Judith Tonhauser
Biographic Data
| ID | 777105 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Judith Tonhauser |
| GIVEN NAMES | Judith |
| FAMILY NAME | Tonhauser |
| SIGNATURE | TONHAUSER J |
| AFFILIATIONS | The Ohio State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6061-7120 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 133 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The Interpretation of Implicit Arguments in Paraguayan Guaraní
Paraguayan Guaraní allows for implicit arguments, that is, arguments that are neither cross-referenced on the verb nor realized by an independent noun phrase. Building on prior description of the distribution of implicit arguments in the language, this paper describes the interpretations such arguments can receive. Specifically, the paper shows that implicit arguments in Paraguayan Guaraní can receive elided and existential interpretations, in ad…
Are there factive predicates? An empirical investigation
Are there factive predicates? An empirical investigation
Properties of the content of the clausal complement have long been assumed to distinguish factive predicates like know from nonfactive ones like think (Kiparsky & Kiparsky 1970, inter alia). There is, however, disagreement about which properties define factive predicates, as well as uncertainty about whether the content of the complement of particular predicates exhibits the properties attributed to the content of the complement of factive predic…
Prior Beliefs Modulate Projection
Beliefs about the world affect language processing and interpretation in several empirical domains. In two experiments, we tested whether subjective prior beliefs about the probability of utterance content modulate projection, that is, listeners’ inferences about speaker commitment to that content. We find that prior beliefs predict projection at both the group and the participant level: the higher the prior belief in a content, the more speakers…
Evaluative adjective sentences
Two contents of evaluative adjective sentences, like Kim was smart to watch the movie, are the prejacent (that Kim watched the movie) and the generalization (that the degree to which Kim watching the movie is smart was higher than the contextual standard of smart). The prejacent is standardly analyzed as a presupposition (e.g., Norrick 1978; Barker 2002; Oshima 2009; Kertz 2010). This paper argues against such analyses of the prejacent because, a…
Projection variability in Paraguayan Guaraní
Prosody and Meaning
The prosody of an utterance plays a significant role in determining the meaning of the utterance. Studying the contributions of prosody to meaning is complicated by several factors: (i) prosody has multiple components in the speech signal, some with continuous expression, (ii) utterances with the same meaning can differ in their prosodic realizations, and (iii) there is cross-linguistic prosodic variation. Concentrating on information-structural …
How Projective is Projective Content? Gradience in Projectivity and At-issueness
Projective content is utterance content that a speaker may be taken to be committed to even when the expression associated with the content occurs embedded under an entailment-canceling operator (e.g., Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet, 1990). It has long been observed that projective content varies in how projective it is (e.g., Karttunen, 1971; Simons, 2001; Abusch, 2010), though preliminary experimental research has been able to confirm only some of…
The Best Question
This article deals with projection in factive sentences. The article first challenges standard assumptions by presenting a series of detailed observations about the interpretations of factive sentences in context, showing that what implication projects, if any, is quite variable and that projection is tightly constrained by prosodic and contextual information about the alternatives under consideration. The article then proposes an account which a…
Questions Under Discussion
We discuss problems familiar from the literature on presupposition and information structure, and illustrate how a synthesis using the Question Under Discussion (QUD) framework yields fresh insight. In this framework, discourse is analyzed in terms of the strategy of inquiry pursued by the interlocutors, and individual utterances are interpreted relative to the question being addressed. This way of thinking offers a new perspective on diverse phe…
Cross-Linguistic Temporal Reference
Tense, the grammaticalized marking of location in time, has played a central role in analyses of temporal reference even since before the inception of the formal study of meaning. However, research on a wide range of typologically diverse languages over the past 40 years has revealed that many languages do not have tenses and that there are a variety of other means, both linguistic and contextual, that affect temporal reference besides tense. The…
Variation in the prosody of focus in head- and head/edge-prominence languages
Are 'informative presuppositions' presuppositions
Presuppositions are contents of utterances that must be mutually known by the interlocutors, i.e. the speaker and the addressees, in order for an utterance of a sentence with the presupposition trigger to be judged to be acceptable. However, a substantial subset of contents traditionally taken to be presuppositions does not exhibit this property and can instead be used to inform the addressee about the supposedly presuppositional content. Classic…
The Prosody of Focus in Paraguayan Guaraní
In many languages, prosodic prominence indicates which expressions of an utterance are focused. This study explores the prosody of focus in Paraguayan Guaraní (Tupí-Guaraní) through two production and two perception experiments conducted with native speakers of Guaraní in Paraguay. The results of the production experiments suggest that prosodic prominence is realized by stressed syllable duration, f0 slope, and pitch accent type. While the percep…
Toward a Taxonomy of Projective Content
Projective contents, which include presuppositional inferences and Potts's (2005) conventional implicatures, are contents that may project when a construction is embedded, as standardly identified by the FAMILY-OF-SENTENCES diagnostic (e.g. Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet 1990). This article establishes distinctions among projective contents on the basis of a series of diagnostics, including a variant of the family-of-sentences diagnostic, that can b…
What projects and why
Projection is widely used as a diagnostic for presupposition, but many expression types yield projection even though they do not have standard properties of presupposition, for example appositives, expressives, and honorifics (Potts 2005). While it is possible to analyze projection piecemeal, clearly a unitary explanation is to be preferred. Yet we show that standard explanations of projective behavior (common ground based theories, anaphoric the…
Temporal Interpretation without Tense
Matrix clauses are tensed in Korean and Japanese, but both languages have coordination constructions where any non-final conjunct may or, in the case of Japanese, must be untensed. Building on analyses of the temporal interpretation of tenseless languages such as Yucatec Maya (Mayan: Bohnemeyer 2002) and Kalaallisut (Eskimo-Aleut: Bittner 2005), this article argues that a truly tenseless analysis of the temporal interpretation of these non-final …
The synchrony and diachrony of differential object marking in Paraguayan Guaraní
This paper explores the synchrony and diachrony of differential object marking in Paraguayan Guaraní on the basis of a quantitative study of a corpus of naturally occurring data of the modern language and an investigation of object marking in a 17th-century catechism. We show that both animacy and topicality, but not definiteness, affect whether a direct object is marked in modern Guaraní, a finding that has implications for cross-linguistic theo…
Word Order In Paraguayan Guaraní
This paper explores constraints on clausal word order in Paraguayan Guaraní on the basis of a corpus of naturally occurring data. We find that grammatical function is a strong predictor of word order for direct objects, since they are almost exclusively realized postverbally, as well as for indirect objects, which all occur postverbally. The placement of subjects, however, depends on a variety of factors, in particular discourse status and the tr…
Defining crosslinguistic categories
Taking stock. Nordlinger & Sadler 2004 (NS04) brought nominal tense/aspect/mood (TAM) markers across languages to the attention of the linguistic community and raised many important questions about noun-phrase temporality, lexical categories, and other research areas. In the theoretical literature on noun-phrase temporality, the idea that tense might be a category of noun phrases was considered as early as Enç 1981. In her analysis of the tempora…
Nominal Tense? The Meaning of Guaraní Nominal Temporal Markers
Paraguayan Guaraní has nominal markers that affect the temporal interpretation of the noun phrase they attach to. On the basis of data collected during recent fieldwork in Paraguay, I explore in this article the lexical semantic, semantic, and discourse properties of these nominal temporal markers and develop a semantic analysis that accounts for their meaning and use. I then address the claim (made e.g. in Nordlinger & Sadler 2004) that such mar…
Toward a Taxonomy of Projective Content
Projective contents, which include presuppositional inferences and Potts's (2005) conventional implicatures, are contents that may project when a construction is embedded, as standardly identified by the FAMILY-OF-SENTENCES diagnostic (e.g. Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet 1990). This article establishes distinctions among projective contents on the basis of a series of diagnostics, including a variant of the family-of-sentences diagnostic, that can b…
Variation in the prosody of focus in head- and head/edge-prominence languages
Nominal Tense? The Meaning of Guaraní Nominal Temporal Markers
Paraguayan Guaraní has nominal markers that affect the temporal interpretation of the noun phrase they attach to. On the basis of data collected during recent fieldwork in Paraguay, I explore in this article the lexical semantic, semantic, and discourse properties of these nominal temporal markers and develop a semantic analysis that accounts for their meaning and use. I then address the claim (made e.g. in Nordlinger & Sadler 2004) that such mar…
The Prosody of Focus in Paraguayan Guaraní
In many languages, prosodic prominence indicates which expressions of an utterance are focused. This study explores the prosody of focus in Paraguayan Guaraní (Tupí-Guaraní) through two production and two perception experiments conducted with native speakers of Guaraní in Paraguay. The results of the production experiments suggest that prosodic prominence is realized by stressed syllable duration, f0 slope, and pitch accent type. While the percep…
The Best Question
This article deals with projection in factive sentences. The article first challenges standard assumptions by presenting a series of detailed observations about the interpretations of factive sentences in context, showing that what implication projects, if any, is quite variable and that projection is tightly constrained by prosodic and contextual information about the alternatives under consideration. The article then proposes an account which a…
Questions Under Discussion
We discuss problems familiar from the literature on presupposition and information structure, and illustrate how a synthesis using the Question Under Discussion (QUD) framework yields fresh insight. In this framework, discourse is analyzed in terms of the strategy of inquiry pursued by the interlocutors, and individual utterances are interpreted relative to the question being addressed. This way of thinking offers a new perspective on diverse phe…
Cross-Linguistic Temporal Reference
Tense, the grammaticalized marking of location in time, has played a central role in analyses of temporal reference even since before the inception of the formal study of meaning. However, research on a wide range of typologically diverse languages over the past 40 years has revealed that many languages do not have tenses and that there are a variety of other means, both linguistic and contextual, that affect temporal reference besides tense. The…
Defining crosslinguistic categories
Taking stock. Nordlinger & Sadler 2004 (NS04) brought nominal tense/aspect/mood (TAM) markers across languages to the attention of the linguistic community and raised many important questions about noun-phrase temporality, lexical categories, and other research areas. In the theoretical literature on noun-phrase temporality, the idea that tense might be a category of noun phrases was considered as early as Enç 1981. In her analysis of the tempora…
Are there factive predicates? An empirical investigation
Properties of the content of the clausal complement have long been assumed to distinguish factive predicates like know from nonfactive ones like think (Kiparsky & Kiparsky 1970, inter alia). There is, however, disagreement about which properties define factive predicates, as well as uncertainty about whether the content of the complement of particular predicates exhibits the properties attributed to the content of the complement of factive predic…
The synchrony and diachrony of differential object marking in Paraguayan Guaraní
This paper explores the synchrony and diachrony of differential object marking in Paraguayan Guaraní on the basis of a quantitative study of a corpus of naturally occurring data of the modern language and an investigation of object marking in a 17th-century catechism. We show that both animacy and topicality, but not definiteness, affect whether a direct object is marked in modern Guaraní, a finding that has implications for cross-linguistic theo…
Word Order In Paraguayan Guaraní
This paper explores constraints on clausal word order in Paraguayan Guaraní on the basis of a corpus of naturally occurring data. We find that grammatical function is a strong predictor of word order for direct objects, since they are almost exclusively realized postverbally, as well as for indirect objects, which all occur postverbally. The placement of subjects, however, depends on a variety of factors, in particular discourse status and the tr…
Are 'informative presuppositions' presuppositions
Presuppositions are contents of utterances that must be mutually known by the interlocutors, i.e. the speaker and the addressees, in order for an utterance of a sentence with the presupposition trigger to be judged to be acceptable. However, a substantial subset of contents traditionally taken to be presuppositions does not exhibit this property and can instead be used to inform the addressee about the supposedly presuppositional content. Classic…
Are there factive predicates? An empirical investigation
Nominal Tense? The Meaning of Guaraní Nominal Temporal Markers
Paraguayan Guaraní has nominal markers that affect the temporal interpretation of the noun phrase they attach to. On the basis of data collected during recent fieldwork in Paraguay, I explore in this article the lexical semantic, semantic, and discourse properties of these nominal temporal markers and develop a semantic analysis that accounts for their meaning and use. I then address the claim (made e.g. in Nordlinger & Sadler 2004) that such mar…
Defining crosslinguistic categories
Taking stock. Nordlinger & Sadler 2004 (NS04) brought nominal tense/aspect/mood (TAM) markers across languages to the attention of the linguistic community and raised many important questions about noun-phrase temporality, lexical categories, and other research areas. In the theoretical literature on noun-phrase temporality, the idea that tense might be a category of noun phrases was considered as early as Enç 1981. In her analysis of the tempora…
What projects and why
Projection is widely used as a diagnostic for presupposition, but many expression types yield projection even though they do not have standard properties of presupposition, for example appositives, expressives, and honorifics (Potts 2005). While it is possible to analyze projection piecemeal, clearly a unitary explanation is to be preferred. Yet we show that standard explanations of projective behavior (common ground based theories, anaphoric the…
Temporal Interpretation without Tense
Matrix clauses are tensed in Korean and Japanese, but both languages have coordination constructions where any non-final conjunct may or, in the case of Japanese, must be untensed. Building on analyses of the temporal interpretation of tenseless languages such as Yucatec Maya (Mayan: Bohnemeyer 2002) and Kalaallisut (Eskimo-Aleut: Bittner 2005), this article argues that a truly tenseless analysis of the temporal interpretation of these non-final …
The synchrony and diachrony of differential object marking in Paraguayan Guaraní
This paper explores the synchrony and diachrony of differential object marking in Paraguayan Guaraní on the basis of a quantitative study of a corpus of naturally occurring data of the modern language and an investigation of object marking in a 17th-century catechism. We show that both animacy and topicality, but not definiteness, affect whether a direct object is marked in modern Guaraní, a finding that has implications for cross-linguistic theo…
Word Order In Paraguayan Guaraní
This paper explores constraints on clausal word order in Paraguayan Guaraní on the basis of a corpus of naturally occurring data. We find that grammatical function is a strong predictor of word order for direct objects, since they are almost exclusively realized postverbally, as well as for indirect objects, which all occur postverbally. The placement of subjects, however, depends on a variety of factors, in particular discourse status and the tr…
The Prosody of Focus in Paraguayan Guaraní
In many languages, prosodic prominence indicates which expressions of an utterance are focused. This study explores the prosody of focus in Paraguayan Guaraní (Tupí-Guaraní) through two production and two perception experiments conducted with native speakers of Guaraní in Paraguay. The results of the production experiments suggest that prosodic prominence is realized by stressed syllable duration, f0 slope, and pitch accent type. While the percep…
Toward a Taxonomy of Projective Content
Projective contents, which include presuppositional inferences and Potts's (2005) conventional implicatures, are contents that may project when a construction is embedded, as standardly identified by the FAMILY-OF-SENTENCES diagnostic (e.g. Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet 1990). This article establishes distinctions among projective contents on the basis of a series of diagnostics, including a variant of the family-of-sentences diagnostic, that can b…
Cross-Linguistic Temporal Reference
Tense, the grammaticalized marking of location in time, has played a central role in analyses of temporal reference even since before the inception of the formal study of meaning. However, research on a wide range of typologically diverse languages over the past 40 years has revealed that many languages do not have tenses and that there are a variety of other means, both linguistic and contextual, that affect temporal reference besides tense. The…
Variation in the prosody of focus in head- and head/edge-prominence languages
Are 'informative presuppositions' presuppositions
Presuppositions are contents of utterances that must be mutually known by the interlocutors, i.e. the speaker and the addressees, in order for an utterance of a sentence with the presupposition trigger to be judged to be acceptable. However, a substantial subset of contents traditionally taken to be presuppositions does not exhibit this property and can instead be used to inform the addressee about the supposedly presuppositional content. Classic…
Questions Under Discussion
We discuss problems familiar from the literature on presupposition and information structure, and illustrate how a synthesis using the Question Under Discussion (QUD) framework yields fresh insight. In this framework, discourse is analyzed in terms of the strategy of inquiry pursued by the interlocutors, and individual utterances are interpreted relative to the question being addressed. This way of thinking offers a new perspective on diverse phe…
The Best Question
This article deals with projection in factive sentences. The article first challenges standard assumptions by presenting a series of detailed observations about the interpretations of factive sentences in context, showing that what implication projects, if any, is quite variable and that projection is tightly constrained by prosodic and contextual information about the alternatives under consideration. The article then proposes an account which a…
How Projective is Projective Content? Gradience in Projectivity and At-issueness
Projective content is utterance content that a speaker may be taken to be committed to even when the expression associated with the content occurs embedded under an entailment-canceling operator (e.g., Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet, 1990). It has long been observed that projective content varies in how projective it is (e.g., Karttunen, 1971; Simons, 2001; Abusch, 2010), though preliminary experimental research has been able to confirm only some of…
Prosody and Meaning
The prosody of an utterance plays a significant role in determining the meaning of the utterance. Studying the contributions of prosody to meaning is complicated by several factors: (i) prosody has multiple components in the speech signal, some with continuous expression, (ii) utterances with the same meaning can differ in their prosodic realizations, and (iii) there is cross-linguistic prosodic variation. Concentrating on information-structural …
Evaluative adjective sentences
Two contents of evaluative adjective sentences, like Kim was smart to watch the movie, are the prejacent (that Kim watched the movie) and the generalization (that the degree to which Kim watching the movie is smart was higher than the contextual standard of smart). The prejacent is standardly analyzed as a presupposition (e.g., Norrick 1978; Barker 2002; Oshima 2009; Kertz 2010). This paper argues against such analyses of the prejacent because, a…
Projection variability in Paraguayan Guaraní
Prior Beliefs Modulate Projection
Beliefs about the world affect language processing and interpretation in several empirical domains. In two experiments, we tested whether subjective prior beliefs about the probability of utterance content modulate projection, that is, listeners’ inferences about speaker commitment to that content. We find that prior beliefs predict projection at both the group and the participant level: the higher the prior belief in a content, the more speakers…
The Interpretation of Implicit Arguments in Paraguayan Guaraní
Paraguayan Guaraní allows for implicit arguments, that is, arguments that are neither cross-referenced on the verb nor realized by an independent noun phrase. Building on prior description of the distribution of implicit arguments in the language, this paper describes the interpretations such arguments can receive. Specifically, the paper shows that implicit arguments in Paraguayan Guaraní can receive elided and existential interpretations, in ad…
Are there factive predicates? An empirical investigation
Are there factive predicates? An empirical investigation
Properties of the content of the clausal complement have long been assumed to distinguish factive predicates like know from nonfactive ones like think (Kiparsky & Kiparsky 1970, inter alia). There is, however, disagreement about which properties define factive predicates, as well as uncertainty about whether the content of the complement of particular predicates exhibits the properties attributed to the content of the complement of factive predic…
Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (19 works) · Linguistics (18 works) · Philosophy (17 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Mathematics (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis (7 works) · Algorithm (6 works) · Artificial Intelligence (6 works)