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Modularity and intuitions in formal semantics: the case of polarity items

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Chemla, Emmanuel Homer, Vincent Rothschild, Daniel
Copyright Year	2012
Abstract	Linguists often sharply distinguish the different modules that support linguistics competence, e.g., syntax, semantics, pragmatics. However, recent work has identified phenomena in syntax (polarity sensitivity) and pragmatics (implicatures), which seem to rely on semantic properties (monotonicity). We propose to investigate these phenomena and their connections as a window into the modularity of our linguistic knowledge. We conducted a series of experiments to gather the relevant syntactic, semantic and pragmatic judgments within a single paradigm. The comparison between these quantitative data leads us to four main results. (i) Our results support a departure from one element of the classical Gricean approach, thus helping to clarify and settle an empirical debate. This first outcome also confirms the soundness of the methodology, as the results align with standard contemporary accounts of scalar implicature (SI). (ii) We confirm that the formal semantic notion of monotonicity underlies negative polarity item (NPI) syntactic acceptability, but (iii) our results indicate that the notion needed is perceived monotonicity. We see results (ii) and (iii) as the main contribution of this study: (ii) provides an empirical interpretation and confirmation of one of the insights of the model-theoretic approach to semantics, while (iii) calls for an incremental, cognitive implementation of the current generalizations. (iv) Finally, our results do not indicate that the relationship between NPI acceptability and monotonicity is mediated by pragmatic features related to SIs: this tells against elegant attempts to unify polarity sensitivity and SIs (pioneered by Krifka and Chierchia). These results illustrate a new methodology for integrating theoretically rigorous work in formal semantics with an experimentally-grounded cognitively-oriented view of linguistic competence.
Starting Page	537
Ending Page	570
Page Count	34
File Format	PDF
ISSN	01650157
Journal	Linguistics and Philosophy
Volume Number	34
Issue Number	6
e-ISSN	15730549
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2012-04-20
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Modularity Polarity Scalar implicatures Monotonicity Intuitions Experiment Syntax Philosophy of Language Semantics
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Philosophy Linguistics and Language

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