Lexical Inference vs Scalar Implicature
Final Report Abstract
The main result of the project was to confirm with novel evidence a three-fold distinctions of lexical inferences, strong implicatures and weak implicatures and develop a new theoretical model of implicature generation. In the first phase, we focused on the strong/weak distinction, while in this phase the distinction between lexical and implicature inferences was in the foreground. One major result used a novel experimental method to test for priming effects in a cross-modal sentence verification task. Methodologically, our work improved on earlier work by using visually identical stimuli for different items in the experiment to completely rule out effects of visual processing. Furthermore it improved upon prior work by properly satisfying the ignorance inferences of disjunction. The results exactly confirmed the predictions of a model where scalar implicatures and free-choice implicatures involve at most partly overlapping mechanisms. The second major result was the development of a new theoretical model of implicature as projecting inference akin to presuppositions. This new model of implicature enables a view where implicatures are inert, and therefore implicature generation can be local while the inferences generated project to the global level. The novel model, we supported by additional findings specifically supporting the obligatory presence of implicature generation beyond the isotone (or upward entailing) environments to which obligatory embedded implicature generation was previously assumed to be restricted too. In particular, we found this picture can predict some conditions such as scope economy that were previously regarded as syntactic or manner implicature effects. The results of the project corroborate with new theoretical and experimental evidence the essential role of the typology of inferences derived from the interplay of implicature generation and presupposition in explaining linguistic phenomena. Our results also support the view that manner and quantity implicatures should be unified.
Publications
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Covert Across-The-Board Movement revisited: Free choice and the scope of modals. In A. Lamont & K. Tetzloff (Eds.), Proceedings of NELS 47 (Vol. 2, pp. 275–288)
Meyer, M.-C. & Sauerland, U.
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Disjunction and Implicatures: Some Notes on Recent Developments. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory (2017), 245-259. Springer International Publishing.
Sauerland, Uli
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Remind-Me Presuppositions and Speech-Act Decomposition: Evidence from Particles in Questions. Linguistic Inquiry, 48(4), 651-678.
Sauerland, Uli & Yatsushiro, Kazuko
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The Thought Uniqueness Hypothesis. Semantics and Linguistic Theory, 28(c(2018, 10, 23)), 289.
Sauerland, Uli
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How to be Brief: Children’s and Adults’ Application of Grice’s Brevity Maxim in Production. Languages, 4(1), 18.
Yatsushiro, Kazuko & Sauerland, Uli
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Ineffability and unexhaustification. In M. T. Espinal, E. Castroviejo, M. Leonetti, L. McNally, & C. Real-Puigdollers (Eds.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 23 (Vol. 1, pp. 399–412)
Elliott, P. D. & Sauerland, U.
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Presuppositional exhaustification. Semantics and Pragmatics, 14(11), 1-48.
Bassi, Itai; Del Pinal, Guillermo & Sauerland, Uli
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Priming reveals similarities and differences between three purported cases of implicature: Some, number and free choice disjunctions. Journal of Memory and Language, 120(c(2021, 10)), 104206.
Meyer, Marie-Christine & Feiman, Roman
