to appear

1. WCCFL

   Truth-value gaps with integrative predicates

   Paillé, Mathieu

   In Proceedings of WCCFL 41 to appear

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   What kind of generalizations can be made about the meaning of predicates? This paper compares two classes of predicates: summative predicates, which involve part-quantification, and integrative predicates, which do not. I start by sketching out a unified analysis of non-lexical aspects of their meaning, as motivated by the observation that all of these predicates are intuited as strong or weak in the same environments. However, summative predicates also have some formal properties that integrative predicates have not been described as having: they give rise to truth-value gaps and they can be ‘non-maximal,’ i.e. weak due to discourse factors. Since both of these properties arise post-lexically, a complete unification of the post-lexical meaning of summative and integrative predicates predicts that integrative predicates should display those properties too. I show that they do in fact display these properties, making a strong case for summative and integrative predicates having the same post-lexical semantic-pragmatic profile.

2024

1. UQAM 50

   Généraliser l’unicité thématique : une alternative à base d’exhaustivité [Generalizing thematic uniqueness: an alternative based in exhaustivity]

   Paillé, Mathieu

   In Actes du colloque 50 ans de linguistique à l’UQAM 2024

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   Il est souvent suggéré qu’un événement ne peut pas avoir plus d’un participant portant le même rôle thématique. Ce phénomène d’unicité thématique est normalement stipulé en tant que condition sur les rôles thématiques (par ex. Chomsky 1981, Carlson 1998). Par contre, le présent article démontre que le phénomène est plus général, motivant une analyse tout autant générale. Lorsque l’on s’éloigne du domaine des arguments pour observer les adjoints, un parallèle s’établit entre le comportement des PP (où la tête assigne un rôle thématique à son complément) et celui de certaines classes de prédicats, en particulier les adjectifs, qui ne reçoivent pas de rôle thématique. Cela suggère un nouveau desideratum pour la sémantique, à savoir une façon de capter le comportement des expressions thématiques et adjectivales d’un seul coup. Je propose que le comportement des deux est la conséquence d’un processus sous-jacent d’exhaustivité (Chierchia et al. 2012) qui présente une caractéristique particulière. Dans les deux cas, l’opérateur d’exhaustivité est assujetti à une contrainte syntaxique non décrite jusqu’aujourd’hui : l’opérateur doit avoir portée immédiatement par-dessus l’élément qui le requiert. Cette contrainte a l’effet d’empêcher que plus d’un constituant par événement ne provienne du même ensemble d’alternatives.

2023

1. JoS

   Co-predications and the quantificational force of summative predicates

   Paillé, Mathieu

   Journal of Semantics 2023

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   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.

2. SALT

   Trivalent Exh and summative predicates

   Paillé, Mathieu

   In Proceedings of SALT 33 2023

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   Many expressions display ‘homogeneity’: they quantify as universals in positive sentences, but as negated existentials in negative sentences. This paper aims to partly rethink work claiming that homogeneity is the result of exhaustification. I focus on ‘summative’ predicates like colour adjectives, and the claim that they are universal in positive sentences because they exclude one another. Three puzzles arise on this approach: the existence of truth-value gaps in non-homogeneous situations, the existence of non-maximality, and contrasts between sentential negation and other downward-entailing environments. I show that all of these difficulties can be resolved if exhaustification is trivalent rather than bivalent.

3. NELS

   Optionally co-occurring additive expressions as a challenge for the Maximize Presupposition account of obligatory additives

   Paillé, Mathieu

   In Proceedings of NELS 53 2023

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4. SuB

   Alternatives and jurisdiction in predication

   Paillé, Mathieu

   In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 27 2023

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   While many predicates can compose consistently (e.g. This dog is happy), some can only compose via conjunctive material like additive particles (e.g. This comedy is #(also) a tragedy). This paper asks what relation must exist between predicates for them to fall in the latter category. In previous work, I suggested that predicates require also if they come from the same conceptual taxonomy. In the present paper, I show that another factor is at play, namely whether two predicates contribute the same kind of information (‘have the same jurisdiction’) in a given sentence. In particular, same-taxonomy predicates stop requiring also when they are interpreted with a different jurisdiction. From the observation that jurisdiction is pertinent to whether also is required, I suggest that jurisdictional identity is in fact the only factor in whether two expressions require an additive; bringing in the notion of taxonomic co-membership is superfluous.

5. SuB

   Comparing contextual shifts in partial/total predication and plural non-maximality

   Haslinger, Nina, and Paillé, Mathieu

   In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 27 2023

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   We investigate a potential analogy between the varying quantificational strength of partial/total predicates and plural predication. Using the predicates wet and dry as a case study, we ask whether partial/total adjectives show a property characteristic of plurals, namely homogeneity effects. As far as part quantification is concerned, these predicates do exhibit homogeneity. But for degree quantification, a new contrast emerges between partial and total predicates: only partial predicates show homogeneity.

2022

1. Amsterdam

   Subatomic and plural homogeneity as exhaustification effects of different kinds

   Paillé, Mathieu

   In Proceedings of the 23rd Amsterdam Colloquium 2022

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   Homogeneity (all-or-nothing) effects are observed in both atoms and pluralities. In this paper, I compare two theories of homogeneity. The first is made for plural homogeneity and the second for subatomic homogeneity, but both capture the effect through existential lexical meaning paired with local exhaustification in positive sentences. I show that neither approach can be extended to the side of the paradigm it was not intended for. But relying on exhaustification for at least subatomic homogeneity is well motivated: all predicates belonging to taxonomies (rather than scales), whether displaying homogeneity effects or not, are interpreted as weak/strong in the same environments, and it is not clear what mechanism other than exhaustification could account for these facts in a united way. Hence, I maintain that homogeneity is an exhaustification effect, and suggest that plural and subatomic homogeneity are simply due to different kinds of local exhaustification.

2. NELS

   On additives’ interaction with exhaustivity: the view from negative continuations

   Paillé, Mathieu

   In Proceedings of NELS 52 2022

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3. SuB

   Subatomic homogeneity without the excluded middle presupposition: an argument from conjunction

   Paillé, Mathieu

   In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 26 2022

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   While discussion of homogeneity effects usually focuses on examples involving pluralities, the effect is often taken to hold within atoms as well (e.g. Löbner 2000, Spector 2013, Križ 2015). This paper brings to the literature on homogeneity an independent difference between pluralities and atoms, namely their behaviour with conjoined predicates. I show that the theory of homogeneity based on an excluded-middle presupposition produces unwanted results for conjunctions predicated of atomic subjects. I suggest that subatomic homogeneity is in fact the result of covert exhaustivity, which strengthens predicates in positive sentences

4. PhD thesis

   Strengthening Predicates

   Paillé, Mathieu

   McGill University 2022

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   Sentences in natural language are routinely interpreted as stronger than would be expected from the lexical meanings of the overt lexical items alone. This has led to the postulation of exhaustification (strengthening) mechanisms in pragmatics and semantics. Such exhaustivity effects have largely been discussed for logical vocabulary, focused expressions, and predicates forming entailment scales with other predicates. Relying on recent work on additive particles, I argue that exhaustivity is at play in a significantly broader array of meanings than previously appreciated: all predicates are exhaustified, in all sentences. That is, the intuited meanings of predicates in sentences are stronger than their lexical–conceptual meanings. I focus on ’taxonomic’ predicates, which do not form entailment scales with other predicates. I make this case first and foremost based on apparently banal contradictions like This comedy is a tragedy or The white flag is green. While these contradictions are intuitively due to the meanings of the predicates, the interaction of these predicates with additive particles (This comedy is also a tragedy) and conjunction (This play is both a comedy and a tragedy) is argued to show that the predicates are underlyingly consistent. As such, the contradiction observed in the basic case must result from exhaustification.
   
   In addition to demonstrating the existence of exhaustification in the meaning of taxonomic predicates, I also show that this exhaustification behaves in a hitherto undescribed way. The exhaustification of a given predicate is not only obligatory, but it is also obligatorily local to the predicate. Modelling exhaustification through an Exh(aust) operator, roughly equivalent to a covert only, predicates are claimed to ’control’ Exh: they both require its presence and roughly dictate its syntactic locus. These constraints on Exh give its semantic output the flavour of lexical meaning. I argue that the locality requirement on Exh is best understood as it needing to be in the predicate’s maximal projection, and I model this by postulating an Agree relation between derivational morphemes (n⁰, a⁰, etc.) and Exh.
   
   For Exh to exhaustify predicates in a non-trivial way, predicates must come with alternatives; similarly to expressions like some or or, they bear alternatives even without being focused. I make two claims about alternatives. First, concerning the alternatives borne by predicates, I suggest as a first approximation that these are the sisters of the predicate in a given conceptual taxonomy. I then propose a notion of ’predicational jurisdiction’—the kind of information provided by a predicate—to suggest that predicates are alternatives iff they share a jurisdiction. For example, green and table are not interpreted as mutually exclusive (i.e., are not alternatives for controlled exhaustivity) because they contribute different kinds of information; but table and chair, comedy and tragedy, and green and white are alternatives because they share a jurisdiction. This both explains why taxonomic sisters are alternatives, and, as I will show, manages to capture a broader range of data. The second claim about alternatives pertains to how Exh and additive particles interact. One of the key datapoints motivating the view that taxonomic predicates undergo exhaustification is their interaction with additive particles. Building on work suggesting that additives serve to avoid unwanted exhaustivity effects, I suggest that additives are directly involved in pruning alternatives from the domain of Exh. They do not prevent exhaustification by removing Exh, but can weaken Exh by making it exclude fewer alternatives.
   
   The claim that there is a systematic and principled mismatch between the lexical–conceptual meaning of taxonomic vocabulary items and the meaning intuited from these expressions in actual sentences challenges what appears to be a tacit consensus in linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, and philosophy. Work on concepts takes for granted that the nature of concepts can be researched from the meanings of predicates in natural-language sentences. This thesis shows that this is not straightforwardly the case, because grammar systematically interferes with the basic meanings of predicates.

2021

1. AFLA

   Tucking-in and pivot-third word order

   Paillé, Mathieu

   In Proceedings of AFLA 27 2021

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   Some formal investigations of specifiers have suggested that, if a phrase has multiple specifiers and one of these specifiers is thematic (i.e., externally merged), this thematic specifier is necessarily the lowest one. This ‘thematic-lowest’ hypothesis has been used to explain extraction facts in Tagalog (Rackowski and Richards 2005). The present paper brings in new data to the discussion on specifiers, namely the ‘pivot-third’ word order found in many Austronesian languages. I suggest a new analysis for it, according to which pivots in pivot-third languages tuck in to Spec-VoiceP. They end up below the thematic specifier, rather than above it. If accepted, this analysis casts doubt on the generalization that thematic specifiers must be lowest among a maximal projection’s specifiers.

2. WCCFL

   Exhaustivity and the meaning of colour terms

   Paillé, Mathieu

   In Proceedings of the 38th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 2021

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   Colour terms have been described as receiving a ’total’ interpretation: a simple sentence like the flag is red is true if the flag is entirely red, and false otherwise. This paper considers the apparently simple question of whether this totality is the result of lexical meaning, or whether it is derived through semantic computation. Based on data from conjunction and additive particles, I argue that colour terms are lexically partial, not total. I therefore follow the spirit of Levinson (1983) in arguing that totality is the result of exhaustivity. However, I also show that a number of meanings predicted by an exhaustivity account of totality are not intuited. Rather, colour terms’ exhaustivity is constrained in a previously unobserved way: colour terms must be in the immediate scope of the Exh operator.

2020

1. SALT

   The distribution of controlled exhaustivity

   Paillé, Mathieu

   In Proceedings of SALT 30 2020

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   While predicates in taxonomies (e.g. colour terms) are interpreted as mutually incompatible, this paper shows that their incompatibility is in many cases not lexical. Rather, it is the result of a previously undescribed exhaustivity effect. What is more, this class of exhaustivity effects displays novel behaviour. Exhaustivity is both obligatory and tightly constrained: at first approximation, any taxonomic predicate must be in the immediate scope of the exhaustivity operator it requires. Taxonomic predicates, in this sense, are argued to ‘control’ exhaustivity.

2. AFLA

   V=nya in colloquial Malay

   Paillé, Mathieu

   In Proceedings of AFLA 26 2020

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   This paper discusses a construction in colloquial Malay where VSO word order obtains together with a morpheme, =nya, on the verb. This V==nya construction is argued to mark broad focus. Syntactically, it sheds light on the existence of an information-structural head between Voice and T in colloquial Malay. This is the head the verb moves to in every clause; in V==nya, the arguments stay in situ, yielding VSO word order. Specifically, the head is a Cat(egoricality) head, which identifies its specifier as the sentence’s subject of predication (Cardinaletti 2004). The morpheme =nya is argued to be an expletive subject, merged to satisfy an EPP feature, precisely when all arguments are in situ in V=nya. Hence, Malay displays overtly an expletive subject that is lower than the derived subject position of Spec-TP, coinciding with the hypothesis that English-type languages generate expletives lower than the derived subject position, too.

2019

1. WCCFL

   Knowing Whether and Ignorance Inferences

   Paillé, Mathieu, and Schwarz, Bernhard

   In Proceedings of WCCFL 36 2019

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   The truth conditions of know whether reports – statements that feature the matrix predicate know embedding a polar question – have not been a matter of controversy (Karttunen 1977, Lewis 1982, Groenendijk and Stokhof 1982). What does not seem to have been observed, however, is that negated know whether reports are judged to convey more information about the agent’s beliefs than received wisdom leads one to expect. For example, Aisha doesn’t know whether Ben is Canadian is expected to merely convey that Aisha does not know the true answer to the embedded question, but it is actually understood to more specifically convey that Aisha is unopinionated about which answer to the embedded question is true. We will examine the prospects of relating such agent ignorance implications of negated know whether reports to speaker ignorance implications that have been described for both affirmative and negative know whether reports (Eckardt 2007, Egré 2008). We show that both types of ignorance implications are amenable to a derivation as quantity implicatures under neo-Gricean assumptions. However, we also find that, surprisingly, agent ignorance inferences are more pervasive than the corresponding speaker ignorance implications, even though the neo-Gricean account would at best be consistent with the opposite pattern. This suggests that agent ignorance implications of negative know whether reports are not in fact Gricean inferences, but part of the conventional meaning of such sentences.