Mathieu Paillé

I’m a postdoctoral researcher in linguistics at the University of Calgary. I completed my PhD in 2022 as a Vanier scholar at McGill University. This fall, I will be starting a postdoctoral research position at ZAS.

In my dissertation, I show that the meaning of predicates as intuited in sentences is stronger than their lexical-conceptual meaning, and that the way this strengthening occurs has some special properties. In discussing the semantics of predication and strengthening, I also touch on the topics of additive particles, conjunction, and homogeneity.

In my spare time I enjoy studying languages, social movement organising, and time outdoors. I’m a native French speaker from a minority community in Winnipeg.

Get in touch! mathieu.paille (at) mail.mcgill.ca.

selected publications

LingPhil

An interaction between logical vocabulary and predicate meanings

Paillé, Mathieu

Linguistics and Philosophy 2025

Abs HTML PDF

Predicates within many conceptual classes are intuited as mutually exclusive. Based on these predicates’ interaction with logical vocabulary like and or also, however, this paper argues that they are in fact underlyingly consistent; the strong intuited meanings arise from semantic exhaustification. In addition to demonstrating that exhaustification is more widespread than previously believed, this paper also shows that this particular exhaustification effect behaves in a hitherto undescribed manner. Indeed, a predicate’s exhaustification is always computed locally at the level of the predicate, rather than the clause or sentence containing it.
JoS

Co-predications and the quantificational force of summative predicates

Paillé, Mathieu

Journal of Semantics 2024

Abs HTML PDF

In the literature on homogeneity, summative predicates have been described as quantifying universally over their argument’s parts in positive sentences, while being negated existentials in negative sentences. In this article, I provide a fuller picture of these predicates’ quantificational force in positive sentences through various ’co-predications’—sentences in which two summative predicates are predicated of the same individual. In some co-predications, summative predicates are universal; in others, they are weaker, while remaining stronger than existential. In light of this new empirical paradigm, I suggest that summative predicates are lexically existential, but are exhaustified so as to exclude other same-class predicates. In addition to making this proposal, I also show that no other theory of homogeneity can capture the co-predicational paradigm.