At least "at least" shifts the question

Abstract

In this talk, I explore the rescuing effect of at least and but-periphrasis in otherwise odd sentences, in particular the Hurford Disjunction (Hurford, 1974) in (1) and Conditional (Mandelkern & Romoli, 2018) in (2).

(1) Ed lives in Paris or #(at least) France #(but not Paris).
(2) If Ed does not live in Paris, he #(at least) lives in France (#but not Paris).

The main puzzle is that at least can rescue both (1) and (2) from infelicity; while but-periphrasis can only rescue (2). Capturing the infelicity of both (1) and (2), while retaining the contrast between (3) and (4) constitutes a parallel challenge, overcome by two existing accounts: Super-Redundancy (Kalomoiros, 2024), and an account based Compositional Implicit QuDs (Hénot-Mortier, to appear). But these accounts so far don’t incorporate the effect of repairs.

(3) # Ed lives in France or Paris.
(4) If Ed lives in France, he does not live in Paris.

The repairing effect of at least in (1) has been recently discussed by Zhang (2022) in the QuD framework, and Krifka (2024) in the Speech Act framework. But it remains unclear how these two accounts deal with (2), with and without repairs. In this talk, I build on Zhang’s and Krifka’s insights to capture (1-4), without and without repairs, within the Compositional Implicit QuD framework. Based on question-answer pairs, I argue that at least completely shifts the QuD evoked by its prejacent to evoke a more specific one, while but-periphrasis introduces more QuD specificity, but retains the at-issueness of its prejacent--pretty much like a disjunction. This contrast between the two repairs interacts with QuD-well formedness constraints (Q-Redundancy, Q-Relevance), independently needed to explain the repairless (1-4). This interaction eventually captures the distribution of at least- and but-repairs in those sentences.

Please contact Uli Sauerland sauerland@leibniz-zas.de for the Zoom-Link.

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