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Hoping: Predicates that Hate Questions

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Question-orientedness and the Semantics of Clausal Complementation

Part of the book series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy ((SLAP,volume 106))

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Abstract

In Chap. 1, I discussed the challenges ‘picky’ predicates—those predicates that are compatible only with a certain clause type—pose for the semantics of clause-embedding predicates. It is important to recall that there are in fact two classes of picky predicates—rogative predicates and anti-rogative predicates—and that each of these two classes poses distinct challenges for the proposition-oriented theory and the question-oriented theory of clause-embedding predicates.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Qing (2021) offers a similar intuition, noting that think is interchangeable with consider in the examples in (7).

  2. 2.

    Qing (2021) argues that this mechanism of alternative percolation is marked. For example, it requires an additional type-shifting that allows believe to combine point-wise with each alternative in the complement, rather than the set of alternatives as a whole. Qing suggests that this is the reason why the examples are rather marked.

  3. 3.

    I say that a clause-embedding predicate V  is veridical if \({\ulcorner \mbox{x}}\) Vs that \({\mbox{p}\urcorner }\) entails p. Factivity is a special case of veridicality. An embedding predicate V  is factive if \({\ulcorner \mbox{x }}\) Vs that \({\mbox{p}\urcorner }\) presupposes p.

  4. 4.

    Some of these cases sound better with a preposition like about, but we should be careful as about itself might make an interrogative complement available. This issue will be taken up in Chap. 7.

  5. 5.

    By ‘constituent interrogative complements’, we refer to the interrogative complements except for whether/if-complements.

  6. 6.

    For the sake of exposition, it is assumed that focus association with preferential predicates is conventional (in the sense of Beaver and Clark 2008), but nothing crucial hinges on this. See Romero (2015) for discussion.

  7. 7.

    The formulation in (33) uses a measure function Pref that maps individual-proposition pairs to degrees rather than to relations between degrees and individuals/propositions as done in Romero (2015). This is only for presentational reasons (the former formulation results in shorter formulae); nothing crucial hinges on this choice.

  8. 8.

    In (35), to avoid the ‘binding problem’ concerning the existential quantifications in the presupposition and the assertion, the content of the presupposition is repeated in the scope of the existential quantification in the assertion. See Spector and Egré (2015) for a similar solution to the binding problem in the domain of question embedding.

  9. 9.

    In Uegaki and Sudo (2019), this entry is simplified as follows, with existential quantification over propositions in the question denotation.

    1. (i)

      = \(\lambda Q_{{\langle {st,t}\rangle }}\lambda x\colon \, \underline {\exists p\!\in \!Q \left [ \begin {array}{l} p(w) \wedge \\ \mathsf {B}_w(x,p) \wedge \\ p\in C \end {array} \right ]}.\ \exists p''\!\in \!Q\left [ \begin {array}{l} p''(w) \wedge \\ \mathsf {B}_w(x,p'') \wedge \\ p'' \in C\wedge \\ \mathsf {Pref}_w(x,p'')>\theta (C) \end {array} \right ]\)

    Note that the entry in (35) simply replaces the occurrences of p and p″ in (i) with \({\mathsf {AnsD}} _{w'}(Q)\) and \({\mathsf {AnsD}} _{w''}(Q)\) with appropriate existential binding of the world variables. I choose the formulation in (35) to make it compatible with my overall analysis of question embedding presented in this book, including the background assumptions regarding exhaustivity and existential/uniqueness presupposition given in Chap. 2.

  10. 10.

    As pointed out by Henriëtte de Swart (p.c.), this equivalence might not hold when number morphology is involved. Concretely, while ranges over singular individuals, its focus value might include plural individuals, in which case the ordinary semantic value will be a subset of the focus semantic value. As far as we can see, however, there is no empirical reason to assume that contains plural individuals. In Uegaki and Sudo (2019), this problem is addressed by reformulating the analysis in terms of selective focus binding in Beck (2006).

  11. 11.

    More precisely, Romero’s (2015) analysis enables an account of the incompatibility of preferentials with alternative-question whether-complements. To account for their incompatibility with polar-question whether-complements, Romero has to make additional assumptions, e.g. that polar questions involve an elliptical or not and thus are structurally equivalent to alternative questions.

  12. 12.

    It is not straightforward to give a parallel empirical argument for threshold significance with anti-rogative predicates like hope. Indeed, the following sentence sounds infelicitous given the context.

    1. (i)

      (Context: there is no student Kim wants to win the race.)#Kim doesn’t hope that ALICE will win.

    However, this might be due to focus. That is, focus induces the presupposition that some alternative is true, which projects through negation (e.g., Tonhauser et al., 2013).

    Relatedly, note that our analysis is consistent with the fact that (i) is felicitous with a different focus structure, for example, a broad focus on the entire complement clause. This is so because a different focus structure would induce a different set of alternatives, and thus it is possible for threshold significance to be met with respect to that set of alternatives while the situation in (i) holds. For example, threshold significance with respect to the broad focus is satisfied if Kim prefers Alice not to win, which is compatible with the situation given.

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  1. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Wataru Uegaki

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  1. Wataru Uegaki
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Uegaki, W. (2022). Hoping: Predicates that Hate Questions. In: Question-orientedness and the Semantics of Clausal Complementation. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 106. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15940-4_6

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