NOTES ON MÊME AND ITS ADDITIVITY
Abstract
This paper discusses the behavior of even-like particles (e.g. French même) when interacting with entailment-based scales, pragmatically incompatible alternatives and semantically incompatible alternatives. Standard approaches to even-like particles assume that such operators convey the assertion that the prejacent proposition is true; they also induce a scalar presupposition to the effect that the prejacent proposition is higher on a suitably defined scale, and an additive presupposition to the effect that an alternative proposition in the same scale is also true. We submit preliminary evidence from Italian arguing against the assumption that even-like particles are necessarily additive and suggesting that the scalar presuppositions requires a pragmatic (or “rhetorical”) ordering.
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