“One tool to rule them all”? An integrated model of the QuD for Hurford Sentences

Abstract

Katzir and Singh (2015) proposed that felicitous sentences should constitute good answers to a “good” Question under Discussion (QuD, Roberts, 1996, i.a.). Following this insight, we account for a range of challenging Hurford Sentences (Hurford, 1974; Singh, 2008b; Marty and Romoli, 2022; Mandelkern and Romoli, 2018), via a compositional machinery pairing assertions with implicit QuDs, complemented with two pragmatic principles (RELEVANCE, REDUNDANCY) made sensitive to implicit QuDs. This approach motivates the use of implicit QuDs as a general and explanatory tool in pragmatics.