The *hope-wh puzzle

Abstract

Clause-embedding predicates come in three major varieties: (i) responsive predicates (e.g. know) are compatible with both declarative and interrogative complements; (ii) rogative predicates (e.g. wonder) are only compatible with interrogative complements; and (iii) anti-rogative predicates (e.g. hope) are only compatible with declarative complements. It has been suggested that these selectional properties are at least partly semantic in nature. In particular, it has been proposed that the anti-rogativity of negraising predicates like believe comes from the triviality in meaning that would arise with interrogative complements. This paper puts forward a similar semantic explanation for non-veridical preferential predicates such as hope, which are anti-rogative, unlike their veridical counterparts such as be happy, which are responsive.

On believing and hoping whether

“…In an attempt to extend Theiler et al's proposal to predicates like hope and fear, Uegaki & Sudo (2019) propose generalization V + P.…”

“…Thus, insofar as the inference is licensed from the contrast in (1) to the antirogativity of think and believe, the predictions of NR are correct for those predicates. This outcome is positive for NR: hope and fear are standardly assumed to be non-neg-raising (see Uegaki & Sudo 2019), but if NR took the form of a biconditional, it would predict hope and fear to be responsive, thereby conflicting with the inference from the contrast in (1) to the antirogativity of hope and fear.…”

The "doubt-whether" puzzle

“…In this paper, I will argue that these puzzling behaviors of doubt can be accounted for by combining two independently motivated semantic mechanisms: HIGHLIGHTING (Pruitt and Roelofsen, 2011, Roelofsen and Farkas, 2015, Theiler, 2020 and EXHAUSTIFICATION (Fox, 2007, Bar-Lev and Fox, 2020, Jeretič, 2020, Mirrazi and Zeijlstra, 2021. The analysis will furthermore show that the selectional restriction of doubt, even though puzzling at first sight, can be given a semantic explanation, advancing the ongoing research programme that aims to give meaning-driven explanations of selectional restrictions for clauseembedding predicates (Uegaki 2015, Mayr 2018, Theiler et al 2019, Uegaki and Sudo 2019cf. also White and Rawlins 2016 for different perspective).…”

“…This provides further arguments for the utility of these mechanisms in the analysis of attitudes, building on the earlier literature (Pruitt and Roelofsen 2011, Roelofsen 2019 for highlighting; Mirrazi and Zeijlstra 2021 for exhaustification). The present analysis also helps advance the ongoing research programme that aims to give meaning-driven explanations of selectional restrictions for clause-embedding predicates(Uegaki 2015, Mayr 2018, Theiler et al 2019, Uegaki and Sudo 2019. In particular, the analysis goes beyond existing proposals within the same research programme by extending the empirical coverage to a heretofore unexplained selectional pattern (i.e., compatibility with declarative and answer-mentioning interrogative complements and incompatibility with constituent wh-complements) and by taking into account cross-linguistic data in evaluating the exact link between lexical semantics and selectional properties.…”

The study of questions

“…Many researchers have attempted to provide a unified explanation of embedding predicates (Egré, 2008; Ginzburg, 1995; Groenendijk & Stokhof, 1982; Lahiri, 2002; Karttunen, 1977; Mayr, 2019; Romero, 2015; Spector & Egré, 2015; Theiler, 2014; Theiler, Roelofsen, & Aloni, 2019; Uegaki, 2015; Uegaki & Sudo, 2020). Some researchers connect selectional restrictions to semantic properties of the embedding verb (e.g., factivity or veridicality).…”