Abstract
Free choice inferences, or distribution effects, are well-known with modals and other quantifiers. This chapter shows that these inferences turn up with the future-directed opining verbs in analogous ways, with some of the verbs exhibiting the pattern associated with existential terms, and others displaying the pattern found with universals. We even see that among the universals, the verbs split into subclasses that correspond to weak and strong necessity. This symmetry between the future-directed opining verbs and the better studied quantifiers motivates the pursuit of a unified account of free choice that can derive the correct inferences in all environments. In general, a scalar implicature based approach to free choice has been widely (though not universally) accepted, and the grammatical theories in this family have the ability to effectively deal with embedding contexts, something required to generate the future-directed opining data demonstrated here. These theories, such as Bar-Lev and Fox (Universal free choice and innocent inclusion. In: Semantics and linguistic theory, vol 27, pp 95–115, 2017), are also easily tied to a notion of relevance that can account for the context-sensitivity of inferences found with universal constructions, including the universal future-directed opining verbs. Additionally, a grammatical approach can help to explain the presence of distribution inferences with modal-based wide disjunctions (including with the future-directed opining verbs), but not with other wide disjunctions. But while the potential power of these approaches affords them the ability to capture a broader range of inferences, it also necessitates a principled deployment that can maintain a coherent overall picture of exhaustification.
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Notes
- 1.
Note that there is a sense in which giving money and giving a hotel stay are possible—epistemically, these are the possibilities provided by the speaker. This is fine: there is an epistemic/ignorance reading of the sentences of (128–131) and (133–145) as well; the critical point is that there is no non-epistemic, non-speaker-ignorance way to interpret the disjuncts in this extensional case.
- 2.
For the purposes of the disjunctive distributive patterns at issue in this work, this intuitive notion of scale will suffice, though it should be mentioned that this idea requires revision in order to precisely constrain the alternatives at play in deriving a wider range of implicatures. Several proposals have been built for this purpose, particularly around monotonicity (e.g. Horn 1989 and Matsumoto 1995) and complexity (e.g. Atlas and Levinson 1981 and Katzir 2007).
- 3.
For additional motivation behind these features, as well as a slightly different way to formulate a response, see Spector (2006). Also note that even though Sauerland’s arguments are guided by neo-Gricean principles, both suggestions he tables have been adopted by non-globalist accounts as well. See, e.g., Fox (2007).
- 4.
The alternatives in (201) are propositional, but this is just a notational convenience: really it is or that is originally associated with alternatives, and then these grow with the structure. For instance:
-
(1)
(a) ALT(a cookie or a banana) = {a cookie or a banana, a cookie and a banana, a cookie, a banana}
(b) ALT(Myron ate a cookie or a banana) = {Myron ate a cookie or a banana, Myron ate a cookie and a banana, Myron ate a cookie, Myron ate a banana}
-
(1)
- 5.
Here we employ an informal modal logic formulation that we will use throughout, especially in the later chapters, when our semantic calculations start to get unwieldy.
- 6.
To calculate these alternatives, I have applied IE and II to each original alternative, and then simplified as much as possible. The details of recursive exhaustification are relegated to a footnote in Bar-Lev and Fox (2017), but I believe this is their intention. Errors of assumption are, of course, entirely mine.
- 7.
Note that the discussion in Crnič et al. (2015) was concerned with missing universal inferences, in particular ¬ ∀x(p(x)) and ¬ ∀x(q(x)). With the account of free choice presented in Bar-Lev and Fox (2017), we no longer predict that these alternatives will be innocently excludable, so the original worry is assuaged. However, as discussed here, the conjunctive alternatives are still innocently excludable, and so the spirit of the concern persists.
- 8.
If the conjunctive alternatives were pruned during the process of exhaustification, we’d end up being able to innocently include all the other alternatives, including ∀xpx and ∀xqx, leading to an interpretation of (227) as Every brother of mine has been married to a woman and a man, a reading that is not attested.
- 9.
It may be worth mentioning that both examples are still meaningful, but attempting to read the to clause the same way we do for the other examples (as something like if you want to get from Paris to London), brings about a feeling that the second clause has slightly shifted the topic of conversation.
- 10.
Note that the contextual assumption of taking up a single option (for (261), an afternoon activity) is an idea that requires more elaboration. Here, I will assume that it forms a part of the conversational background for any weak necessity modal or verb, including in (262), where it would restrict the initial set of good worlds to those in which you get to London via the standard number of transportation options, namely one. It could be that something like a conditional assumption where things (goals, desires, commitments, etc.) come about or are achieved by way of the normal number of contextually determined alternatives is present with all modals, however, the key difference between the weak and strong necessity terms will still be that for the former, the first ordering source establishes that the thing (goal, desire, commitment, etc.) is achieved, and the second ordering source selects among the alternatives for doing so, while for the latter, the single ordering source only asserts which alternatives are requisites for achieving the thing (goal, desire, commitment, etc.).
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Bervoets, M. (2020). Distribution Effects. In: The Semantics of Opinion. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 102. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1747-0_3
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