Semantics 4/Seminar in Semantics on Thursday, January 23, 8:35-9:55 in R. 117, will feature a special presentation by Mathieu Paillé (McGill PhD 2022, currently a postdoc at the University of Calgary). Detais below. All are welcome to attend!
Seminar on additive particles
Abstract: One of the main concerns in the literature on additive particles (too, also) is why they are sometimes obligatory. This seminar will start with evidence that they are obligatory when they serve to avoid unwanted implicatures; we will see that the competing theory, based in Heim’s (1991) principle of Maximize Presupposition, predicts additives to be obligatory much more often than they are. Then, we will see evidence that additives manage to avoid unwanted implicatures not by removing the implicatures entirely, but by weakening them. The seminar will conclude with a new empirical puzzle for the ’unwanted implicatures’ theory.
Recommended background readings (available here):
Paillé, M. (2023) Optionally co-occurring additive expressions as a challenge for the Maximize Presupposition account of obligatory additives. Proceedings of NELS 53
Paillé, M. (2022) On additives’ interaction with exhaustivity: the view from negative continuations. In Proceedings of NELS 52