Penka Stateva

Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics

Notes on Contributors Introduction: U.Sauerland & P.Stateva Quantifier Dependent Readings of Anaphoric Presuppositions S.Beck Licensing or R.Eckardt Free Choice and the Theory of Scalar Implicatures D.Fox Partial Variables and Specificity G.Jager Negated Antonyms: Creating and Filling the Gap M.Krifka Pragmatic Constraints on Adverbial/Temporal Quantification O.Percus Transparency: An Incremental Theory of Presupposition Projection P.Schlenker Aspects of the Pragmatics of Plural Morphology: on Higher-Order Implicatures B.Spector Index

Possessive clitics and the structure of nominal expressions

Abstract This paper examines the syntactic structure of nominal expressions (NE) containing possessive phrases with special attention on Bulgarian NE with possessive clitics. We argue that the possessive clitic appears in two syntactic positions: one inside the NE, and one in the VP domain, even though it can be pronounced either pre- or postverbally in the second case. The choice of the position in which the clitic is pronounced is determined by the general conditions governing the syntax-phonology interface. Following a proposal of Franks [Clitics in Slavic. Paper presented at the Workdhop on Comparative Slavic Morphosyntax, Bloomington, IN (1998)] and Boskovic [On the Nature of Syntax-Phonology Interface: Cliticization and Related Issues (2001)] we argue that when the clitic escapes the boundaries of the NE, it creates a non-trivial chain. In the default case, the head of the chain is pronounced but when pronouncing the head leads to a PF violation, a lower copy of the clitic is pronounced. We explore the question what conditions the possibility for the possessive clitic to appear in two syntactic positions. We propose that the clitic climbs to the verb for reasons of case. We support earlier proposals that movement into theta-positions is possible. We argue that the possessive clitic is assigned inherent Dative case. In the spirit of Lasnik [Chains of Arguments (1999)], we account for the cases of clitic climbing that seem to involve optional movement without appealing to the controversial notion of optionality. We defend the view that the different word orders result from different lexical choices. Finally, we examine various agreement phenomena inside the Bulgarian NEs which provide new evidence that movement is constrained by principles of Economy of derivation.

Two Types of Vagueness

This chapter is about vagueness in natural language semantics. More specifically, we discuss lexical means of making vague assertions more or less precise in compositional semantics. Examples of expressions that have this effect are approximately, absolutely, definitely, and roughly speaking. While many of these expressions are modifiers and adverbs, some such expressions are neither. Hence, for the purposes of this chapter we call expressions that make vague assertions more or less precise approximators. Our main claim is that the distribution of such expressions provides evidence for the view that vagueness in language comes in at least two varieties, which we call scalar vagueness and epistemic vagueness.

Two (non-)islands in Slovenian : A study in experimental syntax

Abstract There exists a controversy in the literature and among the speakers of Slovenian concerning the grammaticality of wh-island and subject island constructions in this language. We conducted an acceptability rating study of wh-islands and subject islands in Slovenian, using the factorial definition of island. This definition provides for a possibility to isolate a true island effect while controlling for two complexity factors that potentially interfere in speakers’ evaluation of the relevant sentences: the length of the respective movement dependency and the presence of an island structure itself. We found that (i) Slovenian speakers do judge the wh-island sentences worse than the respective controls, but the observed degradation cannot be attributed to a true island effect; (ii) subject extraction out of a wh-island leads to a so called reverse island effect whereby the acceptability is higher than expected even if the above two complexity factors are taken into consideration; and (iii) speakers are sensitive to the subject island effect, as predicted by the mainstream theories of syntactic locality. The results of our study contribute to establishing a solid empirical base for further theoretical investigations of the island effects and raise new questions about the role of processing factors in speakers’ evaluations of island constructions.

Countability, agreement and the loss of the dual in Russian

In this work we investigate the internal syntax and semantics of quantifier phrases (QP) involving cardinal numerals. Concentrating on a set of previously documented puzzles concerning Case and number agreement within the numeral phrase in Russian, we argue that these agreement patterns follow naturally if one recognizes three structural layers in a numeral-based QP: the countability layer, the number layer and the quantificational layer. Our central theoretical claim is that the countability layer is implemented as a (pseudo-)classifier structure whose morphological manifestation obeys a principle of syntactic ‘visibility’. Our specific claim for Russian is that, diachronically, this countability layer has emerged as a result of the loss of the dual number in the course of transition between Old and Modern Russian. We strengthen our conclusions with psycholinguistic evidence from a sentence completion study that tests Russian speakers’ sensitivity to the countability layer.

Two “many”-words in Slovenian

Slovenian features at least two lexical items that are potential semantic counterparts of the English many, namely veliko and precej, whose meaning appears close to identical. Yet speakers are certain that the two items are not equivalent, although they find intuitively felt differences hard to pinpoint. We argue that precej and veliko are lexically synonymous, but their meanings are pragmatically strengthened under relevant conditions, which leads to subtle interpretative differences. Specifically, we extend Krifka’s (2007) analysis of double negatives and propose that veliko is assigned the stereotypical interpretation of a quantity degree word, whereas precej is identified with the non-stereotypical one and consequently relates to moderately big amounts. To support this claim, we report the results of an experiment involving a sentence-picture verification task, which highlight the similarities and contextually-determined differences in the use of both determiners. Our results suggest that the interpre...

Agreement errors and structural distance: A corpus study of Bulgarian

In this work we address the phenomenon of substitution of the special “count form” suffix of masculine non-person nouns in Bulgarian numeral phrases for a simple plural morpheme. This substitution phenomenon is observed in everyday speech and writing and is noted by traditional Bulgarian grammarians. We propose to treat this phenomenon on a par with agreement errors previously investigated in the language production literature on English (e.g. “The editor of the books are...”) and on the Romance languages. We conducted a corpus study of agreement substitution errors in Bulgarian, the results of which support the psycholinguistic theories maintaining, in particular, that structural hierarchy is relevant for the computation of agreement in language production.