Filtering free choice

Romoli, Jacopo; Santorio, Paolo

doi:10.3765/sp.12.12

Cited by 10 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Of course, the semantic account that we have sketched in this section leaves open a variety of issues as well; see e.g. Romoli and Santorio (2019), Marty and Romoli (2019) for discussion. Here we mention a couple.…”

Section: Open Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are also a variety of challenges for this approach stemming from certain differences between implicatures and free choice in their processing and acquisition profiles (Chemla and Bott 2014;Tieu et al 2016). Other challenges stem from the interaction between free choice and presuppositions (Romoli and Santorio 2019;Marty and Romoli 2019) and the status of positive versus negative sentences in certain contexts (Tieu et al 2018). 7 See Chierchia (2004Chierchia ( , 2013, Chierchia et al (2012), Magri (2009), Meyer (2013, among others.…”

Section: (19)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Choice and prohibition in non-monotonic contexts

2020

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Disjunctions in the scope of possibility modals give rise to a conjunctive inference, generally referred to as 'free choice.' For example, Emma can take Spanish or Calculus suggests that Emma can take Spanish and can take Calculus. This inference is not valid on standard semantics for modals in combination with a Boolean semantics for disjunction. Hence free choice has sparked a whole industry of theories in philosophy of language and semantics. This paper investigates free choice in sentences involving a non-monotonic modified numeral, under which we embed a possibility modal scoping over disjunction. One example is Exactly one student can(not) take Spanish or Calculus. As we point out, the presence (or absence) of certain readings of these sentences is a key test for a prominent approach, which analyzes free choice as a kind of scalar implicature. We report on two experiments investigating the readings of such sentences, using an inferential task. Our results are challenging for the implicature approach. We sketch two possible solutions within this approach, either adopting a different recent implicature algorithm, or exploring a different meaning for modified numerals with exactly. Both of them suffer from a variety of problems. We then discuss a third solution, which exploits a recent account of free choice based on homogeneity. This approach can account for our results, in combination with plausible assumptions about homogeneity projection, though it too has open issues with related cases. Regardless of which solution is chosen, non-monotonic contexts turn out to be an important test case for theories of free choice, implicature, and modified numerals.

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Section: Open Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: (19)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Choice and prohibition in non-monotonic contexts

2020

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“…4 We note right away that two kinds of replies have been given to Fox's argument and that, in principle, both replies could extend to our own extension of Fox's argument below. The first is to argue that free choice inferences are not implicatures after all (see Bar-Lev 2018;Goldstein 2019;Franke 2011;Aloni 2018;Romoli and Santorio (2019) a.o. for discussion).…”

Section: Olivia Can Choose Between the Two Classes Free Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second has to do with the role of implicatures in filtering presuppositions (see Romoli and Santorio 2019 for discussion). We will briefly discuss the latter case in the conclusion.…”

Section: Olivia Can Choose Between the Two Classes Free Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

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Presupposed free choice and the theory of scalar implicatures

Marty

Romoli

2021

Linguist and Philos

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A disjunctive sentence like Olivia took Logic or Algebra conveys that Olivia didn’t take both classes (exclusivity) and that the speaker doesn’t know which of the two classes she took (ignorance). The corresponding sentence with a possibility modal, Olivia can take Logic or Algebra, conveys instead that she can take Logic and that she can take Algebra (free choice). These exclusivity, ignorance and free choice inferences are argued by many to be scalar implicatures. Recent work has looked at cases in which exclusivity and ignorance appear to be computed instead at the presupposition level, independently from the assertion. On the basis of those data, Spector and Sudo (Linguist Philos 40(5):473–517, 2017) have argued for a hybrid account relying on a pragmatic principle for deriving implicatures in the presupposition. In this paper, we observe that a sentence like Noah is unaware that Olivia can take Logic or Algebra has a reading on which free choice appears in the presupposition, but not in the assertion, and we show that deriving this reading is challenging on Spector and Sudo’s (2017) hybrid account. Following the dialectic in Fox (Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics, Palgrave, London, pp 71–120, 2007), we argue against a pragmatic approach to presupposition-based implicatures on the ground that it is not able to account for presupposed free choice. In addition, we raise a novel challenge for Spector and Sudo’s (2017) account coming from the conflicting presupposed ignorance triggered by sentences like #Noah is unaware that I have a son or a daughter, which is infelicitous even if it’s not common knowledge whether the speaker has a son or a daughter. More generally, our data reveals a systematic parallelism between the assertion and presupposition levels in terms of exclusivity, ignorance, and free choice. We argue that such parallels call for a unified analysis and we sketch how a grammatical theory of implicatures where meaning strengthening operates in a similar way at both levels (Gajewski and Sharvit in Nat Lang Semant 20(1):31–57, 2012; Magri in A theory of individual-level predicates based on blind mandatory scalar implicatures, MIT dissertation, 2009; Marty in Implicatures in the DP domain, MIT dissertation, 2017) can account for such parallels.

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