Séminaire avec Keny Chatain (ZAS)

Title: English "only" as French "ne que": new arguments for a bipartite structure for English only

Abstract: 
In English, the meaning of exclusivity, as shown in (1), requires two semantic ingredients: the word "only" and a focus, signalled by the position of the final pitch accent. In other languages, the very same meaning of exclusivity can be expressed with a bipartite construction (e.g. French ne ... que ..., MS Arabic la ... ila ...), as shown in (2) for French. Bipartite constructions, on the surface, form the meaning from three elements: two words ("ne" and "que" in French) and a focus. This suggests a 3-ingredient recipe for exhaustivity in these languages, as schematized in (3b).

(1) Millie only talked about the [FALL]_F of Constantinople.
= Millie talked about the fall of Constantinople and didn't talk about any other period of time in the history of Constantinople.

(2) Millie n'a parlé que de la CHUTE de Constantinople.
Millie NE-has talked QUE of the fall of Constantinople 
= Millie talked about the fall of Constantinople and didn't talk about any other period of time in the history of Constantinople.

(3) 
a. 2-argument "only": ONLY(prejacent, alternatives)
a. 3-argument "only": ONLY(background, associate, alternatives)

This presents a prima facie paradox: how can the same semantic operation require more arguments in one language than in another? The answer pursued in this talk is that, despite surface appearances, "only" in English, as in French or Arabic, requires three semantic arguments to form its meaning. This proposal, albeit controversial, is not new and has been defended in many previous works: Structured Meaning approaches (Krifka 1991, a.o.), association by movement (Wagner 2006, Erlewine & Kotek 2014, a.o.), bi-morphemic "only" (von Fintel & Iatridou 2007, Quek & Hirsch 2017, a.o.). But I present two entirely novel semantic arguments in support of this conclusion:

  1. Exhaustive readings of indefinites: no compositional recipe based on the two ingredients above can deliver adequate readings for exhaustive readings of indefinites. 
  2. Accents embedded in islands: for certain deeply embedded accents, the two-ingredient account fails to deliver the attested reading.