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

Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P. De; Tönnis, Swantje; Onea, Edgar; Zimmermann, Malte

doi:10.3765/sp.11.3

Cited by 12 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…4. The procedure and the design of the German experiment are discussed in more detail in De Veaugh-Geiss et al (2017. The procedure reported there is the same for English and Hungarian here.…”

Section: Results: a First Lookmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To explain our findings, we analyze focus partitioning structures as anaphoric devices with specific discourse-semantic use conditions, which are identical across languages, following ideas in Horn (1981Horn ( , 2016, Delin (1992), Onea & Beaver (2009), Velleman et al (2012), Pollard & Yasavul (2016), De Veaugh-Geiss et al (2017. We claim that such constructions semantically encode an ∃-inference, often explicitly marked by means of givenness or anaphoricity markers (deaccenting, demonstratives, definites, relative markers, etc.).…”

Section: (Non-)exhaustivity In Focus Partitioning Across Languagesmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…This division facilitates processing and information update, which makes it a (near) universal feature of natural languages. Second, focus partitioning structures come with an existence presupposition, which is computed over the backgrounded property (Rooth 1996) and leads to discourse-anaphoric interpretation (Geurts & van der Sandt 2004), and they are not licensed out of the blue (Delin 1992;De Veaugh-Geiss et al 2017). (7) and (8) illustrate two standard diagnostics for existence presuppositions in clefts.…”

Section: Focus Partitioning: Morphosyntax and Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Approaches to Hungarian

2020

Approaches to Hungarian

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The article examines reanalysis processes underlying doubling patterns in non-degree equatives in German and Hungarian. In German, the combination als wie (lit. 'as how') is attested historically and in certain present-day dialects. Traditionally, it is assumed to be a mixed pattern involving the earlier canonical equative complementiser als and the later canonical equative complementiser wie; however, more recent proposals suggest that als was in fact reanalysed from the matrix clause. While matrix equative markers and equative complementisers are surface-similar in German historically, these elements are distinct in Hungarian throughout its history. Based on the results of a corpus study on Old Hungarian, the paper argues that reanalysis from the matrix clause is indeed possible and starts in non-degree equatives.

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Section: Results: a First Lookmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: (Non-)exhaustivity In Focus Partitioning Across Languagesmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Focus Partitioning: Morphosyntax and Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Approaches to Hungarian

2020

Approaches to Hungarian

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“…In their conclusion, they explicitly state that they consider the exhaustivity inference in it-clefts to be a kind of scalar implicature, and thus attribute it to a purely pragmatic source. DeVeaugh-Geiss et al (2017) offer an updated account of these findings, though their results are again somewhat inconclusive. They found that neither it-clefts nor definite pseudoclefts consistently elicited purely exhaustive interpretations, which is surprising given the regularity of assuming exhaustive interpretations for these constructions in the theoretical literature.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rather, interpretations of what should have been infelicitous uses were also reported to be acceptable some of the time. DeVeaugh-Geiss et al (2017) concluded that there must be both presuppositions and scalar implicatures at play in it-clefts and pseudoclefts.…”

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confidence: 99%

A within-subjects comparison of the acquisition of quantity-related inferences

Parrish

Cournane²

2020

Proc Ling Soc Amer

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This study directly compares quantity inferences from scalar implicatures ('Some of the ducks are black') and uniqueness presuppositions in definites ('the duck is black') to exhaustivity inferences in English it-clefts ('It's the duck that's black') for which the theoretical literature disagrees on the source of inference -pragmatic (like scalar implicatures), or semantic (like presuppositions). We investigate whether within-subjects correlations in acquisition can inform us about the source of exhaustivity inferences. Assuming comprehension is achieved once the necessary basis for meaning is acquired, it-clefts should pattern with presupposition judgments if computing a presupposition is involved and should pattern with scalar implicature judgments if computing an implicature is involved. We conduct three experiments to test how closely it-cleft judgments pattern with other quantityrelated inferences, keeping materials maximally similar. The first two experiments test adult participants using a Truth Value Judgment Task and then a 3-point Rating Task; we find that adults' response patterns to under-informative uses of these constructions differ both across individuals and across inference types, with the Rating Task giving more informative results. In the third experiment, we use the 3-point Rating Task with 4-, 5-, and 6-year olds to characterize response patterns across the three inference types for each individual subject. We find that the individual response patterns children exhibit are consistent with the theory that it-cleft exhaustivity shares an underlying cognitive source with the computation of presupposition inferences, but not with scalar implicature inferences.

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On the interpretation and processing of exhaustivity: Evidence of variation in English and French clefts

Destruel

DeVeaugh-Geiss

2018

Journal of Pragmatics

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

Cited by 12 publications

References 30 publications

Approaches to Hungarian

Approaches to Hungarian

A within-subjects comparison of the acquisition of quantity-related inferences

On the interpretation and processing of exhaustivity: Evidence of variation in English and French clefts

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