Abstract
This paper contributes to two recent lines of work on disjunction: on the one hand, work on so-called Hurford disjunctions, i.e., disjunctions where one disjunct entails another, and on the other hand, work in alternative and inquisitive semantics where disjunction has been argued to generate multiple propositional alternatives. We point out that Hurford effects are found not only in disjunctive statements, but also in disjunctive questions. These cases are not covered by the standard accounts of Hurford phenomena, which assume a truth-conditional treatment of disjunction. We show that inquisitive semantics facilitates a unified explanation of Hurford phenomena in statements and questions. We also argue that Hurford effects provide an empirical handle on the subtle differences between inquisitive semantics and alternative semantics, providing insight into the notion of alternatives and the notion of meaning adopted in these two frameworks.
Highlights
Hurford disjunctions are disjunctions in which one disjunct entails another, either logically or relative to a specific context
We hope to have demonstrated the relevance of inquisitive semantics for the theory of Hurford disjunctions: a general account of Hurford effects, both in statements and in questions, becomes available if we combine a ban against redundant operations, as proposed by Katzir and Singh (2013), with an inquisitive account of disjunction—a result that seems difficult to obtain based on other existing accounts of disjunction
Of particular importance here is that, in its treatment of disjunction, inquisitive semantics strikes a subtle balance between truth-conditional semantics and alternative semantics
Summary
Hurford disjunctions are disjunctions in which one disjunct entails another, either logically or relative to a specific context. We will see that inquisitive semantics (Ciardelli et al 2013, 2015) provides a setting in which Hurford effects in statements and questions can be explained uniformly as resulting from a ban against redundant operations combined with the availability of local exhaustification. It shows that under the standard treatment of disjunction in questions provided by alternative semantics, the explanation of Hurford’s constraint in terms of redundancy that was proposed for statements does not carry over to questions.
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