{"id":2547,"date":"2011-04-04T05:00:39","date_gmt":"2011-04-04T09:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=2547"},"modified":"2011-04-03T21:23:06","modified_gmt":"2011-04-04T01:23:06","slug":"linguistics-colloquium-48-rick-nouwen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2011\/04\/04\/linguistics-colloquium-48-rick-nouwen\/","title":{"rendered":"Linguistics Colloquium 4\/8 - Rick Nouwen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaker: Rick Nouwen (Utrecht University)
\nTime: Friday, April 8, 2011, 3:30pm-5pm
\nLocation: 32-141 (PLEASE NOTE ROOM)
\nTitle: Superlative modifiers and modality<\/p>\n

Abstract:<\/p>\n

\n

In the literature on the semantics of “at least” and similarly
\nsuperlative modifiers, there has been much attention to the
\ninteraction of such modifiers with modality. In this talk, I will
\nfocus on two observations that are central to this interaction: (I)
\nsentences like (a) give rise to ignorance implicatures, in the sense
\nthat (a) implies that the speaker does not know how many cards John
\npicked; and (II) such implicatures disappear in modal environments:
\n(b) has a reading that is simply a statement of minimum requirement,
\nwith no implicature about the speaker’s knowledge.<\/p>\n

(a) John picked at least 3 cards.
\n(b) John is required to pick at least 3 cards.<\/p>\n

In this talk, I will compare two strategies to account for these
\nobservations: (I) ignorance implicatures are due to the requirement
\nthat the modifiers operate on a scalar argument; (II) the ignorance
\nimplicatures triggered by “at least” are the ignorance implicatures
\ntriggered by disjunctions. I will compare these approaches with
\nrespect to a larger data set that includes the behaviour of ordinary
\nsuperlatives, adjectives like “minimal” and “maximal” and definite
\ndescriptions that refer to scalar end-points, like “the earliest John
\nshould arrive”.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaker: Rick Nouwen (Utrecht University) Time: Friday, April 8, 2011, 3:30pm-5pm Location: 32-141 (PLEASE NOTE ROOM) Title: Superlative modifiers and modality Abstract: In the literature on the semantics of “at least” and similarly superlative modifiers, there has been much attention to the interaction of such modifiers with modality. In this talk, I will focus on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-talks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2547"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2550,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547\/revisions\/2550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}