Speaker: Pranav Anand (UC Santa Cruz)
Title: The role of upward monotonicity in the interpretation of
plurals: A view from image verification
Time: Thurs 9/16, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Plural DPs possess the vexing capability to be inclusive, capable of
allowing atomic reference in some sentences, but to be exclusive in
others. The several proposals for this double?life (Krifka 1989,
Sauerland et al. 2005, Spector 2007, Farkas & de Swart 2010) converge
in analyzing the distinction in terms of pragmatic competition,
suggested by dispreference for exclusive plurals in downward monotone
(DM) environments. A number of analyses (Spector 2007, Farkas and de
Swart 2010, Sauerland et al. 2005) connect this competition to the
Strongest Meaning Hypothesis, suggesting that, other things being
equal, an exclusive reading is preferred in UM contexts and an
inclusive reading is preferred in DM ones. This talk examines this
claim empirically in the context of image verification for bare
plurals under each. Although acceptability responses do show that
speakers verify exclusive plural readings significantly more often in
the nuclear scope (NS) of each than in the restrictor (R), the effect
size is small. This result comports with evidence that exclusive
plurality is sensitive to the ecological settings defeating scalar
inference (Khan et al. 2010) and argues that the principle driving
exclusivity is a factor subject to strong situational reduction.