Jacopo Romoli

Dados Biográficos

ID959368
NOMEJacopo Romoli
PRENOMESJacopo
SOBRENOMERomoli
ASSINATURAROMOLI J
AFILIAÇÕESUniversity of Ulster
ORCID0000-0003-2165-4559
VERIFICADOSim
TOTAL DE OBRAS34
TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES30
TOTAL COMO AUTOR34
TOTAL COMO EDITOR0
PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO2015
ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO2026
ÍNDICE H4

  • Spreading ignorance

    Open AccessPaul Marty, Marco Degano et al.ARTICLESemantics and Pragmatics2026

    This squib compares two notions of alternatives. On a familiar pragmatic view, alternatives are relevant propositions a speaker could have conveyed instead of, or in addition to, the asserted sentence. On the inquisitive-semantic view, alternatives are part of a sentence’s semantic value, typically tied to specific lexical operators, and correspond to maximal ways of supporting that sentence. We compare these notions by examining ignorance infere…

  • Counterfactuals and quantificational force

    Open AccessSonia Ramotowska, Paul Marty et al.ARTICLESemantics and Pragmatics2025

    Theories of counterfactuals agree on the use of a comparative similarity relation, but disagree about the quantificational force of counterfactual modals. This study reports findings from two experiments designed to evaluate the predictions of three prominent approaches: universal theories, homogeneity theories, and single-world selection theories (supplemented with supervaluations over selection functions). To differentiate the predictions of th…

  • The ups and downs of ignorance

    Open AccessMarco Degano, Paul Marty et al.ARTICLENatural Language Semantics2025Referências: 29

    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 …

  • What Makes Linguistic Inferences Robust?

    Open AccessPaul Marty, Jacopo Romoli et al.ARTICLEJournal of Semantics2024

    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…

  • Implicature priming, salience, and context adaptation

    Open AccessPaul Marty, Jacopo Romoli et al.ARTICLECognition2024

    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…

  • An experimental investigation of implicature and homogeneity approaches to free choice

    Open AccessLyn Tieu, Cassandra Bill et al.ARTICLENatural Language Semantics2024Referências: 35

  • Sequence of tense and cessation implicatures

    Open AccessAnne Mucha, Agata Renans et al.ARTICLENatural Language and Linguistic…2023Citada por: 1Referências: 40

    In English, past tense stative clauses embedded under a past-marked attitude verb, like Eric thought that Kalina was sick , can receive two interpretations, differing on when the state of the complement is understood to hold, i.e. Kalina’s sickness precedes the time of Eric’s thinking (backward-shifted reading), or Kalina is sick at the time of Eric’s thinking (simultaneous reading). As is well known, the availability of the simultaneous reading—…

  • Children’s Interpretation of Sentences Containing Multiple Scalar Terms

    Open AccessCassandra Bill, Cory Bill et al.ARTICLEJournal of Semantics2022

    Sentences containing the scalar term “some”, such as “The pig carried some of his rocks”, are usually interpreted as conveying the scalar inference that the pig did not carry all of his rocks. Previous research has reported that when interpreting such sentences, children tend to derive fewer of these scalar inferences than adults ( Noveck (2001); Papafragou & Musolino (2003); Guasti et al. (2005), among others). One approach to explaining these r…

  • Alternatives in Counterfactuals

    Open AccessJacopo Romoli, Paolo Santorio et al.ARTICLEJournal of Semantics2022

    Classical semantics for counterfactuals is based on a notion of minimal change: If ${\textsf {A}}$, would ${\textsf {C}}$ says that the worlds that make ${\textsf {A}}$ true and that are otherwise minimally different from the actual world are ${\textsf {C}}$-worlds. This semantics suffers from a well-known difficulty with disjunctive antecedents (see e.g. Alonso-Ovalle, 2009; Willer, 2018; Santorio, 2018, a.o.). In a recent study, Ciardelli, Zhan…

  • Presupposed free choice and the theory of scalar implicatures

    Open AccessPaul Marty, Jacopo RomoliARTICLELinguistics and Philosophy2022

    A disjunctive sentence like Olivia took Logic or Algebra conveys that Olivia didn’t take both classes ( exclusivity ) and that the speaker doesn’t know which of the two classes she took ( ignorance ). The corresponding sentence with a possibility modal, Olivia can take Logic or Algebra , conveys instead that she can take Logic and that she can take Algebra ( free choice ). These exclusivity , ignorance and free choice inferences are argued by man…

  • Varieties of Hurford disjunctions

    Open AccessPaul Marty, Jacopo RomoliARTICLESemantics and Pragmatics2022

    Hurford 1974 famously observed that a disjunction is generally infelicitous if one of the disjuncts entails the other. Several accounts of Hurford’s observation have been put forward in the literature, grounding the infelicity of the so-called “Hurford disjunctions” into various principles of language use. In this article, we investigate three variants of Hurford’s original cases and we show that none of the major explanatory approaches to “Hurfo…

  • Negative free choice

    Open AccessPaul Marty, Jacopo Romoli et al.ARTICLESemantics and Pragmatics2021

    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…

  • Meaning and Alternatives

    Nicole Gotzner, Jacopo RomoliARTICLEAnnual Review of Linguistics2021Citada por: 4Referências: 12

    Alternatives and competition in language are pervasive at all levels of linguistic analysis. More specifically, alternatives have been argued to play a prominent role in an ever-growing class of phenomena in the investigation of natural language meaning. In this article, we focus on scalar implicatures, as they are arguably the most paradigmatic case of an alternative-based phenomenon. We first review the main challenge for theories of alternativ…

  • Presuppositions, implicatures, and contextual equivalence

    Open AccessPaul Marty, Jacopo RomoliARTICLENatural Language Semantics2021Referências: 34

    Maximize Presupposition! (MP), as originally proposed in Heim (Semantik: Ein internationales Handbuch der zeitgenössischen Forschung, pp. 487–535, 1991) and developed in subsequent works, offers an account of the otherwise mysterious unassertability of a variety of sentences. At the core of MP is the idea that speakers are urged to use a sentence ψ over a sentence φ if ψ contributes the same new information as φ , yet carries a stronger presuppos…

  • Multiplicity and Modifiers

    Open AccessJacopo Romoli, Agata RenansARTICLEJournal of Semantics2020

    A sentence with an adverbial modifier under negation like Mike didn’t wash the window with soap gives rise to an inference that Mike did wash the window. A sentence with a plural noun like Mike washed windows gives rise to a so-called ‘multiplicity’ inference that Mike washed multiple windows. In this note, we focus on the interaction between these two inferences in sentences containing both an adverbial modifier and a plural noun under negation,…

  • Testing theories of plural meanings

    Open AccessLyn Tieu, Cassandra Bill et al.ARTICLECognition2020

  • Plurality and crosslinguistic variation

    Open AccessAgata Renans, Yağmur Sağ et al.ARTICLENatural Language Semantics2020Citada por: 3Referências: 35

    In English and many other languages, the interpretation of the plural is associated with an ‘exclusive’ reading in positive sentences and an ‘inclusive’ reading in negative ones. For example, the plural noun tulips in a sentence such as Chicken planted tulips suggests that Chicken planted more than one tulip (i.e., a reading which ‘excludes’ atomic individual tulips). At the same time, however, the corresponding negative sentence Chicken didn’t p…

  • Choice and prohibition in non-monotonic contexts

    Open AccessNicole Gotzner, Jacopo Romoli et al.ARTICLENatural Language Semantics2020Citada por: 1Referências: 23

    Disjunctions in the scope of possibility modals give rise to a conjunctive inference, generally referred to as 'free choice.' For example,Emma can take Spanish or Calculussuggests that Emma can take Spanish and can take Calculus. This inference is not valid on standard semantics for modals in combination with a Boolean semantics for disjunction. Hence free choice has sparked a whole industry of theories in philosophy of language and semantics. Th…

  • Plurality

    Lyn Tieu, Jacopo RomoliCHAPTEROxford Handbook of Experimental…2019

    This chapter presents an overview of recent experimental work investigating the semantics and pragmatics of plurality. The studies discussed examine the ‘more than one’ meaning that is seemingly contributed by plural morphology, referred to in the literature as a plurality inference or a multiplicity inference. Theoretical treatments of the multiplicity inference involve deriving the ‘more than one’ meaning as a kind of implicature, or treating i…

  • Vagueness in Implicature

    Open AccessTimothy Leffel, Anita Cremers et al.ARTICLEJournal of Semantics2019

    We show that the interpretation of sentences like John is not very Adj depends on whether Adj is vague. We argue that this follows from a constraint on the interaction between vagueness and conversational implicature, a domain that has not been studied extensively. The constraint states that implicatures are not drawn if they lead to “borderline contradictions” (see Ripley 2011; Alxatib & Pelletier 2011; a.o.), a natural extension of the idea tha…

  • Filtering free choice

    Open AccessJacopo Romoli, Paolo SantorioARTICLESemantics and Pragmatics2019

    Sentences involving disjunctions under a possibility modal give rise to so-called ‘free choice’ inferences, i.e. inferences to the effect that each disjunct is possible. This note investigates the interaction between free choice and presuppositions. We focus on sentences embedding both a disjunction in the scope of a possibility modal and a presupposition trigger, and we investigate how the free choice inference triggered by the former can contri…

  • What’s Not to Like

    Jacopo Romoli, Matthew MandelkernARTICLELinguistic Inquiry2019Referências: 3

    In this squib, we show that there is indeed a class of predicates which give rise to neg- raising inferences but do not license strong NPIs: namely, factive emotives like ‘appreciate’, ‘be glad’, ‘be happy’, and ‘like’. This is a striking fact which we believe provides support for the Gajewski-Chierchia theory. We also point to some challenges this class of predicates poses for traditional approaches to neg-raising, and make a suggestion about ho…

  • Hurford Conditionals

    Open AccessMatthew Mandelkern, Jacopo RomoliARTICLEJournal of Semantics2018

    Compare the following conditionals: Bad #If John is not in Paris, he is in France. Good If John is in France, he is not in Paris. (1) If ¬p+, then p. We argue that existing theories of informational oddness do not distinguish between Bad and Good. We do not have an account of the divergence in judgments about the two, but we think this is a fascinating puzzle which we pose here in the hope others will be able to solve it.

  • The Scalar Inferences of Strong Scalar Terms under Negative Quantifiers and Constraints on the Theory of Alternatives

    Open AccessNicole Gotzner, Jacopo RomoliARTICLEJournal of Semantics2018

    Chemla & Spector (2011) have found experimental evidence that a universal sentence embedding a weak scalar term like Every student read some of the books has the strong inference that no student read all of the books, in addition to the weak one that not every student did (see also Clifton Jr & Dube 2010, Potts et al. 2015, Gotzner & Benz 2017, forthcoming). While it is controversial how this strong inference should be derived, there is consensus…

  • Children's comprehension of plural predicate conjunction

    Open AccessLyn Tieu, Jacopo Romoli et al.ARTICLEJournal of Child Language2018

    Previous developmental studies of conjunction have focused on the syntax of phrasal and sentential coordination (Lust, 1977; de Villiers, Tager-Flusberg & Hakuta, 1977; Bloom, Lahey, Hood, Lifter & Fiess, 1980, among others). The present study examined the flexibility of children's interpretation of conjunction. Specifically, when two predicates that can apply simultaneously to a single individual are conjoined in the scope of a plural definite (…