UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Minimal sufficiency with covert even

Panizza, D; Sudo, Y; (2020) Minimal sufficiency with covert even. Glossa , 5 (1) , Article 98. 10.5334/gjgl.1118. Green open access

[thumbnail of Sudo_1118-21068-1-PB.pdf]
Preview
Text
Sudo_1118-21068-1-PB.pdf - Published Version

Download (938kB) | Preview

Abstract

Exclusive particles (e.g. just) express exclusivity inferences by negating focus alternatives to the sentence they modify. Grosz (2012) observes that they can sometimes give rise to what he calls minimal sufficiency readings, which seem to affirm, rather than negate, focus alternatives. Grosz proposes to analyze them in terms of the rank-order reading, a kind of scalar reading of exclusive particles that is independently attested. Coppock & Beaver (2014) put forward a similar analysis based on their unified semantics for different uses of exclusive particles. We point out that these previous accounts fail to capture the distribution of minimal sufficiency readings, in particular, the relevance of distributivity, and propose an alternative analysis where the scalar component of the minimal sufficiency reading comes from a covert version of even, rather than from the exclusive particle itself. Empirical support for this comes from the generalization that an overt even can be added to sentences that have minimal sufficiency readings without changing the meaning, but not to sentences that do not allow for minimal sufficiency readings. We argue that our account not only captures the distribution of the minimal sufficiency reading, but also derives the inferences involved in the minimal sufficiency reading compositionally together with the standardly assumed semantics for exclusive particles and even.

Type: Article
Title: Minimal sufficiency with covert even
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.5334/gjgl.1118
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.1118
Language: English
Additional information: This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: minimal sufficiency, just, even, focus sensitivity, distributivity
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Linguistics
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10106753
Downloads since deposit
148Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item