The semantics of exceptives
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21461979 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stanley Peters (0000-0003-4920-3506, Stanford University), Dag Westerståhl (0000-0002-9925-3811, Stockholm University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 197-235 |
| Publication date | 2023-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Linguistics and Philosophy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0165-0157 • E-ISSN: 1573-0549 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10988-022-09349-y |
| OpenAlex | W4284963529 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 16 |
This paper gives a uniform account of the meaning of generalizations with explicit exceptions that employ the prepositions “but”, “except”, and “except for”. Our theory is that exceptives depend on generalizations, which can but need not be universal, whose generality they limit, and some of whose exceptions they comment on. Every generalization intrinsically partitions its domain of applicability into regular cases, which are as it says to expect, and exceptions, which are not. A generalization’s exceptions are instances that falsify it if sufficiently prevalent. These two facts underpin the meaning of exceptives as combining a generality claim with an exception claim , giving correct truth conditions for the several ways the three exceptive prepositions are used, and significantly improving on existing semantic accounts in the literature. We support this by analyzing a wide range of examples. The analysis applies whether or not the phrase following the exceptive preposition is a DP, and whether or not the generalization is expressed with a quantifier. We further argue that these exceptive prepositions are synonymous, contrary to the widely held view that a difference in meaning explains their different syntactic distributions
Epistemology · Generality · Generalization · Linguistics · Metaphysics · Natural language processing · Philosophy of language · Phrase · Programming language · Computer Science · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Mathematics · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Artificial Intelligence
Pluralities
A semantic characterization of natural language determiners
Generalized quantifiers and natural language
A unified analysis of the English bare plural
Definites
The meaning of plural definites
Bare NPs
Compositionality I
Exceptive constructions
Plurals, presuppositions and the sources of distributivity
NPI any and connected exceptive phrases
The semantics of possessives
Reference to Kinds across Language
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |