On the characterization of alternatives

By Danny Fox, Roni Katzir. 2011

306 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present an argument for revising the theory of alternatives for Scalar Implicatures and for Association with Focus. We argue that in both cases the alternatives are determined in the same way, as a contextual restriction of the focus value of the sentence, which, in turn, is defined in structure-sensitive terms. We provide evidence that contextual restriction is subject to a constraint that prevents it from discriminating between alternatives when they stand in a particular logical relationship with the assertion or the prejacent, a relationship that we refer to as symmetry. Due to this constraint on contextual restriction, discriminating between alternatives in cases of symmetry becomes the task of focus values. This conclusion is incompatible with standard type-theoretic definitions of focus values, motivating our structure-sensitive definition instead.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Philosophy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/de0fbdc3e23b27436ada30d14f6a26f9069feea8

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Citations in the corpus

Pragmatic Language Interpretation as Probabilistic Inference. (2016, unknown): “For instance, the alternative utterances in RSA can be restricted [65] using previously-proposed grammatical mechanisms [23].”
Logic in Grammar: Polarity, Free Choice, and Intervention (2013, background): “The ideas presented here are due to Gajewski (2002) (and also inspired by Danny Fox).”
Non-monotonicity in NPI licensing (2014, background): “For example, Fox and Katzir (2011) characterize a restriction on pruning that appears to encompass the ban on pruning of domain alternatives.”
Constraining the derivation of alternatives (2015, unknown): “…did some of the homework) b. John did some of the homework ∧ ¬ John did all of the homework c. , John A = {John did some of the homework did all of the homework} Ashasbeennoted,thisapproachtoimplicatureamountstoassimilatingittoassociation withfocus(cf. Krifka1995;Fox2007b;FoxandKatzir2011).”
Knowledge and implicature: Modeling language understanding as social cognition (2012, background): “The alternatives may, for instance, be generated by a grammatical mechanism as in Fox and Katzir (2011).”
Pragmatic reasoning through semantic inference (2016, background): “Fox & Katzir (2011) break the symmetry between " all" and " some but not all" by providing a theory of the alternative utterances which are considered during the computation of scalar implicatures.”
Another argument for embedded scalar implicatures based on oddness in downward entailing environments (2011, background): “Irrelevant alternatives don’t matter, and thus there is no point in excluding them; see Fox & Spector 2009 and Fox & Katzir 2011 for further elaboration on this point.”
Children interpret disjunction as conjunction: Consequences for theories of implicature and child development (2016, unknown): “Specifically, we assume, following Fox and Katzir (2011), that pruning involves the choice of a subset of relevant alternatives (see (37)) and that relevance is closed under conjunction (if A is relevant and B is relevant, then A ∧ B is relevant).”
An Experimental Comparison Between Presuppositions and Indirect Scalar Implicatures (2015, background): “For a more articulate theory of alternatives see Katzir 2007; Fox and Katzir 2011.”