Semantics etc.

There is now a two page handout giving an overview of the system we have now in place. It also contains the new problem set.

As announced in class, we are next reading:

• Chapter 4 of the Portner textbook

You should have read this by the end of this week.

In addition, I will hand out in class tomorrow:

• “Relative Clauses, Variables, Variable Binding”, pp. 86–105 of Heim & Kratzer’s textbook “Semantics in Generative Grammar”.

This reading covers the material I presented in yesterday’s class (and informally presented just before spring break). You should read this very carefully as well.

You may have noticed that I have fewer short new paper announcements in the blog these days. That’s because when I find a new paper on the web and don’t feel the urgent need to post the abstract or make comments of my own, I will just add the link to my semantics bookmarks at del.icio.us. The links are automatically displayed in the right sidebar on my blog. If you don’t want to check the main page regularly for new links, you can subscribe to an RSS feed of the quick links instead.

My colleague Danny Fox has made available his class handouts on implicatures and exhaustivity. He writes:

“These are handouts I used for a short seminar at USC (November 04). The material was first presented in a joint seminar that I taught with Irene Heim at MIT (Fall 04). Class 5, in particular, builds on Irene’s discussion of various theories of the meanings of the exhaustive operator, only.”

The handouts are here: Class 1, Class 2-3, Class 4, Class 5. Get them while they’re hot.

Just a heads up. At the end of the semester, I am going to Austin to give a couple of talks. Originally, this was scheduled for May 5 and 6, which meant that there was not going to be a class on Thu 5/5. Now, the trip has been shifted by a week. So, there will after all be class on Thu 5/5, but not on Thu 5/12. The paper/squib for this class will still be due on the 12th (although since I will be away, one might assume that the real hard deadline is late that Sunday night).

I have updated the syllabus to reflect this change.

Sabine Iatridou and I have just finished the first draft of our paper “Anatomy of a Modal”, which treats material that we have been presenting in various places, including invited talks at GLOW and SALT last year. Get it while it’s hot:

• Kai von Fintel & Sabine Iatridou: 2005, “Anatomy of a Modal”, ms, MIT.

Sabine is going on a roadshow where she will be presenting this paper and some other until very recently dormant work of ours. When she is back, we hope to finalize the Anatomy paper for submission to Linguistic Inquiry. Whether or not it gets accepted by LI, the paper will first appear as a working paper in a forthcoming “modality” volume of our department’s MIT Working Papers in Philosophy and Linguistics.

So, if you have any comments or helpful criticism, we would especially appreciate them if we can get them within the next few weeks.

Chapter 4 of the lecture notes on modals is now available. NB: this chapter has not been updated since last year. Apologies.

The fifth problem set is due next Wednesday March 16th at 12 noon.

• Read the article on disjunction by R.E. Jennings in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Read especially carefully the section on “The Myth of Vel and Aut“.
• Report in your own words the central argument that Jennings makes against the claim that Latin aut unambiguously conveyed exclusive disjunction.
• Assess whether Jennings’ argument could be used to make the same point about English or.

Expected length: about one page.

I promised a while back to hand out some useful summaries of Grice’s system. They are now available:

• A refrigerator summary of Grice’s maxims.
• A sample derivation of a quantity implicature, meant to replace the calculation on p. 201-202 of Portner’s book.

Daniel Rothschild asked me to comment on a point he makes in his paper on NPI-licensing and definites:

It seems to me that definite descriptions, if understood in the standard way as presupposing uniqueness, are strawson-downward-entailing in their restrictor.

For in any situation in which “the dog is happy” is true then in that same situation “the dog with red ears is happy” is true as long as there is a unique dog with red ears. In general, “the F” presupposes that there is just one F, whereas “the F and G” presupposes that there is just one F and G. So if both presupposition are satisfied then “the F is the F and G” will always be true.

However, NPIs are infelicitous in the restrictor of most singular definite descriptions:

?”The dog who ever went to the park was in my living room.”

It turns out that the issue with definites has been pointed out to me a number of times — in fact, the first time was just days after the final proofs of my Strawson-DE paper had gone out to the printers. In my recollection, the point was made to me independently by Philippe Schlenker and by Bernhard Schwarz. It has since appeared (in some fashion) in some critical passages by Anastasia Giannakidou as well.

What I observed in the conversations with Philippe and Bernhard was the following. Definites are not just Strawson-DE, they are also Strawson-UE: if “the dog is happy” is true and the presuppositions of “the animal is happy” are satisfied, then “the animal is happy” must be true. So, my suggestion, which I have never publicized (but probably should, together with some other remarks occasioned in particular by Giannakidou’s work), was and is that the NPI-licensing condition requires that the licenser be Strawson-DE, but properly so, i.e. not Strawson-UE at the same time. This seems only reasonable.

As I am looking at your problem sets, I am reminded of Irene’s admonition about the importance of clarity in semantic argumentation. Here is the quote (from her 24.970 lecture notes):

When arguing for or against a particular semantic analysis, we often proceed by showing that this analysis makes correct or incorrect predictions about the truth conditions of certain examples. To make such arguments, you need to be able to compute what a given analysis predicts for a given sentence. Computations of this sort are the basic building blocks of all arguments in formal semantics. In the published literature, you will not find many of them spelled out. When you listen to professionals debating, it may even look as if they see the predictions of each proposal instantly without ever having to compute anything. But these appearances are deceptive. What is really going on is that formal semanticists write for and talk to a trained audience. As part of the training they presuppose, you have already done so many calculations that almost every new one you encounter will be a minor variant or combination of things that you have computed before. Until you get to this stage, however, you have to go slowly, take one step at a time, and pay meticulous attention to how each step is supported by the definitions, rules, and assumptions that comprise the analysis under consideration.

The fourth problem set is due next Wednesday March 9th at 12 noon.

I. [adapted from a textbook by McCawley]

Give an account in terms of Gricean conversational implicature of why the slogan “We are serving Metro-Boston at over twenty locations” conveys that the company in question has fewer than 30 locations in the Metro-Boston area.

II. [from a textbook by Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet]

In each of the pairs below, sentence (a) conversationally implicates sentence (b). For each pair, provide a reason for thinking that the implication is not a truth-conditional entailment [consult Portner Section 11.1, pp. 203-205, and you class notes], and calculate the implicature as best you can, indicating where contextually specific premises need to be supplied.

(1) a. Joan swung at the ball. b. Joan missed the ball.

(2) a. I wonder what time it is. b. The speaker wants to be told what time it is by the addressee.

(3) a. Jill and Greg went to the movies. b. Jill and Greg went to the movies together.

I can’t come into the Institute because my kids are home from school because of the snow. So, I cannot hold my regular office hours today. If you have any questions that need to be answered fast, please send me and/or Justin email.

Kai von Fintel.