A Cross-Linguistic Study of the Non-at-issueness of Exhaustive Inferences

Abstract

This paper explores the discourse status of English causal clauses introduced by since. Tests for non-at-issueness demonstrate that neither the relation (between the subordinate and the superordinate clause) expressed by since nor the content of the subordinate clause is at-issue. Other diagnostics further show that these two not-at-issue contents triggered by since belong to two different classes of projective content. This can be accounted for by attributing two different sources to their non-at-issueness: the relation expressed by since is not-at-issue for structural reasons, i.e. because since-clauses modify high evidential or speech act phrases, which are not-at-issue; the content of the subordinate clause is not-at-issue because since lexically selects factive clauses. More generally, this study (and future comparative studies on other subordinators) promises to shed further light on the constraints on different contents projected by the same trigger and the role played by structure in non-at-issueness.

Contradicting (not-)at-issueness in exclusives and clefts: An empirical study

“…2.2 (Not-)at-issue content in various linguistic diagnostics Destruel et al (2015) argue that the Yes, but. .…”

“…At issue content, that which directly addresses the Question under Discussion (QUD) (Simons, Beaver, Tonhauser & Roberts 2010;Tonhauser, Beaver, Roberts & Simons 2013), is a critical factor that has not been properly controlled for in prior experimental work (see Section 2.2). Crucially, exhaustivity in clefts is considered to be not-at-issue; by contrast, exhaustivity in exclusives is claimed to be at-issue (see, e.g., Horn 1981;Velleman et al 2012;Büring & Križ 2013;Horn 2014;Destruel et al 2015). Perhaps the simplest contrast to illustrate this is found in the examples in (3) (from Büring & Križ 2013: 2; modelled on Horn 1981).…”

“…Empirical research, often with exhaustivity in exclusives as a baseline, appears to support a pragmatic approach, since cleft exhaustivity is comparatively weak and more easily cancellable or violable (Destruel 2012;Destruel et al 2015;Saur 2013;Byram-Washburn, Kaiser & Zubizarreta 2013). The STATUS of exhaustivity, however-that is, whether exhaustivity is at-issue or not-at-issue-may pose a potential confound to empirical research orthogonal to the semantic-pragmatic debate.…”

“…(topic-comment it-cleft) 2015), intra-speaker cancellation (Mayol & Castroviejo 2013), NPI licensing, among other things (Horn 2014). Yet Drenhaus, Zimmermann & Vasishth (2011), Destruel (2012, and Destruel et al (2015) have all modelled their claims about the not-atissue exhaustivity of clefts compared to the behavior of the at-issue exhaustivity of exclusives. The goal of the present study is to test empirically how the not-at-issue status of an inference influences acceptability judgments in a variation on more standard cancellation tasks, referred to here as felicity under contradiction: in our design, a conjunct explicitly negates the relevant at-issue and not-at-issue inferences resulting in a contradiction for semantic inferences.…”

That’s not quite it: An experimental investigation of (non‑)exhaustivity in clefts

“…In particular, the exhaustivity inference is typically modeled as a maximality presupposition (Percus 1997) or as a homogeneity presupposition (Büring & Križ 2013 A further type of semantic account has recently emerged which suggests that exhaustivity in English clefts, and arguably in German clefts as well, is derived from a conventional interaction between clefts and the question under discussion (sensu Roberts 2012), hence being closer to the focus-based pragmatic accounts. Such accounts include Velleman et al 2012, Destruel et al 2015, Beaver & Onea 2015 Even though this is common practice in the literature, we will not refer to examples like (3) simply as definite descriptions. Example (3) is a specificational construction involving a heavy definite description consisting of a complex definite determiner der.MASC / die.FEM / das.NEUT -jenige (involving the distal demonstrative stem jen) and a full relative clause.…”