Implicatures in the DP domain

In this thesis, I investigate a set of apparently disparate phenomena that relate, more or less closely, to the interpretation of Determiner Phrases (DPs): the restrictiveness effects associated with NP modification, the proper partitivity effects associated with the use of partitive of, the disjoint reference 'i-within-i' effects and finally anti-presuppositions. In the previous literature, these interpretative effects have been subsumed under different generalizations and accounted for by means of different primitive principles (e.g., Minimize Restrictors!, The 'i-within-i' Condition, Maximize Presupposition!). The claim that I put forward in this thesis is twofold. First of all, I show that, upon closer examination, all these phenomena are reducible to the theory of implicatures. Second, I argue that an implicature-based approach to these phenomena offers a better empirical coverage of the relevant effects than previously achieved. Capitalizing on Magri (2009, 2011, 2014, and subsequent works), I will offer a conceptualization of implicature computation on which assertive and pre-suppositional implicatures are derived in grammar, allowing a uniform account of the phenomena of interest.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Marty, Paul P

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Irene Heim, Danny Fox, and David Pesetsky.

• Linguistics and Philosophy.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/113778

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/113778