The phenomenon of quantification into attitude ascriptions has haunted broadly Fregean views, according to which co-referential proper names are not always substitutable salva veritate in attitude ascriptions. Opponents of Fregeanism argue that a belief ascription containing a proper name such as ‘Michael believes that Lindsay is charitable’ is equivalent to a quantified sentence such as ‘there is someone such that Michael believes that she is charitable, and that person is Lindsay’. They conclude that the semantic contribution of a name such (...) as ‘Lindsay’ is the same as the semantic contribution of a variable under an assignment, which these opponents suggest is merely the object assigned to that variable. However, renewed interest in variables suggests that they make a more complicated contribution to the semantic processing of sentences that contain them. In particular, a variable contributes both an assignment-unsaturated and an assignment-saturated semantic value. I use this dual role of the semantics of variables to develop a response to the argument from quantifying in. I take as my point of departure Cumming's () view that an attitude ascription relates the subject of an attitude to the assignment-unsaturated semantic value of an open sentence. I argue that this approach fails. I propose an alternative, according to which the truth of a belief ascription depends on both the assignment-saturated and the assignment-unsaturated semantic value of the open sentence in its that-clause. This approach reverses standard assumptions concerning the relation between quantification and substitution. (shrink)

Kit Fine has reawakened a puzzle about variables with a long history in analytic philosophy, labeling it “the antinomy of the variable”. Fine suggests that the antinomy demands a reconceptualization of the role of variables in mathematics, natural language semantics, and first-order logic. The difficulty arises because: (i) the variables ‘x’ and ‘y’ cannot be synonymous, since they make different contributions when they jointly occur within a sentence, but (ii) there is a strong temptation to say that distinct variables ‘x’ (...) and ‘y’ are synonymous, since sentences differing by the total, proper substitution of ‘x’ for ‘y’ always agree in meaning. We offer a precise interpretation of the challenge posed by (i) and (ii). We then develop some neglected passages of Tarski to show that his semantics for variables has the resources to resolve the antinomy without abandoning standard compositional semantics. (shrink)

Semantics in the Montagovian tradition combines two basic tenets. One tenet is that the semantic value of a sentence is an intension, a function from points of evaluations into truth-values. The other tenet is that the semantic value of a composite expression is the result of applying the function denoted by one component to arguments denoted by the other components. Many philosophers object to intensional semantics on the grounds that intensionally equivalent sentences do not substitute salva veritate into attitude ascriptions. (...) They propose instead that the semantic values of sentences must be structured propositions. In rejecting intensional semantics, philosophers who endorse structured propositions also usually reject functional compositionality, undermining both tenets of the Montagovian programme. I defend a semantic theory that incorporates both structured propositions and functional compositionality. I argue that this semantic theory can preserve many explanatory benefits of Montague semantics. Finally, I show how treating composition functional application can resolve core problems internal to a theory of structured propositions. (shrink)

Few critics of the received view in metaphysics that ontological disputes are generally substantive have stirred as much response as those that have developed Carnapian arguments turning on considerations of language and interpretation. The arguments from deflationists like Thomasson ( 2009, 2014 ) and Neo-Fregeans like Hale and Wright ( 2009 ), focus on features of actual language use, others like those from Hirsch ( 2002, 2009 ) focus on interpretation. In this paper, I offer a novel challenge to the (...) latter sort of argument. I argue that through their use of the principle of charity, they have unacceptable consequences beyond the ontology room: the best accounts of some natural language phenomena—most importantly, presupposition—cannot be maintained. (shrink)

This paper introduces and defends a high-level generalization about the way that presupposition triggers interact with attitude verbs. This generalization tells us a great deal about what an adequa...

We provide a cognitive analysis of how children represent belief using mental files. We explain why children who pass the false belief test are not aware of the intensionality of belief. Fifty-one 3½- to 7-year old children were familiarized with a dual object, e.g., a ball that rattles and is described as a rattle. They observed how a puppet agent witnessed the ball being put into box 1. In the agent’s absence the ball was taken from box 1, the child (...) was reminded of it being a rattle, and emphasising its being a rattle it was put back into box 1. Then the agent returned, the object was hidden in the experimenter’s hands and removed from box 1, described as a ‘‘rattle,” and transferred to box 2. Children who passed false belief had no problem saying where the puppet would look for the ball. However, in a different condition in which the agent was also shown that the ball was a rattle they erroneously said that the agent would look for the ball in box 1, ignoring the agent’s knowledge of the identity of rattle and ball. Their problems cease with their mastery of second-order beliefs. Problems also vanish when the ball is described not as a rattle but as a thing that rattles. We describe how our theory can account for these data as well as all other relevant data in the literature. (shrink)

Hybrid metaethical theories have significant promise; they would have important upshots if they were true. But they also face severe problems. The problems are severe enough to make many philosophers doubt that they could be true. My ambition is to show that the problems are just instances of a highly general problem: a problem about what are sometimes called ‘intensional anaphora'. I'll also show that any adequate explanation of intensional anaphora immediately solves all the problems for the hybrid theorist. We (...) should regard hybrid tools as among the most legitimate tools in our toolkit—at least when we use them properly. (shrink)

Sentences containing pronouns and indefinite noun phrases can be said toexpress open propositions, propositions which display gaps to be filled.This paper addresses the question what is the linguistic content ofthese expressions, what information they can be said to provide to ahearer, and in what sense the information of a speaker can be said tosupport their utterance. We present and motivate first order notions ofcontent, update and support. The three notions are each defined in acompositional fashion and brought together within a (...) single and coherentframework. (shrink)

We argue that formal linguistic theory, properly extended, can provide a unifying framework for diverse phenomena beyond traditional linguistic objects. We display applications to pictorial meanings, visual narratives, music, dance, animal communication, and, more abstractly, to logical and non-logical concepts in the ‘language of thought’ and reasoning. In many of these cases, a careful analysis reveals that classic linguistic notions are pervasive across these domains, such as for instance the constituency (or grouping) core principle of syntax, the use of logical (...) variables (for object tracking), or the variety of inference types investigated in semantics/pragmatics. The aim of this overview is to show how the application of formal linguistic concepts and methodology to non-linguistic objects yields non-trivial insights, thus opening the possibility of a general, precise theory of signs. (An appendix, found in the online supplements to this article, surveys applications of Super Linguistics to animal communication.). (shrink)

Formal semantics is an approach to SEMANTICS1, the study of meaning, with roots in logic, the philosophy of language, and linguistics, and since the 1980’s a core area of linguistic theory. Characteristics of formal semantics to be treated in this article include the following: Formal semanticists treat meaning as mind-independent (though abstract), contrasting with the view of meanings as concepts “in the head” (see I-LANGUAGE AND E-LANGUAGE and MEANING EXTERNALISM AND INTERNALISM); formal semanticists distinguish semantics from knowledge of semantics (Lewis (...) 1975, Cresswell 1978), which has consequences for the notion of semantic COMPETENCE. A central part of the meaning of a sentence on this approach is its TRUTH CONDITIONS, and most although not all formal semantics is model-theoretic, relating linguistic expressions to model-theoretically constructed semantic values cast in terms of truth, REFERENCE, and possible worlds. This sets formal semantics apart from approaches which view semantics as relating a sentence just to a representation on another linguistic “level” (LOGICAL FORM) or a representation in an innate LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT. The formal semanticist could accept such representations as an aspect of semantics but would insist on asking what the model-theoretic semantic interpretation of the given representationlanguage is (Lewis 1970). Formal semantics is centrally concerned with COMPOSITIONALITY at the SYNTAX-SEMANTICS INTERFACE, how the meanings of larger constituents are built up from the meanings of their parts on the basis of their syntactic structure, and with the relation between compositional SENTENCE MEANING and meaning in discourse. (shrink)

Formal semantics and pragmatics as they have developed since the late 1960's have been shaped by fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration among linguists, philosophers, and logicians, among others, and in turn have had noticeable effects on developments in syntax, philosophy of language, computational linguistics, and cognitive science.In this paper I describe the environment in which formal semantics was born and took root, highlighting the differences in ways of thinking about natural language semantics in linguistics and in philosophy and logic. With Montague as (...) a central but not solo player in the story, I reflect on crucial developments in the 1960's and 70's in linguistics and philosophy, and the growth of formal semantics and formal pragmatics from there. I discuss innovations, key players, and leading ideas that shaped the development of formal semantics and its relation to syntax, to pragmatics, and to the philosophy of language in its early years, and some central aspects of its early impact on those fields. (shrink)

A new formalism for predicate logic is introduced, with a non-standard method of binding variables, which allows a compositional formalization of certain anaphoric constructions, including donkey sentences and cross-sentential anaphora. A proof system in natural deduction format is provided, and the formalism is compared with other accounts of this type of anaphora, in particular Dynamic Predicate Logic.

One of the big questions about indefinites is why they can escape scope islands. In the recent approach of Brasoveanu and Farkas :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. (shrink)

Marie Duží, Bjørn Jespersen, and Pavel Materna: Procedural Semantics for Hyperintensional Logic. Foundations and Applications of Transparent Intentional Logic, vol. 17 of series “Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science”, Springer, Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London, New York, 2010; xiii+552 pages, ISBN 978-90-481-8811-6, e-ISBN 978-90-481-8812-3. DOI: 10.1007/978-90-481-8812-3.

How does your information change when you learn that something might be the case, where the modal “might” is epistemic? On the orthodox view, a proposition is added to your information base; on the view defended here, no propositions are added to your information base but some are removed from it. I argue that Stephen Yablo’s recent attempt to define this removal operation as a kind of propositional subtraction fails, offer a definition of my own in terms of the part–whole (...) relations between the truthmakers of the propositions one accepts, and argue that a deontic analogue of this account solves a problem about permission posed long ago by David Lewis. (shrink)

I have two aims for the present paper, one narrow and one broad. The narrow aim is to show that a class of data originally described by Lynsey Wolter empirically undermine the leading treatments of complex demonstratives that have been described in the literature. The broader aim of the paper is to show that Wolter demonstratives, as I will call the constructions I focus on, are a threat not just to existing treatments, but to any possible theory that retains the (...) uncontroversial assumptions that relative clauses always form a constituent with the nouns they modify, and that semantic composition proceeds sequentially and locally, with the inputs to interpretation having the structure syntax tells us they do. (shrink)

Stojnić et al. (2013, 2017) argue that the reference of demonstratives is fixed without any contribution from the extra-linguistic context. On their `prominence/coherence' theory, the reference of a demonstrative expression depends only on its context-independent linguistic meaning. Here, we argue that Stojnić et al.’s striking claims can be maintained in only the thinnest technical sense. Instead of eliminating appeals to the extra-linguistic context, we show how the prominence/coherence theory merely suppresses them. Then we ask why one might be tempted to (...) try and offer such a view. Since we are rather sympathetic to the motivations we find, we close by sketching a more plausible alternative. (shrink)

Standard semantic theories predict that non-deictic readings for complex demonstratives should be much more widely available than they in fact are. If such readings are the result of a lexical ambiguity, as Kaplan (1977) and others suggest, we should expect them to be available wherever a definite description can be used. The same prediction follows from ‘hidden argument’ theories like the ones described by King (2001) and Elbourne (2005). Wolter (2006), however, has shown that complex demonstratives admit non-deictic interpretations only (...) when a precise set of structural constrains are met. In this paper, I argue that Wolter’s results, properly understood, upend the philosophical status quo. They fatally undermine the ambiguity theory and demand a fundamental rethinking of the hidden argument approach. (shrink)

This essay introduces a puzzle about the interaction between quantifiers and epistemic modals. The puzzle motivates the idea that whether an object satisfies an epistemically modalized predicate depends on the mode of presentation of the domain of quantification. I compare two ways of implementing this idea, one using counterpart theory, the other using Aloni's 'conceptual covers' theory, and then provides some evidence in favor of the former.

I contrast two approaches to the interpretation of generics such as ‘ravens are black:’ majority-based views, on which they are about what is the case most of the time, and inquiry-based views, on which they are about a feature we focus on in inquiry. I argue that majority-based views face far more systematic counterexamples than has previously been supposed. They cannot account for generics about kinds with multiple characteristic properties, such as ‘elephants live in Africa and Asia.’ I then go (...) on to sketch an inquiry-based view. (shrink)

This paper discusses free-choice like effects in generics. Just as Jane may drink coffee or tea can be used to convey Jane may drink coffee and Jane may drink tea (she is free to choose ), some generics with disjunctive predicates can be used to convey conjunctions of simpler generics: elephants live in Africa or Asia can be used to convey elephants live in Africa and elephants live in Asia. Investigating these logically slightly more complex generics and especially the free-choice (...) like effects throws light on both the semantics of generics and the interaction between world knowledge and the interpretive options generics offer. This paper presents a package of semantic and pragmatic hypotheses to account for the data, including why the effect is absent in the superficially logically similar elephants live in Africa or give birth to live young. (shrink)

Abstract This paper discusses the semantic theory presented in Robert Brandom’s Making It Explicit . I argue that it is best understood as a special version of dynamic semantics, so that these semantics by themselves offer an interesting theoretical alternative to more standard truth-conditional theories. This reorientation also has implications for more foundational issues. I argue that it gives us the resources for a renewed argument for the normativity of meaning. The paper ends by critically assessing the view in both (...) its development and motivations. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-22 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9768-4 Authors Bernhard Nickel, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

In this paper, I utilise the growing literature on scientific modelling to investigate the nature of formal semantics from the perspective of the philosophy of science. Specifically, I incorporate the inferential framework proposed by Bueno and Colyvan : 345–374, 2011) in the philosophy of applied mathematics to offer an account of how formal semantics explains and models its data. This view produces a picture of formal semantic models as involving an embedded process of inference and representation applying indirectly to linguistic (...) phenomena. The final aim of the paper is directed at proposing a novel account of the syntax–semantics interface while shedding light on empty categories, semantically null forms, underspecified content and compositionality as a whole. (shrink)

This is the introductory essay to a collection commemorating the 100th anniversary of the publication in Mind of Bertrand Russell’s paper ‘On Denoting’.

This paper embeds the core part of Discourse Representation Theory in the classical theory of types plus a few simple axioms that allow the theory to express key facts about variables and assignments on the object level of the logic. It is shown how the embedding can be used to combine core analyses of natural language phenomena in Discourse Representation Theory with analyses that can be obtained in Montague Semantics.

There are two kinds of semantic theories of anaphora. Some, such as Heim’s File Change Semantics, Groenendijk and Stokhof’s Dynamic Predicate Logic, or Muskens’ Compositional DRT (CDRT), seem to require full coindexing of anaphora and their antecedents prior to interpretation. Others, such as Kamp’s Discourse Representation Theory (DRT), do not require this coindexing and seem to have an important advantage here. In this squib I will sketch a procedure that the first group of theories may help themselves to so that (...) they can interleave interpretation and coindexing in DRT’s way. (shrink)

This paper offers an analysis of metalinguistic comparatives such as more dumb than crazy in which they differ from ordinary comparatives in the scale on which they compare: ordinary comparatives use scales lexically determined by particular adjectives, but metalinguistic ones use a generally-available scale of imprecision or ‘pragmatic slack’. To implement this idea, I propose a novel compositional implementation of the Lasersohnian pragmatic-halos account of imprecision—one that represents clusters of similar meanings as Hamblin alternatives. In the theory that results, existential (...) closure over alternatives mediates between alternative-sets and meanings in which imprecision has been resolved. I then articulate a version of this theory in which the alternatives are not related meanings but rather related utterances, departing significantly from Lasersohn’s original conception. Although such a theory of imprecision is more clearly ‘metalinguistic’, the evidence for it from metalinguistic comparatives in English is surprisingly limited. The overall picture that emerges is one in which the grammatical distinction between ordinary and metalinguistic comparatives tracks the independently motivated distinction between vagueness and imprecision. (shrink)

The present paper analyzes how the semantic and pragmatic functions of closed class categories, or grammatical morphemes (i.e., inflections and function words), organize discourse processing. Grammatical morphemes tend to express a small set of conceptual distinctions that organize a wide range of objects and relations, usually expressed by content or open class words (i.e., nouns and verbs), into situations anchored to a discourse context. Therefore, grammatical morphemes and content words cooperate in guiding the construction of a situation model during discourse (...) comprehension by specifying complementary aspects of described situations. The paper reviews and extends analytical and empirical evidence for this grammatical‐conceptual correspondence, and suggests that the correspondence developed in response to the cognitive demands of discourse processing. Thus the distinction between open and closed linguistic categories is interpreted in terms of a fundamental correspondence between conceptual and linguistic structure that helps organize discourse processing. (shrink)

Unbound anaphoric pronouns or ‘E-type pronouns’ have presented notorious problems for semantic theory, leading to the development of dynamic semantics, where the primary function of a sentence is not considered that of expressing a proposition that may act as the object of propositional attitudes, but rather that of changing the current information state. The older, ‘E-type’ account of unbound anaphora leaves the traditional notion of proposition intact and takes the unbound anaphor to be replaced by a full NP whose semantics (...) is assumed to be known (e.g. a definite description). In this paper, I argue that there are serious problems with any version of the E-type account as well as the (original form of the) dynamic account. I will explore a new account based on structured propositions, which can be considered a conservative extension of a traditional proposition-based semantics, but which at the same time incorporates some crucial insights of the dynamic account. (shrink)

Philosophers who accept tropes generally agree that tropes act as the objects of reference of nominalizations of adjectives, such as 'Socrates’ wisdom' or 'the beauty of the landscape'. This paper argues that tropes play a further important role in the semantics of natural language, namely in the semantics of bare demonstratives like 'this' and 'that' in what in linguistics is called identificational sentences.

In this paper, I will argue for a new account of presuppositions which is based on double indexing as well as minimal representational contexts providing antecedent material for anaphoric presuppositions, rather than notions of context defined in terms of the interlocutors’ pragmatic presuppositions or the information accumulated from the preceding discourse. This account applies in particular to new phenomena concerning the presupposition of quantifier domains. But it is also intended to be an account of presuppositions in general. The account differs (...) from the Satisfaction Theory and the Binding Theory of presuppositions in that it can be viewed as a conservative extension of traditional static semantics and in that it does not involve the notion of pragmatic presupposition. (shrink)

Based on the notion of a trope, this paper gives a novel analysis of identificational sentences such as 'this is Mary','this is a beautiful woman', 'this looks like Mary', or 'this is the same lump of clay, but not the same statue as that'.

The generic pronoun 'one' (or its empty counterpart, arbitrary PRO) exhibits a range of properties that show a special connection to the first person, or rather the relevant intentional agent (speaker, addressee, or described agent). The paper argues that generic 'one' involves generic quantification in which the predicate is applied to a given entity ‘as if’ to the relevant agent himself. This is best understood in terms of simulation, a central notion in some recent developments in the philosophy of mind (...) and cognitive science (Simulation Theory). (shrink)

In this paper, I have proposed a compositional semantic analysis of exception NPs from which three core properties of exception constructions could be derived. I have shown that this analysis overcomes various empirical and conceptual shortcomings of prior proposals of the semantics of exception sentences. The analysis was first formulated for simple exception NPs, where the EP-complement was considered a set-denoting term and the EP-associate was a monadic quantifier. It was then generalized in two steps: first, in order to account (...) for quantified EP-complements, and second, in order to account for polyadic quantifiers as the EP-associates. An additional assumption that was made in several places was that EPs may operate at the level of implications. The consequences of this assumption, though, still have to be investigated. (shrink)

This paper deals with the interpretation and distribution of universal Free Choice (FC) items, such as English FC any or Spanish cualquiera. Crosslinguistically, universal FC items can be characterized as follows. First, they have a restricted distribution. Second, they express freedom of choice: the sentence You can take any card conveys the information that the addressee is free to pick whichever card she chooses. Under standard assumptions, the truth conditions of sentences like You can take any card are taken to (...) be captured by formalizations in which a universal quantifier ranging over individuals has wide scope over the possibility modal. The crucial observation that informs the account in this paper is that this type of formalization cannot capture the freedom of choice component. I will argue that in order to derive the right interaction between possibility modals and FC items, we need to add an exclusiveness condition to the standard wide scope paraphrases. The same proposal that guarantees freedom of choice will automatically account for the distribution restrictions of FC items. The formal implementation of this proposal is cast in the Hamblin semantics proposed in Kratzer and Shimoyama (Indeterminate phrases: The view from Japanese, 2002). (shrink)

Presents a set-theoretic version of the analysis of "there be" as predicating instantiation of a property, a property-theoretic version of which was developed in McNally 1992. This paper provides a solution to the criticism that McNally 1992's analysis could not account for sentences in which postverbal nominal contains a monotone decreasing or nonmonotonic determiner.

This paper concerns the formal semantic analysis of imperative sentences. It is argued that such an analysis cannot be deferred to the semantics of propositions, under any of the three commonly adopted strategies: the performative analysis, the sentence radical approach to propositions, and the (nondeclarative) mood-as-operator approach. Whereas the first two are conceptually problematic, the third faces empirical problems: various complex imperatives should be analysed in terms of semantic operators over simple imperatives. One particularly striking case is the Dutch pluperfect (...) imperative. It is argued that this construction should be analysed as a genuine counterfactual imperative. On the constructive side, in the last part of the paper a formal semantic analysis of imperatives is presented, in the framework of Update Semantics. On this analysis, imperatives are sui generis semantic entities, on a par with propositions. The analysis also includes an account of the counterfactual imperatives. (shrink)

The meaning of definite descriptions (like ‘the King of France’, ‘the girl’, etc.) has been a central topic in philosophy and linguistics for the past century. Indefinites (‘Something is on the floor’, ‘A child sat down’, etc.) have been relatively neglected in philosophy, under the Russellian assumption that they can be unproblematically treated as existential quantifiers. However, an important tradition, drawing from Stoic logic, has pointed to patterns which suggest that indefinites cannot be treated simply as existential quantifiers. The standard (...) dynamic semantic treatment of those phenomena, however, has well-known problems with negation and disjunction. -/- In this paper I develop a new approach to (in)definites. On my theory, truth-conditions are classical. But in addition to truth-conditions, meanings comprise a second dimension of what I call bounds. It is at the level of bounds, not truth-conditions, that I locate the characteristically dynamic coordination between indefinites and definites. The resulting system thus has a classical logic. This approach avoids dynamic semantics’ logical problems, and, more generally, yields a new perspective on the relation between truth-conditional and dynamic effects in natural language. (shrink)

I explore the logic of the conditional, using credence judgments to argue against Duality and in favor of Conditional Excluded Middle. I then explore how to give a theory of the conditional which validates the latter and not the former, developing a variant on Kratzer (1981)'s restrictor theory, as well as a proposal which combines Stalnaker (1968)'s theory of the conditional with the theory of epistemic modals I develop in Mandelkern 2019a. I argue that the latter approach fits naturally with (...) a conception of conditionals as referential devices which allow us to talk about particular worlds. (shrink)

Rhetorical Structure Theory has enjoyed continuous attention since its origins in the 1980s. It has been applied, compared to other approaches, and also criticized in a number of areas in discourse analysis, theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics. In this article, we review some of the discussions about the theory itself, especially addressing issues of the reliability of analyses and psychological validity, together with a discussion of the nature of text relations. We also propose areas for further research. A follow-up (...) article will discuss applications of the theory in various fields. (shrink)

When embedding data are used to argue against semantic theory A and in favor of semantic theory B, it is important to ask whether A could make sense of those data. It is possible to ask that question on a case-by-case basis. But suppose we could show that A can make sense of all the embedding data which B can possibly make sense of. This would, on the one hand, undermine arguments in favor of B over A on the basis (...) of embedding data. And, provided that the converse does not hold—that is, that A can make sense of strictly more embedding data than B can—it would also show that there is a precise sense in which B is more constrained than A, yielding a pro tanto simplicity-based consideration in favor of B. In this paper I develop tools which allow us to make comparisons of this kind, which I call comparisons of potential expressive power. I motivate the development of these tools by way of exploration of the recent debate about epistemic modals. Prominent theories which have been developed in response to embedding data turn out to be strictly less expressive than the standard relational theory, a fact which necessitates a reorientation in how to think about the choice between these theories. (shrink)

Two recent and influential papers, van Rooij 2007 and Lassiter 2012, propose solutions to the proviso problem that make central use of related notions of independence—qualitative in the first case, probabilistic in the second. We argue here that, if these solutions are to work, they must incorporate an implicit assumption about presupposition accommodation, namely that accommodation does not interfere with existing qualitative or probabilistic independencies. We show, however, that this assumption is implausible, as updating beliefs with conditional information does not (...) in general preserve independencies. We conclude that the approach taken by van Rooij and Lassiter does not succeed in resolving the proviso problem. (shrink)

Import-Export says that a conditional 'If p, if q, r' is always equivalent to the conditional 'If p and q, r'. I argue that Import-Export does not sit well with a classical approach to conjunction: given some plausible and widely accepted principles about conditionals, Import-Export together with classical conjunction leads to absurd consequences. My main goal is to draw out these surprising connections. In concluding I argue that the right response is to reject Import-Export and adopt instead a limited version (...) which better fits natural language data; accounts for all the intuitions that motivate Import-Export in the first place; and fits better with a classical conjunction. (shrink)

Compare the following conditionals: 'If John is not in Paris, he is in France' versus 'If John is in France, he is not in Paris.' The second sounds entirely natural, whereas the first sounds quite strange. This contrast is puzzling, because these two conditionals have the same structure at a certain level of logical abstraction, namely 'If ¬p+, then p.' -/- We argue that existing theories of informational oddness do not distinguish between these conditionals. We do not have an account (...) of the divergence in judgments about the two, but we think this is a fascinating puzzle which we pose here in the hope others will be able to solve it. (shrink)