Homogeneity effects in natural language semantics

Križ, Manuel

doi:10.1111/lnc3.12350

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 29 publications

(46 reference statements)

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“…The fact that no child displayed the universal pattern of response, however, suggests this is not the case. Instead, children might be led to posit an existential meaning for the definite plural, on the basis of its behavior under negation, and the occasional non-maximal reading of the definite plural (for discussion of non-maximal readings, see Brisson, 1998; Lasersohn, 1999; Malamud, 2012; Schwarz, 2013; Križ, 2015a).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Plural definite descriptions give rise to homogeneity effects (see among others, Fodor, 1970; Schwarzschild, 1994; Löbner, 2000; Breheny, 2005; Gajewski, 2005; Büring and Križ, 2013; Spector, 2013; Magri, 2014; Križ, 2015a). The positive (1) is true in a situation where all of the trucks are blue, but its negation (2) is only true in a situation where none of them are.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Children's Acquisition of Homogeneity in Plural Definite Descriptions

2019

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Plural definite descriptions give rise to homogeneity effects: the positive The trucks are blue and the negative The trucks aren't blue are both neither true nor false when some of the trucks are blue and some are not, that is, when the group of trucks is not homogeneous with respect to the property of being blue (Löbner, 1987, 2000; Schwarzschild, 1994; Križ, 2015b). The only existing acquisition studies related to the phenomenon have examined children's comprehension only of the affirmative versions of such sentences, and moreover have yielded conflicting data; while one study reports that preschoolers interpret definite plurals maximally (Munn et al., 2006, see also Royle et al., 2018), two other studies report that preschoolers allow non-maximal interpretations of definite plurals where adults do not (Karmiloff-Smith, 1979; Caponigro et al., 2012). Moreover, there is no agreed upon developmental trajectory to adult homogeneity. In this paper, we turn to acquisition data to investigate the predictions of a recent analysis of homogeneity that treats homogeneous meanings as the result of a scalar implicature (Magri, 2014). We conducted two experiments targeting 4- and 5-year-old French-speaking children's interpretations of plural definite descriptions in positive and negative sentences, and tested the same children on standard cases of scalar implicature. The experiments revealed three distinct subgroups of children: those who interpreted the plural definite descriptions existentially and failed to compute implicatures; those who both accessed homogeneous interpretations and computed implicatures; and finally, a smaller subgroup of children who appeared to access homogeneous interpretations without computing implicatures. We discuss the implications of our findings, which appear to speak against the implicature theory as the adult-like means of generating homogeneous meanings.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children's Acquisition of Homogeneity in Plural Definite Descriptions

2019

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“…Homogeneity inferences are attested at least in English, Hungarian, Russian, Italian, Serbian, and Japanese (Szabolcsi & Haddican 2004). Homogeneity has been documented with definite plurals (Krifka 1996;Schwarzschild 1996), as in (1a/1b), conjunctions (Magri 2014;Szabolcsi & Haddican 2004;Muromatsu 2007), as in (2a/2b), and in various other environments (Higginbotham 1994;Löbner 2000;Cohen 2004; Križ 2016Križ , 2019. Križ (2019: 6) notes some apparent exceptions to homogeneity with collective predicates "that involve measuring a plurality in some way".…”

Section: Homogeneity Inferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Homogeneity and the illocutionary force of rejection

Sbardolini

2024

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Homogeneity inferences arise whenever an assertion implies a universal positive (every/both) and its denial implies a universal negative (no/neither). I present an account of homogeneity inferences based on two assumptions which together constrain the behavior of negation: rejection is non-classical, and vacuous models may be omitted (Neglect Zero). If both assumptions are enforced, the only definable negatives are universal (no/neither), predicting the homogeneity gap.

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“…Predicates like blue that are true of an individual by virtue of being true of its parts are called 'summative,' as opposed to 'integrative' predicates like square that are true of an individual as an atom (Löbner 2000). Identical quantificational patterns are observed beyond summative predicates (Križ 2015), including in plural predication:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trivalent Exh and summative predicates

Paillé

2024

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Many expressions display 'homogeneity': they quantify as universals in positive sentences, but as negated existentials in negative sentences. This paper aims to partly rethink work claiming that homogeneity is the result of exhaustification. I focus on 'summative' predicates like colour adjectives, and the claim that they are universal in positive sentences because they exclude one another. Three puzzles arise on this approach: the existence of truth-value gaps in non-homogeneous situations, the existence of non-maximality, and contrasts between sentential negation and other downward-entailing environments. I show that all of these difficulties can be resolved if exhaustification is trivalent rather than bivalent.

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Homogeneity effects in natural language semantics

Cited by 10 publications

References 29 publications

Children's Acquisition of Homogeneity in Plural Definite Descriptions

Children's Acquisition of Homogeneity in Plural Definite Descriptions

Homogeneity and the illocutionary force of rejection

Trivalent Exh and summative predicates

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