Remarks on disjunctive focus-associates

Abstract

This paper concerns similarities and differences between the implicatures of dis-junction — modalized disjunction speci?cally — and the implicatures of other scalar terms like some. The two inference types are compared with special attention to their behavior under association with only, where they are shown to come apart. I argue that disjunct alternatives (p,q) to a disjunctive associate of only ([p or q]) do not feed the semantics of the particle. The signi?cance of the claim is discussed in connection to (a) semantic and implicature-based accounts of free choice inferences, and (b) the phenomenon of presupposed implicatures.