Minimal sufficiency, plural predication, and scalarity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18148/sub/2025.v29.1224Abstract
Minimal sufficiency readings of exclusive modifiers (Just the thought of food makes me hungry) have resisted a comprehensive semantic analysis that accurately predicts their distribution. In this paper we show that the distribution of minimal sufficiency readings is directly correlated with the interpretation of plural arguments and that the distributional facts reflect the connection between plural predication and scalarity: sufficiency readings are licensed precisely in contexts where ordering relations over alternatives are reversed. We develop a semantics for exclusives that is capable of generating either exclusive or sufficiency readings depending on the direction of scalarity.Downloads
Published
2025-09-22
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Fagen, L., & Bar-Asher Siegal, E. (2025). Minimal sufficiency, plural predication, and scalarity. Proceedings of Sinn Und Bedeutung, 29, 465–481. https://doi.org/10.18148/sub/2025.v29.1224
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Copyright (c) 2025 Lucas Fagen, Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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