Two methods to find truth-value gaps and their application to the projection problem of homogeneity

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• 作者：Manuel Kri? ; Emmanuel Chemla
• 关键词：Plurals ; Homogeneity ; Presupposition projection ; Scalar implicatures ; Truth ; value gaps ; Experimental pragmatics
• 刊名：Natural Language Semantics
• 出版年：2015
• 出版时间：September 2015
• 年：2015
• 卷：23
• 期：3
• 页码：205-248
• 全文大小：1,538 KB
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• 作者单位：Manuel Kri? (1)
  Emmanuel Chemla (2)
  
  1. University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
  2. LSCP, Paris, France
  
• 刊物类别：Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
• 刊物主题：Linguistics
  Semantics
  Syntax
  Philosophy of Language
  
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1572-865X

文摘

Presupposition, vagueness, and oddness can lead to some sentences failing to have a clear truth value. The homogeneity property of plural predication with definite descriptions may also create truth-value gaps: The books are written in Dutch is true if all relevant books are in Dutch, false if none of them are, and neither true nor false if, say, half of the books are written in Dutch. We study the projection property of homogeneity by deploying methods of general interest to identify truth-value gaps. Method A consists in collecting both truth judgments (completely true vs. not completely true) and, independently, falsity judgments (completely false vs. not completely false). The second method, employed in experiment series B and C, is based on one-shot ternary judgments: completely true vs. completely false vs. neither. After a calibration of these methods, we use them to demonstrate that homogeneity projects out of negation, the scope of universal sentences and the scope of non-monotonic quantifiers such as exactly two, to some extent (i.e., in two out of three conceivable kinds of gap situations). We assess our results in light of different theoretical approaches to homogeneity—approaches based on presuppositions, scalar implicatures, and something like supervaluations, respectively. We identify free parameters in these theories and assess various variants of them based on our results. Our experimental paradigms may be of broader significance insofar as they can be applied to other phenomena which result in the failure of a sentence to have a definite truth value. Keywords Plurals Homogeneity Presupposition projection Scalar implicatures Truth-value gaps Experimental pragmatics