Yasutada Sudo
Biographic Data
| ID | 1610133 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Yasutada Sudo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Yasutada |
| FAMILY NAME | Sudo |
| SIGNATURE | SUDO Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0248-9308 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Free choice with anaphora
In this paper, we formulate a new problem for any account of Free Choice (FC) inferences, which we dub FC with anaphora. According to the classical FC inference schema, given a sentence of the form ♢(φ ∨ ψ), one can infer ♢φ and ♢ψ. FC with anaphora involves cases where an anaphoric dependency spans φ ∨ ψ. Anaphora is heavily constrained in disjunctions, but a negative existential statement in the initial disjunct can license a pronoun in the lat…
Problems for a uniform analysis of ancora in Italian
The Italian additive particle ancora has uses that can be paraphrased by again and still in English. Michela Ippolito’s uniform analysis of still and again in English could be the foundation for a uniform analysis of the two uses of ancora, but we argue that it faces serious challenges. Her core idea is that still and again have the same presupposition about a past eventuality and differ only in the assertion such that still asserts that the same…
The ups and downs of ignorance
Plain disjunctive sentences, such as The mystery box contains a blue ball or a yellow ball, typically imply that the speaker does not know which of the two disjuncts is true. This is known as an ignorance inference. We can distinguish between two aspects of this inference: the negated universal upper bound part (i.e., the speaker is uncertain about each disjunct), which we call uncertainty, and the existential lower bound part (i.e., the speaker …
Additivity, accommodation, and alternatives
Additive particles are generally infelicitous in out-of-the-blue contexts. Kripke (in Linguistic Inquiry 40(3):367-386, 2009) puts forward an influential idea that the additive presupposition they trigger has an anaphoric component that cannot be accommodated. Ruys (in Linguistic Inquiry 46(2):343-361, 2015) proposes an alternative analysis that the observation can be explained in terms of conditions on deaccenting, claiming that in light of exce…
What Makes Linguistic Inferences Robust?
Sentences involving embedded disjunctions give rise to distributive and free choice inferences. These inferences exhibit certain characteristics of Scalar Implicatures (SIs) and some researchers have proposed to treat them as such. This proposal, however, faces an important challenge: experimental results have shown that the two inferences are more robust, faster to process, and easier to acquire than regular SIs. A common response to this challe…
Temporal -made in Japanese and its interaction with aspect and polarity
The main puzzle that Japanese -made gives rise to is that it has two uses, the until-use and the by-use. In this paper we attempted to analyze the two uses uniformly. The core idea is that in both uses -made introduces domain alternatives, and a phonologically null alternative-sensitive operator introduces additional inferences based on them. We employed two such operators, exc and exh. The former accounts for the until-use, as in Alxatib’s 2023 …
Implicature priming, salience, and context adaptation
Recent experimental research has observed two kinds of priming effects on quantity implicatures. One is the Strong-Weak contrast, where more quantity implicatures are observed after prime trials forcing interpretations with quantity implicatures ('Strong primes') than after prime trials forcing interpretations without quantity implicatures ('Weak primes'). The other effect is the Alternative-Weak contrast, where prime trials mentioning alternativ…
Which answer resolves which reading of which question
The Representation of Gender and Inflectional Class in Italian: A Reply to Kučerová 2018
Kučerová (2018) puts forward a novel theory of the morphology and interpretation of nominal gender in Italian. Here, we take issue with this theory from both empirical and theoretical standpoints. We first show that several generalizations presented as empirical support for it are incorrect. We then point out three fundamental theoretical challenges. First, the proposed three-way classification of nouns does not represent the full range of facts,…
Scalar implicatures with discourse referents: A Case Study on Plurality Inferences
This paper explores the idea that scalar implicatures are computed with respect to discourse referents . Given the general consensus that a proper account of pronominal anaphora in natural language requires discourse referents separately from the truth-conditional meaning, it is naturally expected that the anaphoric information that discourse referents carry play a role in the computation of scalar implicatures, but the literature has so far most…
Donkey Anaphora in Non-Monotonic Environments
Donkey anaphora in quantified sentences is ambiguous between an existential and a universal reading. The extent to which different readings are accessible depends on the quantifier, but how to model this dependence is debated (Kanazawa, 1994; Champollion et al. 2019). This study advances this debate by providing novel experimental data on the interpretation of donkey anaphora in sentences with non-monotonic quantifiers exactly 3 and all but one. …
Negative free choice
Free Choice (FC) is an inference arising from the interaction between existential modals and disjunction. Schematically, a sentence of the form permitted(A or B) gives rise to the inference ◊A∧◊B. Many competing theories of FC have been proposed but they can be classified into two main groups: one group derives FC as an entailment, while the other derives it as an implicature. By contrast, Negative Free Choice (NFC), the corresponding inference f…
Gender and interpretation in Greek: Comments on Merchant (2014)
Merchant (2014, “Gender mismatches under nominal ellipsis”, Lingua, 151: 9–32) makes the following two claims about nominal ellipsis in (Modern) Greek. (i) There are three classes of MASCULINE-FEMININE noun pairs that differ in whether nominal ellipsis with gender mismatch is possible. (ii) Nominal ellipsis with gender mismatch is possible in predicative positions but not in argument positions. We take issue with both of these claims. Our qualms …
Minimal sufficiency with covert even
Exclusive particles (e.g. just) express exclusivity inferences by negating focus alternatives to the sentence they modify. Grosz (2012) observes that they can sometimes give rise to what he calls minimal sufficiency readings, which seem to affirm, rather than negate, focus alternatives. Grosz proposes to analyze them in terms of the rank-order reading, a kind of scalar reading of exclusive particles that is independently attested. Coppock & Beave…
Daniel Gutzmann, The grammar of expressivity (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 72). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xx + 287
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The *hope-wh puzzle
Clause-embedding predicates come in three major varieties: (i)responsive predicates(e.g.know) are compatible with both declarative and interrogative complements; (ii)rogative predicates(e.g.wonder) are only compatible with interrogative complements; and (iii)anti-rogative predicates(e.g.hope) are only compatible with declarative complements. It has been suggested that these selectional properties are at least partly semantic in nature. In particu…
The symmetry problem: Current Theories and Prospects
The structural approach to alternatives (Katzir in Linguist Philos 30(6):669–690, 2007; Fox and Katzir in Nat Lang Semant 19(1):87–107, 2011; Katzir in Semantics, pragmatics and the case of scalar implicatures, Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp 40–71, 2014) is the most developed attempt in the literature at solving the symmetry problem of scalar implicatures. Problematic data with indirect and particularised scalar implicatures have however been rai…
Predicates of Relevance and Theories of Question Embedding
Lahiri (2002) classifies question embedding predicates into two major types, rogative and responsive predicates. Rogative predicates like wonder are only compatible with interrogative complements, while responsive predicates like know are also compatible with declarative complements. There are two main theories of responsive predicates: The question-to-proposition reduction approach holds that responsive predicates semantically always select for …
Presupposed ignorance and exhaustification: How scalar implicatures and presuppositions interact
We investigate the interactions between scalar implicatures and presuppositions in sentences containing both a scalar item and presupposition trigger. We first critically discuss Gajewski and Sharvit’s previous approach. We then closely examine two ways of integrating an exhaustivity-based theory of scalar implicatures with a trivalent approach to presuppositions. The empirical side of our discussion focuses on two novel observations: (i) the int…
Hidden nominal structures in Japanese clausal comparatives
Recent studies of Japanese clausal comparatives have yielded several competing theoretical views of their syntax and semantics that have different implications for the issue of crosslinguistic variation in comparative constructions. This paper aims at contributing to this debate by offering a novel syntactic analysis of Japanese clausal comparatives. The main proposal is that despite their appearance, Japanese clausal comparatives involve a nomin…
Varieties of intensification: Remarks on Beltrama and Bochnak ‘Intensification without degrees cross-linguistically’
This paper is a commentary on Beltrama and Bochnak ( 2015 ), who propose a uniform semantics for different uses of cross-categorial intensifiers -issimo in Italian and šému in Washo as universal quantifiers over contexts. Two concerns of their uniform semantics are raised, (i) unexpected restrictions on intensification, and (ii) non-truth-conditional intensification. It is argued that a uniform semantics like Beltrama and Bochnak’s is unachievabl…
Experimental investigations of ambiguity: The Case of Most
Dependent plural pronouns with Skolemized choice functions
The present paper discusses two interesting phenomena concerning phi-features on plural pronouns: (i) plural pronouns that denote atomic individuals (‘dependent plural pronouns’), and (ii) plural pronouns with more than one binder (‘partial binding’). A novel account of these two phenomena is proposed, according to which all occurrences of phi-features are both semantically and morphologically relevant. For such a ‘uniformly semantic account’ of …
The Syntax of Monsters
We present novel data showing that indexicals, first and second person pronouns in particular, occurring in a certain kind of attitude report in Uyghur are interpreted with respect to the reported context (indexical shifting). While previous authors report similar shifted interpretations of indexicals in languages such as Amharic and Zazaki, we observe a unique feature of Uyghur indexical shifting: it is sensitive to structural positions of the i…
Person Indexicals in Uyghur Indexical Shifting
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt:This paper provides novel data of indexical shifting from (Modern) Uyghur. Focusing on the interpretation of 1st and 2nd person singular indexicals, we observe two peculiar features of Uyghur indexical shifting: (i) that 1st person indexicals are obligatorily de se, while 2nd person indexicals are not obligatorily de se in the sense explained below; and (ii) that shifted 2nd person pronouns are not …
The Syntax of Monsters
We present novel data showing that indexicals, first and second person pronouns in particular, occurring in a certain kind of attitude report in Uyghur are interpreted with respect to the reported context (indexical shifting). While previous authors report similar shifted interpretations of indexicals in languages such as Amharic and Zazaki, we observe a unique feature of Uyghur indexical shifting: it is sensitive to structural positions of the i…
The symmetry problem: Current Theories and Prospects
The structural approach to alternatives (Katzir in Linguist Philos 30(6):669–690, 2007; Fox and Katzir in Nat Lang Semant 19(1):87–107, 2011; Katzir in Semantics, pragmatics and the case of scalar implicatures, Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp 40–71, 2014) is the most developed attempt in the literature at solving the symmetry problem of scalar implicatures. Problematic data with indirect and particularised scalar implicatures have however been rai…
The *hope-wh puzzle
Clause-embedding predicates come in three major varieties: (i)responsive predicates(e.g.know) are compatible with both declarative and interrogative complements; (ii)rogative predicates(e.g.wonder) are only compatible with interrogative complements; and (iii)anti-rogative predicates(e.g.hope) are only compatible with declarative complements. It has been suggested that these selectional properties are at least partly semantic in nature. In particu…
Varieties of intensification: Remarks on Beltrama and Bochnak ‘Intensification without degrees cross-linguistically’
This paper is a commentary on Beltrama and Bochnak ( 2015 ), who propose a uniform semantics for different uses of cross-categorial intensifiers -issimo in Italian and šému in Washo as universal quantifiers over contexts. Two concerns of their uniform semantics are raised, (i) unexpected restrictions on intensification, and (ii) non-truth-conditional intensification. It is argued that a uniform semantics like Beltrama and Bochnak’s is unachievabl…
Experimental investigations of ambiguity: The Case of Most
Dependent plural pronouns with Skolemized choice functions
The present paper discusses two interesting phenomena concerning phi-features on plural pronouns: (i) plural pronouns that denote atomic individuals (‘dependent plural pronouns’), and (ii) plural pronouns with more than one binder (‘partial binding’). A novel account of these two phenomena is proposed, according to which all occurrences of phi-features are both semantically and morphologically relevant. For such a ‘uniformly semantic account’ of …
Person Indexicals in Uyghur Indexical Shifting
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt:This paper provides novel data of indexical shifting from (Modern) Uyghur. Focusing on the interpretation of 1st and 2nd person singular indexicals, we observe two peculiar features of Uyghur indexical shifting: (i) that 1st person indexicals are obligatorily de se, while 2nd person indexicals are not obligatorily de se in the sense explained below; and (ii) that shifted 2nd person pronouns are not …
Dependent plural pronouns with Skolemized choice functions
The present paper discusses two interesting phenomena concerning phi-features on plural pronouns: (i) plural pronouns that denote atomic individuals (‘dependent plural pronouns’), and (ii) plural pronouns with more than one binder (‘partial binding’). A novel account of these two phenomena is proposed, according to which all occurrences of phi-features are both semantically and morphologically relevant. For such a ‘uniformly semantic account’ of …
The Syntax of Monsters
We present novel data showing that indexicals, first and second person pronouns in particular, occurring in a certain kind of attitude report in Uyghur are interpreted with respect to the reported context (indexical shifting). While previous authors report similar shifted interpretations of indexicals in languages such as Amharic and Zazaki, we observe a unique feature of Uyghur indexical shifting: it is sensitive to structural positions of the i…
Hidden nominal structures in Japanese clausal comparatives
Recent studies of Japanese clausal comparatives have yielded several competing theoretical views of their syntax and semantics that have different implications for the issue of crosslinguistic variation in comparative constructions. This paper aims at contributing to this debate by offering a novel syntactic analysis of Japanese clausal comparatives. The main proposal is that despite their appearance, Japanese clausal comparatives involve a nomin…
Varieties of intensification: Remarks on Beltrama and Bochnak ‘Intensification without degrees cross-linguistically’
This paper is a commentary on Beltrama and Bochnak ( 2015 ), who propose a uniform semantics for different uses of cross-categorial intensifiers -issimo in Italian and šému in Washo as universal quantifiers over contexts. Two concerns of their uniform semantics are raised, (i) unexpected restrictions on intensification, and (ii) non-truth-conditional intensification. It is argued that a uniform semantics like Beltrama and Bochnak’s is unachievabl…
Experimental investigations of ambiguity: The Case of Most
Predicates of Relevance and Theories of Question Embedding
Lahiri (2002) classifies question embedding predicates into two major types, rogative and responsive predicates. Rogative predicates like wonder are only compatible with interrogative complements, while responsive predicates like know are also compatible with declarative complements. There are two main theories of responsive predicates: The question-to-proposition reduction approach holds that responsive predicates semantically always select for …
Presupposed ignorance and exhaustification: How scalar implicatures and presuppositions interact
We investigate the interactions between scalar implicatures and presuppositions in sentences containing both a scalar item and presupposition trigger. We first critically discuss Gajewski and Sharvit’s previous approach. We then closely examine two ways of integrating an exhaustivity-based theory of scalar implicatures with a trivalent approach to presuppositions. The empirical side of our discussion focuses on two novel observations: (i) the int…
The symmetry problem: Current Theories and Prospects
The structural approach to alternatives (Katzir in Linguist Philos 30(6):669–690, 2007; Fox and Katzir in Nat Lang Semant 19(1):87–107, 2011; Katzir in Semantics, pragmatics and the case of scalar implicatures, Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp 40–71, 2014) is the most developed attempt in the literature at solving the symmetry problem of scalar implicatures. Problematic data with indirect and particularised scalar implicatures have however been rai…
The *hope-wh puzzle
Clause-embedding predicates come in three major varieties: (i)responsive predicates(e.g.know) are compatible with both declarative and interrogative complements; (ii)rogative predicates(e.g.wonder) are only compatible with interrogative complements; and (iii)anti-rogative predicates(e.g.hope) are only compatible with declarative complements. It has been suggested that these selectional properties are at least partly semantic in nature. In particu…
Gender and interpretation in Greek: Comments on Merchant (2014)
Merchant (2014, “Gender mismatches under nominal ellipsis”, Lingua, 151: 9–32) makes the following two claims about nominal ellipsis in (Modern) Greek. (i) There are three classes of MASCULINE-FEMININE noun pairs that differ in whether nominal ellipsis with gender mismatch is possible. (ii) Nominal ellipsis with gender mismatch is possible in predicative positions but not in argument positions. We take issue with both of these claims. Our qualms …
Minimal sufficiency with covert even
Exclusive particles (e.g. just) express exclusivity inferences by negating focus alternatives to the sentence they modify. Grosz (2012) observes that they can sometimes give rise to what he calls minimal sufficiency readings, which seem to affirm, rather than negate, focus alternatives. Grosz proposes to analyze them in terms of the rank-order reading, a kind of scalar reading of exclusive particles that is independently attested. Coppock & Beave…
Daniel Gutzmann, The grammar of expressivity (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 72). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xx + 287
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Negative free choice
Free Choice (FC) is an inference arising from the interaction between existential modals and disjunction. Schematically, a sentence of the form permitted(A or B) gives rise to the inference ◊A∧◊B. Many competing theories of FC have been proposed but they can be classified into two main groups: one group derives FC as an entailment, while the other derives it as an implicature. By contrast, Negative Free Choice (NFC), the corresponding inference f…
Donkey Anaphora in Non-Monotonic Environments
Donkey anaphora in quantified sentences is ambiguous between an existential and a universal reading. The extent to which different readings are accessible depends on the quantifier, but how to model this dependence is debated (Kanazawa, 1994; Champollion et al. 2019). This study advances this debate by providing novel experimental data on the interpretation of donkey anaphora in sentences with non-monotonic quantifiers exactly 3 and all but one. …
Which answer resolves which reading of which question
The Representation of Gender and Inflectional Class in Italian: A Reply to Kučerová 2018
Kučerová (2018) puts forward a novel theory of the morphology and interpretation of nominal gender in Italian. Here, we take issue with this theory from both empirical and theoretical standpoints. We first show that several generalizations presented as empirical support for it are incorrect. We then point out three fundamental theoretical challenges. First, the proposed three-way classification of nouns does not represent the full range of facts,…
Scalar implicatures with discourse referents: A Case Study on Plurality Inferences
This paper explores the idea that scalar implicatures are computed with respect to discourse referents . Given the general consensus that a proper account of pronominal anaphora in natural language requires discourse referents separately from the truth-conditional meaning, it is naturally expected that the anaphoric information that discourse referents carry play a role in the computation of scalar implicatures, but the literature has so far most…
What Makes Linguistic Inferences Robust?
Sentences involving embedded disjunctions give rise to distributive and free choice inferences. These inferences exhibit certain characteristics of Scalar Implicatures (SIs) and some researchers have proposed to treat them as such. This proposal, however, faces an important challenge: experimental results have shown that the two inferences are more robust, faster to process, and easier to acquire than regular SIs. A common response to this challe…
Temporal -made in Japanese and its interaction with aspect and polarity
The main puzzle that Japanese -made gives rise to is that it has two uses, the until-use and the by-use. In this paper we attempted to analyze the two uses uniformly. The core idea is that in both uses -made introduces domain alternatives, and a phonologically null alternative-sensitive operator introduces additional inferences based on them. We employed two such operators, exc and exh. The former accounts for the until-use, as in Alxatib’s 2023 …
Implicature priming, salience, and context adaptation
Recent experimental research has observed two kinds of priming effects on quantity implicatures. One is the Strong-Weak contrast, where more quantity implicatures are observed after prime trials forcing interpretations with quantity implicatures ('Strong primes') than after prime trials forcing interpretations without quantity implicatures ('Weak primes'). The other effect is the Alternative-Weak contrast, where prime trials mentioning alternativ…
Free choice with anaphora
In this paper, we formulate a new problem for any account of Free Choice (FC) inferences, which we dub FC with anaphora. According to the classical FC inference schema, given a sentence of the form ♢(φ ∨ ψ), one can infer ♢φ and ♢ψ. FC with anaphora involves cases where an anaphoric dependency spans φ ∨ ψ. Anaphora is heavily constrained in disjunctions, but a negative existential statement in the initial disjunct can license a pronoun in the lat…
Problems for a uniform analysis of ancora in Italian
The Italian additive particle ancora has uses that can be paraphrased by again and still in English. Michela Ippolito’s uniform analysis of still and again in English could be the foundation for a uniform analysis of the two uses of ancora, but we argue that it faces serious challenges. Her core idea is that still and again have the same presupposition about a past eventuality and differ only in the assertion such that still asserts that the same…
The ups and downs of ignorance
Plain disjunctive sentences, such as The mystery box contains a blue ball or a yellow ball, typically imply that the speaker does not know which of the two disjuncts is true. This is known as an ignorance inference. We can distinguish between two aspects of this inference: the negated universal upper bound part (i.e., the speaker is uncertain about each disjunct), which we call uncertainty, and the existential lower bound part (i.e., the speaker …
Additivity, accommodation, and alternatives
Additive particles are generally infelicitous in out-of-the-blue contexts. Kripke (in Linguistic Inquiry 40(3):367-386, 2009) puts forward an influential idea that the additive presupposition they trigger has an anaphoric component that cannot be accommodated. Ruys (in Linguistic Inquiry 46(2):343-361, 2015) proposes an alternative analysis that the observation can be explained in terms of conditions on deaccenting, claiming that in light of exce…
Linguistics (22 works) · Philosophy (22 works) · Computer Science (19 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (19 works) · Mathematics (12 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Philosophy of language (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Metaphysics (7 works) · Natural language processing (6 works)