The semantics of additive either

Abstract

Focus particles too and additive either have been analyzed as fully presuppositional elements that presuppose an existence or reference of some salient antecedent. In this paper, I propose an alternative account of too and either, where they are two-place predicates taking as arguments the overt proposition they adjoin to and a silent propositional anaphor. While too assertsa conjunction of the two arguments, either asserts a disjunction of the two arguments. The main advantages of this proposal are that too and either’s non-presuppositional behavior is accounted for, and that the conjunction-disjunction switch has implications on additive either’s NPI behavior.