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Based on a sample of seven languages, I show that the so-called modal inferences in ever free relatives (ignorance and indifference) are not universally available. The primary reading of ever free relatives crosslinguistically turns out to be a “non-modal” one, which is available to all languages under investigation. The implication is that if there is a modal inference triggered by the use of the ever-morpheme in FRs, the inference is likely to have a source external to the ever free relative (Lauer, 2009; Condoravdi, 2015; Hirsch, 2016). In line with this conclusion, I propose to generalize Hirsch’s (2016) analysis of ignorance ever free relatives, suggesting that all ever free relatives, no matter how they are ultimately interpreted, are instances of (un)conditionals + donkey-anaphoric definite descriptions.
This paper examines whether gender features (masculine, feminine, neuter) in German have to be interpreted semantically, along their specific gender, or whether they allow for a gender unrelated interpretation. As to this, two experiments with two different classes of nouns (gender marked and sex marked nouns vs. gender marked and sex neutral nouns) were conducted. The first experiment supports the view that in their function as nominal predicates masculine nouns, contrary to feminine (and neuter) nouns, have the widest extension – which confirms the existence of a ‘Generic Masculine’ (Generisches Maskulinum). On the other hand, the second experiment shows that in their function as subjects masculine nouns, contrary to feminine (and neuter) nouns, are the least flexible agreement controllers – hardly allowing for gender mismatches. Thus, masculine nouns behave differently depending on whether they appear as controllers/sources of agreement or as targets of agreement. The findings are supplemented by corpus data.
Marie Wrona präsentiert in ihrem Beitrag "Ist das ein Komma oder kann das weg? - Topologische Felder und Kommasetzung. Erste empirische Befunde" ein Experiment zur Kommadidaktik. Sie untersucht, inwiefern sich die Kommasetzungskompetenz von SchülerInnen verbessert, wenn diese mithilfe des topologischen Feldermodells vermittelt wird, das auf der Verbklammer im Deutschen aufbaut, anstatt wie bei traditionellen Ansätzen mithilfe von Signalwörtern wie Subjunktionen. Die SchülerInnen lernten, das finite Verb zu bestimmen und so zu entscheiden, ob ein Komma gesetzt werden muss oder nicht. Nach der Unterrichtseinheit setzten die SchülerInnen v.a. deutlich weniger falsche Kommata
'Enough'-/'too'-constructions (E/T constructions) have an implicative reading: e.g., "Mary was clever enough to leave early yesterday" entails Mary left early yesterday. I argue that this implicative reading is not due to the lexical semantics proper of 'enough'/'too', but due to its bi-clausal structure (e.g., the above-mentioned example is analyzed as "Mary left early yesterday because she was clever enough"). I analyze 'enough' and 'too' simply as degree modifiers that involve a comparison: 'enough' means reaching the lower bound of an interval, while 'too' means exceeding the upper bound of an interval. Then inspired by Schulz (2011), Baglini and Francez (2015), and Nadathur (2016), I relate the semantics of E/T constructions to causal dependence: due to some sufficiency/excess, the infinitival complement clause in E/T constructions is episodically or generically (depending on its aspect being perfective or imperfective) true/false. I also argue that this infinitive has its tense and aspect marked on the main predicate of sentences, resulting in the seeming correlation between aspect and implication in languages that overtly make a distinction between perfective and imperfective aspects (e.g., French).
This paper addresses the question of how to account for the semantic variability of weak free adjuncts. Weak free adjuncts are non-clausal adjuncts that associate with an argument of the main predicate, contribute propositional content, and can interact with temporal or modal operators, which leads to different, adverbial-clause-like interpretations. I focus on a specific type of weak adjuncts, non-clausal as-phrases, and propose a unified semantic analysis for the full range of interpretational possibilities that takes into account the interpretational contingency on different syntactic positions. I show that this analysis improves on Stump’s (1985) original analysis of weak adjuncts. I then go on to discuss the limitations of both Stump’s account and the unified account. Both accounts fail to capture that the interaction of weak adjuncts with modal operators underlies certain restrictions on the properties of the modal operators—an observation that has not been discussed in the literature so far.