東海・関西意味論研究会（7月14日）のお知らせ
Kenta Mizutani
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第56回 東海・関西意味論研究会
2024年7月14日 (日) 13時30分 (13:30 ~ onwards, 14 July 2024)
名古屋学院大学白鳥学舎 曙館 607 (Nagoya Gakuin University, Shiratori Campas, Akebonokan room 607)/Zoom
https://www.ngu.jp/english/location-access/access/ (map) 地図
研究発表 (Lecture)：13:30~15:10
Takanobu Nakamura (University of Amsterdam)
Resolving Polar Questions in Contexts
This talk submits two claims: (i) the so-called evidential bias of Japanese polar questions with the particle no (Sudo 2013, Rieser 2017) is not hard-wired to the lexical semantics of no, and (ii) one may reconcile the classical bipolar view and the recent monopolar view (Roberts 2012, Biezma and Rawlins 2012, Krifka 2021, a.o.) to polar questions by considering the context-dependency of polar questions. Starting with the first point, I show that the evidential bias is not observed in (a) disjunctive questions of the form p-no or q-no? and p-no? or not p-no?, (b) content questions, and (c) simplex polar questions of the form p-no? that are uttered when p or not p remains as an unresolved issue (Kamali and Nakamura 2024). I claim that these are puzzling if the evidential bias is directly written in the semantics of no. One way to derive this distribution is to say that no-questions are sometimes bipolar and sometimes monopolar, and inferences of evidence are triggered by virgue of monopolarity (Kamali to appear, and cf. Goodhue 2022, Rudin 2022). Then, the question is how one may predict when it is monopolar and when it is not. I suggest that p? has a bipolar denotation as default (possibly across languages, but see Matthewson 2024), and its interaction with Question under Discussion (QUD) sometimes make not p non-congruent: given a QUD={p, q, r, ...} and p? = {p, not p}, p may resolve both questions but not p leaves the QUD unresolved. This aproach takes a polar question to be bipolar on its own, but monopolar when related with a (non-bipolar) QUD by taking the question meaning as resolution conditions (Ciardelli, Groenedijk and Roelofsen 2017, a.o.). Then, I argue that p-no presupposes an issue Q such that p is a subset of Q (sub-questionhood), instead of raising a new issue. This makes QUD-anchoring obligatory for no-p, deriving its monopolar status relative to context. I briefly compare this approach with a commitment-based approach, e.g., Farkas and Bruce 2011, Krifka 2015, Rudin 2022, a.o. I discuss embedded questions with no and argue that addition of no to embedded questions still subtly changes their resultant interpretations in a similar way in which no affects the interpretations of root questions. If this is on the right track, it is hard to deal with the contribution of no at the level of speech act or (global) discourse update unless one stipulates that contributions at these levels are also expected to embedded clauses, spoiling explanations for the root phennomena.
研究発表 (Lecture)：15:20~onwards
Toshiyuki Ogihara (University of Washington)
Before and pragmatic presuppositions
In this presentation, I shall argue for the view that Anscombe’s (1964) extensional account of A before B (where A and B are tensed clauses) is sufficient if it is supplemented by a pragmatic presupposition that involves a modal thought. As a preliminary step, I shall show briefly why Beaver and Condoravdi’s (2003) modal account is untenable by presenting examples involving time-sensitive expressions that refer to a time before the matrix predication time (Ogihara and Steinert-Threlkeld 2024). An extensional alternative to B&C’s account based on Anscombe (1964) and Landman (1990) will be discussed and defended. I shall show that the common ground must be such that either A or B could occur (or could have occurred) first and that the actual outcome of this question is of interest to the participants of the conversation.