NOTES ON MÊME AND ITS ADDITIVITY

Resumen

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. 

 

Biografía del autor/a

Salvatore Pistoia-Reda, University of Siena

Senior researcher in philosophy of language and linguistics at the University of Siena. Previously, he was a researcher at the Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Berlin and at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. His research interests include semantics and pragmatics of natural languages. 

Nicoletta Armentano, University of Verona

Junior researcher at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Verona. Her research interests include the didactics of French as a foreign language, the study of plurilingualism and translation. 

Citas

ANSCOMBRE, Jean-Claude ; DUCROT, Oswald. L’argumentation dans la langue. Philosophie et Langage. Pierre Mardaga, 1983.

ATAYAN, Vahram. On the distribution of additive focus particles addirittura and perfino/persino in Italian. In: DE CESARE, Anna Maria ; ANDORNO, Cecilia (eds). Focus on Additivity. p. 79–106, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2017.

CHIERCHIA, Gennaro. Scalar implicatures, polarity phenomena, and the syntax/pragmatics interface. In: BELLETTI, Adriana (ed). Structures and beyond. P. 39–103. Oxford University Press, 2004.

DUCROT, Oswald. Les échelles argumentatives. Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1980. (Oswald Ducrot. Le scale argomentative. Carocci, Roma, in press.)

GAST, Volker ; VAN DER AUWERA, Johan. Scalar additive operators in the languages of Europe. Language, 87(1):2–54, 2011.

GREENBERG, Yael. A novel problem for the likelihood-based semantics of even. Semantics and Pragmatics. n°9, p. 1-28, 2016.

GREENBERG, Yael. A revised, gradability-based semantics for even. Natural Language Semantics. n°26, p. 51-83, 2017.

GREENBERG, Yael. Even as a scalar additive particle. ESSLLI Handout. 2021.

HORN, Laurence. A presuppositional analysis of only and even. In: Papers from the Fifth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. University of Chicago Press, 1969.

HORN, Laurence. On the semantic properties of logical operators in English. PhD thesis, University of California at Los Angeles, 1972.

HORN, Laurence. A natural history of negation. The University of Chicago Press, 1989.

HORN, Laurence. WJ-40: Implicature, truth, and meaning. International review of pragmatics. n°1(1), p. 3-34, 2009.

JASINSKAIA, Katja Jasinskaja ; KARAGJOSOVA, Elena. Rhetorical relations. The Wiley Blackwell companion to Semantics. pages 1–29, 2020.

KARTTUNEN, Lauri ; PETERS, Stanley. Conventional implicature. In: OH, C.-K. ; DINNEN, D. A. (eds.). Presupposition. New-York: Academic Press, 1979.

LEHRER, Adrienne. Semantic fields and lexical structure. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1974.

PISTOIA-REDA, Salvatore. A note on contextual blindness as extended to ‘only’. International Review of Pragmatics. n°11(2), p. 301-308, 2019.

RIESTER, Arndt. Only scalar. In: HUITINK, Janneke ; KATRENKO, Sophia (eds.). Proceedings of the Eleventh ESSLLI Student Session. 2006.

ROOTH, Mats. Association with focus. PhD thesis, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1985.

ROOTH, Mats. A theory of focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics. n°1(1), p. 75-116, 1992.

RULLMANN, Hotze. Even, polarity, and scope. Papers in experimental and theoretical linguistics. n°4, p. 40-64, 1997.

Publicado
2022-06-21