Connecting the exhaustivity of clefts and the homogeneity of plural definite descriptions in acquisition

Lyn Tieu, Manuel Kriz

Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperConference Paperpeer-review

Abstract

Various views exist on the kind of meaning that the exhaustivity component of clefts corresponds to, and therefore on the status that clefts have when exhaustivity is violated. In particular, two semantic theories have recently been spelled out in some details. According to Velleman et al. (2012), (1) carries the presupposition that it's not the case that both the truck and something else are blue, and asserts that the truck is, in fact, blue. When exhaustivity fails, the cleft therefore incurs a presupposition failure. The presupposition is, in particular, taken to be akin to that of "only".
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 41st Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 4-6 November 2016, Boston, Mass.
PublisherCascadilla Press
Pages651-664
Number of pages14
ISBN (Print)9781574730760
Publication statusPublished - 2017
EventBoston University Conference on Language Development -
Duration: 1 Jan 2017 → …

Conference

ConferenceBoston University Conference on Language Development
Period1/01/17 → …

Keywords

  • presupposition (logic)
  • language acquisition

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