Distribution Interferences with DP-Taking Intensional Verbs

Abstract

This project identifies two classes of DP-taking verbs that are associated with distribution inferences, or free-choice effects, when their objects are disjunctive. Here I present and explore one possible analysis of these predicates, which decomposes them into two parts—a manner of speech type verb, and a modal operator that accounts for the distribution effects. This proposal is designed to capitalize on the intensionality of the predicates, and to account for an additional empirical property, that negated instances of these predicates come in two flavors: one that negates  that something has been communicated, and another that reports a negative claim.