21. |
22. |
23. |
24. |
25. |
26. Double negatives, Negative Concord and metalinguistic negationLuis Alonso Ovalle, Elena Guerzoni, 2002, published scientific conference contribution Abstract: Spanish nadie, nada…) do not find a unified account in any of the existing analyses of
Negative Concord (NC): (i) their uses in the special context of denials and (ii) their
incompatibility with factive environments. We suggest that the unifying property of these
two apparently unrelated phenomena is the common sensitivity of these two
environments (denials and factives) to non-truthconditional aspects of meaning. Thereof
we take these properties to reveal that the meaning of n-words involves a nontruthconditional component. Specifically, we explore the hypothesis that n-words are
existential quantifiers at the truth-conditional level but that they contribute negative
existentials at the level of their conventional implicatures. This hypothesis explains the
special uses of n-words in denials and their incompatibility with factive environments.
The fact that they are restricted to the scope of negation (or more precisely averidical
expressions
1
(Giannakidou’s 1997,2000)) in non-sentence-initial position follows as a
consequence of the relation between their implicature and their semantic contribution to
the truth conditions of the sentences they appear in. Under certain common additional
stipulations, this view can be extended to preverbal occurrences as well.
Keywords: negative concord, Italian, Spanish
Published in RUNG: 21.02.2024; Views: 2167; Downloads: 0
This document has many files! More... |
27. Even and minimizer NPIs in wh-questionsElena Guerzoni, 2003, published scientific conference contribution Abstract: This work follows up on a previous paper of mine on y/n questions with ‘minimizer’ Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) like lift a finger, bat an eyelash, budge (an inch) (i.e. Guerzoni 2002) and brings into the picture the case of wh-questions. In the interest of space, the summary I provide of that paper is very brief; for a fuller understanding the reader should refer to the paper itself.
Keywords: minimizers, negative polarity, constituent questions
Published in RUNG: 20.02.2024; Views: 2130; Downloads: 0
This document has many files! More... |
28. Even-NPIs in yes/no questionsElena Guerzoni, 2004, original scientific article Abstract: It has been a long-standing puzzle that Negative Polarity Items appear to split into two subvarieties when their effect on the interpretation of questions is taken into account: while questions with any and ever can be used as unbiased requests of information, questions with so-called `minimizers', i.e. idioms like lift a finger and the faintest idea, are always biased towards a negative answer (cf. Ladusaw 1979). Focusing on yes/no questions, this paper presents a solution to this puzzle. Specifically it is shown that in virtue of containing even (cf. Heim 1984), minimizers, unlike any, trigger a presupposition, which reduces the set of the possible answers to a question to the singleton containing the negative answer.
Keywords: NPIs, minimizers, polar questions, presupposition, negative bias
Published in RUNG: 20.02.2024; Views: 1959; Downloads: 4
 Link to file
This document has many files! More... |
29. On Karttunen’s "The syntax and semantics of questions"Elena Guerzoni, 2022, independent scientific component part or a chapter in a monograph Abstract: Karttunen’s article on the syntax and semantics of questions is a milestone in the truth-conditional compositional semantics of interrogatives and of verbs that embed them. It is the first comprehensive study of the mapping between the syntax and the interpretation of the three different types of questions (polar, constituent and alternative questions) and presents the first semantic analysis of question-embedding verbs (QEVs henceforth) that assumes the same intensions for matrix and embedded interrogatives. This analysis continues to vastly inspire the ongoing research on the properties of questions and QEVs. This chapter illustrates Karttunen’s theory focusing on those formal details that have been the most influential in subsequent literature. In doing so, however, I will take the liberty to suggest a less than literal rendition of these details, in an attempt to make the discussion more accessible to today’s reader. The main departure that I make here from Karttunen’s 1977 is in the formal framework. Whereas Karttunen adopts Montague’s PTQ, here I will expose his ideas in Heim and Kratzer‘s type driven semantics.
Keywords: interrogatives, questions, syntax-semantics interface, compositionality, wh-movement
Published in RUNG: 20.02.2024; Views: 2202; Downloads: 8
Link to file
This document has many files! More... |
30. |
