This article presents a unified theory of polarity-sensitive items (PSIs) based on the notion of domain widening. PSIs include negative polarity items (like Italian mai ‘ever’), universal free choice items (like Italian qualunque ‘any/whatever’), and existential free choice items (like Italian uno qualunque ‘a whatever’). The proposal is based on a ‘‘recursive,’’ grammatically driven approach to scalar implicatures that breaks with the traditional view that scalar implicatures arise via post- grammatical pragmatic processes. The main claim is that scalar items optionally activate scalar alternatives that, when activated, are then recursively factored into meaning via an alternative sensitive operator similar to only. PSIs obligatorily activate domain alternatives that are factored into meaning in much the same way.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

This book explores the relation between language and logic through an analysis of polarity sensitivity and free choice effects. A wide variety of items are considered, with the intent of identifying the common core of the Polarity System as well as the choices that determine the stunningly diverse array of its manifestations. Sensitivity to polarity and freedom of choice are analyzed as a form of grammaticized Scalar Implicature. This requires a reassessment of how the different components of language (i.e. syntax, semantics and pragmatics) interact. But perhaps the most surprising outcome of t Logical Syntax of Language his book concers the relation of syntax to logic. In his classic, Carnap defines syntax as a lexicon and a set of formation rule and logic proper as a set of inference rules. Modern linguistics in the generative tradition has maintained a similar modular set up: a combinatorial apparatus generates structures over which semantic/pragmatic relations (like entailment, presuppositions and implicatures) are defined. This book argues that a wide array of structures that are typically perceived and analyzed as syntactically deviant owe in fact their status to their logical properties, i.e. whether they are contradictory/analytically true in specific ways (‘G-trivial’). This alters the Carnapian view, as the characterization of ‘grammatical structure’ now requires a more direct role of logical inferences. The functional lexicon of grammar comes with a set of inference rules that crucially and directly determine grammaticality patterns. Logic in Grammar presents the results of a decade’s work on semantics, pragmatics and syntax. It extends the author’s long-term project on how humans categorize the world and how they reason. It is, in sum, a mind-opening contribution to the understanding of the fundamental operations of language and thought, a book that will interest linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists alike.

No abstract

No abstract