Additive Presuppositions Are Derived Through Activating Focus Alternatives
نویسنده
چکیده
The additive presupposition of particles like too/even is uncontested, but usually stipulated. This paper proposes to derive it based on two properties. (i) too/even is cross-linguistically focus-sensitive, and (ii) in many languages, too/even builds negative polarity items and freechoice items as well, often in concert with other particles. (i) is the source of its existential presupposition, and (ii) offers clues regarding how additivity comes about. (i)-(ii) together demand a sparse semantics for too/even, one that can work with different kinds of alternatives (focus, subdomain, scalar) and invoke suitably different further operators.
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