33.2690, Diss: Pragmatics; Semantics: Mathieu Paillé: ''Strengthening Predicates''

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-33-2690. Sun Sep 04 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.2690, Diss:  Pragmatics; Semantics: Mathieu Paillé: ''Strengthening Predicates''

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Date: Sun, 04 Sep 2022 19:44:13
From: Mathieu Paillé [mathieu.paille at mail.mcgill.ca]
Subject: Strengthening Predicates

 
Institution: McGill University 
Program: Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2022 

Author: Mathieu Paillé

Dissertation Title: Strengthening Predicates 

Dissertation URL:  https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/006765

Linguistic Field(s): Pragmatics
                     Semantics


Dissertation Director(s):
Bernhard Schwarz
Luis Alonso-Ovalle

Dissertation Abstract:

Sentences in natural language are routinely interpreted as stronger than would
be expected from the lexical meanings of the overt lexical items alone. This
has led to the postulation of exhaustification (strengthening) mechanisms in
pragmatics and semantics. Such exhaustivity effects have largely been
discussed for logical vocabulary, focused expressions, and predicates forming
entailment scales with other predicates. Relying on recent work on additive
particles, I argue that exhaustivity is at play in a significantly broader
array of meanings than previously appreciated: all predicates are
exhaustified, in all sentences. That is, the intuited meanings of predicates
in sentences are stronger than their lexical–conceptual meanings. I focus on
'taxonomic' predicates, which do not form entailment scales with other
predicates. I make this case first and foremost based on apparently banal
contradictions like 'This comedy is a tragedy' or 'The white flag is green.'
While these contradictions are intuitively due to the meanings of the
predicates, the interaction of these predicates with additive particles ('This
comedy is also a tragedy') and conjunction ('This play is both a comedy and a
tragedy') is argued to show that the predicates are underlyingly consistent.
As such, the contradiction observed in the basic case must result from
exhaustification. 

In addition to demonstrating the existence of exhaustification in the meaning
of taxonomic predicates, I also show that this exhaustification behaves in a
hitherto undescribed way. The exhaustification of a given predicate is not
only obligatory, but it is also obligatorily local to the predicate. Modelling
exhaustification through an Exh(aust) operator, roughly equivalent to a covert
'only,' predicates are claimed to 'control' Exh: they both require its
presence and roughly dictate its syntactic locus. These constraints on Exh
give its semantic output the flavour of lexical meaning. I argue that the
locality requirement on Exh is best understood as it needing to be in the
predicate's maximal projection, and I model this by postulating an Agree
relation between derivational morphemes and Exh.

For Exh to exhaustify predicates in a non-trivial way, predicates must come
with alternatives; similarly to expressions like 'some' or 'or,' they bear
alternatives even without being focused. I make two claims about alternatives.
First, concerning the alternatives borne by predicates, I suggest as a first
approximation that these are the sisters of the predicate in a given
conceptual taxonomy. I then propose a notion of 'predicational
jurisdiction'—the kind of information provided by a predicate—to suggest that
predicates are alternatives iff they share a jurisdiction. For example,
'green' and 'table' are not interpreted as mutually exclusive (i.e., are not
alternatives for controlled exhaustivity) because they contribute different
kinds of information; but 'table' and 'chair,' 'comedy' and 'tragedy,' and
'green' and 'white' are alternatives because they share a jurisdiction. This
both explains why taxonomic sisters are alternatives, and, as I will show,
manages to capture a broader range of data. The second claim about
alternatives pertains to how Exh and additive particles interact. Building on
work suggesting that additives serve to avoid unwanted exhaustivity effects, I
suggest that additives are directly involved in pruning alternatives from the
domain of Exh. They do not prevent exhaustification by removing Exh, but can
weaken Exh by making it exclude fewer alternatives.

(abstract abridged)




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