Conjunction Meets Negation: A Study in Cross-linguistic Variation

Szabolcsi, Anna; Haddican, Bill

doi:10.1093/jos/21.3.219

Cited by 43 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 19 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The word both in the antecedents of ¬(A ∧ B) > off and ¬(A ∧ B) > on has been inserted to rule out an unwanted interpretation of the antecedent that is false or infelicitous in situations where the switches have different positions. That interpretation has been characterized as a homogeneity effect; for discussion, see Szabolcsi and Haddican (2004) and Magri (2014). Our filler sentence is shown in (5).…”

Section: ¬(A∧ B) >Onmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two switches in the theory of counterfactuals

Ciardelli

Zhang

Champollion

2018

Linguist and Philos

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Based on a crowdsourced truth value judgment experiment, we provide empirical evidence challenging two classical views in semantics, and we develop a novel account of counterfactuals that combines ideas from inquisitive semantics and causal reasoning. First, we show that two truth-conditionally equivalent clauses can make different semantic contributions when embedded in a counterfactual antecedent. Assuming compositionality, this means that the meaning of these clauses is not fully determined by their truth conditions. This finding has a clear explanation in inquisitive semantics: truth-conditionally equivalent clauses may be associated with different propositional alternatives, each of which counts as a separate counterfactual assumption. Second, we show that our results contradict the common idea that

show abstract

Section: ¬(A∧ B) >Onmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two switches in the theory of counterfactuals

Ciardelli

Zhang

Champollion

2018

Linguist and Philos

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…tone or contrastive stress). Szabolcsi & Haddican (2004) point out that English John AND Mary, with stressed AND, is a strictly Boolean, distributive construction, in various respects similar to John as well (102) a. # John AND Mary are a good couple.…”

Section: (101)mentioning

confidence: 99%

What do quantifier particles do?

Szabolcsi

2015

Linguist and Philos

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In many languages, the same particles that form quantifier words also serve as connectives, additive and scalar particles, question markers, roots of existential verbs, and so on. Do these have a unified semantics, or do they merely bear a family resemblance? Are they aided by silent operators in their varied roles-if yes, what operators? I dub the particles "quantifier particles" and refer to them generically with capitalized versions of the Japanese morphemes. I argue that both MO and KA can be assigned a stable semantics across their various roles. The specific analysis I offer is motivated by the fact that MO and KA often combine with just one argument; I propose that this is their characteristic behavior. Their role is to impose semantic requirements that are satisfied when the immediately larger context is interpreted as the meet/join of their host's semantic contribution with something else. They do not perform meet/join themselves. The obligatory vs. optional appearance of the particles depends on whether the meet/join interpretations arise by default in the given constellation. I explicate the proposal using the toolkit of basic Inquisitive Semantics.

show abstract

“…However, the interaction of negation with conjunction and disjunction is not so straightforward crosslinguistically. Szabolsci & Haddican 2004 show that in many languages "negated definite conjunctions are naturally and exclusively interpreted as 'neither"'. Szabolsci & Haddican 2004 look in depth at Hungarian, in contrast to English; both the negated disjunction and the negated conjunction have different interpretations across languages.…”

Section: Naa As Disjunction?mentioning

confidence: 97%

Complex connectives

Murray¹

2017

SALT

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper discusses the interpretation and analysis of several sentential connectives found in Cheyenne (Algonquian), drawing on the author’s fieldwork as well as several collections of texts. Coordinating connectives in English, including and, but, and or, are monomorphemic. In Cheyenne, the basic form used for conjunction is naa. Other connectives are morphologically complex, formed by combining naa with additional morphemes, all of which have independent uses. These complex connectives, and certain uses of naa alone, are challenges for a compositional, truth-functional analysis. In particular, though disjunction is logically weaker than conjunction, two forms for disjunction – naa matȯ=héva and naa mó=héá'e – each contain the conjunction naa. Several recent analyses of similar data argue the basic element is not true conjunction. However, the data in these languages differ from Cheyenne in crucial ways. Building on these analyses, and other work on the semantics of disjunction, this paper proposes an analysis of the Cheyenne connectives that preserves naa as conjunction. Specifically, naa is analyzed as dynamic conjunction, and different from English and in important ways.

show abstract

Conjunction Meets Negation: A Study in Cross-linguistic Variation

Cited by 43 publications

References 19 publications

Two switches in the theory of counterfactuals

Two switches in the theory of counterfactuals

What do quantifier particles do?

Complex connectives

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About