Economy and embedded exhaustification

Building on previous works which argued that scalar implicatures can be computed in embedded positions, this paper proposes a constraint on exhaustification (an economy condition) which restricts the conditions under which an exhaustivity operator can be licensed. We show that this economy condition...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Natural language semantics 2018-03, Vol.26 (1), p.1-50
Main Authors: Fox, Danny, Spector, Benjamin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accentuation
Embedded constructions
Entailment
Generalization
Humanities and Social Sciences
Implicature
Licensing
Linguistics
Philosophy of Language
Scalarity (Semantics)
Semantics
Social Sciences
Syntax
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Summary:Building on previous works which argued that scalar implicatures can be computed in embedded positions, this paper proposes a constraint on exhaustification (an economy condition) which restricts the conditions under which an exhaustivity operator can be licensed. We show that this economy condition allows us to derive a number of generalizations, such as, in particular, the 'Implicature Focus Generalization': scalar implicatures can be embedded under a downward-entailing operator only if the (relevant) scalar term bears pitch accent. Our economy condition also derives specific predictions regarding the licensing of so-called Hurford disjunctions.
ISSN:0925-854X
1572-865X
DOI:10.1007/s11050-017-9139-6