Focus, Evaluativity, and Antonymy (eBook)

Acknowledgements 7
Contents 8
1 Introduction 10
1.1 Overview 11
1.2 Three Illustrations of Empirical Claim 14
1.2.1 First Illustration: Betting Scenarios 14
1.2.2 Second Illustration: In Fact, and Downward Entailing Contexts 16
1.2.3 Third Illustration: Only as a Weakener 18
1.3 Consequences 18
1.4 Theoretical Implications 20
1.5 Book Overview 24
2 Only and Its Inferences 32
2.1 Chapter Preview 32
2.2 The Semantics of Only 33
2.2.1 The Exclusive Inference of Only 37
2.2.1.1 Scalar Only 39
2.2.1.2 Scalarity and Only's Disjunctive Presupposition 43
2.2.2 Interim Summary 46
2.2.3 Only and Its Scalar Presupposition 47
2.2.4 Only and the Ban Against Its Vacuous Use 53
2.2.5 The Scalar Presupposition as the Ban Against VacuousUse 57
2.3 Chapter Summary 60
3 The Positive Morpheme and Its Interaction with Only 62
3.1 Chapter Preview 62
3.2 Background: Many and Few as Gradable Adjectives 63
3.3 pos and the Evaluativity of Many and Few 66
3.3.1 N as a Modal in the Semantics of pos 71
3.4 Interim Summary 74
3.5 The Interaction of pos and Only: Answering the Missing Readings Question 75
3.6 Theory 1 of the Only-pos Interaction 77
3.6.1 Prediction: Negation 80
3.6.2 Prediction: Modals and Their Monotonicity 82
3.6.3 Section Summary 87
3.7 Theory 2 of the Only-pos Interaction 88
3.8 Chapter Summary 93
3.9 The Antonym-Pair Generalization 94
4 The Proposal 98
4.1 Chapter Preview 98
4.2 The Scoping Account: Decomposing Modified Numerals 99
4.3 The Closure Account 107
4.3.1 Van Benthem's Problem 109
4.3.2 Bypassing van Benthem's Problem by Constraining Alternatives 111
4.3.3 Bypassing van Benthem's Problem by Blind Exclusion 119
4.4 Summary 124
4.4.1 The Existence Inference and the Status of Only'sPrejacent 126
4.4.2 A Remark on the Distribution of Existentially-ClosedParses 127
4.5 Comparison with Other Accounts 128
4.5.1 POS as Comparative: Density? 128
4.5.2 BonomiCasalegno1993 129
4.5.3 Beck2012 134
4.6 Extension to Rarely 138
4.7 Chapter Summary 141
Appendix: Constraint on Formal Alternatives 142
5 Only if, Its Interaction with pos, and Its Scalar Presupposition 145
5.1 Chapter Preview 145
5.2 Only if as Only and a Conditional Prejacent 147
5.3 Only if and pos 154
5.4 Only if and Only's Scalar Presupposition 156
5.5 Chapter Summary 158
6 Conclusions and Extensions 160
6.1 Book Summary 160
6.2 Comparatives 163
6.2.1 Antonymy and the -er Morpheme 164
6.2.2 Subsethood in Measure-Phrase Comparatives 165
6.2.3 Innocent Exclusion and Density 169
6.2.4 LessP 173
6.2.5 Summary 174
6.3 At Least and At Most? 175
6.3.1 Alternativehood of Disjuncts and Association with Only 175
6.4 Another Case: Recently 182
Appendix 184
References 186
Index 192