Non-Monotonic NPI-Licensing, Definite Descriptions, and Grammaticalized Implicatures

Modeling generalized implicatures using non-monotonic logics

This paper reports on an approach tomodel generalized implicatures using nonmonotonic logics. The approach, called compositional, is based on the idea of compositional semantics, where the implicatures carried by a sentence are constructed from the implicatures carried by its constituents, but it also includes some aspects nonmonotonic logics in order to model the defeasibility of generalized i...

NPI licensing and head movement

NPI Licensing in Temporal Clauses

This paper offers a systematic approach to NPI licensing in temporal clauses based on a uniform analysis of temporal connectives as relations between times and relying on appropriate type shifting for compositional buildup. The quantificational force commonly associated with temporal connectives is attributed to the operators earliest and max operating on the temporal clause and effecting the n...

NPI Licensing, Strawson Entailment, and Context Dependency

The Fauconnier-Ladusaw analysis of negative polarity licensing (that NPIs are licensed in the scope of downward entailing operators) continues to be the benchmark theory of negative polarity. In this paper, I consider some of the moves that are needed to maintain its basic intuition in some recalcitrant arenas: negative polarity licensing by only, adversatives, superlatives, and conditionals. W...

rEfErEntial DEscriptions anD conVErsational iMplicaturEs

The standard Gricean defense of russell in the face of referential uses of descriptions has been to claim that these uses are conversational implicatures. My argument in “The case for referential Descriptions” focused on showing that these uses are not particularized implicatures. I now adapt and develop this argument to show that they are not generalized implicatures nor otherwise pragmatic. I...