Another argument for embedded scalar implicatures based on oddness in downward entailing environments

By Giorgio Magri. 2011

81 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In Magri 2009a, I argue that a sentence such as '#Some Italians come from a warm country' sounds odd because it triggers the scalar implicature that not all Italians come from a warm country, which mismatches with the piece of common knowledge that all Italians come from the same country. If this proposal is on the right track, then oddness can be used as a diagnostic for scalar implicatures. In this paper, I use this diagnostic to provide one more argument that scalar implicatures are computed not only at the matrix level but also in embedded position. The argument is based on a puzzling pattern of oddness in downward entailing environments. Some apparently unrelated facts about restrictions on temporal modification with individual-level predicates are shown to fit into the pattern. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.4.6 BibTeX info

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c5e926d34f0d8676d914abb3c4d7a7e95e394f5d

Citations in the corpus

• Children interpret disjunction as conjunction: Consequences for theories of implicature and child development (2016, unknown): “12We put aside for now arguments that sentences are always exhaustified (Magri 2009, Magri 2011).”
• Constraining the derivation of alternatives (2015, unknown): “We believe the second option is correct, in light of arguments made elsewhere concerning free choice disjunction (Fox 2007a), Hurford’s Constraint (Chierchia et al. 2012), modularity (Magri 2009, 2011), and intermediate implicatures (Sauerland 2012).”