Uli Sauerland
Biographic Data
| ID | 804297 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Uli Sauerland |
| GIVEN NAMES | Uli |
| FAMILY NAME | Sauerland |
| SIGNATURE | SAUERLAND U |
| AFFILIATIONS | Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2175-535X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 268 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Core concepts and indirect alternatives: On the anti-duality of quantifiers
This paper proposes an analysis for the long-standing puzzle observed by Chemla (2007) regarding the anti-duality of the French universal quantifier tous, which arises even though French has no word for ‘both’ to feed a Maximize Presupposition competition. This phenomenon has been cited as an example in language where a dual ‘conceptual alternative’ is at play (Buccola et al., 2018), but no formal account of it has been put forth. Furthermore, a …
Kein subjects are hard: Exploring German-speaking children’s behavior with negative indefinites
In this article, we present converging results from three studies investigating children’s production or comprehension of the negative indefinite kein in German. An elicited production study found that 3- to 6-year-old children and adults exhibit different patterns with respect to the production of kein: children, but not adults, exhibit an asymmetry with respect to the position where they produce negative indefinites, in that they use negative i…
The cum-sine pattern in German child language: An argument for antonym decomposition
German-speaking children between ages 2 and 3 mostly use the preposition ohne (‘without’) in an adult-like way, to express the absence of something. In this article we present surprising results from a corpus study suggesting that in this age group, absence can also be expressed using the sequence mit ohne ‘with without’. We argue that this pattern becomes much less surprising if we assume that there is a conceptual representation independent of …
Free choice and presuppositional exhaustification
Sentences such as Olivia can take Logic or Algebra (‘♢∨-sentences’) are typically interpreted as entailing that Olivia can take Logic and can take Algebra. Given a standard semantics for modals and disjunction, those ‘Free choice’ (FC) readings are not predicted from the surface form of ♢∨-sentences. Yet the standard semantics is appropriate for the ‘double prohibition’ reading typically assigned to ¬♢∨-sentences like Olivia can’t take Logic or A…
The Plural is Unmarked: Evidence from Turkish, Hungarian and German
Quantity distinctions are morphologically indicated in the majority of languages.However, the marking of these distinctions exhibits a high degree of cross-linguistic variation with respect to the number of quantity categories, their agreement properties, and the morphemes themselves. Furthermore, number marking on numerically quantified nouns varies across languages: for instance, while German and English use plural number marking with numerals …
Measurements, Numerals and Scales: Essays in Honour of Stephanie Solt
Who and What Do Who and What Range Over Cross-Linguistically?
Dayal’s (1996) account of the presuppositions of wh-questions makes faulty predictions for languages which draw number distinctions in the domain of simplex wh-expressions: (Dayal, 1996) predicts that a singular wh-expression should always give rise to a Uniqueness Presupposition; the Anti-Singleton Inference associated with its plural counterpart is expected to be parasitic on the uniqueness presupposition. Using data from Spanish, Greek, and Hu…
Meaning and Use in the Expression of Estimative Probability
Words of estimative probability (WEPs), such as ‘possible’ and ‘a good chance’, provide an efficient means for expressing probability under uncertainty. Current semantic theories assume that WEPs denote crisp thresholds on the probability scale, but experimental data indicate that their use is characterised by gradience and focality. Here, we implement and compare computational models of the use of WEPs to explain novel production data. We find t…
Presuppositional exhaustification
Grammatical theories of Scalar Implicatures make use of an exhaustivity operator exh, which asserts the conjunction of the prejacent with the negation of excludable alternatives. We present a new Grammatical theory of Scalar Implicatures according to which exh is replaced with pex, an operator that contributes its prejacent as asserted content, but the negation of scalar alternatives at a non-at-issue level of meaning. We show that by treating th…
When hypotaxis looks like parataxis: Embedding and complementizer agreement in Teiwa
Teiwa, an Alor-Pantar language of the Trans-New Guinea family, has been characterized as expressing speech reports not with complementation, but with combinations of two clauses juxtaposed under a single intonation contour with no morphological indication for integration (Klamer 2010: A Grammar of Teiwa, Mouton de Gruyter). We argue, contra Klamer, that speech and attitude reports in Teiwa should be analyzed as embedding (or hypotaxis). We presen…
Vagueness
Though vague phenomena have been studied extensively for many decades, it is only in recent years that researchers sought the support of quantitative data. This chapter highlights and discusses the insights that experimental methods brought to the study of vagueness. One area focused on are ‘borderline contradictions’, that is, sentences like ‘She is neither tall nor not tall’ that are contradictory when analysed in classical logic, but are actua…
How to be Brief: Children's and Adults' Application of Grice's Brevity Maxim in Production
The brevity maxim of Gricean pragmatics states that unnecessary prolixity should be avoided. We report a case in which 5-year-old children's performance conforms better to Grice's maxim than adults' behavior. Our data come from a semi-spontaneous German relative clause production study that we carried out with 5- and 7-year-old children as well as adults. In particular, we focus on the pragmatics of the passive predicates that were produced. Thes…
Measure constructions with relative measures: Towards a syntax of non-conservative construals
Relative measures such as percent and thirds relate one quantity to another. We observe that, in several languages, determiner phrases containing relative measures can express two distinct construals: (1) The ‘conservative’ construal in The company hired 75 % of the women considers the ratio of the company’s female hires to all women. (2) The ‘non-conservative construal’ in The company hired 75 % women is instead concerned with the ratio of the c…
Discrete Infinity and the Syntax-semantics Interface
Discrete infnity was identifed as a central feature of human language by Humboldt who famously spoke of making infnite use of fnite means. Later Chomsky refocused attention on this property starting with Chomsky (1957). In a number of works since, Chomsky has repeatedly stressed the centrality of infnity for understanding language. For example, Chomsky (2007) writes that "An I-language is a computational system that generates infnitely many inter…
Remind-Me Presuppositions and Speech-Act Decomposition: Evidence from Particles in Questions
In this article, we investigate questions like What is your name again?, which presuppose that the answer was already made common-ground knowledge in the past ( Sauerland 2006 ). We call this a remind-me presupposition. While repetitive particles can trigger a remind-me presupposition in German and English, Japanese uses a specialized particle kke to bring about such a presupposition. We argue for an account of remind-me presuppositions based on …
On the definition of sentence
How do 5-year-olds understand questions? Differences in languages across Europe
The comprehension of constituent questions is an important topic for language acquisition research and for applications in the diagnosis of language impairment. This article presents the results of a study investigating the comprehension of different types of questions by 5-year-old, typically developing children across 19 European countries, 18 different languages, and 7 language (sub-)families. The study investigated the effects of two factors …
Two conjunctions are better than one
Across languages, the morpheme expressing conjunction frequently has other uses as well. Several linguists have attempted to unify all uses of conjunction morphemes under one general algebraic scheme. We argue in favor of a more limited unification and propose a universal decomposition of conjunction structures: We propose that there exist both a “nominal” e -type and “verbal” or “clausal” t -type junctor. Our account is substantiated with eviden…
On the Role of Alternatives in the Acquisition of Simple and Complex Disjunctions in French and Japanese
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (and ordinary ones require ordinary evidence): On experimental linguistics for less well studied languages
O falecido físico Carl Sagan, citado na primeira parte do título deste artigo, formulou com habilidade a visão do senso comum sobre a natureza da evidência nas ciências maduras. Em linguística, no entanto, a evidência tornou-se um assunto controverso, especialmente quando se trata da investigação das línguas menos estudadas. Neste artigo, defendo que o princípio de Sagan deve ser aplicado à linguística. A acessibilidade crescente a uma grande var…
The Computation of Scalar Implicatures: Pragmatic, Lexical or Grammatical
I provide an overview of four current theories of scalar implicature: the pragmatic (orGricean), the lexical, a combined pragmatic + lexical, and the grammatical theory. The empirical focus are global and local, but also intermediate implicatures. I argue that the grammatical theory is conceptually less well motivated than even the pragmatic + lexical theory, and that the grammatical theory therefore requires strong empirical support. I then focu…
Reported Speech in Matses: Perspective Persistence and Evidential Narratives
In Matses reported speech, the personal, spatial, and temporal indexicals of the reported speech act must be maintained from the point of view of the original speaker, thus resembling a strict form of direct speech. However, substantial paraphrasing, extraction, reconfiguration, and de re construals are permitted, which are features more typically associated with indirect speech. We give a detailed account of this unique reported speech system, i…
Meaning and Analysis: New Essays on Grice
The anthology 'Meaning and Analysis' addresses the key topics of H. Paul Grice's philosophy of language, such as rationality, non-natural meaning, communicative actions, conversational implicatures, t
Embedded Implicatures and Experimental Constraints: A Reply to Geurts & Pouscoulous and Chemla
Experimental evidence on embedded implicatures by Chemla (2009b) and Geurts & Pouscoulous (2009a) has fewer theoretical consequences than assumed: On the one hand, the evidence successfully argues against obligatory local implicature computation, which has however already been discredited. On the other hand, the data are fully consistent with optional local implicature computation. doi:10.3765/sp.3.2 BibTeX info
A pragmatic constraint on ambiguity detection: A rejoinder to Büring and Hartmann and to Reis
Scalar Implicatures in Complex Sentences
Total Reconstruction, PF Movement, and Derivational Order
Theories of total reconstruction have generally supposed that movement can be followed by an undoing operation like LF lowering (May 1977, 1985) or deletion of higher copies (Chomsky 1993). We argue that reconstruction effects can be derived only if the original movement is purely phonological. There are no undoing operations. We present three distinct arguments, based on an interaction between raising and wh-movement in English, facts from agree…
Sorting out Relative Clauses
The Interpretation of Traces
Intermediate Adjunction with A-Movement
It’s widely assumed—often tacitly—that A-movement doesn’t move through intermediate positions where it doesn’t seem to check features (e.g. Baltin 2001). Chomsky (2001), however, proposes that all movement from inside the complement of v to a position above vP must pass through an intermediate position in the edge of vP. Within Chomsky’s proposal, this follows from the assumption that vP is a Phase. Fox (1999) and Nissenbaum (2000) argue on indep…
Erasability and Interpretation
This paper corroborates the interpretability proposal of Chomsky (1995) with evidence from scrambling in Japanese and German. First it is shown that scrambling in Japanese is semantically vacuous, whereas scrambling in German is semantically contentful. Chomsky's proposal then predicts that the feature driving Japanese scrambling is erased after checking, while the corresponding feature in German remains visible, specifically for the Shortest Att…
The Computation of Scalar Implicatures: Pragmatic, Lexical or Grammatical
I provide an overview of four current theories of scalar implicature: the pragmatic (orGricean), the lexical, a combined pragmatic + lexical, and the grammatical theory. The empirical focus are global and local, but also intermediate implicatures. I argue that the grammatical theory is conceptually less well motivated than even the pragmatic + lexical theory, and that the grammatical theory therefore requires strong empirical support. I then focu…
DP is Not a Scope Island
April 01 2005 DP is Not a Scope Island In Special Collection: CogNet Uli Sauerland Uli Sauerland Zentrum für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Uli Sauerland Zentrum für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Online ISSN: 1530-9150 Print ISSN: 0024-3892 © 2005 Massachusetts Institute of Technology2005 Linguistic Inquiry (2005) 36 (2): 303–314. https://doi.org/10.1…
Remind-Me Presuppositions and Speech-Act Decomposition: Evidence from Particles in Questions
In this article, we investigate questions like What is your name again?, which presuppose that the answer was already made common-ground knowledge in the past ( Sauerland 2006 ). We call this a remind-me presupposition. While repetitive particles can trigger a remind-me presupposition in German and English, Japanese uses a specialized particle kke to bring about such a presupposition. We argue for an account of remind-me presuppositions based on …
Reported Speech in Matses: Perspective Persistence and Evidential Narratives
In Matses reported speech, the personal, spatial, and temporal indexicals of the reported speech act must be maintained from the point of view of the original speaker, thus resembling a strict form of direct speech. However, substantial paraphrasing, extraction, reconfiguration, and de re construals are permitted, which are features more typically associated with indirect speech. We give a detailed account of this unique reported speech system, i…
A pragmatic constraint on ambiguity detection: A rejoinder to Büring and Hartmann and to Reis
How to be Brief: Children's and Adults' Application of Grice's Brevity Maxim in Production
The brevity maxim of Gricean pragmatics states that unnecessary prolixity should be avoided. We report a case in which 5-year-old children's performance conforms better to Grice's maxim than adults' behavior. Our data come from a semi-spontaneous German relative clause production study that we carried out with 5- and 7-year-old children as well as adults. In particular, we focus on the pragmatics of the passive predicates that were produced. Thes…
Erasability and Interpretation
This paper corroborates the interpretability proposal of Chomsky (1995) with evidence from scrambling in Japanese and German. First it is shown that scrambling in Japanese is semantically vacuous, whereas scrambling in German is semantically contentful. Chomsky's proposal then predicts that the feature driving Japanese scrambling is erased after checking, while the corresponding feature in German remains visible, specifically for the Shortest Att…
Total Reconstruction, PF Movement, and Derivational Order
Theories of total reconstruction have generally supposed that movement can be followed by an undoing operation like LF lowering (May 1977, 1985) or deletion of higher copies (Chomsky 1993). We argue that reconstruction effects can be derived only if the original movement is purely phonological. There are no undoing operations. We present three distinct arguments, based on an interaction between raising and wh-movement in English, facts from agree…
Intermediate Adjunction with A-Movement
It’s widely assumed—often tacitly—that A-movement doesn’t move through intermediate positions where it doesn’t seem to check features (e.g. Baltin 2001). Chomsky (2001), however, proposes that all movement from inside the complement of v to a position above vP must pass through an intermediate position in the edge of vP. Within Chomsky’s proposal, this follows from the assumption that vP is a Phase. Fox (1999) and Nissenbaum (2000) argue on indep…
Scalar Implicatures in Complex Sentences
The Interpretation of Traces
The Plural is Semantically Unmarked
In the first century b.c., Marcus Terentius Varro used the terms singularis and multitudinis in his grammar of Latin, De Lingua Latina, to refer to two classes of morphological marking (cf. Taylor 1996). Soon after Varro’s writing, the term pluralis replaced multitudinis (e.g. in Marcus Fabius Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria in the first century A.D.) while the term singularis caught on. Varro’s choice of terminology seems to have been inspired …
DP is Not a Scope Island
April 01 2005 DP is Not a Scope Island In Special Collection: CogNet Uli Sauerland Uli Sauerland Zentrum für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Uli Sauerland Zentrum für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Online ISSN: 1530-9150 Print ISSN: 0024-3892 © 2005 Massachusetts Institute of Technology2005 Linguistic Inquiry (2005) 36 (2): 303–314. https://doi.org/10.1…
Sorting out Relative Clauses
Presupposition and Implicature in Compositional Semantics
Interfaces + Recursion = Language?: Chomsky's Minimalism and the View from Syntax-Semantics
The Minimalist Program postulates the equation Interfaces + Recursion = Language - a radical reduction of the language to the core mechanism and the interfaces. With contributions by Noam Chomsky and other experts, this volume evaluates the minimalists' proposal against evidence from syntax and semantics by asking questions like the following: What kind of recursive structures can the core generator form? How can properties of language be reduced…
Beyond unpluggability
Emotional expressions like damn and bastard seem to bring out the extreme not only in the speakers who use them, but also in the linguists who try to account for them: For Potts, nothing short of a new dimension of meaning can accommodate these expressions. Potts already in earlier work (Potts, 2003) provides one interesting argument for this view: the unpluggability (or nondisplaceability) of these expressions in many cases. Regardless of the po…
Copying vs. structure sharing a semantic argument
The term Focus Dependency describes an important phenomenon at the syntax-semantics interface: Elided material can exhibit bound-variable-like behavior when its antecedent is a focussed phrase in the same sentence. In the past, focus dependency has been analyzed as actual binding or by means of copying. This paper presents a new account of focus dependency that relies on the syntactic idea of structure-sharing. Structure-sharing allows sub-phrase…
Projection and pragmatics: Two comments
A pragmatic constraint on ambiguity detection: A rejoinder to Büring and Hartmann and to Reis
Meaning and Analysis: New Essays on Grice
The anthology 'Meaning and Analysis' addresses the key topics of H. Paul Grice's philosophy of language, such as rationality, non-natural meaning, communicative actions, conversational implicatures, t
Embedded Implicatures and Experimental Constraints: A Reply to Geurts & Pouscoulous and Chemla
Experimental evidence on embedded implicatures by Chemla (2009b) and Geurts & Pouscoulous (2009a) has fewer theoretical consequences than assumed: On the one hand, the evidence successfully argues against obligatory local implicature computation, which has however already been discredited. On the other hand, the data are fully consistent with optional local implicature computation. doi:10.3765/sp.3.2 BibTeX info
The Computation of Scalar Implicatures: Pragmatic, Lexical or Grammatical
I provide an overview of four current theories of scalar implicature: the pragmatic (orGricean), the lexical, a combined pragmatic + lexical, and the grammatical theory. The empirical focus are global and local, but also intermediate implicatures. I argue that the grammatical theory is conceptually less well motivated than even the pragmatic + lexical theory, and that the grammatical theory therefore requires strong empirical support. I then focu…
Reported Speech in Matses: Perspective Persistence and Evidential Narratives
In Matses reported speech, the personal, spatial, and temporal indexicals of the reported speech act must be maintained from the point of view of the original speaker, thus resembling a strict form of direct speech. However, substantial paraphrasing, extraction, reconfiguration, and de re construals are permitted, which are features more typically associated with indirect speech. We give a detailed account of this unique reported speech system, i…
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (and ordinary ones require ordinary evidence): On experimental linguistics for less well studied languages
O falecido físico Carl Sagan, citado na primeira parte do título deste artigo, formulou com habilidade a visão do senso comum sobre a natureza da evidência nas ciências maduras. Em linguística, no entanto, a evidência tornou-se um assunto controverso, especialmente quando se trata da investigação das línguas menos estudadas. Neste artigo, defendo que o princípio de Sagan deve ser aplicado à linguística. A acessibilidade crescente a uma grande var…
On the definition of sentence
How do 5-year-olds understand questions? Differences in languages across Europe
The comprehension of constituent questions is an important topic for language acquisition research and for applications in the diagnosis of language impairment. This article presents the results of a study investigating the comprehension of different types of questions by 5-year-old, typically developing children across 19 European countries, 18 different languages, and 7 language (sub-)families. The study investigated the effects of two factors …
Two conjunctions are better than one
Across languages, the morpheme expressing conjunction frequently has other uses as well. Several linguists have attempted to unify all uses of conjunction morphemes under one general algebraic scheme. We argue in favor of a more limited unification and propose a universal decomposition of conjunction structures: We propose that there exist both a “nominal” e -type and “verbal” or “clausal” t -type junctor. Our account is substantiated with eviden…
On the Role of Alternatives in the Acquisition of Simple and Complex Disjunctions in French and Japanese
Measure constructions with relative measures: Towards a syntax of non-conservative construals
Relative measures such as percent and thirds relate one quantity to another. We observe that, in several languages, determiner phrases containing relative measures can express two distinct construals: (1) The ‘conservative’ construal in The company hired 75 % of the women considers the ratio of the company’s female hires to all women. (2) The ‘non-conservative construal’ in The company hired 75 % women is instead concerned with the ratio of the c…
Discrete Infinity and the Syntax-semantics Interface
Discrete infnity was identifed as a central feature of human language by Humboldt who famously spoke of making infnite use of fnite means. Later Chomsky refocused attention on this property starting with Chomsky (1957). In a number of works since, Chomsky has repeatedly stressed the centrality of infnity for understanding language. For example, Chomsky (2007) writes that "An I-language is a computational system that generates infnitely many inter…
Linguistics (32 works) · Computer Science (31 works) · Philosophy (29 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (24 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Natural Language Processing Techniques (14 works) · Mathematics (13 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Artificial Intelligence (10 works) · Natural language processing (9 works)