Speaker: Aron Hirsch
\nTitle: Covert vs. overt exhaustification and polarity mismatch
\nDate\/Time: Monday, February 24, 12-1:30p <\/br>
\nLocation: 66-148<\/br><\/p>\n
\nWhen can the answer to a constituent question be interpreted as exhaustive, and when can\u0092t it? This paper establishes a link between exhaustivity and polarity, both for covert exhaustification with exh and overt exhaustification with only. I report two sets of experimental data. Exp. 1 shows that an answer can be parsed with exh only if it and the question match in polarity (following Spector 2005, Uegaki 2013): (1\/2a) can be interpreted exhaustively; (1\/2b) can only be interpreted as partial answers.<\/p>\n
(1) Which of the officers have a beard?<\/br>
\na. (exh) Ryan has a beard.<\/br>
\nb. (*exh) Ryan doesn\u0092t have a beard.<\/br>
\nc. Only Ryan doesn’t have a beard.<\/p>\n(2) Which of the officers don\u0092t have a beard?<\/br>
\na. (exh) Ryan doesn’t have a beard.<\/br>
\nb. (*exh) Ryan does have a beard.<\/br>
\nc. Only Ryan does have a beard.<\/p>\nExp. 2 shows that only has a less restricted distribution than exh, but still shows subtle effects of polarity-sensitivity: only can exhaustify an answer which mismatches the question in polarity, (1\/2c), but only if the dialog takes place in the right kind of context. I argue that exh and only both carry a presupposition which requires polarity match. When only occurs with polarity-mismatch, a question of the opposite polarity to the question actually asked is accommodated. I claim that accommodation incurs a cost that economy considerations regulate. Economy differentiates between exh and only, as well as between different contexts with only to predict the full distribution of the operators.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Speaker: Aron Hirsch Title: Covert vs. overt exhaustification and polarity mismatch Date\/Time: Monday, February 24, 12-1:30p Location: 66-148 When can the answer to a constituent question be interpreted as exhaustive, and when can\u0092t it? This paper establishes a link between exhaustivity and polarity, both for covert exhaustification with exh and overt exhaustification with only. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-talks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5853","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5853"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5868,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5853\/revisions\/5868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}