Causal necessity and sufficiency in implicativity

Nadathur, Prerna

doi:10.3765/salt.v26i0.3863

Cited by 26 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Our data support an analysis where most examples of orka reflect two meaning components: participant-internal ability and sufficiency of mental or physical strength. In line with Nadathur's (2016) proposal for the semantic profile of Finnish jaksaa, a verb similar to orka, we suggest that the sufficiency component of orka reflects an assumed obstacle, i.e. the presence of sufficient strength/energy, to the event reflected in orka's complement.…”

Section: Concluding Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

“…This type of analysis has been forwarded by Nadathur (2016) to explain the semantics of Finnish jaksaa, a sufficiency verb corresponding to Swedish orka. Nadathur's analysis is part of a discussion of implicative verbs, a discussion that is beyond the scope of our article, but some of her observations are relevant to our interpretation of orka.…”

Section: Sufficiency As An Obstacle To Ability 33mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The proposal that the factor is contextually insufficient explains that even if a Subject has sufficient strength to be able to do something, it does not follow that he or she actually does it -there may be other factors involved in this decision. Interestingly, Nadathur (2016Nadathur ( : 1010 points out that jaksaa is similar to manage in assuming a potential obstacle, but that manage does not specify what the obstacle is.…”

Section: Sufficiency As An Obstacle To Ability 33mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Swedish orka viewed through its English correspondences – ability, insufficient strength/energy or insufficient volition?

Johansson¹,

Nordrum²

2018

BeLLS

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This paper explores the Swedish auxiliary orka and its English correspondences as reflected in English-Swedish parallel corpora. Orka is interesting from a contrastive perspective since it lacks a straightforward equivalent in English. We show that most of the English correspondences, both in the direction Swedish original to English translation and in the direction English original to Swedish translation, indicate a semantic analysis of Swedish orka involving a combination of two meaning components 1) ability and 2) sufficient physical or mental strength/energy. We suggest an analysis inspired by Nadathur (2016) where ability is the core semantic property, but sufficiency of physical or mental energy is included in the lexical meaning of the verb as a potential obstacle to ability. In addition, our material includes correspondences reflecting a second meaning involving sufficiency of volition (von Fintel, 2006), which we assume is derived from the meaning above. We also note that orka predominantly occurs in negative polarity contexts, and speculate that the relatively recent use of the imperative form orka in informal talk, meaning something along the lines of 'I could not be bothered', might have its source in such negative connotations. In addition to offering a specified semantic description of the Swedish verb orka, our study contributes to crosslinguistic studies of expressions of sufficiency meanings and sufficiency as a meaning component in verbs (Fortuin, 2013).

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Section: Concluding Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Section: Sufficiency As An Obstacle To Ability 33mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sufficiency As An Obstacle To Ability 33mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Swedish orka viewed through its English correspondences – ability, insufficient strength/energy or insufficient volition?

Johansson¹,

Nordrum²

2018

BeLLS

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“…Having shown that the implicative reading of genuine E/T constructions is due to its bi-clausal structure, here I further characterize the nature of this implicative reading. Inspired by Schulz (2011), Baglini and Francez (2015), and Nadathur (2016), I propose that causal dependence is involved in the interpretation of genuine E/T constructions. As illustrated in (30), bi-clausal E/T constructions can be paraphrased with the use of because: their infinitival complement represents a consequence, which causally depends on the factor expressed by the comparative.…”

Section: The Semantics Of E/t Constructions: Necessary Vs Sufficientmentioning

confidence: 99%

"Enough", "too", and causal dependence

Zhang¹

2018

Zaspil

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Enough-/too-constructions (E/T constructions) have an implicative reading: e.g.,Mary was clever enough to leave early yesterday entails Mary left early yesterday. I arguethat this implicative reading is not due to the lexical semantics proper of enough/too, but dueto its bi-clausal structure (e.g., the above-mentioned example is analyzed as Mary left earlyyesterday because she was clever enough). I analyze enough and too simply as degree modifiersthat involve a comparison: enough means reaching the lower bound of an interval, whiletoo means exceeding the upper bound of an interval. Then inspired by Schulz (2011), Bagliniand Francez (2015), and Nadathur (2016), I relate the semantics of E/T constructions to causaldependence: due to some sufficiency/excess, the infinitival complement clause in E/T constructionsis episodically or generically (depending on its aspect being perfective or imperfective)true/false. I also argue that this infinitive has its tense and aspect marked on the main predicateof sentences, resulting in the seeming correlation between aspect and implication in languagesthat overtly make a distinction between perfective and imperfective aspects (e.g., French).Keywords: enough, too, comparatives, causal dependence, necessary (but not necessarily sufficient)causes, sufficient (but not necessarily necessary) causes, infinitives, implicatives.

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“…The approach is inspired by Bhatt (1999), who compares actuality entailments to the characteristic complement entailments of the implicative verb manage (Karttunen 1971). Based on recent causal treatments of implicativity (Baglini & Francez 2016;Nadathur 2016), I argue that ability and manage do indeed share semantic structure, backgrounding the causal dependence of their complements on some prior action or event. On this proposal, ability and manage differ only in assertion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Causality and aspect in ability, actuality, and implicativity

Nadathur

2021

SALT

Self Cite

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Past-tense ability ascriptions (e.g., "was able") alternate between pure, potentially unrealized ability and an interpretation which actualizes the ability. The alternation extends to abilitative uses of possibility modals, with actualized readings strengthening to actuality entailments under perfective aspect in aspect-marking languages (Bhatt 1999). These interpretations resist explanation on accounts which seek to derive them in the composition of modality and aspect. I build on causal analyses of implicative inferences (from lexical implicatives like "manage" as well as 'variably-implicative' "enough" comparatives; Baglini & Francez 2016, Nadathur 2016, 2017) to propose a new approach to actuality inferences, grounded in a causal semantics for ability predicates. This account derives both pure ability and actuality readings, and explains parallels between implicative "manage" and actualized ability on the basis of shared (presuppositional) causal structure. "Manage" and ability differ in asserted content, but the difference is neutralized – producing actuality entailments – under a perfective operator which selects for eventive predicates, and combines with stative ability attributions only via aspectual coercion.

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Causal necessity and sufficiency in implicativity

Cited by 26 publications

References 8 publications

Swedish orka viewed through its English correspondences – ability, insufficient strength/energy or insufficient volition?

Swedish orka viewed through its English correspondences – ability, insufficient strength/energy or insufficient volition?

"Enough", "too", and causal dependence

Causality and aspect in ability, actuality, and implicativity

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