Linguistik-Klassifikation: Semantik / Semantics
19 search hits
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On the semantic markedness of phi-features
(2005)
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Uli Sauerland
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On greek illusions: a semantic account of Alexopoulou’s generalization
(2008)
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Uli Sauerland
- Alexopoulou (2008) argues that Greek provides new evidence for the concept of binding illusions that was hypothesized by Fox and Sauerland (1996). Of special interest from my perspective is Alexopoulou’s argument that binding illusions arise not only with existential and universal quantifiers, but also with negative and interrogative quantifiers. The purpose of this note is to speculate on how to account for these kinds of binding illusions semantically building on Alexopoulou’s argument. In the following I refer to Alexopoulou’s (2008) paper as BIRG (Binding Illusions and Resumption in Greek) and to Clitic Left-Dislocation as CLLD. BIRG’s argument is based on the generalization concerning CLLD in Greek. Generally, a left-dislocated noun phrase cannot bind a pronoun in its clause in Greek.
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On embedded implicatures
(2004)
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Uli Sauerland
- The Gricean approach explains implicatures by assumptions about the pragmatics of entire utterances. The phenomenon of embedded implicatures remains a challenge for this approach since in such cases apparently implicatures contribute to the truth-conditional content of constituents smaller than utterances. In this paper, I investigate three areas where embedded implicatures seem to differ from implicatures at the utterance level: optionality, epistemic status, and implicated presuppositions. I conclude that the differences between the two kinds of implicatures justify an approach that maintains Gricean assumptions at the utterance level, and assumes a special operator for embedded implicatures.
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No 'No' : on the crosslinguistic absence of a determiner 'No'
(2000)
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Uli Sauerland
- This paper concerns the semantics of determiners. I point out that the currently dominant generalized quantifiers analysis of determiners has certain deficiencies. I then provide an alternative which seems offer some hope not suffer from the same deficiencies.
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New ideas on binding and binding theory
(2004)
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Uli Sauerland
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Intermediate cumulation
(2001)
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Uli Sauerland
- In this snippet, I will describe a new case where overt wh-movement leads to additional scope possibilities.
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Intermediate adjunction with A-movement
(2003)
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Uli Sauerland
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Implicated presuppositions
(2008)
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Uli Sauerland
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Illusive wide scope of universal quantifiers
(1997)
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Uli Sauerland
Danny Fox
- It is widely believed that existential quantifiers can bring about the semantic effects of a scope which is wider than their actual syntactic scope (See Fodor & Sag (1982), Cresti (1995), Kratzer (1995), Reinhart (1995) and Winter (1995), among many others.) On the other hand, it is assumed that the syntactic scope of universal quantifiers can be determined unequivocally by the semantics. This paper shows that this second assumption is wrong; universal quantifiers can also bring about scope illusions, though in a very specific environment. In particular, we argue that in the environment of generic tense, universal quantifiers can show the semantic effects of a scope which is wider than the one that is actually realized at LF. Our argument has four steps. First, we show that in generic contexts, universal quantifiers escape standard “scope-islands” (Section 1). Second, we show how the effects of wide scope in generic contexts can be achieved without syntactic wide scope (Section 2.1). Third, we show that this result is actually forced on us, once we take seriously certain independent issues concerning the interpretation of generic tense (Sections 2.2 - 2.4). Finally, the semantics of generic tense and, in particular, its interaction with focus, will yield some intricate new predictions, which, as we show, are borne out (Sections 3 - 5).
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Hardt's surprising sloppy readings : a flat binding account
(2008)
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Uli Sauerland
- The paper presents an additional argument for a specific account of semantic binding: the flat-binding analysis. The argument is based on observations concerning sloppy interpretations in verb phrase ellipsis when the binder is not the subject of the elided VP. In one such case, it is important that one of the binders belong to the domain of the other. This case can be derived from the flat-binding analysis as is shown in the paper, while it is unclear how to account for it within other analyses of semantic binding.
