Abstract
Supplements have often been characterized as inert with respect to other content. But under closer scrutiny, the data shows that supplements can take scope and participate in anaphoric links, undermining multidimensional accounts of them. I argue that the core empirical facts pertaining to supplements, including projection, can in many cases be accounted for by more general, independently motivated factors such as anaphora resolution in discourse and quantifier scope preferences. Importantly, supplement projection is decoupled from at-issueness, with projection arising instead as an epiphenomenon of various external influences. The account is formalized in a dynamic, compositional, and unidimensional semantics that allows anaphoric links to and from supplement content. Since supplements are modeled as a kind of quantifier phrase modifier, scope interactions with semantic operators are captured without further stipulation. When a supplement takes widest scope, it constitutes a separate at-issue proposal, enabling both supplement projection and (non)deniability. The formal machinery requires no additional rules or representation layers except for the dynamic meaning of the comma intonation, which demarcates a supplement from its surrounding content. BibTeX info
Highlights
Potts (2005) revitalized interest in supplements, the class of constructions that includes nominal appositives, nonrestrictive relative clauses, and asparentheticals, arguing that they are inert with respect to semantic operators — scopeless, in his terms — as a result of not being at-issue
A closer look at the data pertaining to supplements, much of it undertaken in recent work by Amaral, Roberts & Smith (2007), AnderBois, Brasoveanu & Henderson (2010, 2015), Koev (2012, 2014), Martin (2013), Nouwen (2014) and Schlenker (2010, 2013a, 2013b), calls into question some central aspects of Potts’s (2005: 42) characterization of them
They are not scopeless, as they clearly interact with semantic operators, and anaphoric links between supplements and surrounding material are unproblematic
Summary
Potts (2005) revitalized interest in supplements, the class of constructions that includes nominal appositives, nonrestrictive relative clauses, and asparentheticals, arguing that they are inert with respect to semantic operators — scopeless, in his terms — as a result of not being at-issue. Several authors (Amaral, Roberts & Smith 2007, AnderBois, Brasoveanu & Henderson 2010, 2015, Koev 2012, 2014, Martin 2013) point out that a supplement can both contain elements that are anaphoric to an antecedent occurring outside it, as well as introduce antecedents for subsequent anaphora. Others (del Gobbo 2007; Nouwen 2007, 2014; Schlenker 2010, 2013a, 2013b) draw attention to the fact, already noticed by Amaral, Roberts & Smith, that supplements are sometimes interpreted in the scope of operators. Based on the fact that they may be directly denied, AnderBois, Brasoveanu & Henderson, Koev, and Schlenker even call into question the notion that supplements are never at-issue. Some cyclist , a doper , won the Tour de France. b. (Q D) and (the D E) c. (Some cyclisti is a doper) and (The doperi won the Tour de France)
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