An Implicature-Based Approach to Disjointness Effects

Abstract

The generation and distribution of disjointness effects raise a descriptive and explanatory challenge to linguistic theories: what are the conditions under which these effects arise and why do these effects arise in the first place? In this paper, I flesh out an account of these effects that takes up both these challenges at once in showing that these effects are derivable from current approaches to implicature-reasoning. In substance, it is argued that these effects follow from a genuine implicature-based reasoning whose outcome may, upon certain contextual pressures, result in conflicting representations, giving rise then to oddity effects. The account is shown to unify various disjointness effects under one roof and to explain the source of some of the classical conditions on co-reference and binding.