Contradicting (not-)at-issueness in exclusives and clefts: An empirical study

Abstract

We present two empirical studies on exclusives, it-clefts, and pseudoclefts (i.e., identity statements with a definite description) in which the at-issue and not-at-issue content-a factor that has not been properly controlled for in prior experimental work on cleft exhaustivity-were teased apart systematically. The results show that violations of exhaustivity in it-clefts, a not-at-issue inference, patterned differently from the necessary presupposition failures of the not-at-issue semantic inferences. These findings pose a new experimental challenge to semantic accounts of exhaustivity in it-clefts, while being in line with pragmatic accounts.

That’s not quite it: An experimental investigation of (non‑)exhaustivity in clefts

“…While Horn (1981) had to stipulate a specific pragmatic rule in order to derive exhaustiveness from the existential presupposition, our proposal derives exhaustivity from the anaphoricity of clefts: Exhaustivity arises whenever the anaphoric antecedent of the existential presupposition is interpreted as maximal by the hearer, in a way similar to what Pollard & Yasavul (2015) propose. Crucially, our pragmatic account deviates from the earlier pragmatic implicature account in DeVeaugh-Geiss et al 2015 in that it does not derive an exhaustivity implicature from the explicit and unambiguous structural marking of focal alternatives (cf. Büring 2016).…”

“…Finally, DeVeaugh-Geiss et al (2015) report the results of an acceptability study. The aim of this study was to clarify whether or not the difference in atissueness between the canonical inference and the exhaustivity inference of clefts is sufficient to explain the apparent weakness of the exhaustivity inference observed for clefts.…”

“…In a follow-up experiment with definite pseudoclefts in place of it-clefts, cancellations of uniqueness were by contrast treated in the same way as cancellations of the prejacent of exclusives, and again, both inferences are not-at-issue. Hence, DeVeaugh-Geiss et al (2015) argued that at-issueness cannot be the sole factor responsible for the observed weakness. Rather, the experimental findings were taken in support of a pragmatic implicature account of cleft exhaustivity.…”

“…This contention has recently been challenged by findings of several experiments on the interpretation of clefts. Studies such as Onea & Beaver 2009, Destruel et al 2015, DeVeaugh-Geiss et al 2015, Destruel 2012, Byram-Washburn et al 2013 and others report various ways in which cleft exhaustivity does not align with standard expectations raised by semantic inferences of any kind. In other words, the experimental findings point to a pragmatic analysis of the exhaustivity inference in which exhaustivity is not conventionally coded as part of the literal semantic meaning of clefts.…”

“…There are variants of this idea which mainly build on the observation that the cleft pivot is focused. For instance, DeVeaugh-Geiss et al 2015 argue that the source of pragmatic exhaustification in clefts lies in the non-canonical, unambiguous focus marking. A similar conclusion is put forward by the dynamic account of Pollard & Yasavul 2015, according to which it-clefts in English are anaphoric expressions that specify their anaphoric antecedent, whereby exhaustivity occurs as part of a question-answer paradigm.…”