Scope Islands Research Articles

An Experimental Comparison of the Availability of Inverse Scope in English and German

We present two offline experiments on the interpretation in German and English of doubly quantified sentences with an existential subject and a universal object, which have been reported to allow for inverse readings only in English. We show for this specific syntactic configuration that there is no categorical crosslinguistic difference, but only a gradual one, with English more readily allowing for inverse scope than German. These results support a crosslinguistically unified analysis of inverse scope on which gradual differences between languages follow from language-specific properties and exposure effects. Moreover, they suggest that relative clauses with indefinite head NPs allow for inverse readings, thereby challenging the status of these clauses as scope islands (May 1977, Huang 1995), while according with introspective claims in semantic accounts (Barker 2012, 2019). Finally, our results suggest a high between-speaker variability and a strong impact of pragmatics.

A flexible scope theory of intensionality

Extant attempts to incorporate intensionality into the grammar either systematically over-generate, or systematically under-generate. In this paper, building on Keshet (Linguist and Philos 33(4):251–283, 2011), we aim to reconcile a scopal account of de re with the possibility of de re readings out of scope islands. By adapting compositional techniques for dealing with exceptionally scoping indefinites (Charlow, in On the semantics of exceptional scope, PhD thesis, Rutgers University, 2014; The scope of alternatives: indefiniteness and islands. Linguist and Philos 43(4):427–472, 2020), we develop an intensional grammar in which exceptional de re is achieved via cyclic scope. World-sensitive expressions are converted into scope-takers via a constrained inventory of type-flexible operators. Type flexibility explains the possibility of apparently island-violating de re by predicting the possibility of cyclic scope-taking. We argue that the resulting theory—which we dub the flexible scope theory—is sufficiently expressive to address the under-generation issues of current accounts, while still capturing constraints on de re in an explanatory fashion.

Rethinking Scope Islands

Relative clauses and tensed clauses are standardly assumed to be scope islands. However, naturally occurring counterexamples are abundant and easy to find. Therefore, we should revisit analyses that reject Quantifier Raising on the assumption that QR is clause-bounded. The data show that scope islands are sensitive to the identity of both the scope-taker and the predicate embedding the island. I propose the Scope Island Subset Constraint: given two scope islands, the scope-takers trapped by one will be a subset of the scope-takers trapped by the other. A simple refinement of semantic types allows encoding and enforcing of scope islands.

The Semantics of Comparatives: A Difference-Based Approach

Abstract Degree semantics has been developed to study how the meanings of measurement and comparison are encoded in natural language. Within degree semantics, this paper proposes a difference-based (or subtraction-based) approach to analyze the semantics of comparatives. The motivation is the measurability and comparability of differences involved in comparatives. The main claim is that comparatives encode a subtraction equation among three scalar values: two measurements along an interval scale and the difference between them. We contribute two innovations: (i) using interval arithmetic to implement subtraction, and (ii) analyzing comparative morpheme -er/more as an additive particle, denoting the default, most general, positive difference. Our analysis inherits existing insights in the literature. Moreover, the innovations bring new conceptual and empirical advantages. In particular, we address the interpretation of comparatives containing than-clause-internal quantifiers and various kinds of numerical differentials. We also account for three puzzles with regard to the scope island issue, the monotonicity of than-clauses, and the discourse status of the standard in comparison.

The logic of Quantifier Raising

Displaced scope is a hallmark of natural language, and Quantifier Raising (QR) has long been the standard tool for analyzing scope. Yet despite the foundational importance of QR to theoretical linguistics, as far as I know, there has never been a study of its formal properties. For instance, consider the decidability problem: given an initial syntactic structure, is there an algorithm that will determine whether a semantically coherent QR derivation exists? If at least one such derivation exists, is the number of semantically different analyses always finite? How do we know when we have found them all? Do the answers to these questions depend on imposing scope islands or other constraints on QR, such as forbidding vacuous movement, re-raising, remnant raising, raising of names, repeated type lifting, and so on? I settle these issues by defining QRT (Quantifier Raising with Types), a substructural logic that is a faithful model of QR in the following respect: every semantically coherent QR derivation corresponds to a semantically equivalent proof in QRT, and vice-versa. Since QRT is decidable and has the finite readings property, it follows that a broad class of theories that rely on QR also have these properties, without needing to place any formal constraints on QR. I go on to study the special relationship between type lifting and QR, drawing an analogy with eta reduction in the lambda calculus. Allowing unrestricted type lifting does not compromise decidability. In addition, it turns out that QR with type lifting validates the core type shifting principles of Flexible Montague Grammar, a paradigm example of an in-situ type-shifting approach to scope taking. This suggests that QR is compatible with a local, directly compositional view of scope taking. These results put Quantifier Raising on a reassuringly firm formal footing. EARLY ACCESS

French “quantifiers” in questions: interface strategies

Building on an experimental study, I show that homophonous wh-phrases like qui ‘who’ in French correlate with prosodic differences when specificity and partitivity come into play, something not found with bare Universal Quantifiers like chacun ‘each’ and tous ‘all’. Rather than homophony I claim that these wh-phrases are syncretic. I show that (a) wh-phrases and bare Universal Quantifiers are complex phrases, lexicalizing structures of different sizes; (b) partitivity and specificity are syntactic features. This last claim is supported by intervention effects: the interventions observed with negative and scope islands with wh-phrases in-situ are accounted for in terms of a feature-based Relativized Minimality (Starke 2001; Rizzi 2004).

Introducing Continuations

This working paper introduces CONTINUATIONS (a concept borrowed from computer science) as a new technique for characterizing certain aspects of the semantics of a natural language. I should emphasize at the outset that this is just an introduction, and that more a rigorous and thorough treatment is under development (see Barker (ms)). In the meantime, this paper mentions certain formal results without proving them, and describes certain new empirical generalizations without exploring them. What it will do is provide an explicit account of a range of familiar phenomena relat­ed to quantification, including quantifier scope ambiguity, NP as a scope island, and generalized coordination. What makes the account noteworthy is that it provides a fully and strictly compositional analysis of quantification and generalized coordina­tion that does not rely on syntactic movement operations such as Quantifier Move­ment, auxiliary storage mechanisms such as Cooper Storage, or type ambiguity as in Hendriks' Flexible Types system.

Indefinite Donkeys on Islands

In this paper I present a theory of indefinites which captures two of their natural properties: indefinites license donkey anaphora (Geach 1962) and they exhibit ‘specific’ readings in which they appear to scope out of scope islands. In various flavours of dynamic semantics (Kamp 1981, Heim 1982, Dekker (2004)), these properties can be captured to the detriment of compositionally. Other theories have employed more involved technical machinery like choice functions (Kratzer 1998, von Heusinger 2002), Hamblin-semantics (Kratzer & Shimoyama 2002) or independence friendly logics (Brasoveanu & Farkas 2011) to derive exceptional scope readings, but ignored donkey anaphora. Theories of E-type anaphora, on the other hand, generally do not consider exceptional scope readings (Heim 1990, Elbourne 2001). My own analysis combines insights from dynamic semantics with referential indexing in LF-semantics, resulting in a fully compositional, static system.

Why indefinites can escape scope islands

One of the big questions about indefinites is why they can escape scope islands (Fodor and Sag, in Linguist Philos 5:355–398, 1982). In the recent approach of Brasoveanu and Farkas (Linguist Philos 34(1):1–55, 2011) scopal relations with syntactically dominating quantifiers are hard wired into the semantic definition of the existential quantifier, which immediately explains why the semantic scope of indefinites may exceed their syntactic scope. In this paper, I argue for the revival of an alternative approach which places the explanatory burden on the idea that indefinites are essentially referential expressions, similar to definites, and not plain existential quantifiers. I propose one fully explicit variant of such theories and argue that it comes with a number of conceptual and empirical advantages over competing theories.

The size of noun modifiers and degree quantifier movement

Direct attributive uses of adjectives have often been considered a characteristic property of adjectives. Recent studies suggest, however, that some languages lack direct modification by adjectives entirely and that they only allow for indirect modification using relative clauses. At first glance, Japanese seems to fit into the group of languages that lack direct adjectival modification, and this is in fact a widely accepted view on Japanese adjectival modification. This paper presents evidence for noun modifiers without the support of finite TP and CP in Japanese, using scopal behavior of degree quantifiers as a probe into the modification structure. Japanese adjectival modifiers do not show the scope island effect for degree quantifiers that is expected under the view that they are finite relative clauses. If our analysis is on the right track, there is no need for a stipulation in the grammar of Japanese to block adjectives from forming direct modifiers.

Indefinite Donkeys on Islands

In this paper I present a theory of indefinites which captures two of their natural properties: indefinites license donkey anaphora (Geach 1962) and they exhibit ‘specific’ readings in which they appear to scope out of scope islands. In various flavours of dynamic semantics (Kamp 1981, Heim 1982, Dekker (2004)), these properties can be captured to the detriment of compositionally. Other theories have employed more involved technical machinery like choice functions (Kratzer 1998, von Heusinger 2002), Hamblin-semantics (Kratzer & Shimoyama 2002) or independence friendly logics (Brasoveanu & Farkas 2011) to derive exceptional scope readings, but ignored donkey anaphora. Theories of E-type anaphora, on the other hand, generally do not consider exceptional scope readings (Heim 1990, Elbourne 2001). My own analysis combines insights from dynamic semantics with referential indexing in LF-semantics, resulting in a fully compositional, static system.

Scopability and sluicing

This paper analyzes sluicing as anaphora to an anti-constituent (a continuation), that is, to the semantic remnant of a clause from which a subconstituent has been removed. For instance, in Mary said that [John saw someone yesterday], but she didn’t say who, the antecedent clause is John saw someone yesterday, the subconstituent targeted for removal is someone, and the ellipsis site following who is anaphoric to the scope remnant John saw ___ yesterday. I provide a compositional syntax and semantics on which the relationship between the targeted subconstituent and the rest of the antecedent clause is one of scopability, not movement or binding. This correctly predicts that sluicing should be sensitive to scope islands, but not to syntactic islands. Unlike the currently dominant approaches to sluicing, there is no need to posit syntactic structure internal to the ellipsis site, nor is there any need for a semantic mutual-entailment requirement. Nevertheless, the fragment handles phenomena usually taken to suggest a close syntactic correspondence between the antecedent and the sluice, including case matching, voice matching, and verbal argument structure matching. In addition, the analysis handles phenomena exhibiting antecedent/sluice mismatches, including examples such as John remembers meeting someone, but he doesn’t remember who, Open image in new window, and especially so-called sprouting examples such as John left, but I don’t know when, in which there is no overt subconstituent to target for removal. In Sect. 5, I show how the analysis accounts for Andrews Amalgams such as Sally ate [I don’t know what] today, in which the antecedent surrounds the sluiced clause. Finally, in Sect. 6, I propose a new semantic constraint on sluicing: the Answer Ban, which says that the antecedent clause must not resolve, or even partially resolve, the issue raised by the sluiced interrogative.

The scope of indefinites: an experimental investigation

This paper reports on an experimental investigation of the scope of English a indefinites and a certain indefinites. Three experiments test whether native English speakers allow indefinites to scope out of syntactic islands, and to take intermediate as well as widest scope. The experimental findings indicate that a indefinites and a certain indefinites have different ranges of interpretations available to them. Experiment 1 shows that a certain indefinites, unlike a indefinites, cannot be interpreted in the scope of an intensional operator, and further shows that functional readings are available to a certain indefinites but not to a indefinites. Experiment 2 focuses on the availability of long-distance readings of indefinites out of scope islands, and shows that the most accessible reading for a certain indefinites is the widest-scope reading, while the most accessible reading for a indefinites is the narrow-scope reading. Experiment 3 shows that modification of an a indefinite by a relative clause does not facilitate long-distance readings, as long as it does not restrict the domain to a singleton set. Overall, these findings are consistent with the proposal of Schwarz (Proceedings of the Thirteenth Amsterdam Colloquium, ILCC, University of Amsterdam, 192–197, 2001) that a certain indefinites and a indefinites are derived by different semantic mechanisms. The behavior of a certain indefinites is shown to be consistent with the contextually determined choice function approach Kratzer (Events in grammar, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 165–196, 1998) and the singleton indefinite approach Schwarzschild (J Semant 19:289–314, 2002). In contrast, a indefinites are most compatible with a purely quantificational approach, contra much recent theoretical literature. These findings highlight the value of conducting experimental studies testing the predictions of semantic theories.

A multi-dimensional treatment of quantification in extraordinary English

In this paper I revive two important formal approaches to the interpretation of natural language, that of Montague and that of Karttunen and Peters. Armed with insights from dynamic semantics (Heim, Krifka) the two turn out to stand up against age-old criticisms in an orthodox fashion. The plan is mainly methodological, as I only want to illustrate the technical feasibility of the revived proposals. Even so, there are illuminating and welcome empirical consequences on the subject of scope islands (as discussed by Abusch and Kratzer, among many others), as well as unintended theoretical implications in the contextualist debate (Grice, Recanati, Simons, Stanley, and many others again).

Evidence for the linearization-based theory of semantic composition

The result of questionnaire studies are presented which shows (i) that conjuncts are scope islands in Japanese and (ii) that left-node raising can nullify such scope islands. This finding confirms the theory advanced in Yatabe (2001), in which semantic composition is almost entirely carried out within order domains, and arguably contradicts the theory proposed in Beavers and Sag (2004), which introduces a mechanism called Optional Quantifier Merger to deal with the fact that right-node raising and left-node raising can have semantic effects.

DP is Not a Scope Island

This squib is concerned with inverse linking constructions. May (1977) introduced this term for cases where a quantificational DP occurs inside another DP and takes wider scope than the containing DP. In this squib, I argue that May's (1977) TP-adjunction analysis of inverse linking is required, which entails that DP cannot be an island for QR. Specifically, I show that the inversely linked (or contained) QP can take scope separate from the containing QP when scope relative to a scope-taking verb or scope relative to negation is considered.

Introducing Continuations

This working paper introduces CONTINUATIONS (a concept borrowed from computer science) as a new technique for characterizing certain aspects of the semantics of a natural language. I should emphasize at the outset that this is just an introduction, and that more a rigorous and thorough treatment is under development (see Barker (ms)). In the meantime, this paper mentions certain formal results without proving them, and describes certain new empirical generalizations without exploring them. What it will do is provide an explicit account of a range of familiar phenomena relat­ed to quantification, including quantifier scope ambiguity, NP as a scope island, and generalized coordination. What makes the account noteworthy is that it provides a fully and strictly compositional analysis of quantification and generalized coordina­tion that does not rely on syntactic movement operations such as Quantifier Move­ment, auxiliary storage mechanisms such as Cooper Storage, or type ambiguity as in Hendriks' Flexible Types system.