Post-suppositions and uninterpretable questions
Linmin Zhang
October 2022 

For a sentence like "exactly three boys are between 5 feet 10 inches and 6 feet tall", why cannot we abstract the height information out and raise a corresponding degree question like #"How tall are exactly three boys?" Inspired by the ideas that (i) there is a connection between wh-questions (e.g., "who did Mary kiss") and definite descriptions (e.g., "the people that Mary kissed") and (ii) definite descriptions and modified numerals (e.g., "exactly three boys") bring post-suppositions (i.e., delayed evaluations that lead to relative definiteness, Brasoveanu 2013, Bumford 2017), I propose that when different elements that bring post-suppositions are present, a potential conflict arises in computing relative definiteness, leading to uninterpretability.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/006761 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	To appear in the Proceedings of TLLM 2022
keywords:	dynamic semantics, post-suppositions, wh-questions, degree questions, modified numerals, cumulative reading, definiteness, weak island effects, intervention effects, semantics
previous versions:	v1 [August 2022]
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