supple supplements: appositives in modal contextsfolk.uio.no/kjelljs/sub15kjs.pdf · 2010-08-27 ·...

10.08.2010

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Kjell Johan Sæbø, University of Oslo slide 1

Appositives in modal contexts

Supple supplements:


– Appositions like , a woman, , as in that she,a woman, talks to them about mathematics :

are they building blocks of meaning?

– “no,” say Potts and Harris (2009);

“yes,” says Schlenker (2010a and 2010b).



non-speaker orientation (perspectival shift):Pragmatics or Semantics?

(1) Sheila believes that Chuck, a psychopath, is fit to

watch the kids. (s.o.)

(2) Sheila believes that Chuck, a sweetheart if ever

there was one, is fit to watch the kids. (non-s.o.)

(1) from Potts (2005), (2) from Amaral et al. (2007).

Harris-Potts (2009): a non-speaker-oriented appositive describes – at the level of expressive content – a commitment of, typically, an attitude holder

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non-speaker orientation:

Two strategies, configurational and contextual:

(S) The source of non-speaker-oriented readings ... is semantic binding.

(P) The source of non-speaker-oriented readings ... is the interaction of a variety of pragmatic factors.

(Harris and Potts 2009: 528)

Let us distinguish a semantic and a pragmatic strategy.



Schlenker (2010a, 2010b):

Defends the semantic strategy

– Argues that NRRs (nonrestrictive relative clauses) can be interpreted in the scope of “other operators”

and “semantically interact with them”

– Data: Subjonctif and Sequence of Tense

– NRRs convey a mix of assertion and presupposition: they are “easy to accommodate” (translucency)

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My plan:

Defend the semantic strategy by

– countering the Harris-Potts counterarguments

– supplying novel data and novel arguments: Appositives in downward entailing modal contexts; de dicto readings predominate, and predictably so

– show how the interpretive effects of appositives can be captured through definedness conditions on functions from worlds, i.a., individual concepts



Countering the Harris-Potts counterarguments I

– They claim: non-speaker-oriented readings are available when appositives are in “matrix clauses”

(3) I am increasingly worried about my roommate. She seems to be growing paranoid.

a. The other day, she told me that we need to watch out for the mailman, a possible government spy.

b. The other day, she refused to talk with the mailman, a possible government spy.

Schlenker (2010b): refuse might well be an attitude verb

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Countering the Harris-Potts counterarguments I

– Yes, refuse creates an intensional context:

(4) Goddess Parvati, wife of God Shiva, lonely during one of her husband’s long absences, molds a son from mud. Ganesh grows up, and one day, Parvati tells him to guard the front door and not let anybody in while she bathes.

a. Shiva returns home. Ganesh refuses to let his father in, and Shiva beheads him.

b. Shiva returns home. Ganesh refuses to let the intruder in, and Shiva beheads him.

(4a) is true on de re but false on de dicto, (4b) conversely



Countering the Harri-Potts counterarguments II

– A trickier case:

(5) My brother Sid hates school. He puts off his homework, a complete waste of time, to the last minute.

– Two ways to salvage the semantic strategy:

1 The verb put off is an attitude verb in disguise.

2 The appositive is a piece of quotation in disguise (as suggested more generally by Anand 2007).

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Way 1 predicts that a non-speaker-orientation reading is unavailable if the verb cannot be an attitude verb:

(5) b. (?) My brother Sid hates school. His homework, a complete waste of time, earns him bad grades.

Way 1 also predicts that there can be a de re/de dicto ambiguity in a put off context – and there can (?):

(6) The Senate has postponed the most important bill ever presented to it.




Way 2 appeals to a mechanism of concealed quotation which can affect descriptions generally:

(7) The ship that could not sink sank on her maiden voyage in April 1912.

Geurts and Maier (2005): Pieces of quote create local dicendi contexts with contextually anchored sources(for (7), the White Star Line; for (5)/(8), my brother Sid)

(8) My brother Sid hates school. He puts off his homework, “a complete waste of time”, to the last minute.

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Concealed Quotation cont’d: a spoken parallel

Huey alludes to a previous utterance of a silly, useless toy train by US expressing the content of a toy train



Back to plan: Defend semantic strategy by supplying novel data and novel arguments

Recall (1) and (2) – here, (9a) and (9b) – and the shift in perspective from speaker- to non-speaker-orientation:

(9) a. Sheila believes that Chuck, a psychopath, is fit to watch the kids.

b. Sheila believes that Chuck, a sweetheart if ever there was one, is fit to watch the kids.

Harris and Potts do a corpus study of appositives under attitudes and find a bias for speaker-oriented readings

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But: all their attitudes are upward entailing (if at all monotone: believe, say, claim; ask, etc.)

However, once we turn to downward entailing attitudes like surprised, the picture is reversed: there is a bias for non-speaker-oriented readings, as in (10a).

(10) a. Mary is surprised that John, a Laestadian, wears a necktie.

Here the appositive appears to interact with the attitude and to constrain its argument proposition (intuition: worlds where John is not a L. are not to be counted)



Appositives in Surprise Contexts I

In fact, there is not a substantive difference between (10a) and (10b), with a conjunct instead.


b. Mary is surprised that John is a Laestadian and wears a necktie.

True, there is a distinction between background and foreground, or focus; between old and recent belief

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Appositives in Surprise Contexts I

According to Harris and Potts (2009), (10a) means the same as (10c) in the dimension of descriptive content and implicates (10d) in the expressive dimension


c. Mary is surprised that John wears a necktie.

d. Mary believes that John is a Laestadian.

But does (10a) entail (10c)? Intuitively, no more, no less than does (10b) ...



Surprise Semantics I

According to standard analyses of surprise predicates, (10b) should not entail (10c).

(10) b. Mary is surprised that John is a Laestadian and wears a necktie.

c. Mary is surprised that John wears a necktie.

Asher (1987): negative factives like surprised satisfy weakened downward entailment

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However, the facts are not so clear: Surprise predicates can seem not to entail downward, even to entail upward

(11) a. John is surprised that Mary won a medal.

b. John is surprised that Mary won a bronze medal.

(12) a. John is surprised that she is a conservationist and a hunter.

b. John is surprised that she is a hunter.

Anyway, analysts (von Fintel 1999, Sharvit 2002, ... Rooij 2006) concur in predicting weak downward entailment




Because: The basic truth condition is that the complement proposition is a subset of something (unexpectation worlds), or has an empty intersection with something (expectation worlds), cf. Sharvit 2002:

And that is easier the stronger the proposition P(w) is.

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Surprise Semantics II

To explain the apparent failure to entail downward, it is customary to appeal to a contextual parameter (which it is hard to keep constant from premiss to test conclusion)

Kadmon and Landman (1993: 381):

To be surprised that A is always relative to a certain perspective on A, a perspective that determines ... in virtue of what it is surprising. The perspective is a contextually determined parameter ... enters into the semantics of surprised and affects the truth conditions ...

Perspectives can be at least partly specified by explicit linguistic text ...



Surprise Semantics: Contextual Perspectives

Specifying perspectives: relevant, in-virtue-of properties implied – and spelt out

(13) – I can’t get over that she1 married HIM2.

– A fossil of 56, you mean?

– No, a UN Messenger of Peace.

(14) – I can’t believe she’s divorcing HIM.

– Yeah, such a rich man.

– No, such a NICE man!

1 Catherine Zeta-Jones 2 Michael Douglas

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Surprise Semantics: Contextual Perspectives

Specifying perspectives: relevant properties implied II

(thanks to Regine Eckardt for the idea)



Surprise Semantics: Formalisation

Kai von Fintel (1999) models the contextual perspective in terms of two parameters

Simplifying and adjusting:

are those relevant worlds compatible with a’s beliefs that a most expects

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Surprise Semantics: and appositives

It is natural to think of fa(w) as the intersection of a set of propositions, e.g., the proposition that John is a fossil of 56, such a rich man, or a Laestadian, or that Mary is a conservationist.

Or that the topic time day is Good Friday:

(15) Bjarne was in Hamburg on Good Friday in 1984 and was outraged that the brothels were open.

And if you don’t trust the context, you may want to use



Appositives in Surprise Contexts II

... appositives. Idea:

They provide a means to ensure that a thing referred to in a modal context retains its relevant properties across the modal space

(16) Maria explains that the students are surprised that she, a woman, talks to them about natural sciences.

(17) She became accustomed to the double-takes from residents and male firefighters who were surprised that she, a female, could head the station.

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Strong evidence that they help build propositions: Surprise contexts are not closed when we weaken them

(18) In John 4 Jesus spoke with a Samaritan woman and asked for a drink.

She had two things against her: she was a woman, and a Samaritan.

a. She was surprised that he, a Jewish man, spoke to her, a woman of Samaria.

b. She was surprised that he, a Jew, spoke to her, a Samaritan.

c. She was surprised that he, a man, spoke to her, a woman.




If appositives do not contribute to the nonmon context, the missing inferences are mysterious: (18a–c) should be equivalent truth-conditionally, which they are not

(Caveat – appeal to discourse relations: it could be argued that experiencer-oriented appositives in attitude contexts are commonly intended and interpreted as explanations; if the complex appositives in (18a) provide full explanations, the simple ones in (18b and c) cannot be expected to do so too. After all, the semantics of surprised refers to contextually determined relevant beliefs, and the appositives could be taken to supply those by general pragmatic principles)

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A note on old and new information:

The second appositive in (18a) represents old information –both regarding the global common ground and regarding the belief state of the experiencer:

(18) In John 4 Jesus spoke with a Samaritan woman and asked for a drink.

She had two things against her: she was a woman, and a Samaritan.

a. She was surprised that he, a Jewish man, spoke to her, a woman of Samaria.

We know that she knew that she was a woman of Samaria.




Why bias for non-speaker-orientation in mon contexts?

Heim (to appear):

For all we can tell, every determiner may be construed with a covert restrictor in addition to its overt one and thus apply to an effectively narrowed set of contextually relevant or salient entities. We just don’t see this as clearly with some determiners as with others. the, along with every and no, is not upward monotone, so covert restrictors weaken the presupposition or assertion, giving an otherwise ... false claim a chance to be felicitous and true.

The same would apply to appositives in modal contexts.

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Why bias for non-speaker-orientation in mon contexts?

– Because here the appositives serve to weaken the claim.

If that is so, we expect negated mon modal predicates to

show a propensity for non-speaker-orientation as well, and:

(19) Mary could not believe that she, a virgin, would have a child.

I conclude that appositives can help build propositions. – But how?



Appositives as traditional presuppositions

– By adding definedness conditions on concepts (functions from worlds: individual concepts, propositions)

– As Beaver and Krahmer (2001) do, we must go intensional

Let us build the meaning of (20):

(20) surprised that Mary, a virgin, is pregnant.

Assume an abstract appositive functor (like “, ,”), :

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It takes a “property” (function from individuals to propositions)

and gives an operation on partial individual concepts

First, composed with “(a) virgin” it gives

Then, composed with “Mary” this gives




Partial individual concepts like this are lifted to functions from

“properties” to propositions by the abstract filter function

This DP meaning can be used from a post-QR position,

applying to a “property” like to give

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the partial proposition that Mary, a virgin, is pregnant:

This can serve as the first argument of an attitude like

Ø




– resulting in:

This is to be surprised that Mary, a virgin, is pregnant.

That she is a virgin is a definedness condition but it acts like a

conjunct in the surprise context. Note: this is de dicto

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– and speaker-oriented readings can be treated as

de re readings using an abstract actualiser:

– I use a designated variable for the actual world, v.

@ is needed for de re readings of descriptions in general, but in particular for cases like

(21) Mary is surprised that John, a notorious casanova, betrays her.




The partial proposition that John, a notorious casanova,

betrays Mary is

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Since the actualiser @ can apply below an appositive,

it is predicted that we can have de re definite descriptions

with de dicto appositives – and this seems to be borne out:

(22) Thoas wants Iphigenia to sacrifice her own brother,

a stranger who has tried to steal the statue of Artemis.

Thoas is not yet aware that Orestes is Iphigenia’s brother.



Summing up I

I have argued that non-speaker-oriented interpretation is a semantic phenomenon (the “semantic strategy”)

– The Harris-Potts (2009) finding that such readings are

available in nonmodal contexts was argued to be faulty;

cf. Hintikka (1973: 214):

Surprisingly often modal notions are tacitly being

considered in apparently nonmodal contexts.

– The Harris-Potts (2009) finding that such readings are rare

was argued to be based on a biased sample of attitudes

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Summing up II

... such readings are not rare in mon modal contexts

– Prime piece of evidence that appositives can help build

propositions: weakening them fails to preserve truth

(the Samaritan woman – Jewish man case)

– A theory allowing appositives to help build propositions:

they are definedness conditions on partial concepts,

ultimately on partial propositions

– In mon modal contexts, read de dicto, they act as

reminders of relevant properties



Outlook

Other nonrestrictive adjuncts:

(23) The pharmacist was surprised that this old woman was

interested in condoms.

(24) My friends are surprised that shy and sweet me is

learning self defense.

(25) He is not so rash or so mad as to desire that she

who is so good love him who is so little worthy.

(26) She was startled to see the devoted detective Mickey

Mouse shake hands with his ruthless rival Black Pete.

supple supplements: appositives in modal contextsfolk.uio.no/kjelljs/sub15kjs.pdf · 2010-08-27 ·...

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