The emergence of scalar meanings

Abstract

This paper analyzes the emergence of scalar additive meanings. We show that in Basque the same particle ere can obtain both the “simple additive” reading (akin to English too) and the “scalar additive” reading (akin to English even) but we argue that we do not have to distinguish two types of ere. We provide evidence, by means of a production and a perception experiment, that the reading is disambiguated by means of prosody (the placement of nuclear stress), which is a correlate of focus. We argue that the scalarity effect is generated by the combination of two presuppositions (a focus-induced one and a lexical one) and the assertion of the sentence.

Relating (Un)acceptability to Interpretation. Experimental Investigations on Negation

“…The experiments were conducted by means of the open access LingMarket application that was designed for data gathering by Etxeberria et al (2013) 4 . All the items were pseudo-randomized via the LingMarket application.…”

From additivity to mirativity: The Cantonese sentence final particle <i>tim1</i>

“…The way we formalized the various meanings of tim1 helps to represent how its meaning evolved. It first acquired its existential presupposition, to which the scalar meaning was later added, along the lines of the mechanisms proposed by Etxeberria & Irurtzun (2015), which entrenched the scalar component in the meaning of tim1 (though note that tim1 still has a non-scalar flavor in some of its uses, which we captured in our formalization by making it encode non-strict superiority). The mirative use of tim1 represents another stage of the evolution in which the presupposition has disappeared and only the conventional implicature remains (i.e.…”

“…The scalar use of non-scalar items is also discussed for Basque ere by Etxeberria & Irurtzun (2015). These authors argue that in a context like (54) the particle ere can receive a scalar interpretation, but that this is not part of the semantics of the particle.…”

Assessing the Role of Experimental Evidence for Interface Judgment: Licensing of Negative Polarity Items, Scalar Readings, and Focus

“…In the first part of section Intonation and Meaning: Disambiguating Scalar Components, we discuss the role of intonation in Greek NPIs relying on recent work by Chatzikonstantinou ( 2016 ), who presents evidence that prosodic prominence in Greek NPIs indicates the presence of a scalar component. Finally, in the second part of section Intonation and Meaning: Disambiguating Scalar Components, we discuss the Basque additive particle ere “also/even,” shown in Etxeberria and Irurtzun ( 2015 ) to obtain scalar readings with prosodic prominence. We conclude in section General Conclusions.…”

“…Then we discuss an acceptability judgment task on Greek NPIs which supports the negativity as a scale hypothesis (Zwarts, 1995 , 1996 ; Giannakidou, 1998 ). For the semantics-prosody interface judgment, we discuss two types of findings on two different phenomena and languages: (i) the study by Giannakidou and Yoon ( 2016 ) on scalar and non-scalar NPIs in Greek and Korean, which serves as the foundation for Chatzikonstantinou's ( 2016 ) study of production data showing distinct prosodic properties in emphatic (scalar) and non-emphatic (non-scalar) Greek NPIs; (ii) a (production and perception) study by Etxeberria and Irurtzun ( 2015 ) on the prosodic disambiguation of the scalar/non-scalar readings of sentences containing the focus particle “ere” in Basque. The main conclusion of the paper is that experimental methods of the kind discussed in the paper are useful in establishing physical, quantitative correlates of interface judgment.…”