Topical Referents for Individuals and Possibilities

We bring out syntactic and semantic similarities of two types of conditionals with fronted antecedents [normal indicative conditionals (NCs) and biscuit conditionals (BCs)] and two types of left dislocation constructions in German (German left dislocation and hanging topic left dislocation), which mark two types of topicality (aboutness topicality and relevance topicality). On the basis of these similarities we argue that (the antecedent if -clauses of) NCs and BCs are aboutness topics and relevance topics, respectively. Our analysis extends the approach to aboutness topicality of Endriss (Quantificational topics. A scopal treatment of exceptional wide scope phenomena, 2009) to relevance topics to derive the semantic and pragmatic contribution of left-dislocated DPs and applies it to an analysis of conditionals as (maximal) pluralities of possible worlds. We show how this uniform approach to the interpretation of topicality accounts for the nominal left dislocation constructions as well as for the semantic and pragmatic effects observed in connection with the two types of conditionals. We furthermore discuss the potential of our proposal to deal with subjunctive biscuit conditionals, if -clauses modifying speech acts different from assertions, conditionals with right-dislocated if -clauses, and nested conditionals.

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“…Bittner (2001), for instance, cites the following example from Warlpiri, 15 which she credits to Hale (1976).…”

Section: Gld Htld Nc Bc (P) Prosodically Integratedmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…In both cases the if -clause serves as the topic, while the matrix clause supplies the comment (cf. Haiman 1978;von Fintel 1994;Bittner 2001). 16 Indeed, it is easily possible to find equivalent paraphrases for BCs in terms of relevance topic-marking constructions:…”

Section: Gld Htld Nc Bc (P) Prosodically Integratedmentioning

confidence: 99%

A unified analysis of conditionals as topics

Ebert

Hinterwimmer

2014

Linguist and Philos

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“…I suggest that modal anaphora resolution is a matter of retrieving the possibility that serves as the restrictor 34 Further support for the analogy between modals and pronouns with respect to their interpretive range is provided by examples from languages such as Warlpiri or American Sign Language (ASL) that allow for a single anaphoric expression to be ambiguous between pronominal and modal interpretation. See Bittner (2001) for data on Warlpiri, and Schlenker (2013) for data on ASL. 35 Just as, as we shall see, the anaphoricity of modals plays a key role in explaining the counterexamples like the one in (1)- (3), so this anaphoricity of conditionals plays a key role in explaining the counterexamples to MP and MT involving right-nested conditionals, as McGee's (1985) original counterexample to MP, or Veltman's (1985) counterexample to MT.…”

Section: Modals As Pronounsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…25 The idea of a ranking of referential candidates in a discourse comes from Centering Theory, which hypothesizes that the referential candidates in a discourse are ranked according to relative prominence, those ranked higher being preferred over those ranked lower as interpretations for subsequent anaphora. See Sidner (1983), Grosz, Joshi, and Weinstein (1995), and Bittner (2014). 26 For a detailed development of this view, see Stojni c, Stone, and Lepore (2014).…”

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confidence: 99%

One'sModus Ponens: Modality, Coherence and Logic

Stojnić

2016

Philos Phenomenol Research

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Recently, there has been a shift away from traditional truth‐conditional accounts of meaning towards non‐truth‐conditional ones, e.g., expressivism, relativism and certain forms of dynamic semantics. Fueling this trend is some puzzling behavior of modal discourse. One particularly surprising manifestation of such behavior is the alleged failure of some of the most entrenched classical rules of inference; viz., modus ponens and modus tollens. These revisionary, non‐truth‐conditional accounts tout these failures, and the alleged tension between the behavior of modal vocabulary and classical logic, as data in support of their departure from tradition, since the revisionary semantics invalidate some of these patterns. I, instead, offer a semantics for modality with the resources to accommodate the puzzling data while preserving classical logic, thus affirming the tradition that modals express ordinary truth‐conditional content. My account shows that the real lesson of the apparent counterexamples is not the one the critics draw, but rather one they missed: namely, that there are linguistic mechanisms, reflected in the logical form, that affect the interpretation of modal language in a context in a systematic and precise way, which have to be captured by any adequate semantic account of the interaction between discourse context and modal vocabulary. The semantic theory I develop specifies these mechanisms and captures precisely how they affect the interpretation of modals in a context, and do so in a way that both explains the appearance of the putative counterexamples and preserves classical logic.

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“…In addition, in future work we would like to build on the dynamic analyses of Bittner (2001), Braşoveanu (2008), andBraşoveanu (2012) where the relation between the relative pronoun and its matrix correlate is a special case of discourse anaphora (see also Belyaev & Haug 2014 for a dynamic-diachronic analysis of correlatives).…”

Section: Correlativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The landscape of universal quantification in Old Hungarian

Bende-Farkas¹

2015

Acta Linguistica Hungarica

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This paper presents the system of Old Hungarian expressions conveying universal or maximal readings, as found in Old Hungarian codices. The main empirical findigs are that (i) the OH suffix -keed could be a (temporal) universal quantifier. Expressions with such suffixes can help reconstruct quantifiers from the head-final stage of Hungarian. (ii) Old Hungarian had bare pronouns that acquired a bound, quantificational reading from long-distance operators. Against such a background, minden is claimed to be a quintessential strong D-quantifier: It could undergo raising, and its scope was flexible (within syntactic islands). (iii) These properties of minden are distinctive within the class of particle + indeterminate pronoun complexes (such as vala-ki lit. 'vala-who', 'somebody'), which could be said to lack quantificational force.

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Topical Referents for Individuals and Possibilities

Abstract: No abstract.

Cited by 12 publications

References 8 publications

A unified analysis of conditionals as topics

A unified analysis of conditionals as topics

One'sModus Ponens: Modality, Coherence and Logic

The landscape of universal quantification in Old Hungarian

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