18 found
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  1. Scalar implicatures in complex sentences.Uli Sauerland - 2004 - Linguistics and Philosophy 27 (3):367-391.
    This article develops a Gricean account for the computation of scalarimplicatures in cases where one scalar term is in the scope ofanother. It shows that a cross-product of two quantitative scalesyields the appropriate scale for many such cases. One exception iscases involving disjunction. For these, I propose an analysis that makesuse of a novel, partially ordered quantitative scale for disjunction andcapitalizes on the idea that implicatures may have different epistemic status.
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  2. Analyticity and modulation. Broadening the rescale perspective on language logicality.Salvatore Pistoia-Reda & Uli Sauerland - 2021 - International Review of Pragmatics 1 (13):1-13.
    Acceptable analyticities, i.e. contradictions or tautologies, constitute problematic evidence for the idea that language includes a deductive system. In recent discussion, two accounts have been presented in the literature to explain the available evidence. According to one of the accounts, grammatical analyticities are accessible to the system but a pragmatic strengthening repair mechanism can apply and prevent the structures from being actually interpreted as contradictions or tautologies. The proposed data, however, leaves it open whether other versions of the meaning modulation (...)
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  3. Presuppositional exhaustification.Itai Bassi, Guillermo Del Pinal & Uli Sauerland - 2021 - Semantics and Pragmatics 14:1-42.
    Grammatical theories of Scalar Implicatures make use of an exhaustivity operator exh, which asserts the conjunction of the prejacent with the negation of excludable alternatives. We present a new Grammatical theory of Scalar Implicatures according to which exh is replaced with pex, an operator that contributes its prejacent as asserted content, but the negation of scalar alternatives at a non-at-issue level of meaning. We show that by treating this non-at-issue level as a presupposition, this theory resolves a number of empirical (...)
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  4. Vagueness in Language: The Case Against Fuzzy Logic Revisited.Uli Sauerland - manuscript
    Kamp and Fine presented an influential argument against the use of fuzzy logic for linguistic semantics in 1975. However, the argument assumes that contradictions of the form "A and not A" have semantic value zero. The argument has been recently criticized because sentences of this form are actually not perceived as contradictory by naive speakers. I present new experimental evidence arguing that fuzzy logic still isn't useful for linguistic semantics even if we take such naive speaker judgements at face value. (...)
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  5. Granularity and scalar implicature in numerical expressions.Chris Cummins, Uli Sauerland & Stephanie Solt - 2012 - Linguistics and Philosophy 35 (2):135-169.
    It has been generally assumed that certain categories of numerical expressions, such as ‘more than n’, ‘at least n’, and ‘fewer than n’, systematically fail to give rise to scalar implicatures in unembedded declarative contexts. Various proposals have been developed to explain this perceived absence. In this paper, we consider the relevance of scale granularity to scalar implicature, and make two novel predictions: first, that scalar implicatures are in fact available from these numerical expressions at the appropriate granularity level, and (...)
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  6.  91
    The Interpretation of Traces.Uli Sauerland - 2004 - Natural Language Semantics 12 (1):63-127.
    This paper argues that parts of the lexical content of an A-bar moved phrase must be interpreted in the base position of movement. The argument is based on a study of deletion of a phrase that contains the base position of movement. I show that deletion licensing is sensitive to the content of the moved phrase. In this way, I corroborate and extend conclusions based on Condition C reconstruction by N. Chomsky and D. Fox. My result provides semantic evidence for (...)
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  7.  46
    Sorting out Relative Clauses.Sarah Hulsey & Uli Sauerland - 2006 - Natural Language Semantics 14 (2):111-137.
    This paper investigates the structure of English restrictive relative clauses. It provides support for the view that restrictive relative clauses are structurally ambiguous between two structures: the head-internal, raising structure and the matching structure, which has both an internal and an external head. We present a new test from extraposition facts that distinguishes between the raising and matching structures for relative clauses. Furthermore, this paper presents an account of the semantics of raising relative clauses which is intended to complete the (...)
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  8. Vagueness in Communication.Rick Nouwen, Robert van Rooij, Uli Sauerland & Hans-Christian Schmitz (eds.) - 2011 - Springer.
     
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  9.  29
    Presupposition and Implicature in Compositional Semantics.Uli Sauerland & Penka Stateva (eds.) - 2007 - Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave-Macmillan.
    All humans can interpret sentences of their native language quickly and without effort. Working from the perspective of generative grammar, the contributors investigate three mental mechanisms, widely assumed to underlie this ability: compositional semantics, implicature computation and presupposition computation. This volume brings together experts from semantics and pragmatics to bring forward the study of interconnections between these three mechanisms. The contributions develop new insights into important empirical phenomena; for example, approximation, free choice, accommodation, and exhaustivity effects.
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  10.  37
    Free choice and presuppositional exhaustification.Guillermo Del Pinal, Itai Bassi & Uli Sauerland - unknown
    Sentences such as Olivia can take Logic or Algebra (‘♢∨-sentences’) are typically interpreted as entailing that Olivia can take Logic and can take Algebra. Given a standard semantics for modals and disjunction, those ‘Free choice’ (FC) readings are not predicted from the surface form of ♢∨-sentences. Yet the standard semantics is appropriate for the ‘double prohibition’ reading typically assigned to ¬♢∨-sentences like Olivia can’t take Logic or Algebra. Several extant approaches to FC can account for those two cases, but face (...)
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  11. Lisa Green/Aspectual be–type Constructions and Coercion in African American English Yoad Winter/Distributivity and Dependency Instructions for Authors.Pauline Jacobson, Paycheck Pronouns, Bach-Peters Sentences, Inflectional Head, Thomas Ede Zimmermann, Free Choice Disjunction, Epistemic Possibility, Sigrid Beck & Uli Sauerland - 2000 - Natural Language Semantics 8 (373).
  12.  88
    Illusive Scope of Universal Quantifiers.Danny Fox & Uli Sauerland - 1997 - In Jill Beckman (ed.), Proceedings of NELS 26. GLSA, UMass Amhert.
    It is widely believed that existential quantifiers can bring about the semantic effects of a scope which is wider than their actual syntactic scope (See Fodor & Sag (1982), Cresti (1995), Kratzer (1995), Reinhart (1995) and Winter (1995), among many others.) On the other hand, it is assumed that the syntactic scope of universal quantifiers can be determined unequivocally by the semantics. This paper shows that this second assumption is wrong; universal quantifiers can also bring about scope illusions, though in (...)
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  13. Proceeding of Sinn und Bedeutung 23.Uli Sauerland & Stephanie Solt (eds.) - 2018 - Berlin, Germany: Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS).
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  14.  51
    Definiteness, Inverse Linking, and Narrowing.Uli Sauerland, Lucas Champollion & Stanford SemFest - unknown
    (1) adapted from (Higginbotham, 2006): (black instead of red) a. Do you see the man in (or: wearing) the black hat? b. #Do you see the man in (or: wearing) a black hat?
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  15.  29
    Generative Grammar: A Meaning First Approach.Uli Sauerland & Artemis Alexiadou - 2020 - Frontiers in Psychology 11.
    The theory of language must predict the possible thought—signal (or meaning—sound or sign) pairings of a language. We argue for a Meaning First architecture of language where a thought structure is generated first. The thought structure is then realized using language to communicate the thought, to memorize it, or perhaps with another purpose. Our view contrasts with the T-model architecture of mainstream generative grammar, according to which distinct phrase-structural representations—Phonetic Form (PF) for articulation, Logical Form (LF) for interpretation—are generated within (...)
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  16.  39
    Semantics and pragmatics: from experiment to theory.Uli Sauerland & Kazuko Yatsushiro (eds.) - 2009 - Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.
    This volume comprises thirteen original research papers and three overview papers presenting new work using a number of experimental techniques from psycho- and neurolinguistics in the three key areas of current semantics and pragmatics: implicature, negation and presupposition.
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  17.  97
    Cumulation is Needed: A Reply to Winter (2000). [REVIEW]Sigrid Beck & Uli Sauerland - 2000 - Natural Language Semantics 8 (4):349-371.
    Winter (2000) argues that so-called co-distributive or cumulative readings do not involve polyadic quantification (contra proposals by Krifka, Schwarzschild, Sternefeld, and others). Instead, he proposes that all such readings involve a hidden anaphoric dependency or a lexical mechanism. We show that Winter's proposal is insufficient for a number of cases of cumulative readings, and that Krifka's and Sternefeld's polyadic **-operator is needed in addition to dependent definites. Our arguments come from new observations concerning dependent plurals and clause-boundedness effects with cumulative (...)
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  18. Acceptable Contradictions: Pragmatics or Semantics? A Reply to Cobreros et al. [REVIEW]Sam Alxatib, Peter Pagin & Uli Sauerland - 2013 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 42 (4):619-634.
    Naive speakers find some logical contradictions acceptable, specifically borderline contradictions involving vague predicates such as Joe is and isn’t tall. In a recent paper, Cobreros et al. (J Philos Logic, 2012) suggest a pragmatic account of the acceptability of borderline contradictions. We show, however, that the pragmatic account predicts the wrong truth conditions for some examples with disjunction. As a remedy, we propose a semantic analysis instead. The analysis is close to a variant of fuzzy logic, but conjunction and disjunction (...)
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