A Judge-Free Semantics for Predicates of Personal Taste

Pearson, Hazel

doi:10.1093/jos/ffs001

Cited by 128 publications

(131 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…4 Pearson's analysis also explains the 'generic inference': the inference that (26a) is about the tastes of a larger group of people than just the speaker. While we believe parallel inferences are licensed with impersonal NEED statements, we do not provide empirical support for their existence here, nor do we present the aspects of Pearson's (2013aPearson's ( , 2013b proposal that would explain them. We observe that the modality literature discusses what we call generic inferences primarily in connection with epistemic modality (e.g., von Fintel & Gillies 2008).…”

Section: Proposalcontrasting

confidence: 70%

“…Our proposal for impersonal constructions is inspired by analyses of impersonal uses of experiencer predicates e.g., predicates of personal taste like tasty and fun (cf. Lasersohn 2005;Stephenson 2007;Pearson 2013a). In particular, we adopt a version of Pearson's (2013a) proposal for how to capture the default speaker-orientation of an 'impersonal' taste statement like (26a), which lacks an overt experiencer argument as found in (26b).…”

Section: Proposalmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On root modality and thematic relations in Tagalog and English

Abenina-Adar

Angelopoulos

2016

SALT

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The literature on modality discusses how context and grammar interact to produce different flavors of necessity primarily in connection with functional modals e.g., English auxiliaries. In contrast, the grammatical properties of lexical modals (i.e., thematic verbs) are less understood. In this paper, we use the Tagalog necessity modal kailangan and English need as a case study in the syntax-semantics of lexical modals. Kailangan and need enter two structures, which we call 'thematic' and 'impersonal'. We show that when they establish a thematic dependency with a subject, they express necessity in light of this subject's priorities, and in the absence of an overt thematic subject, they express necessity in light of priorities endorsed by the speaker. To account for this, we propose a single lexical entry for kailangan / need that uniformly selects for a 'needer' argument. In thematic constructions, the needer is the overt subject, and in impersonal constructions, it is an implicit speaker-bound pronoun.

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Section: Proposalcontrasting

confidence: 70%

Section: Proposalmentioning

confidence: 99%

On root modality and thematic relations in Tagalog and English

Abenina-Adar

Angelopoulos

2016

SALT

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“…Kennedy & Willer 2016;Saebø 2009;Pearson 2013;Ninan 2014). However, intuitions regarding the role and even the presence of experiencers can be murky (e.g.…”

Section: The Contribution Of Experience To the Meaning Of Subjective mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These expressions have been analyzed as making reference to a 'judge' or 'evaluator ' (e.g. Lasersohn 2005;Potts 2007;Stephenson 2007;Patel-Grosz 2012 and many others, but see also Pearson 2013). Much of the research on these expressions builds on Lasersohn's (2005) judge parameter j, such that the truth of sentences containing predicates of personal taste is relativized to the particular individual who is the judge.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experience matters: A psycholinguistic investigation of predicates of personal taste

Kaiser

Lee

2017

SALT

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We discuss two psycholinguistic experiments on subjective adjectives, with the aim of testing the idea that predicates of personal taste (PPTs, e.g. fun, tasty) and non-PPT multidimensional adjectives (e.g. smart, healthy) differ in terms of the perspective-taking they involve. Although both are widely regarded as involving a judge/evaluator, it has recently been proposed that the judge of a PPT needs to be an experiencer, while judges of multidimensional non-PPT adjectives do not have this requirement. We report a new study investigating this claim that builds on and extends our earlier work, by using sentences with one animate and one inanimate argument. This allows us to avoid potential complications from pronoun ambiguity. We manipulated verb argument structure (Experiencer-Theme vs. Agent-Patient verbs) to test if PPTs prefer experiencer judges. The results confirm that PPTs, but not non-PPT multidimensional adjectives, are sensitive to the presence of an experiencer thematic role.

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“…In our view, the evaluation proper can coexist with the immediacy of a heightened emotional state, but should not be identified with it. One problem that we have to leave open is the relationship between our evaluative implicatures and the so called "predicates of personal taste" (see Lasersohn 2005, Stephenson 2007, Moltmann 2009, Pearson 2012. A lexical predicate like surprising, which conveys a surprise import, seems to be a predicate of personal taste: here, contrary to MF, the "evaluative" component is clearly part of the at-issue meaning.…”

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confidence: 99%

Focus fronting, unexpectedness, and evaluative implicatures

Bianchi

Bocci

Cruschina

2016

S&P

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This paper discusses the fronting of a focal constituent to a clauseinitial position which, in various languages, is associated with an import of unexpectedness. We provide prosodic and syntactic evidence from Italian showing that this phenomenon has distinctive grammatical properties with respect to other instances of "focus fronting". We argue that the fronted constituent bears narrow focus, and that the unexpectedness import conveys that the asserted proposition is less likely than one or more distinct focus alternatives (see Grosz 2011). We characterize this import as a conventional implicature, and we argue that likelihood is interpreted with respect to an informative modal base which is shared by the conversational community (the context set). We show that the unexpectedness import expressed by a speaker can be accepted or rejected by the other discourse participants: thus, it qualifies as an evaluative commitment of the speaker and, when accepted by the interlocutors, it can give rise to a shared evaluation.

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A Judge-Free Semantics for Predicates of Personal Taste

Cited by 128 publications

References 21 publications

On root modality and thematic relations in Tagalog and English

On root modality and thematic relations in Tagalog and English

Experience matters: A psycholinguistic investigation of predicates of personal taste

Focus fronting, unexpectedness, and evaluative implicatures

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