Mismatches & Disambiguation Meeting: Redundant Strengthening and the Status of Exhaustivity in Scalar Implicatures

Abstract

In this talk I discuss whether scalar implicatures depend on contextual informativeness or can arise independently of discourse needs. I focus on redundant cases in in which the strengthened alternative ‘not all’ is entailed or presupposed in the common ground, a configuration that should suppress enrichment under relevance-based accounts. Using a priming paradigm with mouse-tracking, I test whether enrichment is nevertheless initiated. The results show implicature-related cursor movements even when the strengthened meaning provides no new information. The results indicate that a strengthening operation is initiated even in redundant environments, which challenges relevance-based accounts, in particular Relevance Theory, that predicts no enrichment in such cases, and instead supports analyses in formal semantics where exhaustification is contributed either by an independently triggered operator (Exh) within the compositional system or by commitment-based frameworks that derive strengthening through discourse-level commitments, as in Krifka (2015).

Code of Conduct for ZAS events: The ZAS is committed to fair, respectful, and professional interaction at its events. Therefore, please observe the Code of Conduct for this event.