Tania Ionin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199665297
- eISBN:
- 9780191779732
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199665297.003.0009
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics, Theoretical Linguistics
This chapter revisits the status of long-distance intermediate-scope readings of indefinites (Kratzer 1998; Schwarz 2001; Endriss 2009; among others). An experimental study with native English ...
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This chapter revisits the status of long-distance intermediate-scope readings of indefinites (Kratzer 1998; Schwarz 2001; Endriss 2009; among others). An experimental study with native English speakers investigates two questions: whether intermediate-scope readings are distinct from functional readings; and whether there is any difference in the availability of functional readings to ‘a’ indefinites vs. to ‘a certain’ indefinites. The findings indicate that intermediate-scope readings are equally available in contexts that set up a functional relationship and in contexts that do not set up such a relationship. At the same time, intermediate-scope readings are found to be more readily available to ‘a certain’ indefinites than to ‘a’ indefinites. Implications of these findings for claims about the status of functional and intermediate-scope readings (Schwarz 2001; Endriss 2009) are discussed; the findings point to the methodological difficulty of setting up contexts that tease apart functional and non-functional readings of indefinites.Less
This chapter revisits the status of long-distance intermediate-scope readings of indefinites (Kratzer 1998; Schwarz 2001; Endriss 2009; among others). An experimental study with native English speakers investigates two questions: whether intermediate-scope readings are distinct from functional readings; and whether there is any difference in the availability of functional readings to ‘a’ indefinites vs. to ‘a certain’ indefinites. The findings indicate that intermediate-scope readings are equally available in contexts that set up a functional relationship and in contexts that do not set up such a relationship. At the same time, intermediate-scope readings are found to be more readily available to ‘a certain’ indefinites than to ‘a’ indefinites. Implications of these findings for claims about the status of functional and intermediate-scope readings (Schwarz 2001; Endriss 2009) are discussed; the findings point to the methodological difficulty of setting up contexts that tease apart functional and non-functional readings of indefinites.
Veneeta Dayal
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199281268
- eISBN:
- 9780191757396
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199281268.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics, Theoretical Linguistics
The study of questions is one of the major success stories in modern semantics. This book synthesizes and integrates 40 years of research on the semantics of questions, and its interface with ...
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The study of questions is one of the major success stories in modern semantics. This book synthesizes and integrates 40 years of research on the semantics of questions, and its interface with pragmatics and syntax. The topics covered are extensive and varied: direct–indirect questions, weak–strong exhaustiveness, maximality, mention-some answers, functional answers, single-multiple-trapped list answers, higher order questions, embedding predicates, selection, quantificational variability, concealed questions, weak islands, pied piping, focus, intervention, polar and alternative questions, bias, negative polarity, non-canonical questions. The literature on this rich set of topics, theoretically diverse and scattered across multiple venues, is often hard to assimilate. The author, drawing on her own research, brings them together for the first time in a coherent, concise, and well-structured whole. Readers will find in this book a lucid exposition of the classics as well as discussion of the most recent, cutting edge research on questions. Each chapter begins with a non-technical introduction to the issues. Semantically sophisticated accounts are presented incrementally and major points summarized at the end of each section. Individual accounts of phenomena are placed in the relevant context. Issues that remain open are highlighted and promising lines of further inquiry sketched out. It constitutes at the same time a comprehensible guide to one of the most vibrant areas of research in natural language semantics and a compass for how this area of study is developing.Less
The study of questions is one of the major success stories in modern semantics. This book synthesizes and integrates 40 years of research on the semantics of questions, and its interface with pragmatics and syntax. The topics covered are extensive and varied: direct–indirect questions, weak–strong exhaustiveness, maximality, mention-some answers, functional answers, single-multiple-trapped list answers, higher order questions, embedding predicates, selection, quantificational variability, concealed questions, weak islands, pied piping, focus, intervention, polar and alternative questions, bias, negative polarity, non-canonical questions. The literature on this rich set of topics, theoretically diverse and scattered across multiple venues, is often hard to assimilate. The author, drawing on her own research, brings them together for the first time in a coherent, concise, and well-structured whole. Readers will find in this book a lucid exposition of the classics as well as discussion of the most recent, cutting edge research on questions. Each chapter begins with a non-technical introduction to the issues. Semantically sophisticated accounts are presented incrementally and major points summarized at the end of each section. Individual accounts of phenomena are placed in the relevant context. Issues that remain open are highlighted and promising lines of further inquiry sketched out. It constitutes at the same time a comprehensible guide to one of the most vibrant areas of research in natural language semantics and a compass for how this area of study is developing.
