Semantics circle: Probabilities and Exhaustivity - Revisiting Presuppositional Exhaustification

Abstract

I will discuss whether the notion of informativity relevant to scalar implicatures and exhaustivity is logical informativity or probabilistic informativity ('surprisal'), and I will argue that in a certain sense we need both. Focusing on the interpretation of bare plurals, I will show how a variant of the model proposed in  Cremers, Wilcox & Spector (2023)  (the 'supervaluationis RSA model) predicts all the effects that motivate presuppositional exhaustification (Ahn, Saha & Sauerland 2021, Bassi, Del Pinal & Sauerland 2021, Wehbe & Doron 2025), and, furthermore makes additional desirable predictions thanks to its use of probabilistic informativity.

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