Not unreasonable: Why two negatives don't make a positive

Tessler, Michael Henry; Franke, Mark F. N.

doi:10.31234/osf.io/tqjr2

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 23 publications

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“…21 A reviewer pointed out to us that negation has been observed to interact with politeness (Yoon et al 2020 andFranke 2019), for example. While this may be the case, it is not clear to us why negation should affect the truthvalue judgments, however, from semantics of negation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Certainly but not certain: The expression of subjective and objective probability

Yatsushiro

Trinh

Żygis

et al. 2022

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This paper investigates the interpretation of the epistemic modal adjectives possible, certain and their adverbial counterparts possibly, certainly, taking the perspective that the former express objective modality, whereas the latter express subjective modality. In support of this view, we report on two experiments that assess speakers’ acceptance of possible, certain, possibly, certainly in different contexts. Our results extend those of Lassiter (2016) in demonstrating a difference in interpretation between the adjectival and adverbial modals, with possibly less acceptable than possible but conversely certainly more acceptable than certain in the same situations. Furthermore, the results of our experiments suggest a new insight, namely that these differences depend, to some extent, on the probability of the eventuality in question and polarity of the prejacent sentence.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Certainly but not certain: The expression of subjective and objective probability

Yatsushiro

Trinh

Żygis

et al. 2022

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Keeping Fake Simple

Guerrini

2024

Journal of Semantics

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In this paper, I argue against two common claims about so-called privative adjectives like ‘fake’: first, I argue against the idea that their semantic complexity requires a richer notion of lexical meaning than the standard one (see, e.g., Del Pinal, 2018); second, I argue against the idea that ‘fake’ is a subsective adjective ‘in disguise’ and does not semantically negate its input (see, e.g., Partee, 2010). I propose that a fake P is (i) intended to resemble a P and (ii) is not a P. This makes correct predictions for multiple applications of ‘fake’, a task at which other theories fail. In cases of double application of ‘fake’, the interaction between its conjunctive meaning and the negation hard-coded into clause (ii) yields a complex meaning, compatible with a variety of objects, which aligns with intuitions about what should count as a fake N. While the core meaning of ‘fake’ is quite simple, its mode of composition bears some complexity. In line with Martin (2022), I propose that ‘fake’ can alternatively (a) combine directly with the noun via Functional Application or (b) saturate its property argument via an implicit, contextually provided variable via Functional Application and then combine with the noun via Predicate Modification. Mode of composition (a) is clearly visible in syntactic parses that only allow for Functional Application: for instance, in Italian, if pre-nominal, ‘fake’ can only directly take the noun as an input (cf. Cinque, 2010). Positing (b) correctly predicts readings where ‘fake’ is not apparently privative: ‘fake watch’ can designate a watch that is made to resemble a Rolex but isn’t one, i.e. a fake(-as-a-Rolex) watch. When the intersection between the $[\![ \mathit{fake} ]\!] (*\mathit{implicit\ argument}*)$ complex and the noun is empty, rescuing principles originally proposed by Partee kick in to rescue from vacuous modification: this explains why we can refer to a fake gun as a gun, as in the sentence ‘this gun is fake’. As a result, besides correctly predicting iterated ‘fake’, this theory provides clear predictions on when and how Partee’s pragmatic principles of noun modulation apply. I conclude the paper arguing that this view of privatives calls for a classification of adjectives in terms of their mode of composition, rather than in terms of their emergent entailment pattern.

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Gradable adjective interpretation under negation: The role of competition

Alexandropoulou,

Gotzner

2024

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Gradable adjectives have recently drawn a lot of attention in experimental semantics/pragmatics regarding the different interpretations they trigger depending on scale structure, polarity, extremeness, and presence of negation (e.g., Gotzner et al. 2018b; a; Leffel et al. 2019). The current study investigates the interpretation of relative and absolute gradable adjectives in the scope of negation (e.g., not large and not clean, respectively) capitalizing on the role of competition between alternative expressions in adjective interpretation. Our experimental results show that contextual competition between adjective expressions affects the interpretative asymmetry characteristic of positive and negative relative adjectives in the scope of negation (not large vs. not small; see Horn 1989). However, we do not find evidence that contextual competition affects the symmetric interpretation patterns of positive (not clean) and negative absolute adjectives (not dirty) under negation, or that potential relative-like interpretations of negated absolute adjectives hinge on the availability of overt contextual competition. The attested polarity asymmetry of negated relative adjectives is captured by Horn’s pragmatic theory. The apparent availability of relative-like interpretations of negated absolute adjectives are hypothesized to result from a reasoning akin to Horn’s division of pragmatic labor.

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Not unreasonable: Why two negatives don't make a positive

Cited by 3 publications

References 23 publications

Certainly but not certain: The expression of subjective and objective probability

Certainly but not certain: The expression of subjective and objective probability

Keeping Fake Simple

Gradable adjective interpretation under negation: The role of competition

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