Scalar implicatures with discourse referents: a case study on plurality inferences

This paper explores the idea that scalar implicatures are computed with respect to discourse referents . Given the general consensus that a proper account of pronominal anaphora in natural language requires discourse referents separately from the truth-conditional meaning, it is naturally expected t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Linguistics and philosophy 2023-10, Vol.46 (5), p.1161-1217
Main Author: Sudo, Yasutada
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anaphora
Case studies
Discourse
Discourse anaphora
Dynamic semantics
English language
Grammatical number
Implicature
Linguistics
Meaning
Natural language
Original Research
Philosophy of Language
Pronouns
Reference (Semantic)
Referents
Scalarity (Semantics)
Semantics
Social Sciences
Truth
Usefulness
Word meaning
Citations: Items that this one cites
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Summary:This paper explores the idea that scalar implicatures are computed with respect to discourse referents . Given the general consensus that a proper account of pronominal anaphora in natural language requires discourse referents separately from the truth-conditional meaning, it is naturally expected that the anaphoric information that discourse referents carry play a role in the computation of scalar implicatures, but the literature has so far mostly exclusively focused on the truth-conditional dimension of meaning. This paper offers a formal theory of scalar implicatures with discourse referents couched in dynamic semantics, and demonstrates its usefulness through a case study on the plurality inferences of plural nouns in English.
ISSN:0165-0157
1573-0549
DOI:10.1007/s10988-023-09381-6