Restricted Quantification over Tastes

Abstract

This paper provides an analysis of statements with predicates of personal taste (tasty, fun, etc.) Rather than directly relativizing semantic interpretation to a judge (cf., Lasersohn, 2005), this paper aims to capture the phenomenon called 'faultless disagreement' (the fact that one can deny a speaker's subjective utterance without challenging the speaker's opinion) by means of pragmatic restrictions on quantification domains. Using vagueness models, a statement like the cake is tasty is analyzed as true in a partial context c iff it is true in the set of completions t consistent with c (Kamp, 1975), wherein tasty denotes different, contextually possible, taste measures (Kennedy, 1999). Phrases like for me restrict the set of completions to those with taste measures consistent with the speaker's taste. Faultless disagreement naturally follows assuming speakers accommodate or reject implicit restrictions of this sort (Lewis, 1979).