ANCHORING PRAGMATICS IN SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS ADissertationPresented by MARÍABIEZMA SubmittedtotheGraduateSchoolofthe UniversityofMassachusettsAmherstinpartialfulfillment oftherequirementsforthedegreeof DOCTOROFPHILOSOPHY May2011 Linguistics (cid:13)c CopyrightbyMaríaBiezma2011 AllRightsReserved ANCHORING PRAGMATICS IN SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS ADissertationPresented by MARÍABIEZMA Approvedastostyleandcontentby: ChristopherPotts,Chair RajeshBhatt,Member LynFrazier,Member AdrianStaub,Member MargaretSpeas,DepartmentHead Linguistics Helen: [sobbing]What’llIdo? What’llIdo? Edna: [shouting] What are you talking about? [...] My God... [swatting Helen with a newspaper] Pull-yourself-together! "What will you do?" Is this a question? [...] Go, confront the problem. Fight! Win! [normal voice]Andcallmewhenyougetback,darling. Ienjoyourvisits. EdnaMode,Theincredibles ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I will keep these acknowledgments brief. I want to take the chance to thank all the people at UMass who helped me during these six years. I want to specially thank my committee,ChristopherPotts,RajeshBhatt,LynFrazierandAdrianStaubforalltheirhelp andsupportduringthistime. v ABSTRACT ANCHORING PRAGMATICS IN SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS MAY2011 MARÍABIEZMA Licenciatura,UNIVERSIDADCOMPLUTENSEDEMADRID M.A.,UNIVERSITYOFOTTAWA Ph.D.,UNIVERSITYOFMASSACHUSETTSAMHERST Directedby: ProfessorChristopherPotts The goal of this dissertation is to investigate some of the ways in which pragmatic meanings are generated on the basis of syntax and semantics. The theoretical motivation guiding this research is to contribute towards the understanding of how pragmatics is an- choredinsyntaxandsemantics,payingparticularattentiontotheroleofdiscourse. The focus of this dissertation is the ‘discourse-driven’ construction of meaning. In this dissertation I investigate various ways in which the interaction between syntax, semantics and discourse work together to give rise to meanings that cannot (straightforwardly) be accountedforinisolationfromdiscourse. Intermsofdata,thefocusisonHPCs,astructure thatIhavearguedisatypeofconditionalinSpanish. HPCsserveasidealwindowsintothe interaction between syntax, semantics and discourse. They are non-canonical structures, ‘reduced’ from the point of view of syntax (lacking inflectional projections). They give rise to a varied and rich range of meanings and allow us to see the importance of paying attention to the interaction between syntax, semantics and discourse to understand how meaningsareconstructed. Ialsodrawcomparisonswithotherlanguages,inparticularwith Englishoptatives,whichIclaimareverysimilarto HPCs. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................... v ABSTRACT .............................................................. vi LISTOFTABLES......................................................... xi LISTOFFIGURES .......................................................xii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................... 1 2. HPCS ................................................................. 5 2.1 Afirstapproachto HPCs.............................................. 6 2.1.1 Bosque’scharacterizationof HPCs............................... 7 2.1.1.1 Comparisonwithimperatives .......................... 8 2.1.1.2 Bosque’sanalysisof HPCsasretrospective imperatives .....................................10 2.2 Discussion ........................................................ 12 2.2.1 #Thatisfalse ............................................... 12 2.2.2 Noimperativemorphology.................................... 13 2.2.3 3rd personreference ......................................... 16 2.2.4 Stativepredicates............................................ 17 2.2.5 Weirdorders................................................ 17 2.2.6 HPCsarealwaysreplies ...................................... 18 2.2.7 Experiment1:HPCsaretiedtodesires........................... 19 2.2.7.1 Method ........................................... 20 2.2.7.2 Resultsanddiscussion ............................... 22 2.2.8 Settlingfortheweakest....................................... 22 2.2.9 Duh! ...................................................... 23 2.2.10 Summary .................................................. 24 2.3 Conclusion ........................................................ 24 3. HPCSARECONDITIONALS........................................... 25 3.1 Intuitivecharacterization ............................................ 25 3.2 Argumentsinfavorofaconditional-likeanalysisof HPCs................. 27 vii 3.2.1 MatrixClausePhenomena .................................... 28 3.2.2 Conditionalswithsubject-auxiliaryinversionintheantecedent...... 32 3.2.3 LicensingFree-choiceitems................................... 38 3.2.4 Summary .................................................. 39 3.3 Entertainingapossibility: HPCsspelloutconsequents ................... 39 3.3.1 RestrictorsVs. NuclearScopes ................................ 41 3.3.2 Thetimeofdesire ........................................... 43 3.3.3 Counterfactuality ............................................ 45 3.3.4 Focusadverbs............................................... 46 3.3.5 Summary .................................................. 46 3.4 HPCsaretenseless .................................................. 47 3.5 Conclusion ........................................................ 53 4. MODALITYIN HPCS ................................................. 54 4.1 IsΨauniversaldeonticmodal? ...................................... 54 4.1.1 Theinterpretation ........................................... 55 4.1.2 Thestructure ............................................... 56 4.1.3 Conclusion ................................................. 58 4.2 IsΨauniversalcounterfactualmodal?................................. 58 4.3 Informativityin HPCs: Fallingfortheweakest .......................... 62 4.3.1 Astrictsemanticsforcounterfactuals ........................... 62 4.3.2 Strengthinconditionals ...................................... 64 4.3.3 Whereastrictsemanticsgoeswrong............................ 67 4.3.4 Astrictsemanticsforcounterfactualsthatallowsmonotonicity...... 69 4.3.5 HPCs,strengthandinformativity ............................... 71 4.3.6 Summary .................................................. 73 4.4 Conclusion ........................................................ 73 5. OPTATIVES .......................................................... 75 5.1 Focusadverbsandtheirscopeandassociationinoptatives ................ 77 5.1.1 Data....................................................... 77 5.1.2 Thescopeandassociationofonly .............................. 81 5.1.2.1 Thescopeofthefocusadverb......................... 81 5.1.2.2 Theassociationofthefocusadverbinoptatives.......... 86 5.1.3 Optativeswithoutconsequentsareconditionals................... 88 5.1.3.1 Abstractionsoverpropositions ........................ 88 5.1.3.2 ifonly! optativescancoexistwithanantecedent ......... 92 5.1.3.3 Embeddability...................................... 94 5.1.3.4 Conjunction........................................ 94 5.1.3.5 Allowingfordifferentfollow-upinquiries............... 95 5.1.3.6 Then.............................................. 97 5.1.3.7 Counterfactualityanduncertainty...................... 99 5.1.4 Experiment: ifonly! andquantificationalstructures .............. 101 viii 5.1.4.1 Method .......................................... 102 5.1.4.2 ResultsandDiscussion ............................. 103 5.1.5 Conclusion ................................................ 106 5.2 DesirabilityandtheIQuDinoptatives ................................ 107 5.2.1 Topicalityinoptatives ....................................... 109 5.2.1.1 Topicandfocusinoptatives ......................... 109 5.2.1.2 Optativesandtopic-drop ............................ 111 5.2.2 InterimSummary........................................... 112 5.2.3 Trackingdownspeaker’sintentions............................ 113 5.2.3.1 TheIQuDinoptatives .............................. 114 5.2.3.2 Only............................................. 117 5.2.3.3 Thescaleinoptatives............................... 120 5.2.3.4 FromonlytotheIQuD.............................. 124 5.2.3.5 SummaryandacautionarynoteonIQuDs ............. 127 5.3 HPCsandOptatives ................................................ 128 5.3.1 Derivingdesirabilityin HPCs ................................. 130 5.3.2 Spanishconditionals: Experiment ............................. 134 5.3.2.1 Method .......................................... 134 5.3.2.2 Resultsanddiscussion .............................. 136 5.3.3 Whosedesires? ............................................ 138 5.4 Conclusion ....................................................... 142 6. INVERSION ......................................................... 144 6.1 Inversionand HPCs ................................................ 147 6.1.1 Schwarzschild’s GIVEN...................................... 152 6.1.2 HPCs,invertedconditionalsand GIVENNESS .................... 154 6.1.3 Interimsummary ........................................... 162 6.2 Inversionin HPCsandreproaches .................................... 162 6.2.1 The‘reproach’meaningin HPCs .............................. 162 6.2.2 Experiment: Inversionin HPCsandreproaches .................. 164 6.2.2.1 Method .......................................... 164 6.2.2.2 Resultsanddiscussion .............................. 166 6.2.2.3 Conclusion ....................................... 168 6.3 Inversioninconditionals: thecaseofEnglish .......................... 169 6.3.1 CounterfactualinversionandmovementfromTtoC ............. 169 6.3.2 Thediscoursestatusoftheantecedent.......................... 175 6.3.2.1 Apresuppositionalaccount .......................... 175 6.3.2.2 Animplicatureaccount ............................. 176 ix 6.3.2.3 Explainingthedata................................. 179 6.3.3 Focusadverbs.............................................. 181 6.3.4 Question/answerpairsandclefts .............................. 182 6.3.5 Conclusion ................................................ 184 6.4 Whyinversion? ................................................... 185 6.5 Conclusion ....................................................... 186 7. CONCLUSION ....................................................... 188 7.1 Majorfindings .................................................... 188 7.2 Futureresearch ................................................... 189 APPENDICES A. MATERIALSEXPERIMENT1: HPCSARETIEDTODESIRES ......... 191 B. MATERIALSEXPERIMENT2: OPTATIVESSETTLINGFORTHE WEAKEST........................................................194 C. MATERIALSEXPERIMENT3: SPANISHCONDITIONALS............. 196 D. MATERIALSEXPERIMENT4: CONDITIONALINVERSIONAND REPROACHES ...................................................200 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................ 208 x