Neg-raising with belief predicates as a scaleless implicature

Abstract

I give a new account of neg-raising with belief predicates as scaleless implicatures, inferences that are predicted by grammatical theories of scalar implicatures, when a quantifier projects subdomain alternatives but no scalar alternative. I argue that the neg-raising inference should be treated as an implicature because of parallels observed in its distribution and that of other known cases of implicatures (namely typical scalar implicatures, free choice effects, and other reported cases of scaleless implicatures). Furthermore, the scaleless implicature account of neg-raising is preferred over the previously proposed analysis by Romoli (2013) of neg-raising as a scalar implicature, because Romoli has to make the ad hoc assumption that 'think' has an excluded middle alternative, while in this new account, the lack of a scalar alternative is predicted by its absence in the lexicon of English, and the presence of subdomain alternatives for quantifiers has been assumed in a variety of other work.

Modals, negation and movement: a reassessment

“…Its non-verbal status does not affect our point, and if anything, it supports it, since adjectives are not known to undergo movement. The same scope facts are replicated for necessity modals nado and nužno, also claimed to be adjectival but with an expletive subject (Jeretič 2021a). 9 The Russian data was provided to us by Masha Esipova.…”

“…We claim, following the same line of reasoning as in Jeretič (2021a), that this argument is invalid. This is because non-specific readings of indefinites are available even in cases in which they cannot scope below a modal.…”

“…27 The perfective passé composé is a compound tense in French that only allows narrow scope, as in 'il n'a pas fallu', and could initially appear to be compelling evidence for head movement correlating with wide scope. However, as argued in Jeretič (2021a;b), this narrow scope is due to the effect of the perfective semantics, instead of the lack of head movement. One argument for this is that a similar lack of wide scope is observed in the archaic perfective passé simple 'il ne fallut pas', which does exhibit head movement as in the present tense.…”

“…Along the way we discuss additional issues for deriving the correct interpretations for modals in various negative constructions, and we conclude that the broader body of facts weighs against a syntactic account. In concluding, we outline a recent in-situ account of the modal facts (Jeretič 2021a),…”

You must worry! The interpretation of <em>mustn’t</em> varies with context and verbal complement

“…Several proposals may capture the availability of both the strong necessity not to reading and the weak lack of necessity reading in AE adult speakers. According to a Neg-Raising Approach (Hacquard 2010, Homer 2011, Iatridou & Zeijlstra 2013 or an Implicature Account (Jeretič 2021), the strong interdiction reading is derived from the basic order NEG>MODALITY via negative strengthening (MODALITY>NEG). According to Pragmatic Weakening (Condoravdi 2012, von Fintel 2019, the lack of necessity reading obtains as a suggestion from the basic strong necessity not to.…”