Uli Sauerland

Total Reconstruction, PF Movement, and Derivational Order

Theories of total reconstruction have generally supposed that movement can be followed by an undoing operation like LF lowering (May 1977, 1985) or deletion of higher copies (Chomsky 1993). We argue that reconstruction effects can be derived only if the original movement is purely phonological. There are no undoing operations. We present three distinct arguments, based on an interaction between raising and wh-movement in English, facts from agreement with group terms in British English, and multiple scrambling in Japanese. The arguments imply that the T-model is correct in supposing that movement that affects both LF and PF must precede movement that affects only PF.

Cumulation is Needed: A Reply to Winter (2000)

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 Winters proposal is insufficient for a number of cases of cumulative readings, and that Krifkas and Sternefelds polyadic **-operator is needed in addition to dependent definites. Our arguments come from new observations concerning dependent plurals and clause-boundedness effects with cumulative readings.

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

ERASABILITY AND INTERPRETATION

This paper corroborates the interpretability proposal of Chomsky (1995) with evidence from scrambling in Japanese and German. First it is shown that scrambling in Japanese is semantically vacuous, whereas scrambling in German is semantically contentful. Chomskys proposal then predicts that the feature driving Japanese scrambling is erased after checking, while the corresponding feature in German remains visible, specifically for the Shortest Attract condition. Looking at patterns of movement that result in overlapping paths, this prediction is seen to be correct.

DP is Not a Scope Island

This squib is concerned with inverse linking constructions. May (1977) introduced this term for cases where a quantificational DP occurs inside another DP and takes wider scope than the containing DP. In this squib, I argue that Mays (1977) TP-adjunction analysis of inverse linking is required, which entails that DP cannot be an island for QR. Specifically, I show that the inversely linked (or contained) QP can take scope separate from the containing QP when scope relative to a scope-taking verb or scope relative to negation is considered.

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.

Syntax–Semantics Interface

Humans possess the ability to form and understand infinitely many sentences. It is widely assumed that these two abilities are based on two autonomous, recursive procedures: syntax, a procedure that generates sentences; and semantics, a procedure that interprets sentences. Though autonomous, the two procedures are not unrelated. In particular, the steps of the recursion correspond closely to each other as the relevance of the notion of c-command for both procedures shows. The syntax–semantics interface is the level of grammar where the relationship between syntax and semantics is established. The theory of the syntax–semantics interface has to explain which aspects of structure and interpretation are related and how this relationship comes about. This is usually done by stating what the representation of an utterance at the interface is, and postulating conditions to which this representation is subject. Furthermore, a theory of the syntax–semantics interface must provide mechanisms to explain mismatches that have been found to exist between structure and interpretation. To this end, different readjustment mechanisms have been developed for a number of cases.

Familial sinistrals avoid exact numbers.

We report data from an internet questionnaire of sixty number trivia. Participants were asked for the number of cups in their house, the number of cities they know and 58 other quantities. We compare the answers of familial sinistrals – individuals who are left-handed themselves or have a left-handed close blood-relative – with those of pure familial dextrals – right-handed individuals who reported only having right-handed close blood-relatives. We show that familial sinistrals use rounder numbers than pure familial dextrals in the survey responses. Round numbers in the decimal system are those that are multiples of powers of 10 or of half or a quarter of a power of 10. Roundness is a gradient concept, e.g. 100 is rounder than 50 or 200. We show that very round number like 100 and 1000 are used with 25% greater likelihood by familial sinistrals than by pure familial dextrals, while pure familial dextrals are more likely to use less round numbers such as 25, 60, and 200. We then use Sigurd’s (1988, Language in Society) index of the roundness of a number and report that familial sinistrals’ responses are significantly rounder on average than those of pure familial dextrals. To explain the difference, we propose that the cognitive effort of using exact numbers is greater for the familial sinistral group because their language and number systems tend to be more distributed over both hemispheres of the brain. Our data support the view that exact and approximate quantities are processed by two separate cognitive systems. Specifically, our behavioral data corroborates the view that the evolutionarily older, approximate number system is present in both hemispheres of the brain, while the exact number system tends to be localized in only one hemisphere.