used as a speech
act minimizer whose CI is, roughly, ‘the degree of imposition of the assertion
on the hearer is slightly greater than the minimum.’ 

Chapter 6 focuses on the intensifiers ''totemo'' and ''motto'' (roughly, 'even
more', i.a.). For CIs, both expressions use the scale encoded by a gradable
predicate. ''Totemo'' combines with a negative gradable expression to
conventionally implicate a high degree of unlikelihood. ''Motto'' combines
with a gradable predicate to conventionally implicate that the expected degree
(of, e.g., deliciousness) is lower than the actual. 

Chapter 7 explores two adverbs, ''yoppodo'' and ''kaette''. “Yoppodo''
communicates an intensified meaning; e.g., when ''yoppodo'' combines with the
adjective ''oishii'' 'delicious', 'very delicious' is conveyed at the at-issue
level, with a counter-expectational CI that the target’s degree is above the
judge's expectation. In contrast, ''kaette'' expresses an at-issue identity
function and the CI that it is normal that the property P (e.g., 'dangerous')
doesn’t hold. 

Chapter 8 examines subject- and speaker-oriented implications triggered by
embedded scalar modifiers, focusing on belief-predicate complements. Sawada
argues subject-oriented readings are available for many embedded scalars.
Scalars vary in what type of environment supports subject-oriented vs.
speaker-oriented readings; e.g., ”yoppodo'' requires a main clause evidential
modal for the speaker-oriented interpretation. Sawada proposes that, for
subject-oriented readings, CIs triggered by scalars undergo a semantic shift
(not-at-issue to at-issue content).

The historical development of scalar modifiers is Chapter 9’s focus. Sawada
proposes that most scalars tend to be the result of shift from propositional
to expressive meaning. He considers the interaction of syntactic and semantic
change, arguing that semantic change is sometimes not accompanied by
syntactic.

Chapter 10 summarizes the book and compares Sawada's proposals to others
(e.g., Bach 1999).

CRITICAL EVALUATION

The notion of (not-)at-issueness is central to much recent work, primarily
because of the impact of Potts (2005). Potts, however, never provides an
explicit characterization of at-issueness (Amaral et al. 2007: 729). This is
also true of much work subsequent to Potts (2005), including Sawada’s book.
Some exceptions include AnderBois et al. (2015), Murray (2014), and Simons et
al. (2010). 

Beyond an explicit characterization, work on (not-)at-issueness should also
involve consistent use of diagnostics for varieties of (not-)at-issue content.
Sawada inconsistently uses several diagnostics to support his claim that some
scalar modifiers are associated with not-at-issue CIs. This inconsistency is
instructive, demonstrating difficulties associated with diagnosing
(not-)at-issue content.

Amaral et al. (2007: 711-712) observe that ''the main division of content [in
Potts 2005] is determined by the notion of 'deniability''', where deniability
is susceptibility to direct rejection by ''(the relevant language's equivalent
of) 'That is (not) true''' (Matthewson et al. 2007: 220). It is often assumed
that direct rejectability is a sufficient property of at-issueness: If a
proposition p can be directly rejected, then p is at-issue. 

(1) illustrates the application of direct rejection to an utterance that
contains an appositive (''a dancer'' in A’s utterance). The direct negative
reply B, challenging the main clause content of A (i.e., that Sam took the
bus), is felicitous. B', which targets appositive content, isn’t. Assuming
direct rejection diagnoses at-issueness, the infelicity of B’ suggests that
appositive content is not at-issue.

(1) A: Sam, a dancer, took the bus.
     B: False! He didn't take the bus.
     B': #False! He isn't a dancer. 

Sawada presents direct rejectability as a hallmark of at-issueness (pg. 3). He
shows that only certain uses of scalar modifiers can be targeted by direct
rejection. We should be cautious, though, about using direct rejection as an
at-issueness diagnostic (see Snider 2017). But whatever the viability of the
direct rejection as an at-issueness diagnostic, it doesn’t distinguish between
presuppositions and CIs. Both resist direct rejection. 

Sawada also discusses the ''Wait a minute'' test (Shanon 1976, von Fintel
2004, Potts 2008), a diagnostic that is sometimes used to show that, although
a certain speaker commitment cannot be directly rejected, it can be challenged
indirectly with expressions like ''Wait a minute”:

(2) A: Sam, a dancer, took the bus.
     B: Wait a minute. He isn’t a dancer.

Sawada assumes that this test targets presuppositions. Potts (2008) and Syrett
and Koev (2015) provide evidence against this assumption, showing, for
example, that “Wait a minute'' can also challenge appositive and main clause
content. The ability to pass the ''Wait a minute'' test is a necessary, not
sufficient, condition for presuppositionhood (Potts 2008). 

Sawada discusses (pgs. 36-38) two properties he claims distinguish CIs from
presuppositions: projectivity and backgroundedness. For Sawada, projectivity
concerns the interpretation of an implication embedded under a belief- or
speech-predicate. The interpretation of the appositive ''the linguist'' (that
Kim is a linguist) in the following is preferentially speaker-oriented:

(3) Sam believes that Kim, a linguist, loves to dance.

On Sawada's definition, content is “projective” when embedded under a
belief-predicate if the embedded content is speaker-oriented. Sawada's
conception of projectivity is different from others in the literature.
Tonhauser et al. (2013: 66-67) characterize an implication as projective if
the implication tends to be understood as associated with the speaker ''even
when the trigger is embedded under operators [like negation] that usually
block the implications of material in their scope.'' These environments
include negation, polar questions, epistemic possibility modals, and the
antecedent of a conditional. I think Sawada’s “projectivity” is related to
what Tonhauser et al. (2013: 93) call the “obligatory local effect'':

OBLIGATORY LOCAL EFFECT: A projective content m with trigger t has obligatory
local effect if and only if, when t is syntactically embedded in the
complement of a belief-predicate B, m necessarily is part of the content that
is targeted by, and within the scope of, B.

Sawada claims (pg. 36) presuppositions cannot ''usually'' project out of ''the
complement of an attitude predicate/a verb of saying, CIs can'' (Potts 2005;
see Heim 1992 on projection in these contexts). 

Sawada presents evidence that the not-at-issue content of some embedded
Japanese scalars are projective, but typically only under certain conditions.
For example, “motto'' allows for both speaker-oriented and
non-speaker-oriented readings under belief-predicates, if there is a deontic
modal in the main clause (pgs. 182-183). In this way, the implication
triggered by “motto” behaves quite differently than appositive content in
English, which is typically speaker-oriented.

The presuppositions triggered by some classical presupposition triggers are
known to project out of belief-predicate complements (Heim 1992). Tonhauser et
al. (2013) provide evidence that the implications associated with certain
expressions that have been classified as presupposition triggers --- for
example, the possessive relation expressed by possessives and the salience
implication associated with the additive ''too'' --- are not necessarily part
of the attitude-holder's belief state. Instead, they can be associated with
the speaker. Projectivity (in Sawada's sense) does not neatly distinguish CIs
from presuppositions.

The second property that Sawada uses to distinguish CIs from presuppositions
is backgroundedness. Potts (2005: 33-34) observes that, e.g., appositives,
seem unable to express information already in the common ground. Potts (2005)
proposes an ''antibackgrounding'' requirement that holds for at-issue content
and CIs but not presuppositions. Consider the continuations in (4i) and (4ii)
(adapted from Potts 2005: 34). (4i), which contains an appositive (''a cancer
survivor''), is infelicitous. In contrast, (4ii), in which the proposition
that Lance Armstrong is a cancer survivor is a not-at-issue implication
triggered by ''know'', is felicitous. 

(4) Lance Armstrong survived cancer.
       (i) #When reporters interview Lance, a cancer survivor, he often talks
about the disease.
       (ii) And most riders know that Lance Armstrong is a cancer survivor. 

Sawada's claim is that the not-at-issue scalar content triggered by scalars is
a CI. He does not always provide clear evidence for this. He asserts, e.g.,
that polarity items ''chotto'' and ''sukoshi'' trigger an imprecise and
precise CI, respectively (pgs. 84). Sawada's evidence (pg. 92-93) for the
not-at-issue status of these implications comes from two sources. First, the
implications evade direct rejection. Second, the implications “do not
logically interact with logical operators”: the imprecise/precise implications
for these two minimizers tend to be understood as associated with the speaker
even when these minimizers are embedded within a question or the antecedent of
a conditional. 
    
Having provided evidence that the implications associated with ''chotto'' and
''sukoshi'' are not-at-issue, Sawada must establish that the implications are
CIs. The evidence he provides for this claim comes from projectivity: the
not-at-issue content triggered by these two minimizers can project past a
belief-predicate. But, as discussed above, projection out of a
belief-predicate complement is not a property that cleanly distinguishes
presuppositions from CIs. As Sawada notes (pg. 93), the implications triggered
by ''chotto'' and ''sakoshi'' can be associated with the attitude-holder and
the speaker. Sawada also asserts that the not-at-issue implications associated
with ''sakoshi'' and ''chotto'' are ''new information''. But he provides no
linguistic evidence for this. 

A similar lack of thoroughness characterizes Sawada's discussion of “totemo”.
Sawada provides evidence (pg. 110-111) that the implication triggered by
''totemo'' is not-at-issue: the implication cannot be targeted by direct
rejection and “cannot be under the scope of logical operators” (pg. 110). But
he provides no clear evidence that ''totemo'' triggers a CI rather than a
presupposition (see pgs. 169-171 on speaker- and subject-oriented readings of
embedded “totemo”). 

The evidence that ''motto'' triggers a CI is similarly incomplete. The
implication cannot be directly rejected (pg. 120). Sawada claims that the
implication is not background information; hence, not a presupposition. His
evidence for this comes from the failure of the implication to pass the ''Wait
a minute'' test. But, failure to pass this test does not tell us that the
implication under discussion is a CI. 

Sawada argues that ''yoppodo'' triggers a CI as well. The implication cannot
be directly rejected (pg. 137). Sawada’s evidence that this implication is a
CI comes from the “contextual felicity constraint'' (pgs. 137-138). According
to Sawada, the implication associated with ''yoppodo''  is not presupposed
because it is not required to be contextually entailed. He states (pg. 137,
fn. 6) that Tonhauser et al. (2013) call this the ''strong contextual felicity
constraint.'' But Tonhauser et al. (2013: 79-80) present evidence from GuaranÌ
and English that certain expressions that are traditionally classified as
presupposition triggers (e.g., possessive noun phrases) violate this
constraint. Failure to respect this constraint does not provide conclusive
evidence for CI-status. 

Summing up, Sawada explores an impressive range of scalar modifiers that he
claims trigger a CI. But the diagnostics for not-at-issue content are
typically applied inconsistently and inconclusively. 

It’s possible that the implications Sawada investigates do not form a unified
kind. Potts (2005) argued both expressives and appositives contribute CIs.
Subsequent research has identified differences between these two classes of
expressions (Potts 2012).  Similarly, so-called “presupposition triggers” are
not a unified kind (Soames 1989 [2009], Karttunen 2016; Tonhauser et al. 2013;
Tonhauser et al. 2018). “[W]e should take care not to overstate the unity [of
expressions that appear to display multidimensionality - BZC]; many
differences emerge, suggesting that we need to study each item on its own
terms'' (Potts 2012). 

CONCLUSION

Sawada's book is a solid contribution to the literature. Researchers working
on (not-)at-issueness will find much to engage with. The book will be useful
for further work on Japanese scalar modifiers. Importantly, this investigation
of scalar modifiers provides a case study of the pitfalls that characterize
attempts to test for not-at-issue content. 

REFERENCES

Amaral, Patricia, Craige Roberts, & E. Allyn Smith. 2007. Review of The Logic
of Conventional Implicatures by Chris Potts. Linguistics and Philosophy 30(6).
707-749.

AnderBois, Scott, Adrian Brasoveanu, & Robert Henderson. 2015. At-issue
Proposals and Appositive Impositions in Discourse. Journal of Semantics 32.
93-138. 

Bach, Kent. 1999. The Myth of Conventional Implicature. Linguistics and
Philosophy 22(4). 327-366.

von Fintel, Kai. 2004. Would you believe it? The King of France is back!
(Presuppositions and truth-value intuitions). In Anne Bezuidenhout & Marga
Reimer (eds.), 315-341. Descriptions and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Heim, Irene. 1992. Presupposition Projection and the Semantics of Attitude
Verbs. Journal of Semantics. 9. 183-221.

Karttunen, Lauri. 2016. Presupposition: What went wrong? In Mary Moroney,
Carol-Rose Little, Jacob Collard, & Dan Burgdorf (eds.), 705-731. Proceedings
of the 26th Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference. Linguistic Society of
America & Cornell Linguistics Circle.

Matthewson, Lisa, Hotze Rullmann, & Henry Davis 2007. Evidentials as epistemic
modals. The Linguistic Variation Yearbook 7. 201-254.

McCready, Eric. 2010. Varieties of conventional implicature. Semantics &
Pragmatics. 3(8). 1-57.

Murray, Sarah E. 2014. Varieties of update. Semantics & Pragmatics 7(2). 1-53.

Potts, Christopher. 2005. The Logic of Conventional Implicatures. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.

Potts, Christopher. 2008. Wait a Minute! What Kind of Discourse Strategy is
This? Annotated data. http://christopherpotts.net/ling/data/waitaminute/ (19
November 2018)

Potts, Christopher. 2012. Conventional implicature and expressive content. In
Claudia Maienborn, Klaus von Heusinger, & Paul Portner (eds.), 2516-2536.
Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning, Volume 3.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 

Shanon, Benny. 1976. On the two kinds of presupposition in natural language.
Foundations of Language 14(2). 247-249.

Simons, Mandy, Judith Tonhauser, David Beaver, & Craige Roberts. 2010. What
Projects and Why. In Nan Li & David Lutz (eds.), 309-327. Proceedings of the
20th Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference. Linguistic Society of America
& Cornell Linguistics Circle. 

Snider, Todd. 2017. At-issueness [does not equal] anaphoric availability. In
Patrick Farrell (ed.), 1-15. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the
Linguistic Society of America (LSA) 2(39). Linguistic Society of America.

Soames, Scott. 1989 [2009]. Presupposition. In Dov Gabbay & Franz Guenthner
(eds.), 553-616. Handbook of Philosophical Logic, vol. 4. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Reprinted in Scott Soames 73-130. Philosophical Essays, vol. 1. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2009.

Syrett, Kristen & Todor Koev. 2015. Experimental Evidence for the Truth
Conditional Contribution and Shifting Information Status of Appositives.
Journal of Semantics 32(3). 525-577.

Tonhauser, Judith, David I. Beaver, & Judith Degen. 2018. How projective is
projective content? Journal of Semantics 35(3). 495-542. 

Tonhauser, Judith, David I. Beaver, Craige Roberts, & Mandy Simons. 2013.
Toward a taxonomy of projective content. Language 89(1). 66-109.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Brady Clark is a College Adviser and Associate Professor of Instruction at
Northwestern University. He received his Ph.D. in linguistics in 2004 from
Stanford University. His primary research areas currently are semantics and
pragmatics, with specific interests in (not-)at-issueness, presupposition,
definite descriptions, and metasemantics. He has published work on language
change, focus, game-theoretic approaches to communication, and theories of
language evolution.





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