Phrasal cumulativity with covers and implicatures

Abstract

Phrasal cumulativity (i.e., the assumption that predicates can be pluralized by applying Link's star operator) faces a well known problem with so-called `intermediate' situations: If phrasal cumulativity is available, one would expect a sentence like "these four workers built a raft", when uttered out of the blue, to be true if two of the workers built one raft and the other two workers built another raft, contrary to fact. In this talk I point out that such problems for phrasal cumulativity disappear once one takes into account both the effects of QUD on the choice of covers and the derivation of implicatures. I further argue that assuming phrasal cumulativity while having covers and implicatures in mind has some desired consequences. First, it straightforwardly resolves a conflict between the (apparent) absence of cumulativity with predicates like "build a raft" in upward entailing contexts and its presence when they are in downward entailing contexts (Schwarzschild 1994, Kratzer 2007). Second, on top of being able to explain why sentences like "these four workers built a raft" do not seem true in intermediate situations (in out of the blue contexts), it can also explain why they are only marginally true in distributive situations (Dotlačil 2010, a.o.).

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