Sinn und Bedeutung is a major European conference, devoted to formal semantics and pragmatics as well as neighbouring fields. The first installment took place in Tübingen in 1996, initiated by Arnim von Stechow and Sebastian Löbner. The papers of the conference have been made available in proceedings since SUB 6 in 2002, Osnabrück. In an ongoing initiative, the proceedings are being put online and maintained at the University of Konstanz, starting from SuB 22 (2017, Berlin) and adding earlier and further issues by and by. All issues are also available at a SuB site (Gesellschaft für Semantik) maintained by Emar Maier, whom we warmly thank for his efforts in archiving the proceedings. All issues are also available at the SemanticsArchive. The copyright for articles remains with the individual authors. (Konstanz, July 2019)
We are pleased to present the Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 29, held at the Consorzio Universitario Mediterraneo Orientale (C.U.M.O) in Noto, Italy, from September 16-20, 2024. The conference was jointly organized by the Università degli Studi di Messina, Università degli Studi di Enna “Kore”, and the Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS). [...]
Copyright (c) 2025 Federica Longo, Daniele Panizza https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Number marking in interrogative phrases: 'What' interrogatives in Farsi
Number inflection within interrogative phrases restricts the types of possible answers that these phrases allow for (Dayal, 2016). The paper focuses on Farsi what interrogatives. In Farsi, plural what interrogative phrases require answers naming plural individuals. In contrast, singular what interrogative phrases allow for answers naming singular or plural individuals. This is the case both for bare (what) and for complex interrogatives (what book), but only when these are not marked with differential object morphology: with the differential object marker -ro, only bare singular interrogatives allow for answers naming plural individuals. We derive this pattern from the following assumptions: (i) that interrogatives can range over generalized quantifiers (Spector, 2008; Xiang, 2016; Elliott et al., 2022), (ii) that singular marking is a default in the case of bare interrogatives, but not in the case of complex interrogatives, and (iii) that -ro restricts a set down to one of its singleton subsets. We note that extending this line of analysis to which interrogatives poses questions about their structure, which are left unanswered here.
Copyright (c) 2025 Luis Alonso-Ovalle, Esmail Moghiseh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Decoupling degrees from their instantiations
Degree DPs, like the amount of paint you use, feature both a degree noun, like amount, and an entity noun, like paint. Scontras (2017) observes that these DPs can saturate not just degree predicates, like be three liters, but also entity predicates, like use, and argues that this flexibility shows that degrees, hence the denotations of degree DPs, are complex objects built from instantiating ordinary entities. Based on the distribution of degree DPs with two entity nouns, like the amount of paint that you use of wax, we challenge this argument and argue that the flexibility is instead due to syntactic ambiguity (Alonso-Ovalle and Schwarz 2023, 2024). We moreover present a direct argument against Scontras’ view of degrees as built from instantiating entities. This argument is based on the observation that two degree DPs with different entity nouns, like paint and wax, can be truthfully equated in copular sentences. To set the stage, we show that the internal composition of degree DPs does not require a complex construal of degrees, once we assume a relative clause syntax with pied piping and reconstruction that parallels the structure for how many-questions suggested in Heim (1987).
Copyright (c) 2025 Luis Alonso-Ovalle, Bernhard Schwarz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Most theories of very treat it as a degree modifier whose distribution is restricted to positive-form APs. Against this view, Goncharov (2024) has argued that very has a much wider distribution, highlighting cases like the very beginning, the very same, and the very man and arguing for a unified analysis. While Goncharov (2024) represents a major step towards understanding very, there is another use of very that, though it has been noted in passing, has not been closely scrutinized: very’s use in superlatives (very best). In this paper, I examine very-intensified superlatives more closely to gain a fuller understanding of very. I start by arguing that very’s use in superlatives should be unified with its other uses; then, I turn to the question of what a unified, degree-based theory of very would have to look like. Ultimately, I pursue a new theory of very built on (a) a new approach to comparison classes; and (b) Fitzgibbons et al.’s (2008) claim that -est, like the positive morpheme pos, invokes a standard-degree.
Copyright (c) 2025 Johanna Alstott https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This paper investigates the interpretation of comparative constructions containing definite plurals. We identify an asymmetry between the matrix clause and the than-clause. In the matrix clause, definite plurals give rise to a homogeneity effect, as expected by all theories of homogeneity. In contrast, definite plurals in the than-clause do not trigger such an effect; instead, their interpretation is typically similar to than-clauses containing universal quantifiers. Adopting the truth-value gap approach to homogeneity, we propose that the homogeneity presupposition is locally accommodated within the than-clause, yielding complementary truth conditions for affirmative and negative comparative constructions.
Copyright (c) 2025 Omri Amiraz, Omri Doron https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Lying and commitment: The case of pointing gestures
In this paper, we examine pointing gestures that accompany underinformative definite articles and pronouns in German. Ongoing discussions on the definition of lying reveal a contrast between traditional, narrow definitions that focus on what is said and more recent definitions that emphasize commitment. Through two experiments, we demonstrate that first, deceptive pointing gestures are judged as lies to the same degree as speech only. This finding can be interpreted as support for a commitment-based definition of lying, or be explained by assuming that the pointing gestures in our experiment are part of the assertion. Furthermore, our results show that speakers are perceived to be committed to the content of their pointing gestures, although in comparison to speech only, ratings on commitment were lower. However, none of the two commitment-related properties, accountability and restricted deniability, accurately predicts the similarity between pointing gestures and speech for lie ratings. In conclusion, our findings present empirical challenges to both traditional and commitment-based definitions of lying.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mailin Antomo, Yuqiu Chen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Lying with at-issue and not-at-issue emojis
Drawing on the commitment based definition of lying, we hypothesize that emojis can be used to lie if and only if they cause speaker commitment. We test the three-way relation between emojis, commitment, and lying in two experimental rating studies. In experiment 1, we ask participants whether a writer is lying when they use a pro-text, at-issue emoji, a message-final, not-at-issue emoji, or no emoji in the control. In experiment 2, participants rate the writer’s commitment, operationalized as accountability and restricted deniability, for the same message types. The results show that participants rate messages with final, not-at-issue emojis significantly lower on the lying scale and higher on the deniability scale than messages with pro-text emojis or without emojis. We conclude that writers are seen as similarly committed to their pro-text, at-issue emojis, as to their textual content. In contrast, message-final, not-at-issue emojis trigger less commitment and are less likely to be seen as lies. Our findings indicate that emojis can indeed be used to lie, and that their usage (pro-text vs. message-final) matters for the extent to which emoji content is identified as a lie. These findings are compatible with a view where different emoji uses map onto different types of semantic content, such as at-issue assertion (pro-text emojis) vs. not-at-issue supplemental meaning (message-final emojis). They closely align with a commitment-based definition of lying.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mailin Antomo, Lea Fricke, Patrick G. Grosz, Tatjana Scheffler https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Epistemic temporal interactions in San Pablo Güilá Zapotec
On the basis of data from San Pablo Güilá Zapotec, this paper argues in support of the proposal that past temporal perspective is possible in epistemic contexts and that they depend on an operator that scopes over the epistemic modal. I show that San Pablo Güilá Zapotec has a variable-force epistemic modal pǎt and that sentences with this epistemic modal are judge-dependent. I also show that to create past temporal perspective, an element that scopes over the modal is required. This element (là̰z) performs two main functions: i) it allows past temporal perspective with the epistemic modal pǎt (by carrying a presupposition that the reference time t′ at which the modal is evaluated is located prior to the utterance time t), and ii) it expresses overtly the judge of the epistemic proposition by means of a personal subject clitic attached to it.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ana Laura Arrieta Zamudio https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Conjectural questions in Ktunaxa as canonical questions
Conjectural questions (CQs) are a type of non-canonical question, where the addressee is not expected to know the answer to the issue raised. Such questions are formed in many languages using an inferential evidential. In this paper, we analyze CQs in Ktunaxa (isolate), which contain the modal xma. Although xma is not strictly an evidential, it is compatible with an epistemic reading that requires indirect evidence. We observe that xma in declaratives can be used parenthetically, where its prejacent contains the relevant information for the current issue in the conversation. Our proposal is that CQs in Ktunaxa are derived from the same semantic mechanisms that derive canonical questions, with the twist that CQs are formed on the parenthetical use of xma. We argue against an analysis for Ktunaxa that relies on non-canonical interrogative flip, in contrast with some recent analyses of CQs in other languages.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ana Laura Arrieta Zamudio, M. Ryan Bochnak https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The role of incompatible disjuncts in the acquisition of disjunction
Prior studies on disjunctive utterances involving compatible disjuncts (i.e., where replacing the disjunction or with and would not lead to contradiction) have found that, while adults interpret disjunctive sentences such as The mouse carried either an apple or an orange exclusively (‘only one, not both’), children often interpret them inclusively (‘one, or both’) or conjunctively (‘both, not just one’) (see, for instance, Singh et al., 2016, Tieu et al., 2017 and Bleotu et al., 2024b). Recent studies based on child corpora and experiments with adults suggest that exclusive interpretations are more likely when the two disjuncts in question are incompatible with one another (Jasbi et al., 2018, 2022; Felton and Jasbi, 2025). Building on this observation, our study employed a covered box task to investigate monolingual Romanian five-year-olds’ and adults’ interpretation of disjunctive utterances involving the complex disjunction fie. . . fie ‘either. . . or’ with compatible versus incompatible disjuncts (e.g., The squirrel was either at the top or at the bottom of the tree). We aimed to investigate whether incompatibility would lead to a decrease in Romanian-speaking children’s conjunctive and inclusive interpretations of disjunction. While some children showed conjunctive interpretations for compatible cases, all patterned with adults on incompatible ones. Their adult-like responses to incompatible disjunctions highlight the role of pragmatic and lexical cues in the early acquisition of disjunction. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings, arguing that the source of exclusivity may be pragmatic or lexical.
Copyright (c) 2025 Adina Camelia Bleotu, Gabriela Bîlbîie, Andreea C. Nicolae, Mara Panaitescu, Anton Benz, Lyn Tieu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Underspecified coordination, focus and contrast in Wá·šiw
The connective =ŋa in Wá·šiw (Washo/Washoe; Hokan/isolate; USA) is compatible with both conjunction and disjunction interpretations. Although conjunction/disjunction flexibility has been discussed and analyzed in other languages, what is unique about the Wá·šiw case is that the conjunction reading of =ŋa is contrastive conjunction, translated into English as but. I argue that =ŋa is underspecified for conjunction or disjunction, following the analysis of Davidson (2013) for underspecified coordination in ASL. I propose that the additive marker =saʔ (≈ ‘also’) derives a disjunction reading of =ŋa by existentially quantifying over the alternative set denoted by the coordination. I then propose that =ŋa also lexicalizes a notion of semantic contrast, following Toosarvandani’s (2014) proposal for English but. On this analysis, the coordinates of =ŋa stand in opposition to a certain proposition in the QUD, where one conjunct implies that the proposition is true, while the other conjunct implies that the proposition is false. I furthermore show how =ŋa and =saʔ in interrogatives derive the exclusive and exhaustive inferences associated with alternative questions, though several open issues remain.
Copyright (c) 2025 M. Ryan Bochnak https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Two types of degree nominalizations: Degree concepts and qualities
Francez and Koontz-Garboden (2017) propose that in many languages, gradable predication is fundamentally about not degrees but qualities qua portions of an abstract substance, like wisdom or beauty, that an individual can be said to possess. Both notions—qualities and degrees—are crucial, we propose, to understanding an important distinction between two varieties of degree nominalization in English (e.g. height in Ingo is Bertha’s height vs tallness in Ingo has Bertha’s tallness). Building on Bochnak (2013) and Gobeski (2019), we marshal a range of unnoticed or under-noticed contrasts that we argue show that some nominalizations denote qualities and others denote what we’ll call 'degree concepts', which are intensionalized degrees.
Copyright (c) 2025 M. Ryan Bochnak, Adam Gobeski, Marcin Morzycki, Starr Sandoval https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Embedding definites instead of questions: The case of Spanish and French
Spanish and French may use relativised constructions introduced by a definite and a demonstrative, respectively, as complements of question-embedding verbs. We argue that these constructions are the intensional versions of the respective headless RCs in those languages: DPs (not interrogative CPs) encoding number-neutral maximality. These combine with question-embedding predicates as concealed questions (similar to I know the temperature of the lake), analysed as individual concepts (Romero, 2005). The cross-linguistic implication is that some languages recruit concealed questions as a generalised question-embedding strategy, with DPs taking up the functional space usually associated to wh-interrogatives.
Copyright (c) 2025 Carla Bombi, Jeanne Lecavelier https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Beyond negation and verum: Can contrast license NPIs?
We present the results of an acceptability judgment experiment, which indicate that contrastive environments contribute to the licensing of (some) NPIs in the absence of conventional negative licensors. We relate the findings to previous claims that verum focus licenses (some) NPIs, a phenomenon which we argue is actually a sub-type of licensing by contrast. We provide a rough sketch of how Sailer’s (2022) theoretical account of licensing by “negative side message” could be extended to the facts we observe in the cases of NPIs in contrastive environments.
Copyright (c) 2025 Max Bonke, Katharina Schaebbicke https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Neglect-Zero Effects in the Interpretation of Quantifiers and Disjunction
This paper presents a cross-experimental comparison investigating the interpretation and processing of four semantic/pragmatic phenomena, for which natural language interpretation deviates from literal meaning. In particular, we compared so-called neglect-zero phenomena in the case of quantifier interpretation – both for empty restrictors and empty scope sets – as well as distributivity inferences of disjunction embedded under universal quantification to the interpretation of scalar implicature in the case of some. The experiments employed a timed question-answering task which allowed us to test the just-mentioned phenomena embedded in polar questions. The data lend support to a broad differentiation of the phenomena into 1) presupposition violation in the case of empty restrictors, 2) neglect-zero effects for empty quantifier scope and distributivity inferences, and 3) negation of scalar alternatives for some.
Copyright (c) 2025 Oliver Bott, Fabian Schlotterbeck, Tomasz Klochowicz, Sonia Ramotowska, Maria Aloni https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Discourse Conditions for Conditional Perfection: Extending Beyond QUDs
This paper develops an account of conditional perfection (CP), the inference that strengthens conditionals from sufficiency (if p, q) to necessity and sufficiency (if and only if p, q). CP follows clear patterns across speech acts: it reliably occurs in inducements, varies in assertions, and is absent in advice (Van Canegem-Ardijns and Van Belle, 2008). I argue that this distribution follows from two discourse conditions: (1) the Exhaustivity Condition (speakers provide complete specification of sufficient conditions) and (2) the Epistemic Authority Condition (speakers are well-positioned to make exhaustive claims). Unlike previous accounts that tie exhaustivity to Questions Under Discussion (von Fintel, 2001), I propose that speech acts themselves structure discourse to satisfy or block these conditions. Commitment-based conditionals impose asymmetric discourse structures that guarantee both conditions, thus reliably triggering CP. Assertions satisfy these conditions only in specific contexts, while advice systematically resists CP by identifying possibilities rather than necessities. This framework explains inconsistent experimental results with QUD manipulations (Cariani and Rips, 2023; Grusdt et al., 2023) and offers a more comprehensive understanding of how diverse communicative functions can shape pragmatic inferences beyond purely informational contexts.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sarah Boukendour https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Recent work by Grimau (2020) and Buccola et al. (2021) has rekindled the debate on the extent to which natural language allows for the construction of higher-order (or structured) pluralities (HOPs) — that is, pluralities of pluralities (Link, 1983; Landman, 1989; Schwarzschild, 1996). Over the decades, research on HOP has focused on ordinary entity-denoting plurals, yet the typology of semantic entities is generally assumed to be diverse (Rett, 2022), arguably including events, worlds, times, degrees, and more. At least some of these domains arguably have the same or similar mereology as the ordinary entity domain, most famously events (Bach, 1986), and more recently degrees (Dotlačil and Nouwen, 2015). A natural question that arises is: do any of these other semantic entities allow for HOP? I argue that the answer is yes, using reciprocal degree constructions as a case study (cf. Schwarz, 2007; Hsieh, 2021).
Copyright (c) 2025 Brian Buccola https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Readings of pronouns across connectives are sensitive to monotonicity
Kanazawa (1994) proposed a generalization connecting the monotonicity properties of quantifiers and the preferred reading (existential or universal) of donkey sentences. We show through two experimental studies that his generalization extends to cross-conjunction anaphora. In a nutshell, we find that simple cross-conjunction anaphora like there is a circle and it is blue are read existentially (there is a blue circle) but adding negation to the second conjunct (there is a circle and it is not blue) makes an additional universal reading accessible (there is a circle and no circle is blue). These results provide a challenge to Egli’s principle, a principle validated by most existing dynamic theories, according to which only an existential reading should be found in these constructions, regardless of the presence of negation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Keny Chatain, Benjamin Spector https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Mapping to a scale: Mandarin 'even'-like 'dou' with hyperbolic comparatives
Hyperbole is a common figure of speech widely used cross-linguistically. This paper delves into a hyperbole-related puzzle in Mandarin comparatives observed by Yin (1995): Mandarin bi (than) comparatives intended for a hyperbolic interpretation are degraded in the sense that improved in the presence of dou. We note that dou in such uses is most naturally glossed as English even. This paper aims to address, in particular, why dou helps to improve such uses significantly; to this end, it draws on updated insights from three independent fields, i.e., hyperbole, the semantics of dou, and even-like particles in general. More concretely, it integrates three independently motivated assumptions: (i) hyperboles involve mapping from a factual scale to an evaluative/affective scale (Nouwen, 2024), (ii) dou is an even-like particle (Liao, 2011; Liu, 2017; Chen and Greenberg, 2022), and (iii) even-like particles necessarily map their prejacent and its alternatives to a contextually salient scale (Greenberg, 2018; Zhang, 2022). In light of such assumptions, we propose that dou improves hyperbolic bi comparatives in Mandarin because it encodes scale mapping that is required by but lacking in hyperbolic bi comparatives, and we formally implement this idea via Chen and Greenberg’s (2022) degree-based semantics of dou. Beyond addressing this puzzle, this work is of potential interest to the study of hyperboles in general, a phenomenon that has ‘historically resisted formal analysis’ in Feinmann’s (2023) words.
Copyright (c) 2025 Zhuang Chen, Yael Greenberg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
A pragmatic solution to anankastic conditionals
Standard accounts of modals and conditionals fail to derive the correct meaning of anankastic conditionals like ‘If you want to go to Harlem, you have to take the A train’, where it seems as if the modal in the consequent is restricted by the embedded complement of want (you go to Harlem), rather than by the whole antecedent (you want to go to Harlem). This has led to proposals for a special semantics for want (Condoravdi and Lauer, 2016) or a covert purpose clause associated with teleological (goal-oriented) modality (von Fintel and Iatridou, 2005). In this paper, we show that the apparent non-compositionality of anankastic conditionals is more general, and can be replicated with other modal flavors and attitude verbs: all can trigger what we call “harmonizing readings”. We offer a pragmatic account that generalizes across modal flavors and attitudes. Specifically, we argue that harmonizing arises when the meaning of the antecedent together with background assumptions gives rise to a modal inference that matches in flavor with the consequent modal. Our account predicts when harmonizing is possible and when it isn’t, without relying on any lexical or syntactic idiosyncrasies.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jingyi Chen, Valentine Hacquard https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Clefts can address wh-questions in referential anchoring contexts
Cleft constructions are considered infelicitous responses to wh-questions, compared to canonical focus declaratives. This study argues for a more fine-tuned generalization, by showing clefts are indeed a viable response to a question query when the discourse establishes an identifiable witness to the queried property. Using a judgment task, we tested the acceptability of cleft versus declarative answers across three conditions: unanchored (no identifiable witness), anchored (with an identifiable witness), and corrective (revises a misidentified antecedent in prior discourse). Results showed that clefts were rated on par with declarative focus both in an anchored condition and in a corrective condition. As predicted, lower acceptability ratings were found in an unanchored context.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jun Chen, Dawei Jin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
At the frontier of quantification: Correlatives, movement and scope
The main goal of this paper is to take a further look at correlatives (CRs), focusing on Hindi and the classic work on it (especially, Dayal (1991a,b, 1996), Bhatt (2003)). Despite the progress in our understanding of these constructions, there are some hard questions pertaining to at least two of their key features, namely bijectivity and locality, that remain in need of satisfactory answers. I’d like to propose a new take on them, based on a movement analysis of all CRs, including multiple ones, something that prima facie appears to be hopeless. Yet, a movement analysis of multiple CRs not only turns out to be viable and make correct predictionsfor Hindi, to an extent that arguably goes beyond the empirical reach of the classical analyses, but it also extends to other languages (e.g. Romanian) and, importantly, enables us to place CRs appropriately in the space of UG quantifiers.
Copyright (c) 2025 Gennaro Chierchia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Similative disjunction and strengthening
Many natural languages have a simplex form and a complex form of disjunction, and it is commonly assumed that the complex form has stronger exclusive and exhaustive inferences. This study investigates Hindi disjunction, in its simple form and complex form. We report that Hindi disjunction follows the general tendency, but crucially, its simplex form can also give rise to a ”similative inference”. We propose an analysis treating Hindi disjunction as a ”similative disjunction”, and demonstrate how this similative disjunction can be strengthened into an exhaustive disjunction.
Copyright (c) 2025 Giulio Ciferri Muramatsu, Pravaal Yadav https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Davidson’s proposal that action verbs contain a hidden event argument, later refined by Parsons and others, has provided a powerful framework for understanding the logical form of sentences, in particular those involving adverbial modification. In this paper, we parallel this approach in the nominal domain by introducing the notion of perspectives, which function analogously to events. Our goal is to develop a logical account of adnominal modification that mirrors the insights of event semantics. We propose a compositional framework in which adjectives and undetermined noun phrases are interpreted as sets of perspectives rather than sets of individuals or modifiers of sets of individuals. This approach synthesises Fine’s concept of qua objects and Larson’s suggestion that Davidsonian event semantics should be applied to adjectival modification. Our analysis captures entailment relations and intensional aspects of modification without recourse to meaning postulates or possible world semantics. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our perspective-based semantics naturally accommodates different adjective classes, including subsective, intersective, modal, and privative adjectives.
Copyright (c) 2025 Philippe De Groote, Timothee Bernard https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Non-specific and dependent indefinites: When -nibud’ meets po
This contribution examines two classes of special indefinites, non-specific and dependent, with a focus on Russian, which features both a wh-based non-specific indefinite (-nibud’) and a dependent indefinite (po). The first part of the work shows how these two types of indefinites share various distributional similarities and constraints, yet differ in terms of which operators license them. The second part presents a formal analysis couched in a team semantics framework that treats non-specific indefinites as requiring evaluation-level plurality (variation) and dependent indefinites as being dependent on their licensor (informational dependence). This formalization captures the empirical patterns in Russian and unifies insights from prior analyses, accounting for differences in scopal behavior, (in)compatibility with modal operators, and interactions with plurality and distributivity.
Copyright (c) 2025 Marco Degano https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Take on this commitment: the particle 'bərə' in Marathi (Indo-Aryan)
The particle bərə in Marathi optionally occurs in final position in declaratives, imperatives, and wh-interrogatives giving rise to different discourse effects. This paper presents the first description of utterance-final bərə in declaratives and imperatives, offering a unified analysis for its distributional profile and interpretive effects. I will claim that in these uses, bərə has an advisory effect: a bərə-using speaker conventionally expresses their preference that the addressee undertake a dependent doxastic or preferential commitment to the content introduced by the speaker. A second conventional component is a felicity condition that undertaking this commitment is a pre-condition for fulfilling a contextually salient addressee-benefiting goal. The existence of this conventionalized cross-clausal discourse strategy reinforces a view on which models of discourse update must not only track (i) evolving interlocutor beliefs and preferences; but also (ii) speaker attitudes regarding how commitments should be optimally taken on by their interlocutors; and (iii) how acts of taking on commitments relate to the broader action choices and goals of interlocutors.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ashwini Deo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Believing p, discovering ¬p: 'Meğer' and epistemic shifts
This paper provides the first formal semantic treatment of meğer clauses in Turkish, focusing on their presuppositional and evidential properties. Meğer clauses uniquely encodes a doxastic shift, asserting a proposition that the speaker previously believed to be false but now believes to be true. Additionally, the study explores the obligatory occurrence of the so-called indirect evidential marker -mI in meğer clauses, proposing that the contexts satisfying the presuppositions of meğer inherently satisfy the presuppositions of -mIș . Hence, in such contexts, -mIș is preferred over direct evidentiality as a result of Maximize Presupposition! (Heim, 1991). By analyzing meğer, this study aims to contribute to the broader understanding of evidentiality, presuppositions, and epistemic shifts in natural language.
Copyright (c) 2025 Furkan Dikmen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The landscape of inferential evidentiality: Towards a unified framework
Inferential evidential markers (IEMs) in assertions indicate that the speaker inferred φ from a set of privileged knowledge (e.g. from facts that the speaker witnessed directly). As the intuition that ‘inferencing took place’ is typical for IEMs, a uniform analysis in terms of inferencing seems warranted. The attested logical properties of IEMs, however, can differ substantially from language to language, which led to a multitude of incommensurable accounts. I propose a unified underlying framework which (a) captures the implicitly assumed inferencing in IEMs and (b) can be modulated so as to capture IEMs of different logical strength in a common framework. The model builds on von Fintel + Gillies’ (2010, 2021) kernel model and can be adapted to account for German wohl, Gitksan =ima and Cuzco Quechua =chá.
Copyright (c) 2025 Regine Eckardt https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Mixed-polarity pluralities: A solution to van Benthem’s problem
In this paper, I suggest a new way of resolving a number of problems with an orthodox treatment of modified numerals as existential quantifiers over pluralities. It’s well known that existential quantification renders upper bounds inert—an issue known as ‘van Benthem’s problem’. This can be addressed by building a notion of maximality into the semantics of modified numerals, but this fails to capture attested cumulative readings due to how maximality takes scope with respect to other operators. Existing work addressing this compositional stalemate exploits powerful mechanisms for side-stepping scopal interactions, such as post-suppositions (e.g., Brasoveanu 2013). Here, I maintain a simple treatment of modified numerals as existential quantifiers over pluralities, while significantly enriching the ontology of pluralities themselves. Concretely, I explore the idea that pluralities can encode both positive and negative information, building on recent work by Bledin (2024).
Copyright (c) 2025 Patrick D. Elliott https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Number classifying to number marking: Change in English countability
It is herein argued that, from Old English (OE) to Present Day English (PDE), (i) number marking has narrowed from a complex function specifying either atoms or quantities to its present day status specifying only atomicity in addition to number, and (ii) numericals have been reanalyzed from AP heads to specifiers, n⟨n⟩ of the functional measure phrase, MP, that takes a cardinality or measure function as its head. This analysis situates OE as a “number classifying language” wherein number marking specifies atoms or contextually specified partitions, and in doing so militates against previous claims that OE ‘is a classifier language’ and ‘had no count–mass distinction’.
Copyright (c) 2025 Kurt Erbach https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Minimal sufficiency, plural predication, and scalarity
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.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lucas Fagen, Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The Italian Conditional: X-Marking and Beyond
Languages often use the same morphology (‘X-marking’ morphology, von Fintel and Iatridou 2023) to express counterfactual conditionals, wishes and weak necessity. We bring into the arena a use of X-marking, the reportative interpretation of the Italian conditional, which has received little attention in the formal semantics literature (but see Howell 2012 on the French conditionnel). We show that, on its reportative use, the Italian conditional patterns with reportative evidentials cross-linguistically. We propose that the reportative reading arises when conditional morphology interacts with a default assertoric modal operator, and performs two operations argued to be at work in other uses of X-marking: modal domain widening (as in counterfactual conditionals, von Fintel and Iatridou 2023) and modal domain restriction (as in weak necessity modals, von Fintel and Iatridou 2008).
Copyright (c) 2025 Ilaria Frana, Paula Menéndez Benito https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The at-issue status of (modified) pro-speech gestures
Data from Schlenker (2021) suggests that modifications of pro-speech gestures—for example, a lifting gesture modified by trembling of the hands and facial expressions to convey effort—contribute not-at-issue meaning. If this is the case, modified pro-speech gestures convey information across two semantic dimensions simultaneously: the neutral pro-speech gesture contributes at-issue meaning, while the modification adds not-at-issue content. Presenting results from a rating study, I provide empirical support for this claim and offer novel experimental evidence confirming that pro-speech gestures contribute at-issue meaning.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lennart Fritzsche https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
'Ja' or 'jaaaaa'? Scale interpretation in iconically lengthened response particles
The traditional view that language is arbitrary (Hockett, 1960) has become increasingly challenged recently (e.g., Blasi et al., 2016): Iconic mappings between form and meaning are found throughout language, as for example in prosodic modulations of length such as looooong (Fuchs et al., 2019). In German, it is possible to modulate the length of response particles in responses to polar questions containing a gradable adjective, as in jaaaaa for the response particle ja (‘yes’). We provide experimental evidence showing that prosodic modulations allow access to semantic scales and manipulate the degree to which a certain property has to hold for a given individual. Further, we analyze lengthening as a degree modifier similar to very, but with different effects on the level of non-at-issue meaning.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lennart Fritzsche, Nadine Bade, Cornelia Ebert, Cecile Meier https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
RESPonsible attitudes: The case of Italian 'considerare'
This paper investigates the intentional component of the Italian verb considerare (‘consider’), distinguishing it from the purely doxastic verb credere (‘believe’) and the experiential subjective attitude verb trovare (‘find’). Building on linguistic diagnostics proposed by Farkas (1988) and Barker (2002), we show that considerare patterns with verbs that encode agentive responsibility and discretionary evaluation. We argue that this component aligns considerare with evaluative subjectivity and propose a formal decision-theoretic model to capture its semantics.
Copyright (c) 2025 Achille Fusco https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Aggregate nouns in the plural are uncountable: Evidence from German
Nouns like rice and sand denote aggregates, i.e., pluralities of objects typically situated in great proximity. Aggregates may be encoded not only as a singular mass noun (rice), but also by nouns in the plural (onions, peas). It has been argued that the difference in grammatical form indicates a difference in meaning: Individuals in the denotation of a plural aggregate-denoting noun are more cognitively salient and disjoinable than individuals in the denotation of the singular mass form. In this paper, I present results of corpus studies of plural aggregate-denoting nouns in German which do not confirm this assumption. My findings rather suggest that there is no difference in meaning between aggregate plurals and aggregate mass nouns since both may occur in the same “mass” contexts, and the interpretation of plural in such contexts differs from the interpretation of the ordinary count plural. I use means of mereotopology to formally capture this difference.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ljudmila Geist https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Negativity induced differences in the semantic-pragmatic behavior of expressive adjectives
Expressive Adjectives (EAs) (e.g., damn, blasted) express a negative speaker attitude toward a discourse referent. EAs are typically treated as a homogeneous class in semantic and pragmatic literature, mainly focusing on damn as the prototypical EA. The presumed behavior of damn is then generalized to all other EAs, neglecting the potential impact of meaning variations among EAs on their interpretation. This article addresses this shortcoming by investigating how different degrees of negativity in EAs affect their interpretation and acceptability. We report three studies: a valence rating study that establishes a negativity hierarchy of common EAs; a forced-choice study showing that EA negativity interacts with utterance-internal emotional cues in EA-interpretation; and an acceptability rating study showing that differently negative EAs vary in their compatibility with positive referents. While some results remain inconclusive, the findings challenge earlier generalizations on EA behavior and highlight the necessity for future research on EA processing to take these distinctions into account.
Copyright (c) 2025 Kalle Glauch https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Aspectual shift in Romance: A preliminary study
Bare plurals in English are known to induce a shift in the aspectual properties of verbal complexes, turning telic eventualities into atelic ones. In this respect, they contrast with singular indefinites (e.g., a) and non-specific plural indefinites (e.g., some) which have been claimed to not trigger such an aspectual shift. In this work, we address two questions: (i) how much different types of indefinites vary in their ability to cause aspectual shift and (ii) what happens to aspectual shift in languages where bare plurals have a more constrained distribution than in English or are altogether unattested. We investigate these questions through two experimental studies in three closely related Romance languages: French, Italian and Romanian. We also discuss consequences of our findings for current theoretical proposals on the topic. To our knowledge, this work constitutes the first attempt to investigate aspectual shift across languages experimentally.
Copyright (c) 2025 Aurore Gonzalez, Anamaria Fălăuș, Gennaro Chierchia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Plural definites and domain restriction in Romance and Germanic
Across Romance and Germanic languages, plural definites either have the three following uses, or none of them. (a) They can refer to the maximal plural individual satisfying the description, without being anaphoric or contextually restricted; (b) They can serve as arguments of kind predicates; (c) they can be generic and enter the restrictor of a modal adverb of quantification like ‘usually’ (and its counterpart in other languages). We use compatibility with ‘usually’ as a test for genericity, because even non-generic referential plural definites (say [The NPs] in English) can restrict some adverbs of quantification, including ‘generally’, an often overlooked fact. The relationship between (b) and (c) has been observed, but their connection with (a) has gone unnoticed, and our generalization, to our knowledge, has never been formulated as such. Our goal is to substantiate it and to show that it sheds a new light on the cross-linguistic comparison of Romance and Germanic languages regarding genericity, bare plurals, and plural definites. We conclude the paper by fitting existential readings of Italian and English Bare Plurals into the picture.
Copyright (c) 2025 Janek Guerrini, Benjamin Spector https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The semantics of specificity-marked indefinites: Evidence from Algerian Arabic
In this paper, I argue that specificity-marked indefinites function as referential expressions rather than existential quantifiers. Introducing a novel test, I demonstrate that they systematically lack all forms of existential readings—including narrow scope, wide scope, intermediate scope, and existential quantification over Skolem functions—while instead contributing reference to either individuals or Skolem functions. Based on these observations, I propose a semantics for specificity markers such as Algerian Arabic el (‘the’) and English certain, analyzing them as extreme domain restrictors. I then evaluate the implications of this analysis within both a classical existential generalized quantifier approach to indefinite determiners and a choice function approach.
Copyright (c) 2025 Walid Hafsi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Revisiting the role of structural complexity in symmetry breaking
Many recent theories of strengthening assume following Katzir (2007); Fox and Katzir (2011) that the alternatives used to derive strengthened meanings may be at most as complex as the prejacent. We explore a novel response to several known problems for this view that maintains three of its core assumptions: the selection criterion is (i) structure-based, (ii) indifferent to whether the alternatives form entailment-based scales, and (iii) cannot be overruled by relevance. Contra Fox and Katzir, the crucial structural criterion is not complexity per se, but similarity to the prejacent. Moreover, this property only applies to break stalemates between symmetric alternatives; in the absence of stalemates, alternatives are structurally unconstrained. We suggest that while assumptions (i) and (ii) have good empirical consequences, this account is not entirely successful because (iii) is too strong: In certain special cases, which seem to have an information-structural characterization, stalemates can be broken by relevance.
Copyright (c) 2025 Nina Haslinger, Viola Schmitt https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
“One tool to rule them all”? An integrated model of the QuD for Hurford Sentences
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.
Copyright (c) 2025 Adèle Hénot-Mortier https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
We present novel data derived from a the structure (p ∨ p ∨ q) via the or-to-if tautology and core properties of disjunction (commutativity, associativity). The sentences at stake display unexpected felicity contrasts–posing a challenge for existing theories of oddness. Building on the QuD-informed model of oddness presented in the current volume (Hénot-Mortier, to appear), and much previous work, in particular Ippolito (2019) and Zhang (2022), we propose a solution covering the data, and which can extend to other classic cases of oddness, including Hurford phenomena (Hurford, 1974; Singh, 2008; Mandelkern and Romoli, 2018).
Unifying the French evidential construction 'on di(rai)t que'
The evidential constructions on dit que p (∼‘one says that p’) and on dirait que p (∼‘one would say that p’) differ in terms of meaning, compatibility with negation, and in terms of the moods they can embed. These factors additionally influence whether the speaker can be taken to endorse the prejacent. On dit- and on dirait-constructions were previously assumed to be distinct idioms, the former with an evidential reading, the latter, with an epistemic reading. In this paper, we propose that both forms are derived from the same core components, in particular, an evidential modal dire involving an accessibility relation which forces a homogeneity effect regarding the truth of its prejacent in evidentially accessible worlds. We show that the complex interaction between embedded mood, negation, and speaker endorsement in these constructions, can be explained assuming that on di(rai)t-constructions compete with structural alternatives differing w.r.t. the placement of negation, mood, and their subject pronoun.
The focus operator only asserts that alternatives to its prejacent are false. But, what alternatives does only exclude? There must be constraints on alternatives. Fox and Katzir (2011) propose that alternatives are formed in the syntax, and are constrained by grammar such that they cannot be structurally more complex than the prejacent. We argue that this constraint is too restrictive. We take a new look at complex alternatives, and conclude that they can be attested, with their distribution regulated pragmatically by the Question Under Discussion (after Roberts 1996/2012, Beaver & Clark 2008, Katzir 2023).
Copyright (c) 2025 Aron Hirsch, Bernhard Schwarz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Degrees are accessed indirectly? A new look at Chinese 'bi'-comparatives
Two aspects of Chinese adjectival bi-comparatives (bi-comparatives) remain underexplored. First, a critical morphosyntactic difference between bare (i.e., those without differential phrases) and differential (i.e., those with differential phrases) bi-comparatives is that the morpheme chu, literally meaning ‘beyond/exceed’, is exclusively licensed in the latter, but not in the former. Second, bi-comparatives do not freely allow measure phrases (MPs) as the standard of comparison unless there are sufficiently specific contexts. These observations are taken as indications that degrees may only be accessible in some constructions. I propose that (i) bare bi-comparatives do not characterize an ordering of degrees, but a directed scale segment (Schwarzschild, 2020); and (ii) while characterizing a directed segment, differential bi-comparatives allow the mapping of the segment onto a degree specified by the differential phrase, a role fulfilled by chu (à la Wellwood, 2015). Taken together, Chinese bi-comparatives may constitute a case where degrees are not encoded in the lexical semantics of gradable adjectives, but introduced via a functional morpheme (Wellwood, 2015; Bochnak et al., 2020).
Copyright (c) 2025 Yaqing Hu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The maximality puzzle: Evidence from ʔayʔaǰuθəm
This paper examines the status of maximality for determiners in ʔayʔaǰuθəm (a.k.a. Comox-Sliammon, ISO 639-3: coo), an endangered Central Salish language traditionally spoken by four communities in British Columbia, Canada. Based on an experiment and original fieldwork, we propose that the ʔayʔaǰuθəm tə determiner encodes maximality, but not familiarity, while the kw determiner encodes neither. Furthermore, we argue that salience can play an important role in restricting the domain, thus giving rise to maximal readings in technically non-maximal contexts. These findings contribute to establishing the mechanisms modulating reference to plural individuals cross-linguistically.
Copyright (c) 2025 Marianne Huijsmans, D. K. E. Reisinger https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Exploring the semblance and discrepancies between simplex and complex numerals in Mandarin Chinese
This paper investigates the polysemy of the adjective da ‘big’ within numeral classifier phrases, focusing on its dual roles as an attributive modifier before the head noun and as a degree operator preceding the classifier or a multiplicative numeral. By examining the position of da and its semantic implications, the study distinguishes the roles of cardinal numbers. Syntactically, simplex numerals act as heads, selecting numeral bases as complements. Semantically, they encode either degree-based or quantifier-type meanings. Multiplicative numerals (formed as Simplex-Base combinations) further exhibit versatility, serving as quantifying elements or nominal partitioning tools, highlighting the complex interplay between syntax and semantics in numeral classifier constructions.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lu Jin, Shiyang Fu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
While traditional degree semantics posits that comparison constructions operate on scalar dimensions, property equatives–which compare individuals with respect to categorical properties–present a theoretical challenge to this view. I demonstrate that property equatives, despite lacking inherent scalar structure, exhibit parallel structural constraints with degree equatives, suggesting a unified semantic operation underlying both constructions. Based on novel data evidence, I propose a QUD-based semantics for equatives that accounts for both scalar and non-scalar interpretations. This analysis suggests that the scalar interpretation of degree equatives emerges from the interaction between question-based similarity assessment and the ordered nature of gradable predicates, rather than from inherent scalar semantics in the comparison operation itself.
Copyright (c) 2025 Karolin Kaiser https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Hurford disjunctions: Beyond redundancy and triviality
We present two experiments on Hurford Disjunctions (Hurford, 1974, and much subsequent work) and their conjunctive counterparts, testing key predictions of the two dominant approaches in the literature: the Non-Redundancy approach (Katzir and Singh, 2013) and the Non-Triviality approach (Schlenker, 2009). Our results challenge core predictions of both accounts, suggesting that neither fully captures the actual patterns. We explore the implications of these findings and argue that the notion of super-redundancy, introduced by Kalomoiros (2023a), provides a promising framework for explaining our results. Finally, we draw connections to recent developments in the literature on presuppositions, particularly to insights from Mandelkern et al. (2020) and Kalomoiros and Schwarz (2024), which could help refine our theoretical account of redundancy phenomena.
Copyright (c) 2025 Alexandros Kalomoiros, Matthew Mandelkern, Paul Marty, Jacopo Romoli, Florian Schwarz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Propositional discourse referents and anaphora in dialogue
The article develops the notion of propositional discourse referents that contain dependent discourse referents. It explains the enablement of anaphora on the confirming uptake of assertions and questions by yes, and the blocking of anaphora by no, as well as the role of propositional anaphora like so. The explanation is embedded in a version of dynamic semantics that is based on dynamic context sets with their continuations.
Copyright (c) 2025 Manfred Krifka https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
In some languages, past tense markers give rise to nearly uncancellable cessation inferences - a phenomenon known as ‘discontinuous past’ (DP). In their original discussion of this phenomenon, (Plungian and van der Auwera, 2006) proposed a semantic account of DP-effects, arguing that certain past markers encode the meaning “past and not present”. They further suggested that in languages with optional past tense, the (‘idle’) past marker exhibits this property. More recently, the semantic approach has faced criticism. (Cable, 2017) showed that Tlingit, an optional past tense language exhibiting DP-effects, allows cessation inferences to be cancelled in certain cases (through a statement of ignorance). This finding contradicts the predictions of the semantic account. As a result, an alternative pragmatic explanation has gained traction (Cable, 2017; Bochnak, 2016; Bochnak and Martinović, 2019). Building on original fieldwork on Tundra Nenets, we present arguments against the pragmatic approach and propose a novel semantic account in which DP-effects arise not from the meaning of Past itself, but from the application of Exh to past tense sentences. We argue that our account not only captures the contrasts observed by (Cable, 2017) in Tlingit but also explains the cross-linguistic variation in DP-effects across optional past languages, which we attribute to differences in the obligatoriness of Exh.
Copyright (c) 2025 Petr Kusliy, Ekaterina Vostrikova https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Left-nested conditionals — those with another conditional in the antecedent — have largely been ignored in the semantic and philosophical literature. When discussed, they are usually treated as marginal or even ill-formed, even though linguistic theories of conditionals predict that they should be readily interpretable. This paper attempts to explain why they are special, and to draw out consequences for how they can be used to inform semantic theories of conditionals. Using a number of diagnostics, I show that bare left-nested conditionals are preferentially interpeted as premise conditionals. Premise conditionals are syntactically and semantically distinct from the hypothetical conditionals that the semantic literature has focused on, and they show severe restrictions in terms of the discourse contexts in which they can occur. Left-nested conditionals show the same behavior on this and a number of other diagnostics, including overt markers in Japanese and German. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of how these puzzling patterns could be explained from various theoretical perspectives, and some methodological lessons.
Copyright (c) 2025 Daniel Lassiter https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Do we need two uniqueness conditions? A reply to Lewis (2022)
This paper revisits the long-standing issue of how uniqueness and anaphoricity interact in definite descriptions, particularly the disappearance of the uniqueness effect when a definite description is used anaphorically. Over years of research, two types of uniqueness conditions have been proposed to account for this effect: the individual uniqueness condition and the discourse uniqueness condition. Recently, Lewis (2022) has argued that both are necessary for a comprehensive explanation. However, this paper challenges the necessity of positing two distinct uniqueness conditions. Instead, we argue that grounding the individual uniqueness condition within dynamic semantics (Beaver and Coppock 2015; Köpping 2020) provides a more adequate account. While we disgree with the core premise of Lewis’ dual-uniqueness analysis, we concur with her view that dyanmicness is essential for understanding the interaction between uniqueness and anaphoricity.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jess H. K. Law, Haoze Li https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
You can leave your dog outside, but do you have to?: An RSA approach
A deontic possibility utterance can have a necessity interpretation in some contexts. For example, a café owner’s utterance of “You can leave your dog outside.” to a dog owner who is about to enter can be taken to mean that the dog owner has to leave their dog outside. This phenomenon, where a logically weaker item (possibility) implies a stronger item (necessity) on a scale, is not straightforwardly explained through standard theories of scalar implicature that predict that the assertion of a logically weaker item implies the negation of a stronger item. I attempt to account for this phenomenon of possibility-to-necessity inference using a theory of graded modality (Lassiter, 2011, 2017; Chung and Mascarenhas 2023) and the Rational Speech Act (RSA) framework (Frank and Goodman, 2012; Goodman and Stuhlmüller, 2013). I construct an RSA model where the pragmatic listener jointly infers about the state of the world and the value of the semantic variable as in Lassiter and Goodman (2013, 2017). The speaker utility includes social utility along epistemic utility, after Yoon et al. (2017). I consider two situations which differ in terms of whether explicit deontic necessity utterances are available to the speaker. The RSA model predicts a high probability of necessity interpretation in both. I further compare these results to the ones I obtain by controlling for components of the RSA model such as utterance cost and social utility, examining the effect that each has on the final result. The present study thus offers a way of systematically investigating a previously understudied phenomenon of deontic necessity inference arising from a deontic possibility utterance.
Copyright (c) 2025 Seo-young Lee https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The case for the strong and conditional analysis of permission
The classic analysis of permission modals involves existential quantification over a modal base. This analysis fails to account for many parallels between conditionals and permission, including non-monotonic and order-sensitive behavior in the scope of permission. An alternative-sensitive strict dynamic homogeneous conditional account of permission is given, which captures the parallels with conditionals, while also delivering simple and complex free choice patterns semantically. The semantic derivation of free choice makes it easier for the experimental evidence for the asymmetry between free choice and scalar implicatures to be accounted for than under the implicature approach to free choice.
Copyright (c) 2025 Haoming Li https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Beyond 'yes' and 'no': Multimodal multilexical polar responses in German
Response particles like yes and no fulfil two functions: they may affirm or reject a previous utterance, or they may indicate the response polarity. Languages differ with regard to the function that is given priority, which is reflected in the use of particles in responses to negative antecedents. Quantitative evidence shows that priorities are gradient and that there also is interindividual variation. Response strategies other than particle responses are less well studied but it is well known that languages use for instance echoing strategies, truth-related verbal and adjectival predicates, non-vocal gestural strategies, as well as sequential and simultaneous combinations of these. We present results from an open production experiment looking at the entire range of multilexical and multimodal response strategies in German. German uses a wide range of response elements (RE) including the ambiguous particles ja ‘yes’ and nein ‘no’, unambiguous RE like the adverb genau ‘exactly’ and the particle doch ‘rejecting a negative antecedent’, as well as stand-alone head nods and headshakes. We show inter alia that particles are preferred over non-particles, that stand-alone head movements are ambiguous like ja and nein, that co-speech headshakes may be used to help disambiguation whereas this is not the case for co-speech head nods, and that sequential combinations in principle are such that a second RE may disambiguate the first, although they typically are collocations that are used independently of actual ambiguity avoidance. We discuss the results in the context of models of response elements making use of presuppositional polarity features.
Copyright (c) 2025 Cornelia Loos, Sophie Repp https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Modern semantic theories of count and mass nouns rest on mereologically structured domains (i.e., domains that have parthood relations). Such domains aim to capture cumulative and divisive reference. However, the mereological domains of modern theories presuppose ontologically troublesome atoms of stuff. Furthermore, they predict parts of “atomic” individuals (e.g., handrails) as well as composite individuals (e.g., cars), and they therefore need to define post-hoc properties of reference (e.g., mereotopological constraints) to get the right atoms back. It seems, therefore, justified to assume that modern theories primarily reflect artifacts of their initially chosen starting point (i.e., mereological domains). This assumption is exacerbated by the fact that cumulative and divisive reference is an immediate consequence of a “naïve” domain that assumes sets of individuals (for plural count) and quantities (for mass). Accordingly, we introduce a more recent theory of pluralities and quantification, namely Referential Transparency Theory (RTT), extend it with a quantitative type stuff, and show how issues of count and mass are discussed in a postmodern way. We argue for a unification of mereotopological and lexical approaches, refine earlier taxonomies by hypothesizing six classes of entities denoted by nominal expressions, and explain complement anaphora with mass noun antecedents.
Copyright (c) 2025 Andy Lücking, Jonathan Ginzburg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Classifiers and comparison class: Evidence for cross-linguistic variation in the calculation of standards
The notion of comparison class is often invoked as a way to identify the standard against which vague adjectives are evaluated. However, the means by which such a standard is derived is the subject of long-standing debate. This paper brings new cross-linguistic evidence to bear on this question. In this paper we show that classifiers can attach to adjectives under certain conditions in the Shantou variety of Teochew (Southern Min), and that these ‘adjective classifiers’ are interpreted as expressing a comparison class. However, we argue that the means by which a standard is calculated from the classifier must proceed in a very different way from that proposed for more familiar comparison class expressions, such as English for-. We propose a novel analysis in which the dependency between the adjective and the modified noun – mediated by the classifier – is established via conventional implicature. The analysis takes cross-linguistic differences to derive at least in part from the morphosyntactic properties of the overt comparison class expression. The findings provide evidence that notions of comparison class may be established in very different structures and that the calculation of a standard from overt comparison class expressions may be subject to cross-linguistic variation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Zhuosi Luo, Alison Biggs https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Another look at contrafactive predicates: The case of Spanish 'creerse'
Verbs that presuppose the falsehood of their complement are rare in natural language. Anvari et al. (2019) suggest that Spanish contains one such “contrafactive predicate,” creerse, formed from creer (‘believe’) and the reflexive pronoun. We examine the behavior of creerse under negation, where the mood of the complement affects the inferences that get drawn, in complicated ways. We propose an account on which the aspects of meaning that go beyond simple belief trace back to elements beyond the basic belief predicate creer. Our account is linked to a particular view of mood alternation in negative contexts.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mora Maldonado, Orin Percus https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This paper examines three prominent approaches to homogeneity: the implicature approach (Magri, 2014; Bar-Lev, 2021), the cognitive bias approach (Sbardolini, 2023) and the truth-value gap approach (Schwarzschild, 1996; Löbner, 2000; Gajewski, 2005; Križ, 2015; Križ and Spector, 2021; Guerrini and Wehbe, 2024). While all three frameworks account for homogeneity in simple, non-quantificational sentences, their predictions diverge in certain quantificational environments. To test these predictions, we investigated the interpretation of plural definites in both positive and negative sentences across monotonic and non-monotonic environments. Our results favor a particular version of the truth-value gap approach, posing challenges for both the implicature and cognitive bias approaches. We explore alternative analytical options for these approaches to address these challenges, identify open questions, and evaluate the prospects of a unified analysis of homogeneity alongside related phenomena.
Copyright (c) 2025 Paul Marty, Omri Amiraz, Patrick D. Elliott, Guillermo Del Pinal, Jacopo Romoli https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
A propositions-as-types approach to the generalized crossover effect
It has recently been suggested that the crossover effect, standardly understood as a constraint on anaphoric dependencies between quantifiers and pronouns, extends to presupposition projection. Although this observation calls for a unified account of how presupposition can interact with quantifier scope and anaphora, existing theories fail to provide one. We address this challenge by adopting Dependent Type Semantics, a type-theoretical framework that represents propositions as types. In this approach, the interactions among quantifier scope, anaphora, and presupposition are analyzed through a process called type checking, based on which the generalized version of the crossover effect can be uniformly derived.
Copyright (c) 2025 Daiki Matsuoka, Daisuke Bekki, Hitomi Yanaka https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
On the distinction between amounts and degrees
This paper investigates copular constructions such as Five dogs is too many pets and Ten kilos of broccoli is too much food, in which a property is seemingly ascribed to an amount or quantity. We argue that the subject noun phrases in such examples do in fact denote amounts—construed as the entity correlates of quantized properties—and that amount predication is a form of predication in its own right. We further demonstrate, on the basis of a range of distributional and interpretative patterns, that amounts are distinct from degrees; that is, the place of amounts in semantic theory is not in lieu of but rather in addition to degrees.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jon Ander Mendia, Stephanie Solt https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Lexical decomposition of verbs and the notion of an abstract state
This paper will propose a novel semantic and syntactic analysis of stative verbs, more specifically abstract state verbs. On that analysis, abstract state verbs have an underlying structure on which they are complex predicates consisting of the light verb HAVE and a noun for a trope-like thing, a trope or attitudinal, modal or intensional object. That structure is also input to semantic interpretation. Thus, need a coat is underlyingly have need (of) a coat. This analysis allows for an account of both the restrictions on modifiers of abstract states verbs (including the Stative Adverb Gap) and constraints on explicit property-referring terms, NPs of the sort the property of needing a coat.
Copyright (c) 2025 Friederike Moltmann https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Spanish Neg-raising: Mood effects on NPI licensing
Although Neg-raising (NR) has been subject to a considerable amount of attention over the last decades, the interaction of NR with other linguistic phenomena such as mood is currently not well understood. This paper addresses this gap from both an empirical and theoretical perspective by investigating how mood interacts with NR in terms of licensing the NR reading and strict NPIs. In particular, two simultaneous online experiments were conducted that showed that, whereas the NR reading availability is not influenced by mood, the grammaticality of the strict NPIs is significantly lower when in the indicative. To account for these results, the paper follows Gajewski’s (2011) theory of NPI licensing, whereby not only the asserted content but also the implicatures and presuppositions of the sentence are factored in when testing for anti-additivity. The paper explores two implications potentially induced by indicative mood: (a) the speaker is committed to the embedded proposition p (Quer, 1998; Homer, 2008), and (b) the embedded proposition p has previously been discussed by the conversationalists (Ridruejo Alonso, 1999). It is then shown that when either implication is factored in, the environment is no longer anti-additive and thus blocks strict NPIs without affecting NR.
Copyright (c) 2025 Raquel Montero, Leah Doroski, Maribel Romero https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The Shan (Kra-Dai) question word for ‘which’ lǎj (or lǎɰ in some varieties) can also be used to have a distributive interpretation similar to each. This interpretation exists in addition to the indeterminate pronoun meanings, e.g., as a negative polarity item, question word, or universally quantified expression, such as are found in Japanese. This paper describes the distributive construction and indeterminate pronouns in Shan and develops a unified account for lǎj . The same Hamblin semantics that can account for indeterminate pronouns is extended to the distributive case with the incorporation of Neo-Davidsonian event semantics. This identifies a previously unseen connection between indeterminate pronouns and distributivity.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mary Moroney https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
We present compositional semantic analyses of complex disjunction involving an additive particle in Igbo and Thai. In Igbo, complex disjunction is constructed with an additive particle and a possibility modal in the first clause. We analyze this structure as involving conjoined possibilities, along the lines of Zimmermann’s (2000) analysis of disjunction. In Thai, the relevant construction involves a combination of negation and an additive particle which is independently observed in conditionals. We analyze this construction as an indicative conditional with a negated consequent of the form ‘if p, then not q’. We examine predictions of these analyses and discuss their implications, especially on the role of additive particles and modality in the realization of disjunctions cross-linguistically.
Copyright (c) 2025 Anne Mucha, Wataru Uegaki, Mary Amaechi, Tim Jantarungsee https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
'Only to forget it in the fridge' – On the semantics of German 'nur-um' clauses
This paper presents a compositional account for the meaning of German Telic clauses with nur ‘only’ (Hugo hat einen Nudelsalat gemacht, nur um ihn im Kühlschrank zu vergessen. ‘Hugo made a pasta salad only to forget it in the fridge.’) I argue that the meaning of ‘unexpected outcome’ arises compositionally from (i) a mirative meaning for only and (ii) the connective um expressing an outcome. The account raises question about the meaning of Rationale clause connectives like German um or French pour.
Copyright (c) 2025 David Müller https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
NPI licensing in attitude reports with content-bearing nominals
Noun complement clauses as in the claim that pigs are dirty can host weak negative polarity items like any and ever that are licensed from the matrix clause. This property is shared with attitude verbs but contrasts with relative clauses to singular definite nouns, which is surprising in the light of recent predicate analyses of complement clauses. This puzzle has recently been observed by Sharvit (2024). In this paper, I show how a kind-based approach to attitudes can readily account for this.
Copyright (c) 2025 Kalle Müller https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
More 'again' readings and more 'again' morphemes: A structural analysis of Kanien’kéha 'again'
This paper examines again readings in Kanien’kéha, shining new light on the debate between structural and lexical analyses of again ambiguity. In addition to previously analyzed repetitive, restitutive, and counterdirectional readings, Kanien’kéha has two novel phenomena through which present potential challenges to past analyses. First, Kanien’kéha again gives rise to typologically rare objectless repetitive readings in which a similar event containing the same verb but a different internal argument is presupposed. Second, Kanien’kéha possesses two, co-occurring again morphemes. In investigating these phenomena, I argue that a structural approach most naturally accounts for the Kanien’kéha facts, with one major implication. To account for the availability of objectless repetitive presuppositions under such an approach, I argue for the severing of the internal argument (contra, e.g., Kratzer 1996). With this in place, I propose that a single repetitive operator with variable scope can give rise to the full array of again readings in Kanien’kéha, as predicted by a structural approach.
Copyright (c) 2025 Willie Myers https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
On the diverse interpretations of bare plural generics
Bare plural generics display varying quantificational force. Previous work (e.g., Krifka et al., 1995; Chierchia, 1998; Leslie, 2007) treats examples like ‘Ravens are black.’, ‘Mosquitoes carry malaria.’, and ‘Ducks lay eggs.’ as distinct cases with distinct semantic analyses. However, these examples are structurally the same; they all display distributive generic predication over a bare plural in an out-of-the-blue context. In this paper, we argue that an adequate account of bare plural generics must (i) treat the bare plural constituent as a plural-object (e.g., in the sense of Link (1983)), (ii) have a uniform logical form, and (iii) advance our understanding about the underlying meaning of bare plural generics. In order to achieve such a treatment of bare plural generics, we propose that generics come with inquisitive content. The inquisitive content updates a sustained discourse context and is meant to be behaviorally relevant. Within the proposed analysis, a sentence like ‘Ravens are black.’ is conveying that we are to ask for each unfamiliar raven individual whether it is black and act as if it were. Accordingly, generic sentences are understood as a tool to convey behaviorally guiding information.
Copyright (c) 2025 Flavia Naehrlich https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
What does high negation do? Nothing, negation, or denegation?
This study discusses the semantics of the so-called high negation, which is probably a type of expletive negation in English realized in the guise of n’t in subject–auxiliary inversion contexts. We compare and scrutinize two types of phenomena that carry this item—high negation questions and negative inversion exclamatives—to elucidate its semantic contributions. High negation is revealed to function as a denegation (Searle, 1969; Cohen and Krifka, 2014), that is, the speaker’s refusal of someone’s assertion. In addition, the one to be refused is determined in correlation with the speech act ranging over high negation, suggesting that the negations involved in both phenomena are a unique lexical entry.
Copyright (c) 2025 Shohei Nagata, Masatoshi Honda https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Relevance-sensitive co-variation inferences of dependent indefinites
A dependent indefinite triggers an obligatory distributive reading of the sentences it appears in. While previous literature agrees on the importance of co-variation (Brasoveanu and Farkas, 2011; Henderson, 2014; Kuhn, 2017; Guha, 2018; Law, 2022: a.o.), its behaviour under negation has received little attention (except Guha, 2018; Law, 2020: a.o.). In this paper, I present a novel observation that the co-variation inference of Turkish dependent indefinites is sensitive to contextual relevance in both positive and negative environments and argue that it is similar to the (non-)maximality inference of definite plurals. As a proof of concept, I offer an analysis with Plural Compositional DRT (Brasoveanu, 2007, 2008) in the trilateral setting, emulating Križ’s (2015; 2016) trivalent approach to (non-)maximality inferences.
Copyright (c) 2025 Takanobu Nakamura https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Expressive contexts and descriptive subjects of Spanish imperatives
Imperative clauses in various languages can be used to express the speaker’s wish exclusively, either without addressing the addressee or even in the absence of one. The speaker-bouletic use of imperatives has generally been assumed to exist universally. The current work provides novel empirical data from Spanish that show a complex felicity condition related to the imperatives in expressive contexts. Spanish imperatives can be truly speaker-bouletic only if the imperative subject fails to refer to a particular individual in the context, but rather is associated with a set of objects that share a homogeneous property. Building on Kaufmann (2012), we argue for the necessity of including a subject-dependent element in the denotation of imperatives and an additional presuppositional restriction related to the subject.
Copyright (c) 2025 Seungho Nam, Aarón Sánchez https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
We submit a new puzzle for logicality. It has been argued that the logicality of language is reflected both in the exclusion of contradictions and tautologies, and in the tendency to maximize information in various interpretive phenomena, such as scalar implicatures. We discuss that these two lines of research take on different and intimately conflicting notions of information. This becomes apparent when we focus on contradictions, that are treated as uninformative on the first line, but would qualify as (maximally) informative assuming the second. We suggest that a more adequate and unitary notion of information for logicality is halfway between the one famously introduced by Bar-Hillel and Carnap and the one defended more recently by L. Floridi, namely stronger than the former but weaker than the latter. Adopting this solution, both tautological and contradictory constructions turn out to be uninformative, but for different reasons. This, in turn, grounds the novel prediction of a differentiated speaker reaction as a function of whether the triviality in question is a contradiction or a tautology, both in grammatical and in ungrammatical cases.
Copyright (c) 2025 Antonio Negro, Salvatore Pistoia-Reda https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Temporal interpretation in directive speech acts: A competition between imperative and 2nd person subjunctive in Greek
In this study, we examine the distribution of imperative and subjunctive forms in Greek directive speech acts, focusing on their temporal interpretation. We present evidence from a Sentence Evaluation Task that the imperative is subject to an immediacy restriction, while the subjunctive mood favors a laterness inference and resists immediacy. We argue that this difference is semantic, stemming from the absence of tense in imperatives and its presence in subjunctives. Imperatives, by lacking tense, are interpreted at speech time, resulting in a more specific temporal reading than subjunctives, which convey a non-past meaning. The least specified subjunctive form is therefore blocked in immediate contexts.
Copyright (c) 2025 Despina Oikonomou, Vina Tsakali, Alexandra Samarentsi, Benedict Vassileiou https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Pseudo-scoping out of relative clauses: A functional approach
Sentences where a definite DP is modified by a relative clause containing a universal quantifier (relativized DPs), like the supervisor that each volunteer reported to, license readings which carry separate presuppositions of uniqueness and existence for each volunteer—henceforth, ‘varying definite readings’. Barker 2022 argues that these readings involve the universal DP scoping out of the relative clause and above the definite determiner, proposing to analyze them using a non-local scope shifting mechanism, like quantifier raising (QR). In this paper, we argue for a functional interpretation of the relativized DP and propose that varying definite readings result from the definite DP denoting an ⟨e, e⟩ function, from volunteers to supervisors. We present two arguments in favour of the functional analysis, both of which involve readings a QR based approach fails to capture. Combining these arguments with the fact that the functional approach can also be minimally extended to derive varying definite readings, we conclude that non-local QR is not necessary to handle these examples. As a result, we can maintain the assumption that relative clauses are scope islands for universal quantifiers.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jonathan Palucci https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Covert generic causatives in Korean: A dispositional ascription analysis
This paper introduces a rarely discussed type of causatives in Korean, i.e. covert generic causatives. The construction conststs of a sole causer subject which is strictly non-agentive and a verb which is strictly non-causative. These causatives describe a dispositional causative property of the subject that brings about a result state describe by the verb. I propose that the verb undergoes covert causativization (i.e. zero causativization), taking a non-agentive causer subject. This causativizing strategy is unexpected in two ways: (i) Typologically unexpected in that covert causativization shows a restriction on one semantic domain, namely non-agentive causers; (ii) Locally unexpected in that Korean already has an overt causativizing strategy. I argue that this construction fills in a paradigmatic gap for non-agentive causers, since overt causatives require agentive causers. I further propose dispositional ascription analysis to account for covert generic causatives, and further claim they are a type of dispositional middles, extending the typology of middles.
Copyright (c) 2025 Se Yeon Park https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Certain emotive factive reports and knowledge reports appear to violate their entailment relations in both embedded and unembedded environments. To account for these cases, I propose that these problematic attitude reports should be understood as instances of non-literal speech and, therefore, as cases that trigger a pragmatic mechanism of content subtraction. By adopting an analysis that employs this mechanism, this paper argues that the problematic cases ultimately convey unproblematic propositions that do not violate any entailments.
Copyright (c) 2025 Riccardo Enrico Pellegrini https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The German particle 'denn' in a Scoreboard model of discourse
We develop a Scoreboard-based analysis of the German discourse particle denn occurring in questions. There are three main outcomes of this exercise: First, we propose that the function of denn naturally fits the central ideas of the Scoreboard model: denn indicates that acceptance of the previous discourse move (which may be implicit) is being put on hold until some issue arising from it has been clarified. Second, we show that the formal implementation requires treating all components of a context structure as stacks rather than sets. Third, we argue that the notion of highlighting, which had a prominent place in a previous analysis, is not needed to capture the meaning and distribution of denn.
Copyright (c) 2025 Doris Penka, Maribel Romero https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Pragmatic reasoning in context: Anticipating negation for adjectives
Negation processing seems to be facilitated in pragmatically felicitous contexts compared to infelicitous ones. Using a novel methodological approach, we investigated whether adults can identify felicitous contexts for negative statements by anticipating affirmative or negative sentence continuations (e.g., The socks were not dry. / The socks were wet.) for naturalistic contexts. Results from our forced choice study indicate that participants selected negative statements more frequently after contexts intended to elicit a negative statement than after contexts intended to elicit an affirmative statement. This effect was observed for absolute gradable adjectives but not reliably for relative gradable adjectives. Our study shows that naturalistic contexts contain cues for the polarity of subsequent sentences and that these cues are used by speakers to anticipate affirmative vs. negative sentences.
Copyright (c) 2025 Yvonne Portele, Chiara Boila, Angela Grimm, Jacopo Torregrossa, Merle Weicker, Barbara Kaup https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Semantic triviality leads to ungrammaticality through iterated learning
A major line of research in semantics concerns meaning-driven explanations of combinatorial restrictions of various operators. Such explanations rely on a link from semantic triviality to ungrammaticality, standardly explicated in terms of LOGICALITY. According to the logicality approach, the grammar contains a natural deductive system that contributes to speakers’ grammaticality judgments, besides the purely syntactic combinatorial system. However, this involves a non-trivial architectural assumption about the interaction between syntax and semantics, and there is no consensus on the exact specification of the natural deductive system. In this paper, we provide an alternative account of the link between semantic triviality and ungrammaticality based on ITERATED LEARNING, an independently motivated model of language evolution. Within this model, it can be shown that for certain trivial sentences, a population of speakers possessing a grammar that in principle generates them is overtaken by learners who induce a grammar that rules them out after several generations. Crucially, our account does not need to postulate an additional natural deductive system.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ciyang Qing, Wataru Uegaki https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
An experimental investigation of the homogeneity of conjunctions
Nominal conjunctions in English are associated with the all or nothing homogeneity inference. There are two main approaches to explain the interpretations: the first derives homogeneity as implicatures (Magri, 2014; Bar-Lev and Fox, 2020), the second provides a trivalent account (Schwarzschild, 1993; Križ, 2015; Križ and Spector, 2021). The two accounts differ in their predictions on the existence of gaps and the status of positive and negative sentences in non-uniform contexts. We report two experiments investigating adults’ interpretation of nominal conjunctions in English. The experiments reveal that participants provide gappy judgments for sentences with conjunctions, and the gaps for positive and negative sentences in non-uniform contexts are symmetric. We discuss how the findings of the two experiments are expected on a trivalent approach to homogeneity and the open challenges they pose for the implicature approach.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jia Ren https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The modification puzzle of Mandarin numeral phrases
It has been observed in the literature that the nominal-internal word order influences the specificity in Mandarin Chinese (Huang, 1982; Tang, 1990; Yang, 2005; Partee, 2006; Zhang, 2006). In this paper, we concentrate on numeral phrases that contain modifiers and show how their interaction displays the interpretational difference. We propose a semantic solution that consists of two resources, namely (i) the semantics of classifiers from Japanese (Sudo, 2016), and (ii) the semantics of relative clauses from Turkish (Sağ, 2019). We show that this specificity contrast is pervasive in Mandarin nominal constructions that deserve a uniform account.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jia Ren, Qiuhao Charles Yan, Satoru Ozaki https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Pseudo-incorporation, event kinds, and atelicity
This paper investigates how kind-referring arguments shape (a)telicity by examining aspectual contrasts involving pseudo-incorporation (PI) in Turkish. Building on Sağ's (2019, 2022) analysis of Turkish PI and Chierchia’s (2023) approach to plural kinds and their effect on lexical aspect, I argue that PI involves singular kind reference at the event-kind level, establishing taxonomic event kinds. This approach provides an explanation for the puzzling atelicity of PI constructions, distinguishing them from caseless indefinites and canonical singular kind arguments. Additionally, it elucidates how PI relates to plural kind argumentation, highlighting their similar yet distinct characteristics. Ultimately, my analysis demonstrates that event-kind-level arguments play a fundamental role in determining the aspectual interpretation of verbal predicates, expanding our understanding of kind reference beyond the nominal domain.
Copyright (c) 2025 Yağmur Sağ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Demonstrative descriptions and anti-uniqueness
Demonstrative descriptions robustly give rise to an anti-uniqueness inference, rendering them infelicitous with inherently unique nouns. Two major theoretical approaches have been proposed to explain this phenomenon. One posits that demonstratives lexically encode an anti-uniqueness presupposition in their semantics (Nowak, 2019; Dayal and Jiang, 2022; Owusu, 2022), while the other derives the inference from general pragmatic principles (Blumberg, 2020; Ahn, 2022, 2023). In this paper, I present evidence in favor of the presuppositional account and introduce a modalized implementation that addresses key limitations of prior proposals. Drawing on cross-linguistic empirical data, I further demonstrate that the anti-uniqueness approach is better suited to account for typological variation in this domain.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ankana Saha https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Building modifier questions from anaphors in Ktunaxa
Ktunaxa—a language isolate spoken in parts of British Columbia and Montana—asks questions about manners, locations, and times using two distinct grammatical elements in different positions: a particle that is structurally high and signals that a modifier question is being asked (the ‘wh kernel’) and a preverb that is low and signals the type of the modifier question (the ‘descriptive content marker’, or DCM). DCMs have an independent distribution as anaphors for properties of events. In questions, the wh kernel binds this variable and yields an alternative set. Ktunaxa’s two-part strategy for expressing modifier questions—one word dedicated to forming the question and one word dedicated to defining the question type—puts a new spin on the Japanese-style architecture of wh questions, with the second element an anaphor rather than an indefinite. That sheds light on the building blocks of questions more broadly.
Copyright (c) 2025 Starr Sandoval, Kate Yangshuying Zhou, Marcin Morzycki https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Clause-internal causal inferences: Evidence from nouns
A substantial body of pragmatics research has explored discourse-level coherence inferences — the links between clauses and even larger units that bind a series of utterances into a narrative. Hobbs (2010) proposed that there are also Clause-internal Coherence (CIC) inferences, such as that in, ‘A jogger was hit by a car,’ where one is likely to infer that the car accident occurred while the jogger was jogging. Recently, Sasaki and Altshuler (2022, 2023) and Yao et al. (2024) have provided experimental evidence that CIC inferences can be drawn between verbs and adjectives. We provide further evidence for CIC inferences, this time between verbs and nouns. Our findings from three ratings studies in English suggest that both deverbal nouns like ‘jogger’ and non-deverbal nouns like ‘widow’ can give rise to causal CIC inferences. This result is significant because it demonstrates the robustness and pervasiveness of CIC inferences, and raises the question of how proposition-like content may be extracted from a nominal element. We propose a formal analysis of CIC inferences with nouns that adopts the key claim of Pure Event Semantics (Schwarzschild, 2024), namely that nouns always describe eventualities. We synthesize this with a core assumption of Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (Asher & Lascarides, 2003), namely that the arguments of coherence relations are eventuality descriptions. We argue that this provides us with at least two pathways to formally model CIC with nouns.
Copyright (c) 2025 Kelsey Sasaki, Hannah Rohde, Daniel Altshuler https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Projection without lexically-specified presupposition: A model for 'know'
We present an analysis—formalized as a computational cognitive model—of the projection of the content of the clausal complement of know in utterances of negated declaratives. Our model, formulated within the Bayesian Rational Speech Act framework (Frank and Goodman, 2012), derives projection from lexical entailments of know and sensitivity to the Question Under Discussion (QUD; as do Abrusán, 2011, and Simons et al., 2017), as well as reasoning about utterance informativity relative to private speaker assumptions (Qing et al., 2016; Warstadt, 2022). Crucially, our model predicts projection for know without encoding the inference via a lexically-specified constraint on the Common Ground. The model goes beyond existing analyses by also making predictions about the projection of the content of the clausal complement of nonfactive think, as well as other types of inferences. We find support for three qualitative predictions of our model in two experiments that measured the projection inferences participants draw about utterance content.
Copyright (c) 2025 Gregory Scontras, Judith Tonhauser https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Parenthetical 'say' as a window into sincerity and commitment
This paper offers an analysis of the parenthetical use of say in English: e.g., Can we meet in, say, an hour?. This expression can be used to perform a speech act without incurring its canonical “sincerity condition” (Searle, 1975): for example, using say in a declarative sentence with content ϕ can conversationally commit the speaker to ϕ without communicating that the speaker believes ϕ. Using say does not always void an utterance’s sincerity condition, however: sincerity conditions only disappear when the focal alternatives of the host sentence are inconsistent with each other. This suite of behavior allows us to draw a novel empirical line between an utterance’s dynamic effects and its usual implications about speaker attitudes. I derive this behavior from the metalinguistic, focus-sensitive, and imperative semantics of say. Specifically, I propose that say in an utterance u (i) conventionally implicates that the speaker could have uttered a sentence systematically similar to u (a focal alternative to u), but (ii) effectively prefers to utter u. The effective preference encoded in say requires speaker commitment, even when its implication about focal alternatives weakens belief. I motivate (i) by showing that say is conventionally focus sensitive (Beaver and Clark, 2008). I motivate (ii) by arguing that say is related to the suppositional imperative use of say (e.g., Say that the house was in New York.), which is analyzed using the theory of imperatives as commitments to effective preferences (Condoravdi and Lauer, 2012).
Copyright (c) 2025 Eli Sharf https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Pointwise abstraction has proven elusive to define, though language that requires the operation is commonplace. I show that modeling alternatives as sets of choice functions allows them to be bound into with a simple abstraction rule.
Copyright (c) 2025 Alexander Shilen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Modeling uncertainty, unawareness, and underspecification among Structural Causal Models
We argue that linguistic communication of information about causal relations frequently involves epistemic states of not only uncertainty about, but also unawareness of causal facts. We propose a simple model of Causal Beliefs with Unawareness (CBU), which augments Structural Causal Models with additional structure to model both uncertainty and unawareness.
Copyright (c) 2025 Todd Snider, Michael Franke https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
An alternative to Presuppositional Exhaustification: Supervaluationist RSA
It has been recently argued that exhaustification (the mechanism responsible for deriving scalar implicatures and other exhaustivity effects) should be viewed as generating trivalent meanings, with the effect that scalar implicatures are, in some sense, presupposed (Bassi et al. 2021; Wehbe and Doron 2024). In this paper, I argue that (a) presuppositional exhaustification fails to derive correct felicity conditions in certain cases, and (b) one can replace presuppositional exhaustification with a probabilistic pragmatics account that includes a bivalent exhaustivity operator. Strong Kleene-like behavior is derived on the basis of general principles of rational communication, and adequate felicity conditions are predicted – I call this account, following Cremers et al. (2023), the Supervaluationist RSA account.
Copyright (c) 2025 Benjamin Spector https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Main clause phenomena and discourse moves: Mandarin incompleteness in subordinate clauses
This paper identifies a tense-aspectual phenomenon called “incompleteness” (Kong, 1994; Tang and Lee, 2000; Gu, 2007) as a novel case of Main Clause Phenomenon (MCP) based on its distribution in various kinds of subordinate clauses. I show that an existing pragmatic analysis of incompleteness in matrix clauses (Sun, 2021; 2023) can be extended to capture the full data pattern, together with Djärv (2022)’s claim that root-like clauses that host MCP share the conventional discourse effects of putting an issue on the Discourse Table (Farkas and Bruce, 2010). By contrast, a strictly syntactic account cannot straightforwardly capture the distribution of incompleteness in subordinate clauses. I conclude that the case of Mandarin incompleteness implicates that, at least for some MCP, a semantic-pragmatic component is necessary in the analysis, supporting the long-existing idea that MCP is related to the so-called “asserted” clauses (Hooper and Thompson, 1973; Heycock, 2006; De Cat, 2012, among others).
Copyright (c) 2025 Yenan Sun https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
One way for semanticists to analyze truth in fiction is by relativizing propositions to fictional worlds. However, some sentences in natural language refer to individuals, events, or states from multiple worlds. These include referential cross-world sentences, where the name of an actor from the real world appears to replace the name of the fictional character they play (downward), or vice versa (upward). The conventional analysis claims that in these cases, the name of the actor refers to the fictional individual, or vice versa. I present several empirical asymmetries between upward and downward cross-world reference that make this analysis problematic. Instead, I propose a covert operator FICT, which takes a predicate P, and returns a predicate that roughly means ‘plays a character of whom P is true in a fictional world.’ FICT can be applied to sentential predicates to form downward referential cross-world sentences, or within DPs to form upward referential cross-world sentences. In addition, this accounts for apparent differences between English and languages like Italian and Russian in how gender is handled in referential cross-world sentences, as well as for some previously studied facts about dream reports, which I analyze as a type of referential cross-world sentence. Finally, I explore how this analysis might be expanded to include account for facts about the treatment of fictional times and events.
Copyright (c) 2025 Squid Tamar-Mattis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
DP-internal relative readings of Japanese 'ichiban' superlatives
This paper provides a new perspective on the question of whether Japanese superlatives involve movement of ichiban, considered to be a superlative morpheme, out of superlative DPs. Aihara (2007, 2009) proposes that the different readings of Japanese superlatives are due to the structural ambiguity caused by the movement of ichiban to different landing sites, following Heim (1985, 1999) and Szabolcsi (1986). However, I argue that no movement of a superlative morpheme to a DP-external position is involved in Japanese superlatives based on the absence of “DP-internal relative readings” that are observed in Slavic languages (Pancheva and Tomaszewicz, 2012; Tomaszewicz, 2015). To derive this reading, the superlative -est in Slavic moves out of the superlative DP; the absence of this reading in Japanese supports the view that no such movement obtains in Japanese.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jun Tamura https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Comparison among degrees or individuals?: A view from Japanese 'ichiban' superlatives
Two distinct denotations have been proposed for the superlative morpheme -est in the literature, differing in whether comparison is made among degree sets (2-place -est) or individuals (3-place -est). This paper investigates cross-linguistic evidence for this distinction. We argue that the Japanese superlative morpheme ichiban (literally ‘No.1’) exclusively employs the 3-place -est denotation, which compares individuals rather than degrees. Our empirical focus is on two types of modal superlatives in Japanese, with further implications for the (un)availability of elative superlatives and the negation of existence usage in this language.
Copyright (c) 2025 Eri Tanaka, Kenta Mizutani https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
A plea for a functional dependency approach to correlatives
This paper compares two possible analyses of multi-head correlatives in Hindi; the canonical semantics of these structures proposed by Dayal (1996) and a comparable analysis by Gajewski (2008). While the first relies on the semantics of multiple-wh questions, the second builds on the semantics of wh- free relatives to derive the semantics of the Hindi multi-head correlative. Although the free relative approach seems to derive comparable truth conditions, I argue that this is only achievable through significant stipulations about the nature of pluralization and presupposition projection mechanisms. The required universal quantification over pair-lists which is central to the semantics of the multiple-wh correlative is best captured by a functional dependency between the wh-elements. To that end, I propose an updated analysis of these structures based on the functional dependency approach of Dayal (1996) that aligns multiple headed correlatives with multiple wh-questions rather than free relatives.
Copyright (c) 2025 Natasha Thalluri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
In this paper, we present new challenging data from Kazym Khanty (a Uralic language spoken in Western Siberia, Russia): in this articleless language, bare singular and bare dual NPs in argument positions can receive indefinite readings on par with definite ones, contradicting the predictions of the classic neo-Carlsonian approach (Chierchia, 1998; Dayal, 2004). We argue that the presence of indefinite uses can be accounted for within the neo-Carlsonian approach if we assume that the inventory of type-shifters accessible in the grammar is subject to cross-linguistic variation, and Kazym Khanty differs from the “canonicial” articleless languages in that it lacks the “definite” type-shifter iota. In the absence of iota, bare singular and bare dual NPs are predicted to be interpreted via the “indefinite” type-shifter ex. We show that this prediction is borne out: not only do bare singulars and bare duals feature indefinite uses, but they even can take variable scope, as expected from the generalized existential quantifiers. We also argue that ex, despite being associated with indefinite readings, can cover definite uses when iota is absent.
Copyright (c) 2025 Varvara Tiutiunnikova, Stiopa Mikhailov, Fedor Golosov https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Simultaneous readings of past-under-past in Russian
This paper examines simultaneous readings of past-under-past in Russian. Based on the pattern of cessation inferences, I argue that these readings can only be derived through a de re construal. I demonstrate that the pragmatic competitor for this reading is the double access interpretation of the embedded present tense, which is also derived via a de re construal. Under the grammatical approach to implicature calculation, the structure of the competitor provides insight into the structure of the original statement. I propose a straightforward test for identifying languages in which simultaneous readings can only arise through a de re construal.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ekaterina Vostrikova https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
A non-Boolean analysis of conjunction in additive numerals: A mereotopological approach
In this paper, I investigate the underlying meaning of additive numerals such as two hundred and three. Cross-linguistically, additive numerals often involve a conjunction marker (e.g., Hurford, 1975; Ionin and Matushansky, 2018), which indicates a deep relationship between the expression of arithmetical addition and mereological sum formation. Inspired by the classical results in ontology of numbers showing that numbers are not primitives, but rather complex derived objects, and the ideas concerning the spatial metaphor for numbers by Nouwen (2016) and Matushansky and Zwarts (2017), I propose a mereotopological approach (Grimm 2012 et seq.) to the part-whole structure of additive numerals. I argue that in language numbers are conceptualized as vertically-oriented 1-dimensional maximally self-connected entities (type e) of a given height that can be fused by mereological sum formation. Given the nature of space they occupy and the adopted mereotopological framework, the result is a new greater maximally self-connected object that can be mapped onto its higher point. By utilizing ontological assumptions that were developed independently, the proposed systems allows to capture conjunction in additive numerals as non-Boolean ‘and’.
Copyright (c) 2025 Marcin Wągiel https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Viewpoint matters: Prototypical vs. non-prototypical co-speech gestures in the VP domain
The present paper extends Ebert et al.’s (2020) theory of the semantic contribution of co-speech gestures to the VP domain by investigating differences between prototypical and non-prototypical iconic co-speech gestures. Drawing from Ebert et al. (2022) and Ebert and Hinterwimmer (2022), we propose a formalism where a prototypical gesture denotes an event type which is not interpreted iconically, whereas non-prototypical gestures depend on a viewpoint variable and are interpreted iconically. Moreover, Ebert et al.’s (2020) similarity predicate SIM is spelled out for the verbal domain. We argue that viewpoint is, in the verbal domain, one factor the similarity predicate can depend on.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sebastian Walter, Cornelia Ebert, Stefan Hinterwimmer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Shifted face emoji in indirect discourse: A mixed-quotational approach
Face emoji standardly receive an author-oriented interpretation (Grosz et al., 2021). Moreover, Grosz et al. (2023) claimed that they normally cannot receive a shifted interpretation in indirect discourse (ID). In this paper, we present the results of a rating study showing that emoji can receive a shifted interpretation, i.e., from the matrix subject’s perspective, in ID utterances. Following a suggestion by Ebert and Hinterwimmer (2022), we advocate for an analysis of ID treating it as mixed quotation. Crucially, as we are dealing with multimodal data, we view quotation as an instance of demonstration (Clark and Gerrig, 1990).
Copyright (c) 2025 Sebastian Walter, Stefan Hinterwimmer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Diagnosing the presuppositional properties of scalar implicatures
Existing accounts of scalar implicatures (SIs) treat them as post-semantic inferences (Grice, 1975) or as part of the asserted meaning (Chierchia et al., 2012), but these views have recently been challenged based on evidence that in certain environments, SIs behave like presuppositions (Bassi et al., 2021). In this paper, we provide additional evidence for the presuppositional approach by showing that SIs are sensitive to constraints on presupposition accommodation (Heim, 2015; Doron and Wehbe, 2022). In addition, we show that even when the implicature trigger is embedded in a downward-entailing environment and the implicature does not strengthen the overall meaning, we can detect the contribution of a presuppositional implicature. We take this to provide evidence against both the Gricean perspective and the assertive exh perspective.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jad Wehbe, Omri Doron https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Non-maximal telicity in English incremental theme predicates
Typically, incremental theme predicates give rise to telicity inferences in the case when the object is quantized and an incremental mapping holds between the object and the verb. Culmination inferences can have a strange characteristic, where their default maximal meaning can be rejected in favour of a non-maximal construal. In this paper, I will present an empirical pattern for English incremental theme predicates, situate them within the broader typology of partitive accomplishments, before providing an analysis of their context-sensitive compositional properties and the source of their defeasible maximality.
Copyright (c) 2025 Fred Whibley https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Why 'not numeral NP' requires 'but' but not 'not many NP'
This paper observes that negated numerals require but (e.g. Not three *(but four) students arrived), whereas not many doesn’t (e.g. Not many students arrived). Drawing on the additional observation that negated non-quantifier DPs require but (e.g. Max eats not spinach *(but chard)), I propose that constituent negation presupposes that the utterance containing the negation must entail a true alternative utterance, if there exists such a true alternative. This is generally satisfied by an overt but-phrase, except with the not-many-sentence because it entails an alternative sentence on its own–Some students arrived. I also take the contrast between not many and negated numerals as evidence that they have different types of assertion, in support of Kennedy (2013, 2015): many asserts at least n, while numerals assert at least n and at most n at the same time. Therefore, in contrast to not many, which entails some, not three does not entail not one or not two, and thus requires the but-phrase to introduce the true alternative.
Copyright (c) 2025 Danfeng Wu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Corrective markers 'bing' and 'you' in Mandarin Chinese
This paper argues that there are two types of corrective words across languages, and both types are attested in Mandarin Chinese. One type (e.g. Mandarin you) manages the Common Ground, as Frana and Rawlins (2019) and Bhatt and Homer (2022) have claimed for Italian mica and Hindi thoṛi:, but there is another type that had not been noticed before (e.g. Mandarin bing)–they mark contrast to a salient expectation. While bing and you have similar syntactic distribution, they have subtle differences in meaning: the use of you implies the speaker’s impatience with the hearer, but bing does not have this inference. I argue that bing and you are located between C and T, and have presuppositions (or conventional implicatures): bing not p presupposes that there is a salient proposition that ¬p contrasts with, while you not p presupposes that the speaker believes that ¬p was already in the Common Ground.
Inference complexity as a novel semantic parameter
This paper discusses implications of a novel account of epistemic modals put forward in Wurm, 2025, suggesting that epistemic must is sensitive to inference complexity. The main aim is to provide further support for the theory as such, as well as emphasize its scope. Specifically, I present additional evidence for inference complexity as a relevant parameter in the interpretation of natural language by showing that we find several types of expressions exhibiting a similar sensitivity. As a result, my account gives rise to a novel semantic class and new classifications within existing ones; not only in the domain of modality.
Copyright (c) 2025 Valerie Wurm https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
fEMG as a window into conversational commitments
This paper presents a first experiment within a larger series of experiments on commitments taken on by our speech acts. The experiment serves as a proof of method, demonstrating that the physiological measure of facial electromyography (fEMG)—the recording of facial muscle activity—is a useful methodology for studying commitments in communication. Specifically, we experimentally demonstrate that we can use fEMG to measure norm violations in conversation and from there infer the commitments taken on by conversational participants. We explain how this methodology can be expected to contribute to a better understanding of what happens when we communicate.
Copyright (c) 2025 Harriet Yates, Corien Bary, Peter De Swart, Bob van Tiel https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
We propose a novel theory of redundancy capable of accounting for informational oddness observed in varieties of Hurford disjunctions. Drawing on Simons (2001), we relativize a sentence’s informational content, which encompasses inquisitive content, to some salient question under discussion, from which we formulate a novel non-redundancy constraint.
Copyright (c) 2025 Yichi (Raven) Zhang https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
How to reconcile maximal and non-maximal Mandarin 'mei': Distributivity without maximality
Traditionally translated as ‘each’, Mandarin mei is often considered to express both maximality and distributivity. However, mei’s semantic contribution has been debated as it canonically co-occurs with dou, which also appears to enforce maximality, much like English all. This paper presents novel data demonstrating that dou, not mei, is responsible for expressing maximality. The existence of distributive items such as mei – which enforce distributivity but do not require maximality – underscores the need to distinguish maximality from distributivity as a separate semantic property, a point recently argued by Haslinger et al. (2025).
Copyright (c) 2025 Zeqi Zhao https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Why 'regret' and 'realize' can embed false beliefs
Verbs of emotion (e.g., regret) and discovery (e.g., realize) presuppose factivity, but they can felicitously follow false-belief statements that suspend their factivity (Klein, 1975; Gazdar, 1979), in contrast to know. This paper addresses this puzzle by proposing a believe-based account with two ingredients: (i) a lexical semantics of regret and realize that contains a backgrounding operator turning at-issue meanings into presuppositions, and (ii) a theory of presupposition projection in attitude contexts (Karttunen, 1974; Heim, 1992; Sudo, 2014). The factivity of regret and realize is derived as a context-sensitive pragmatic implicature, while the factivity of know is a lexical presupposition that holds across contexts.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ziling Zhu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/