Principles of the Exclusive Muddle

Abstract

This paper provides a lexical entry schema for exclusives covering the adverbs only, just, exclusively, merely, purely, solely, simply, and the adjectives only, sole, pure, exclusive and alone. We argue, on the basis of inter-paraphrasability relations among these exclusives and entailments involving at least and at most, that all of these items make an at-issue contribution of an upper bound on the viable answers to the current question under discussion (expressible with at most), and signal that a lower bound on those answers (expressible with at least) is taken for granted. The lexical entry schema accommodates two main points of variation, which makes it possible to capture the differences in meaning among these terms: (i) semantic type (restricted to the class of modifiers), and (ii) constraints on the current question under discussion or the strength ranking over its alternative possible answers. We propose 22 different specific instantiations of the schema for exclusives in English.

Definiteness and determinacy

“…Coppock and Beaver (2014) (72) Presuppositional Domination Expression α presupositionally dominates expression β just in case α and β are classically equivalent, and α has presuppositions at least as strong as β but not vice versa.…”

A distributed syntax for evaluative ‘only’ sentences

“…Words meaning 'only' are analyzed as combining entailed and presuppositional components of meaning (Horn 1969;König 1991;Rooth 1992;Guerzoni 2003;Beaver and Clark 2008;Sudhoff 2010;Coppock and Beaver 2014). The truthfunctional core of 'only' words entails the falsity of all non-trivial alternatives.…”

“…Like this, the statement of non-identity in the scope of the existential quantifier will not lead to contradictions. Beaver and Clark (2008) and Coppock and Beaver (2014) capture EXCL by a maximality requirement. The prejacent is the informationally strongest proposition which is true in a given context.…”

“…There is some debate in the literature on whether presupposition is really the right theoretical notion to characterize the status of meaning of the prejacent (Horn 1996) and whether the status of meaning may change under certain conditions (Guerzoni 2003). Beaver and Clark (2008) and Coppock and Beaver (2014) treat prejacent truth as a minimality presupposition. At least a proposition as strong as the prejacent is presupposed to be true in an 'only' sentence.…”

“…Such alternatives are excluded from C by stipulation, such that 'only' foci that receive a scalar-evaluative interpretation are always extreme in the sense just described. 5 Beaver and Clark (2008) and Coppock and Beaver (2014) capture scalar evaluation in two different ways: either by the contextually determined scale with which prejacent truth interacts, and of which informational strength as in Section 2.1 is just one instantiation; or by the assumption of an evaluative presupposition. 6 Ever since Lerner and Zimmermann's (1981) and Jacobs' (1983) work, scalar evaluation has been included in analyses of 'only' words at least for some uses (e.g.…”