Moshe Elyashiv Bar-Lev

We propose a modification of the exhaustivity operator from Fox (2007) that on top of negating all the Innocently Excludable (IE) alternatives affirms all the `Innocently Includable' (II) ones. The main result of supplementing the notion of Innocent Exclusion with that of Innocent Inclusion is that it allows the exhaustivity operator to identify cells in the partition induced by the set of alternatives (assign a truth value to every alternative) whenever possible. We argue for this property of `cell identification' based on the simplification of disjunctive antecedents (SDA) and the effects on free choice (FC) that arise as the result of the introduction of universal quantifiers. We further argue for our proposal based on the interaction of only with free choice disjunction.

I suggest a quantificational account for tenses in which the seemingly peculiar behavior of tenses that are interpreted de re (most notably the double access reading of English Present-under-Past sentences) falls out from a general Trace Conversion rule that applies to moved quantifiers, as in Fox 2002. I propose that de re tenses involve movement (following Ogihara 1989), and that the first argument of tenses is a property of times which characterizes the set of times that include the local evaluation time, such that the application of Trace Conversion to moved tenses yields an inclusion requirement with respect to the local evaluation time of the base position. Unlike previous analyses (Ogihara 1989; Abusch 1997), the current analysis predicts that a de re interpretation of a tense (Past or Present) involves inclusion of the attitude time. This is supported by the availability of simultaneous readings for Past-under-Past sentences in non-SOT languages such as Hebrew, and the unavailability of ‘mixed’ (simultaneous and backward-shifted) readings for Past-under-Past constructions under universal quantification.

It has long been observed that a Past complement clause embedded under a Past attitude verb (Past-under-Past) in English can have either a simultaneous or a backward-shifted reading with respect to the attitude time, but it cannot have a forward-shifted reading. This phenomenon is known as Sequence of Tense (SOT). Additionally, a Present complement clause embedded under a Past attitude verb (Present-under-Past) has only the double access reading (DAR).

Three main (non-exclusive) accounts were proposed in the literature: (i) deletion-rules; (ii) pragmatic approaches; (iii) a de re mechanism. I focus on two de re approaches (Ogihara 1989 and Abusch 1997) and show that they yield problematic results either for tenses embedded under universal quantification over individuals or times or with ellipsis, or for simultaneous readings of Past-under-Past in 'non-SOT languages' like Hebrew. However, the latter issue also serves as an argument in favor of de re approaches over pragmatic ones, leading to a new de re account.

I claim that the de re interpretation of tenses in attitude contexts should be restricted such that the event-time of the embedded clause include the local evaluation time (i.e., the `now' of the attitude holder). I further claim that this is predicted if we assume that tenses are generalized quantifiers that quantify over the set of times that include their local evaluation time and that the Trace Conversion rule suggested by Fox (2002) applies to temporal quantifiers.

The goal of this talk is to provide a global account of universal Free Choice (FC) inferences (argued to be needed in Chemla 2009). We propose a stronger exhaustivity operator than proposed in Fox (2007), one that doesn’t only negate all Innocently Excludable (IE) alternatives but also asserts all “Innocently Includable” (II) ones, and subsequently can derive universal FC inferences globally. We further show that Innocent Inclusion is independently motivated by considerations that come from the semantics of only (data from Alxatib 2014). Finally, the distinction between Innocently Excludable and Innocently Includable alternatives allows us to capture differences between FC inferences and other scalar implicatures.

Following Klinedinst & Rothschild (2012), we argue that conjunctive readings of sentences where disjunction takes scope above an existential modal have a different explanation from that needed in the case where the modal has wide scope. When disjunction takes wide scope, we argue, following Meyer (2016b), that the conjunctive reading results from a structure involving an occurrence of the lexical item else in the second disjunct (overt, or covert).

This paper focuses on two questions in the semantics of plural predication: (i) What is the source of variation between non-distributive predicates with respect to Homogeneity? (ii) What is the nature of the distributive/collective distinction in plural predication, i.e., do we have two different meanings corresponding to collective and distributive situations or one weak underspecified meaning compatible with both? Examining question (ii), I strengthen arguments that predicates differ in whether they give rise to one weak meaning or to stronger ones. I further claim that there is a correlation between the behavior of predicates in this regard and their behavior with respect to Homogeneity, which calls for a unified perspective on questions (i)-(ii). I propose to capture this correlation by a modest modification of a standard view of Homogeneity which relies on a trivalent semantics for the pluralization operator together with a relativization of that operator to ‘covers’.

I provide arguments in favor of an implicature approach to Homogeneity (Magri 2014) where the basic meaning of "the kids laughed" is "some of the kids laughed", and its strengthened meaning is "all of the kids laughed". The arguments come from asymmetries between positive and negatives sentences containing definite plurals with respect to (i) children’s behavior (Tieu et al. 2015), (ii) the availability of non-maximal readings, and (iii) the robustness of neither-true-nor-false (‘gappy’) judgments (Križ & Chemla 2015). I propose to avoid some problems of Magri’s analysis by modelling the Implicature account of Homogeneity after the Implicature account of Free Choice, based on a hitherto unnoticed analogy between the two phenomena. The approach that emerges has the advantages of Magri’s Implicature account of Homogeneity (predicting asymmetries), while at the same time bears a close resemblance to recent approaches to Non-maximality (Malamud 2012; Križ & Spector 2017), which enables restating their account of Non-maximality as following from the context-sensitivity of implicature calculation.