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A Cross-Linguistic Study of the Non-at-issueness of Exhaustive Inferences

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Experimental Perspectives on Presuppositions

Part of the book series: Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics ((SITP,volume 45))

Abstract

Several constructions have been noted to associate with an exhaustive inference, notably the English it-cleft, the French c’est-cleft, the preverbal focus in Hungarian and the German es-cleft. This inference has long been recognized to differ from exhaustiveness associated with exclusives like English only. While previous literature has attempted to capture this difference by debating whether the exhaustiveness of clefts is semantic or a pragmatic phenomenon, recent studies such as (Velleman et al. 2012, Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistics Theory (SALT) 22, pages 441–460) supplement the debate by proposing that the notion of at-issueness is the culprit of those differences. In light of this notion, this paper reconsiders the results from previous experimental data on Hungarian and German (Onea and Beaver 2011, Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 19, pages 342–359; Xue and Onea 2011, Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2011 Workshop on Projective Meaning, Ljubljana, Slovenia) and presents new data on English and French, showing that the “Yes, but” test used in these four languages to diagnose the source of the exhaustive inference (semantics vs. pragmatics), in fact diagnoses its status (at-issue vs. non-at-issue). We conclude that the exhaustiveness associated with clefts and cleft-like constructions is not at-issue, or in other words, exhaustiveness it is not the main point of the utterance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Hungarian pre-verbal focus is generally translated as a cleft as observed in Kiss (1998). Eg.

    • (i) MIHÁLY győzte le Jánost.

    • Michael defeated PRT Jackson

    • ‘It is Michael who defeated Jackson’.

  2. 2.

    Technically, Velleman et al. (2012) propose a very similar analysis essentially involving the same presupposition. The conceptual gist of their argument and some predictions, however, are different.

  3. 3.

    Büring and Kriz (2013) argue that this is no counter-example against their analysis, since the attitude verb realise will only allow the exhaustiveness presupposition of clefts to project, not interfering with the attitude verb.

  4. 4.

    Horn calls this a conventional implicature, to be precise.

  5. 5.

    This argument does not seem to hold for Hungarian focus, however, since Hungarian focus seems to be a fairly economical, unmarked, standard construction.

  6. 6.

    A similar conclusion is reached by Drenhaus et al. (2011) using an ERP experiment we do not discuss here in detail.

  7. 7.

    See Onea (2013) for one framework in which these objections are addressed.

  8. 8.

    We should mention, though, that this interpretation of the test is not entirely uncontroversial. In particular, Horn (1981) argues that there are pragmatic implicatures which are nevertheless uncancellable.

  9. 9.

    Some researchers have argued that there are types of pragmatic inference other than implicatures. In general, these researchers have maintained that all pragmatic inferences are cancellable: see for instance Carston (1988) and Recanati (1989).

  10. 10.

    http://www.webexp.info/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of French and Italian & FLARE, University of Iowa, 111 Phillips Hall, 52242, Iowa City, IA, USA

    Emilie Destruel

  2. Department of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin, CLA 4.304, Mailcode B5100, 78712, Austin, TX, USA

    Daniel Velleman & David Beaver

  3. Courant Research Centre “Text structures”, University of Góttingen, Nikolausberger Weg 23, D-37073, Góttingen, Germany

    Edgar Onea & Jingyang Xue

  4. Department of Linguistics, NewYork University, 10 Washington Place, 10003, NewYork, NY, USA

    Dylan Bumford

Authors
  1. Emilie Destruel
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  2. Daniel Velleman
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  3. Edgar Onea
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  4. Dylan Bumford
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  5. Jingyang Xue
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  6. David Beaver
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Correspondence to Emilie Destruel .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

    Florian Schwarz

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Destruel, E., Velleman, D., Onea, E., Bumford, D., Xue, J., Beaver, D. (2015). A Cross-Linguistic Study of the Non-at-issueness of Exhaustive Inferences. In: Schwarz, F. (eds) Experimental Perspectives on Presuppositions. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, vol 45. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07980-6_6

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