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Long-Distance Degree Quantification and the Grammar of Subjectivity

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Long-Distance Degree Quantification and the Grammar of Subjectivity Long-Distance Degree Quantification and The Grammar of Subjectivity David-Etienne´ Bouchard Department of Linguistics McGill University, Montr´eal B.A., Universit´edeMontr´eal, 2006 December 2012 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of DoctorofPhilosophy c David-Etienne´ Bouchard 2012 Contents Chapter 1: Introduction 5 1 Intensification At a Distance 5 2 Opinion Verbs 9 Chapter 2: Intensification at a Distance 12 1 Introduction 12 2 The Basic Distribution of IAD 15 3 The Lexicon of IAD 19 3.1ASyntacticCharacterizationoftheClassofIAD........... 20 3.2ASemanticCharacterizationoftheClassofIAD........... 21 3.2.1 GradableAdjectivesandComparatives............. 21 3.2.2 Too, Enough, and So...That ................... 29 3.2.3 Superlatives............................ 33 3.2.4 Intensifiers............................. 36 4 IAD as Overt DegP Movement 39 4.1BasicAnalysis............................... 39 4.2GeneralPredictions............................ 43 4.3DegPvs.DPscope............................ 44 4.4IntensionalVerbs............................. 51 4.5DegreeOperatorsandNegation..................... 59 4.6SuperlativeScopeorContextualRestrictions?............. 67 4.7ScopeDataSummary........................... 74 4.8 IAD and Ellipsis ............................. 75 4.8.1 DegP Scope and Ellipsis ..................... 75 4.8.2 FixingtheScope......................... 77 4.8.3 Does DegP Scope Only Limit Ellipsis Size? ........... 80 4.8.4 DirectAnalysis.......................... 84 4.9 DegP Movement and the Merger Position of Than-Phrases...... 92 i 5 Asymmetries between DegP Movement and IAD 94 5.1AbsenceofIslandEffects......................... 95 5.2AbsenceofSourcePosition........................ 100 5.3AbsenceofDifferentialsandFactorials................. 101 5.4TheClassofIADOperators....................... 103 6 Towards an Situ Semantics for IAD 110 6.1IADisnotQuantificationOverEvents................. 110 6.1.1 ApplyingaQADSemanticstoIAD?.............. 118 6.2 Reconciling IAD with an In Situ Syntax ................ 119 6.2.1 Pragmatically-DerivedScales.................. 123 6.2.2 MetalinguisticComparatives................... 129 6.3ExplainingtheLackofDifferentialsinIAD............... 135 7 Summary and Conclusion 138 Chapter 3: Opinion Verbs 141 1 Introduction 141 2 Opinion Verbs: The Basic Facts 143 3 Modeling Subjectivity 147 3.1 Lasersohn (2005) ............................. 147 3.2AnAttemptedExtensiontoEpistemicModals............. 150 3.3Cotextualism:DisagreementisNeverFaultless............. 158 3.4Summary................................. 161 4 Summary of Saebø (2009) 162 5WhatFind Asserts and Presupposes 165 5.1APresuppositionAccountoftheSubjectivityRequirement...... 167 5.2DerivingthePresupposition....................... 169 5.3NegationintheComplementClause................... 172 5.4 Negative Quantifiers below Find ..................... 175 5.5ThePresuppositionAccountvs.theType-MismatchAccount.... 177 ii 5.5.1 Trivial Propositions under Find ................. 177 5.6Summary................................. 180 6 In Favour of Radical Reductionism 180 6.1 No De Dicto Ambiguities under Find .................. 181 6.2 Find isn’tEvidential,PPTsare..................... 182 6.2.1 TheJudge’sBeliefs........................ 183 6.3ThinkingandFinding.......................... 184 7 Syntactic Properties of the Complement of Find 186 7.1PresuppositionsandtheNecessityforDRT............... 186 7.2 The Syntactic Non-Locality of Find andSemanticTheories...... 188 8 Coordination under Find 191 9 Accounting For Saebø’s Syntactic Observations 203 9.1 Natural Judge-Dependency under find ................. 203 9.2ClauseStructure............................. 205 9.3Summary................................. 208 10 The Judge-Dependency of Gradable Adjectives 210 10.1DefinitenessRestrictiononGradableAdjectives............ 215 10.1.1ProblemswithPlurals...................... 216 10.1.2 An Alternative Analysis: Subjective Comparison Classes . 217 11 Conclusion 222 Appendix A: A Judge-Free Semantics for Subjectivity 224 Appendix B: IAD across Opinion Verbs 228 References 230 iii Abstract This thesis is concerned with two little known constructions at the syntax-semantics interface, namely a type of apparent long-distance degree quantification in Qu´ebec French called Intensification At a Distance (IAD), and a class of verbs that I simply refer to as opinion verbs and which include English to find and French trouver,for example. I examine two competing analyses of IAD, namely one where the surface word order is derived by overt DegP movement and one where it is base-generated. The former approach is a natural extension of the view in degree semantics that degree operators need a QR-type of operation to be interpretable. If it is right, then nothing needs to be added to the semantic component, and IAD can be treated as a distributional argument in favour of this semantics. Furthermore, it can be used to examine various proposals in this field, since if this hypothesis is right, then we can read the scope of degree operators right off surface syntax in this dialect. While this hypothesis is very successful at providing an interpretation to IAD sentences, it makes a number of incorrect syntactic predictions. I thus turn to an in situ analysis of IAD, which shares almost none of the syntactic problems of the movement analysis, but requires an entirely novel semantics to be interpretable. I thus suggest an interpretive mechanism for IAD sentences whereby the degree operator does not relate to any gradable predicate lower in the structure, but rather quantifies over degrees of appropriateness of its entire complement, in a manner very similar to how Morzycki (2011) analyses metalinguistic comparatives. The scale of the lower gradable adjective only comes to play a role in the pragmatics. I tentatively conclude in favour of the in situ analysis. Concerning opinion verbs, I present some novel data that show that sentences in find contain much semantic material that is presupposed, and I propose to formal- ize this in the form of what I call the Subjective Contingency Presupposition. This approach gives us an adequate way of describing what is asserted and what is presup- posed in such sentences, including in many problematic cases involving negation, and also gives us for free the fact that such verbs can only take subjective complements. I also suggest that a careful examination of the syntactic and semantic properties of their complement clause argues in favour of Lasersohn (2005)’s proposal that sub- jectivity in grammar is represented by a judge index on the interpretation function, rather than by null pronouns in the syntax. This is exactly contrary to Saebø (2009)’s conclusions, who recently proposed one of the first analyses of the verb find.This conclusion follows from the way that various kinds of subjective and non-subjective constituents may be conjoined under find. 1 Resum´ e´ Cette th`ese examine deux constructions peu connues `a l’interface de la syntaxe et la s´emantique, notamment un type de quantification de degr´es `a distance en fran¸cais qu´eb´ecois appel´e l’Intensification A` Distance (IAD), ainsi que la classe des verbes d’opinion, tels que trouver et to find en anglais. J’examine deux analyses possibles de l’IAD: une selon laquelle l’ordre des mots est d´eriv´e par une version visible du mouvement de DegP et une o`u l’ordre de surface est g´en´er´e tel quel. La premi`ere analyse est naturellement rattach´ee `a l’approche dans la s´emantique de degr´es selon laquelle les op´erateurs de degr´en´ecessitent une op´eration semblablealamont´ ` ee des quantificateurs pour ˆetre interpr´etables. Si cela est correct, il n’est pas n´ecessaire de modifier la s´emantique que nous donnonsa ` ces ´el´ements et l’IAD peut ˆetre consid´er´ee comme un argument distributionnel en faveur de cette s´emantique. De plus, l’IAD peut ainsi servirav´ ` erifier plusieurs hypoth`eses dans ce domaine, puisque si cette analyse est valide, il est possible d’´evaluer la port´ee des op´erateurs de degr´e`amˆeme la syntaxe de surface dans ce dialecte. Malgr´e que cette analyse arrive `a fournir une interpr´etation aux phrases `aIAD, elle fait plusieurs pr´edictions incorrectes sur le plan syntaxique. J’examinerai ainsi une analyse in situ de l’IAD, ce qui permet d’´eviter un grand nombre des probl`emes de l’analyse par mouvement, mais n´ecessite toutefois une s´emantique enti`erement nou- velle. Je proposerai donc un nouveau syst`eme d’interpr´etation pour les phrasesaIAD ` selon lequel l’op´erateur de degr´e n’a aucune relation directe avec un pr´edicat scalaire plus bas dans la phrase, mais quantifie plutˆot sur les degr´es d’ad´equation de son compl´ement entier. Cette analyse et largement inspir´ee de celle de Morzycki (2011) des comparatifs m´etalinguistiques. L’´echelle introduite par le pr´edicat scalaire ne de- vient pertinente pour l’interpr´etation de l’op´erateur qu’au niveau de la pragmatique. Je conclus provisoirement en faveur de l’analyse in situ. En ce qui concerne les verbes d’opinion, je pr´esente de nouvelles donn´ees d´emontrant que les phrases construites avec find contiennent beaucoup d’information pr´esuppos´ee. Je formalise cette information `a l’aide de ce que j’appelle la Pr´esupposition de Contingence Subjective. Cette formulation rend compte de ce que ces phrases affirment et pr´esupposent de mani`ere ad´equate, incluant dans de nombreux cas impliquant des n´egations enchˆass´ees. Le fait que les verbes d’opinion
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