Linguistic Society of Hong Kong 2012 Annual Research Forum Two Contrastive Meanings of Cantonese "dou1 (original) (raw)
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In this talk I try to make progress in capturing an informal observation about only and even, which, although rather old, has not been formally captured by traditional formal entries of these two particles. The observation is that only and even express some sort of ‘scalar antonymy’, and it is illustrated in (1): (1) (Context: We are arriving late to a committee meeting evaluating John’s and Bill’s achievements, and manage to hear what one of the committee members says about Bill): a.. …and during the last 3 years he only wrote [3]F papers. > 5 is ‘a little’ b. …and during the last 3 years he even wrote [5]F papers . > 5 is ‘a lot’ I examine three schematic suggestions which did try to capture the scalar antonymy of only and even, namely that only vs. even presuppose that their prejacent, p is lower vs. higher (respectively), (a) than what is expected / what is the default standard in the context (the ‘mirative / evaluative antonymy’ view), (b) than some (salient) alternative in the set of contextually relevant focus alternatives, C, (the ‘existential antonymy’ view), or (c) than all alternatives in C (the ‘superlative antonymy’ view). The differences between these views are often subtle, and in many contexts the predictions they make empirically overlap. One goal of the paper, then, is to examine the felicity and interpretation of only and even in a wider range of contexts than has been done so far, so we end up with better diagnostics for teasing apart the predictions of each of these view. A second goal is to argue that this examination supports the preferability of the ‘superlative’ view over the ‘existential’ and the ‘mirative / evaluative’ views, and to discuss ways to handle issues which were raised against this view. Finally, I hope to discuss potential implications and open questions raised by the examination of the scalar antonymy of only and even regarding the way contextual factors affect the construction of sets of alternatives, and compare them to parallel implications and questions raised in experimental studies on activation / processing of alternatives and in research on Scalar Implicatures.
A novel argument for an even-like semantics of Mandarin dōu
Proceedings of SALT32, 2022
There have been ongoing debates about the semantics of Mandarin particle dōu, which, among its various readings, has a distributive reading and a scalar reading. In the paper, we make a novel observation that dōu, on both readings, is sensitive to a standard on a scale associated with a contextually supplied gradable property, and take this to be new evidence in favor of a unified, scalar analysis of dōu. To uniformly capture its two readings and its standard-sensitivity, we propose to integrate insights from two proposals mooted respectively by Liu (2017) and Greenberg (2018a). Specifically, on the one hand, we follow Liu (2017) in arguing that (a) dōu is uniformly a scalar particle, (b) it operates on distinct types of alternatives on distinct readings and (c) a trivialization operation occurs on the distributive reading; on the other hand, we, deviating from Liu (2017), adopt two components adapted from the gradability-based semantics originally suggested for English even by Greenberg (2018a), i.e. (a) an evaluative presupposition and (b) a contextually determined scale, instead of one based on unlikelihood. Our revised proposal can successfully account for the two readings in a unified manner but circumvents the issue regarding the dimension of the scale faced by Liu (2017) in the meanwhile.
Focus on Additivity. Multifaceted views on Focusing Modifiers (ed. A.M. De Cesare), 2017
The English scalar additive operator even has a broad distribution, e.g. insofar as it is used in upward-as well as downward-entailing contexts. Other languages, such as German, use a variety of expressions to render the function(s) of even. The question arises what conditions and determines the use of the various operators of German. The present study addresses this question with respect to the particles selbst, sogar and auch as translation equivalents of even in upward-entailing contexts. On the basis of a sample of 300 translation pairs from the Europarl corpus, the influence of four syntactic and three pragmatic variables on the choice of an operator in German is investigated. The results show that the operators are mainly sensitive to two of the pragmatic variables , the presence or absence of overt focus alternatives in the clausal environment, and the size of the set of alternatives. From a syntatic point of view, a clear difference between selbst and sogar is shown, with selbst exhibiting a tendency to attach to higher levels of syntax than sogar. The quantitative findings are interpreted against the background of historical developments, the assumption being that synchronic distributions reflect diachronic developments ('distributional intertia').
On the scalar antonymy of only and even
Natural Langauge Semantics, 2022
An old observation about the focus sensitive particles only and even is that they are in some sense scalar antonyms. We examine three schematic proposals raised in the literature to capture this observation, namely that only vs. even presuppose that the proposition denoted by their prejacent, p, is lower vs. higher, respectively (A) than what is EXPECTED/the default STANDARD (the 'mirative/evaluative antonymy' view), (B) than SOME (salient) alternative in the set of contextually relevant focus alternatives, C, (the 'existential antonymy' view), or (C) than ALL alternatives in C (the 'superlative antonymy' view). To tease these views apart, we examine the behavior of only vs. even in a wide range of contexts and types of discourse, concentrating on the way previously uttered sentences and the salient QUD interact to constrain the C set of contextually relevant alternatives with only (C) (p) and even (C) (p). Based on these examinations we argue for the preferability of the 'superlative antonymy' view of only and even. In contrast, we argue that the 'existential' antonymy and the 'mirative/evaluative' antonymy between only and even are apparent. The former only holds in specific contexts where one alternative to p is made maximally salient. As to the latter, we show that while an evaluative ('above the standard' / 'a lot') inference is hardwired into the scalar presupposition of even, alongside the superlative inference, the mirror imaged one ('below the standard' / 'a little') is cancellable for only and can be derived from the interaction of its superlative scalar presupposition and domain-based constraints on the alternatives in C. Keywords Only Even Scales Focus Alternatives Mirativity Evaluativity Contextual effects Standards QUD
Towards a corpus-based analysis of evaluative scales associated with 'even'
Linguistik Online, 2015
Scalar focus operators like 'even', 'only', etc. interact with scales, i. e., ordered sets of alternatives that are referenced by focus structure. The scaling dimensions interacting with focus operators have been argued to be semantic (e. g. entailment relations, probability) in earlier work, but it has been shown that purely semantic analyses are too restrictive, and that the specific scale that a given operator interacts with is often pragmatic, in the sense of being a function of the context. If that is true, the question arises what exactly determines the (types of) scales interacting with focus operators. The present study addresses this question by investigating the distributional behaviour of the additive scalar particle even relative to scales whose focus alternatives are ordered in terms of evaluative attitudes (positive, negative). Our hypothesis is that such evaluative attitudinal scales are at least partially functions of the lexical material in the sentential environment. This hypothesis is tested by determining correlations between sentence-level attitudes and lexically encoded attitudes in the relevant sentences. We use data from the Europarl corpus, a corpus of scripted and highly elaborated political speech, which is rich in argumentative discourse and thus lends itself to the study of attitudes in context. Our results show that there are in fact significant correlations between (manual) sentence-level evaluations and lexical evaluations (determined through machine learning) in the textual environment of the relevant operators. We conclude with an outlook on possible extensions of the method applied in the present study by identifying attitudinal patterns beyond the sentence, showing that positively and negatively connotated instances of even differ in terms of their argumentative function, with positive even often marking the climax and endpoint of an argument, while negative even often occurs in qualifying insertions like concessive parentheses. While we regard our results as valid, some refinements and extensions of the method are pointed out as necessary steps towards the establishment of an empirical sentence semantics, in the domain of scalar additive operators as well as more generally speaking.
Typologies for even-like and only-like operators: Evidence from Modern Hebrew
The rich semantic-pragmatic research on typologies of even-like particles has identified several parameters along which such particles vary, both within, and across many languages, e.g. the logical properties of the licensing environment (e.g. negative/DE/ UE), high/low position of the prejacent in the scale, and the presence of additive vs. exclusive presuppositions (e.g. Guerzoni,2003, Giannakidou,2007, Gast & van-der-Auwera,2011,2013, Crnič 2011). Other parameters, reported more sporadically for individual languages, seem more contextual/discursive in nature, e.g. high/low degree of contextual saliency of the prejacent (Schwenter & Vasishth,2001), (in)ability to use contextually-based scales (Giannakidou,2007, Tomaszewicz,2012A), and (in)ability to function as ‘discourse even’ in questions (Iatridou & Tetevosov,2016). In light of such parameters we first examine the family of even-like particles in Modern Hebrew (which hasn’t been done so far), mainly afilu, ve-lu, af and bixlal. We show that accounting for the full range of differences between these particles requires (a) adding a new parameter to the existing typologies, namely the (in)ability to operate over domain-based/degree-based alternatives (cf. Greenberg 2014, Chierchia 2013) and (b) a fined-grained characterization of existing ‘context/discourse’-based parameters, e.g. the ability to function as ‘discourse-even’ on corrections/denials, besides questions. This last parameter may be more generally characterized as (in)ability to operate over speech act alternatives. We then compare the resulting even-like typology with the (as yet much more limited) typologies developed for only-like particles in e.g. Beaver & Clark,2008, Coppock & Beaver,2014 (English), Tomaszewicz,2012B (Polish) and Orenstein & Greenberg,2012, Orenstein,2016 (Hebrew). This comparison reveals striking parallels in the parameters along which the Hebrew particles within both the even-family and the only-family vary. Such ‘shared’ parameters include (in)ability to operate over degree/domain-based alternatives, operation over logically-based vs. contextually-supplied scales and (in)ability to operate on questions and corrections/denials (i.e. over speech acts of different sorts). We suggest that, together with reported ‘flipped’ readings of some even-like particles as only-like (cf. Gast & Van-der-Awuera 2011, Tomaschevish,2012B, Grubic & Zimmermann,2011), such parallels further motivate the need for a unified and precise typology for the family of scalar particles cross-linguistically, and we take first steps in identifying some core properties of such a typology.
Scalar marking without scalar meaning: Nonscalar, nonexhaustive even-marked NPIs in Greek and Korean
Language, 2016
This article discusses in detail two cases of even-marked negative polarity items (NPIs) in Greek and Korean that are not scalar or exhaustive. This prima facie paradoxical finding suggests that even-marking is not always an indicator of scalarity-and, at least in the case of the Korean and Greek NPIs discussed, even is grammaticalized as a nonscalar NPI marker. We propose that the nonscalar NPIs are antispecific indefinites with referential vagueness, which is a form of ignorance best captured as nonexhaustive variation in the potential values of the NPIs (Giannakidou & Quer 2013). We also show that the difference in Greek and Korean between scalar and nonscalar NPIs is reflected in prosody: scalar NPIs are 'emphatic', and nonscalar NPIs are 'nonemphatic'; we therefore conclude that prosodic prominence, not even, signals scalar structure. The fact that not all NPIs are scalar or exhaustive falsifies theories claiming that exhaustivity is the
An intuition that can be found in the literature on the focus sensitive particle ‘only’ is that there is a sense in which it is a scalar antonym or mirror image of ‘even’. This intuition, though, is not captured by the entries most often assigned to this particle, namely ‘non-scalar’ and ‘scalar’ entries, asserting the falsehood of all / all stronger alternatives to the prejacent, p, in C, respectively. An entry which gets closer to capturing this mirror imaged relation is what I call a ‘hybrid’ entry (cf. Guerzoni 2003) presupposing all alternatives to p in C to be stronger than it and asserting all distinct alternatives in C to be false. In this paper I supply novel arguments for preferring this entry over the more commonly used entries. I show that using the ‘hybrid’ entry allows a straightforward explanation of the infelicity of ‘only’ in the presence of some discourse salient material, and the fact that this infelicity parallels infelicity of ‘even’ in mirror imaged cases. In contrast, neither ‘non-scalar’ nor ‘scalar’ entries can capture this infelicity, crucially not even when augmented with ‘mirativity/evaluativity’ (or ‘non-vacuity’) constraints. I argue that this is because, unlike ‘even’, which is a true evaluative particle (presupposing a ‘higher than the standard’ degree for both p and its alternatives), mirativity / evaluativity (indicating ‘lower than expected’ / ‘lower than the standard’) is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the felicity of ‘only’, and should not be hardwired into its semantics. Instead I suggest a way to derive mirative / evaluative effects of ‘only’, as well as cases where these effects disappear, from the ‘hybrid’ entry and some assumptions about accommodation of alternatives into C. Thus, besides the mirror imaged scalar ordering (between p and its all distinct alternatives in C), ‘only’ and ‘even’ should not be seen as ‘mirative / evaluative’ mirror images. Neither should they be taken as mirror images in terms of exclusivity vs. additivity, due to independently made claims indicating that ‘even’ is not a true additive particle. I show that adopting the ‘hybrid’ entry of ‘only’ (but not the ‘non-scalar’ or ‘scalar’ entries), where scalarity and exclusivity are separated components, allows us to capture this limited mirror imaged picture, and take ‘only’ to be a member of the typology of scalar particles cross linguistically. Finally, I discuss parallel challenges for the universal quantification over alternatives in the scalar presuppositions of both ‘only’ and ‘even’, and argue that they can be uniformly solved by appropriately constraining the balance between the contribution of discourse salient material vs. lexicon for constructing alternatives in C, though the precise way to do that still requires research.
Plurality, maximality and scalar inferences: A case study of Mandarin Dou
The Mandarin functional morpheme dou appears to have been interpreted, among other things, as a distributor, focus marker even, or already. This paper aims at providing a unified semantic account for these different uses. I argue that the semantic core of these different usages is the same: dou is simply a maximality operator. It gives rise to different meanings by applying maximality to a contextually determined plural set. This could be a set of covers, a set of focus-induced alternatives, or a set of degrees ordered on a scale. This analysis also connects dou in these contexts with dou in environments that license polarity items, as discussed in Giannakidou and Cheng (J Semant 23: 135-183, 2006).
Contrastive (Predicate) Topic, Intonation, and Scalar Meanings
In this chapter I will consider Contrastive Topic (CT), Contrastive Predicate Topic (CPT) and Focus in information structure and their relations to intonation and meaning, as I have attempted to account for in a series of papers on related topics1. Particularly, I will try to see the conventional scalar implicature meanings triggered by CPT and CT in connection with its intonation. In dealing with those phenomena, I will use data extensively from Korean, where CT is surprisingly clearly marked morphologically and intonationally, in comparison with data from English. Information structure, claimed to constitute a separate component from phonological, syntactic and semantic components (Vallduvi 1992), consists basically of Topic – Comment or Background – Focus information. Apart from whether it constitutes a separate component in grammar, no one can deny that it is closely interwoven with morphological structure (particularly in Korean and Japanese), syntactic linear and hierarchical structure, semantic structure, and prosodic phonological structure. That is why we came to organize the present workshop and create a volume on Topic and Focus in connection with their meaning and intonation. Recently the phenomenon of CT in particular has been well characterised. Through this kind of common efforts we believe we can deepen our understanding of underlying principles governing related issues cross-linguistically. The organization of the chapter is as follows: In 2 Contrastive Topic is distinguished from non-contrastive Topic and from list contrastive topics, which do not leave implicature; CT is examined in a dialogue model and the notion of sum considered; Korean CT is shown on pitch tracks. In 3 scalar meanings are analyzed; type-subtype scalarity and subtype scalarity are distinguished and CT’s inherent tendency of subtype scalarity even in entities is advocated. In 4 scope relations between scope bearers and CT and CT’s narrow-scope nature is discussed, together with non-narrow-scope topicalization effect. In 5 Contrastive Predicate Topic and the scope relation between CT and REASON clause are explored. 6 concludes the chapter.