2026-03-19
Ivano Ciardelli, Janek Guerrini
Sentences of the form " x may A or x may B" have a reading that implies " x may A" and " x may B". This has led many to conclude that there is a specific problem of wide-scope free choice , namely, the problem of explaining how a disjunction of possibilities ◇A ∨ ◇B can receive a reading that implies its disjuncts. We argue that this conclusion is mistaken: once we consider a broader range of data, it becomes plausible that the relevant reading in fact results from an LF of the form ◇(A ∨ B). This raises the question of how this LF arises compositionally. We propose a solution based on the theory of modal concord of Zeijlstra (2007), which avoids the problems of previous movement-based approaches and explains an interesting contrast observed by Meyer & Sauerland (2017). EARLY ACCESS
2026-03-04
Eleonora Zani, Ivano Ciardelli, Emanuela Sanfelici
Disjunctive antecedent conditionals (DACs), i.e., sentences of the form “if A or B, C”, are the source of a long-standing puzzle. They are generally felt to be equivalent to the conjunction of their simplifications, “if A, C” and “if B, C”, in accordance with the principle of Simplification of disjunctive antecedents (SDA). However, Lewis’s influential theory of counterfactual conditionals invalidates SDA, as do several prominent theories of indicative conditionals. To explain the strong appeal of this principle, various accounts have recently been proposed: for some, SDA stems from the potential of disjunction to generate semantic alternatives; for others, it arises from a non-Gricean exhaustification operator. To shed light on the status and source of SDA, we administered a picture-based binary forced choice task to 169 children (aged 4;1–9;11) and 28 adults, who were asked to evaluate indicative and counterfactual DACs. Our results reveal that SDA emerges early, being the preferred interpretation already at age four to five. This is in line with the idea that SDA is tightly related to free-choice inferences, which also emerge early (Tieu et al. 2015). We found that subjects who derived SDA in indicatives also derived it in counterfactuals and vice versa, supporting the idea that SDA has the same status in both kinds of conditionals. We did not find any evidence of a shift from a pure Lewisian reading to an SDA reading, which may have supported the exhaustification account. Instead, our data reveal an interesting developmental trend from disjunctive to conjunctive interpretation of DACs, strictly parallel to a trend from existential to universal interpretation of plural definites (Tieu et al. 2019), supporting the idea that SDA involves homogeneity over the antecedent alternatives, as proposed by Santorio (2018) and Cariani & Goldstein (2020). EARLY ACCESS
2026-01-26
William C. Thomas
Many analyses of additive particles (e.g., too , also , either ) have claimed that any such particle requires a contextually salient antecedent sentence that is a focus alternative of its prejacent or is a partial answer to the Question Under Discussion addressed by the prejacent. There is, however, a previously unstudied use — the argument-building use — which occurs without such an antecedent. This paper proposes an analysis of too that accounts for the argument-building use and unifies it with the canonical additive use. The central claim is that too is felicitous if and only if its antecedent can be taken to answer some contextually relevant question such that the conjunction of too ’s antecedent and prejacent evidences some resolution to that question more strongly than the antecedent does alone. This analysis relies on the notion of a “resolution” from Inquisitive Semantics and the treatment of context update as Bayesian inference, as is done in the Rational Speech Act framework. The treatment of too developed here provides the basis for a new approach to additivity that can be extended to other additive expressions. EARLY ACCESS