Evaluative adjective sentences: A question-based analysis of projection

What it is about

In "Kim was smart to watch the movie", the prejacent (Kim watched the movie) is usually analysed as a lexical presupposition. The authors show that this does not fit: under negation the prejacent sometimes does not project, and when it does not, the generalisation ("watching was smart") does, and the reverse. Their analysis treats both contents as lexical entailments whose projection depends on how not-at-issue they are with respect to the question under discussion. A non-redundancy principle links at-issueness to the common ground: the more a content already follows from the common ground, the less likely the question is about it. Experiment 1 (134 analysed participants, 10 adjectives, 60 stimulus pairs) found higher projectivity when the generalisation was less likely to follow from the common ground (mean 5.2 against 2.6 in the content condition; 4.7 against 2.9 in the context condition). Experiment 2 (68 participants) found the prejacent more at-issue when the generalisation was less at-issue (log-odds coefficient 1.29, 95% CI 0.69 to 1.87). A web corpus of 59 negated sentences gave a mean certainty of 3.2 out of 7.

Ideas

• I1. prag/src/frames.rs: do not store "stupid" as a presupposition. Store the two contents (prejacent, generalisation) and a flag for which one is at-issue, set from the question context. Projection is then a score (not-at-issue means projective), with the same pattern for every evaluative adjective.
• I2. Non-redundancy as a rule: if the generalisation follows from facts already in world/src/knowledge.rs (for example "cheating is unwise"), mark it not at-issue and let the prejacent be the at-issue content. Count how often this changes the answer on a test list.
• I3. Add the ten adjectives used in the paper (stupid, smart, wise, fortunate, lucky, brave, polite, mean, foolish, rude) to the lexicon as one entry each, with no per-frame duplicates.

For Mova

The chapter is 33. Implicature and presupposition, with 31. Speech acts for at-issueness and 28. Voice and the passive only if the prejacent is passivised. The code is prag/src/frames.rs and prag/src/infer.rs. Measure: the projection score under negation for a new list of negated evaluative sentences, run twice, with the at-issue choice reported. The paper's stimuli are in its supplementary files; write new items.

Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.5334/gjgl.701

@article{tonhauser2020evaluative,
  title = {{Evaluative adjective sentences: A question-based analysis of projection}},
  author = {Tonhauser, Judith and Marneffe, Marie-Catherine de and Degen, Judith},
  journal = {Glossa: a journal of general linguistics},
  year = {2020},
  doi = {10.5334/gjgl.701},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.701}
}

References

51 references, 3 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. Abbott, Barbara. 2000. Presuppositions as non-assertions. Journal of Pragmatics 32. 1419– 1437. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(99)00108-3 ↗
2. Abrusán, Márta. 2011. Predicting the presuppositions of soft triggers. Linguistics & Philosophy 34. 491–535. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-012-9108-y ↗
3. Abrusán, Márta. 2013. A note on quasi-presuppositions and focus. Journal of Semantics 30. 257–265. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffs010 ↗
4. Abrusán, Márta. 2016. Presupposition cancellation: Explaining the ‘soft-hard’ trigger distinction. Natural Language Semantics 24. 165–202. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11050-016-9122-7 Abusch, Dorit. 2002. Lexical alternatives as a source of pragmatic presupposition. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 12. 1–19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v12i0.2867 ↗
5. Abusch, Dorit. 2010. Presupposition triggering from alternatives. Journal of Semantics 27. 37–80. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffp009 ↗
6. Amaral, Patrícia Matos, Craige Roberts & E. Allyn Smith. 2007. Review of ‘The Logic of Conventional Implicature’ by Chris Potts. Linguistics & Philosophy 30. 707–749. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-008-9025-2 ↗
7. Anand, Pranav & Valentine Hacquard. 2014. Factivity, belief and discourse. In Luka Crnič & Uli Sauerland (eds.), The art and craft of semantics: A festschrift for Irene Heim, 69–90. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. https://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/ jZiNmM4N/. ↗
8. AnderBois, Scott, Adrian Brasoveanu & Robert Henderson. 2015. At-issue proposals and appositive impositions in discourse. Journal of Semantics 32. 93–138. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/fft014 Barker, Chris. 2002. The dynamics of vagueness. Linguistics & Philosophy 25. 1–36. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014346114955 ↗
9. Beaver, David. 2001. Presupposition and assertion in dynamic semantics. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. find
10. Beaver, David. 2010. Have you noticed that your belly button lint colour is related to the colour of your clothing? In Rainer Bäuerle, Uwe Reyle & Ede Zimmermann (eds.), Presuppositions and discourse: Essays offered to Hans Kamp, 65–99. Oxford: Elsevier. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004253162 ↗
11. Beaver, David & Brady Clark. 2008. Sense and sensitivity: How focus determines meaning. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444304176 ↗
12. Beaver, David, Craige Roberts, Mandy Simons & Judith Tonhauser. 2017. Questions Under Discussion: Where information structure meets projective content. Annual Review of Linguistics 3. 265–284. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011516-033952 ↗
13. Bürkner, Paul-Christian. 2017. brms: An R package for bayesian multilevel models using Stan. Journal of Statistical Software 80(1). 1–28. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18637/jss. v080.i01 Christensen, Rune Haubo Bojesen. 2013. “ordinal”: Regression models for ordinal data. R package. Version ordinal_2015.6-28. https://cran.rproject.org/web/packages/ordinal/ ordinal.pdf. ↗
14. Cummins, Chris & Hannah Rohde. 2015. Evoking context with contrastive stress: Effects on pragmatic enrichment. Frontiers in Psychology 6. Article 1779. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01779 de Marneffe, Marie, Mandy Simons & Judith Tonhauser. 2019. The CommitmentBank: Investigating projection in naturally occurring discourse. Sinn und Bedeutung 23. 107– 124. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18148/sub/2019.v23i2.601 ↗ our card
15. Destruel, Emilie, Edgar Onea, Daniel Velleman, Dylan Bumford & David Beaver. 2015. A cross-linguistic study of the non-at-issueness of exhaustive inferences. In Floran Schwarz (ed.), Experimental approaches to presupposition, 135–156. Springer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07980-6 ↗
16. Djärv, Kajsa & Hezekiah Akiva Bacovcin. 2017. Prosodic effects on factive presupposition projection. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 27. 116–133. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/ salt.v27i0.4134 Gazdar, Gerald. 1979. A solution to the projection problem. In Choon-Kyu Oh & David Dinneen (eds.), Syntax and semantics 11: Presupposition, 57–89. New York: Academic Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004368880_003 ↗
17. Groenendijk, Jeroen. 1999. The logic of interrogation. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 9. 109–126. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v9i0.2835 ↗
18. Heim, Irene. 1982. The semantics of definite and indefinite noun phrases: University of Massachusetts, Amherst dissertation. find
19. Heim, Irene. 1983. On the projection problem for presuppositions. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 2. 114–125. find
20. Jaynes, Edwin & Oscar Kempthorne. 1976. Confidence intervals vs. Bayesian intervals. In William Leonard Harper & Clifford Alan Hooker (eds.), Foundations of probability theory, statistical inference, and statistical theories of science, 175–257. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1853-1 ↗
21. Kadmon, Nirit. 2001. Formal pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell. find
22. Karttunen, Lauri. 1971. Some observations on factivity. Papers in Linguistics 4. 55–69. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08351817109370248 ↗
23. Karttunen, Lauri. 2013. You will be lucky to break even. In Tracy Holloway King & Valeria de Paiva (eds.), From quirky case to representing space: Papers in honor of Annie Zaenen, 167–180. Stanford: CSLI Publications. find
24. Karttunen, Lauri, Stanley Peters, Annie Zaenen & Cleo Condoravdi. 2014. The chameleon-like nature of evaluative adjectives. Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 10. 233–250. find
25. Kertz, Laura. 2010. The argument structure of evaluative adjectives. A case of pseudo-raising. In Norbert Hornstein & Maria Polinsky (eds.), Movement theory of control, 269–298. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0022226711000077 ↗
26. Kiparsky, Paul & Carol Kiparsky. 1970. Fact. In Manfred Bierwisch & Karl Erich Heidolph (eds.), Progress in linguistics, 143–173. The Hague: Mouton. find
27. Mahler, Taylor. 2019. Does at-issueness predict projection? It’s complicated! North East Linguistic Society 49. 245–255. find
28. Morey, Richard D., Rink Hoekstra, Jeffrey N. Rouder, Michael D. Lee & Eric J. Wagenmakers. 2016. The fallacy of placing confidence in confidence intervals. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 23(1). 103–123. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-015-0947-8 ↗
29. Murray, Sarah. 2014. Varieties of update. Semantics & Pragmatics 7(2). 1–53. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.3765/sp Nicenboim, Bruno & Shravan Vasishth. 2016. Statistical methods for linguistic research: Foundational Ideas, Part II. Linguistics and Language Compass 10(11). 591–613. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12207 ↗
30. Norrick, Neal R. 1978. Factive adjectives and the theory of factivity. Tübingen: Niemeyer. find
31. Oshima, David Y. 2009. Between being wise and acting wise: A hidden conditional in some constructions with propensity adjectives. Journal of Linguistics 45. 363–393. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226709005684 ↗
32. Potts, Christopher. 2005. The Logic of Conventional Implicatures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199273829.001.0001 ↗
33. R Core Team. 2016. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.Rproject.org/. ↗
34. Roberts, Craige. 2012. Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics & Pragmatics 5. 1–69. Reprint of 1998 revision of 1996 OSU Working Papers publication. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.5.6 ↗ our card
35. Romoli, Jacopo. 2015. The presuppositions of soft triggers are obligatory scalar implicatures. Journal of Semantics 32. 173–291. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/fft017 ↗
36. Schlenker, Philippe. 2010. Local contexts and local meanings. Philosophical Studies 151. 115–142. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9586-0 ↗
37. Simons, Mandy. 2001. On the conversational basis of some presuppositions. Semantics and Linguistics Theory 11. 431–448. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v11i0.3099 ↗
38. Simons, Mandy. 2007. Observations on embedding verbs, evidentiality, and presupposition. Lingua 117. 1034–1056. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2006.05.006 ↗
39. Simons, Mandy, David Beaver, Craige Roberts & Judith Tonhauser. 2017. The Best Question: Explaining the projection behavior of factive verbs. Discourse Processes 3. 187– 206. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2016.1150660 ↗
40. Simons, Mandy, Judith Tonhauser, David Beaver & Craige Roberts. 2010. What projects and why. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 11. 309–327. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/ salt.v20i0.2584 Smith, E. Allyn & Kathleen Currie Hall. 2011. Projection diversity: Experimental evidence. 2011 ESSLLI Workshop on Projective Content, 156–170. ↗
41. Stalnaker, Robert. 1999. Assertion. In Robert Stalnaker (ed.), Context and content: Essays on intentionality in speech and thought, 78–95. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Originally published Syntax and Semantics 9 (1978). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/0198237073.001.0001 Stevens, Jon Scott, Marie-Catherine de Marneffe, Shari R. Speer & Judith Tonhauser. 2017. Rational use of prosody predicts projectivity in manner adverb utterances. Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 39. 1144–1149. ↗
42. Syrett, Kristen & Todor Koev. 2015. Experimental evidence for the truth conditional contribution and shifting information status of appositives. Journal of Semantics 32. 525– 577. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffu007 ↗
43. Tonhauser, Judith. 2012. Diagnosing (not-)at-issue content. Semantics of Under-represented Languages in the Americas 6. 239–254. find
44. Tonhauser, Judith. 2016. Prosodic cues to speaker commitment. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 26. 934–960. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v26i0.3788 Tonhauser, Judith. in press. Projection variability in Paraguayan Guaraní. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-019-09462-x ↗
45. Tonhauser, Judith, David Beaver, Craige Roberts & Mandy Simons. 2013. Toward a taxonomy of projective content. Language 89. 66–109. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ lan.2013.0001 Tonhauser, Judith, David Beaver & Judith Degen. 2018. How projective is projective content? Gradience in projectivity and at-issueness. Journal of Semantics 35. 495–542. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffy007 ↗
46. Tonhauser, Judith, Marie-Catherine de Marneffe, Shari R. Speer & Jon Stevens. 2019. On the information structure sensitivity of projective content. Sinn und Bedeutung 23. 363–389. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18148/sub/2019.v23i2.619 van der Sandt, Rob. 1992. Presupposition projection as anaphora resolution. Journal of Semantics 9. 333–377. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/9.4.333 von Fintel, Kai. 2008. What is presupposition accommodation again? Philosophical Perspectives 22. 137–170. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1520-8583.2008.00144.x ↗
47. Wilkinson, Robert. 1970. Factive complements and action complements. Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 6. 425–444. find
48. Xue, Jingyang & Edgar Onea. 2011. Correlation between projective meaning and at-issueness: An empirical study. 2011 ESSLLI Workshop on Projective Content, 171–184. find
49. How to cite this article: Tonhauser, Judith, Marie-Catherine de Marneffe and Judith Degen. 2020. Evaluative adjective sentences: A question-based analysis of projection. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5(1): 87. 1–33. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.701 ↗ our card
50. Published: 01 September 2020 find
51. Copyright: © 2020 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics is a peer-reviewed open access journal published by Ubiquity Press. OPEN ACCESS ↗

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/tonhauser-2020-evaluative-adjective-sentences-question-based/