QUD effects on epistemic containment principle

Abstract

The Epistemic Containment Principle (ECP) requires that epistemic modals takewider scope than strong quantifiers such as every or most (von Fintel and Iatridou, 2003). Althoughfairly robust in its realization, a few systemic classes of counterexamples to the ECPhave been noted. Based on these, previous work has argued for two claims: subjective modalsobey the ECP, whereas objective ones don’t (Tancredi, 2007; Anand and Hacquard, 2008); andevery respects the ECP, whereas each violates it (Tancredi, 2007). This paper argues that explicitQuestions Under Discussion (QUDs; Roberts, 1996; Ginzburg, 1996) also systematicallyinfluence the ECP: scopal orderings that provide relevant answers to the given QUDs are preferred,and this tendency can override the ECP. To support this claim, the paper presents anexperimental study. The results corroborate the existence of systematic QUD effects on theECP, and support the view that the ECP is derived from a confluence of various pragmatic andlexical biases.Keywords: Epistemic Containment Principle (ECP), epistemic modals, Question Under Discussion(QUD), quantifiers, scopal ambiguity, experimental semantics.