Vincent Rouillard

Temporal in-adverbials lead a double life. Under one guise, they specify the durations of events; under another, they specify the durations of times throughout which certain events don’t take place. Each variety comes with its own seemingly idiosyncratic distributional restrictions. The distribution of the first class of expressions is restricted by the lexical aspect of VPs (Vendler, 1967; Dowty, 1979; Krifka, 1989, i.a.). The distribution of the second class is restricted by the polarity of sentences (Gajewski, 2005, 2007; Hoeksema, 2006; Iatridou & Zeijlstra, 2017, 2021). I argue for a unified semantic analysis of both classes, which derives from one semantic principle their eclectic distribution: it must be possible for temporal in-adverbials to provide a maximally informative measure.

Whether verbs like think can embed questions depends on lexical aspect (Özyıldız 2021; Özyıldız 2024): stative ‘think’ is compatible only with declarative complements, whereas process ‘think’ can combine with both declaratives and interrogatives. In this paper we provide a refinement to this generalization based on the data from Georgian, and propose an account of why such dependence between lexical aspect and embeddability of questions holds. We propose that both stative and process ‘think’ are derived from a more abstract common core—the former via a genericity operator (Özyıldız 2024), the latter via a cumulativity operator—and argue that the genericity operator leads to interpreting ‘think’ as ‘believe’ with declaratives, but gives rise to a semantically deviant meaning with interrogatives.

Dayal (1996) makes two predictions on the interaction of number and wh-phrases: (i) that questions with singular wh-phrases yield a uniqueness inference, and (ii) that questions with plural wh-phrases yield an antiuniqueness inference. Maldonado (2020) shows that Spanish bare wh-phrases do not conform to Dayal’s predictions. From this, she argues against a unified treatment of number across wh-expressions. Elliott et al. (2022) argue that a unified treatment of number can be maintained if bare wh-phrases are capable of ranging over generalized quantifiers. We weigh in on this discussion by arguing for an intermediate position: though independent evidence suggests that wh-phrases can range over generalized quantifiers, an assumption that we adopt for bare wh-phrases, the unified treatment of number presented in Elliott et al. (2022) faces challenges that can be avoided under Maldonado’s assumptions about number marking on bare wh-phrases.

Recent discussion on the source of uniqueness in English singular which-questions has debated whether this is due to a general requirement for questions to have a maximally informative true answer (Dayal 1996), or whether uniqueness is lexically triggered by which (Hirsch & Schwarz 2020). We show that Brazilian Portuguese has two kinds of singular which-questions, only one of which presupposes uniqueness. We argue that the distinction between these two kinds of questions is best accounted for under a lexical approach to uniqueness.

While simple singular wh-interrogatives carry a uniqueness presupposition, this is not so when they contain possibility modals. Hirsch & Schwarz (2019) account for this contrast by assuming (i) that questions can have multiple maximally informative true answers and (ii) that uniqueness is triggered lexically inside the scope of interrogative. We show that their proposal overgenerates on two accounts. Firstly, it predicts too weak a presupposition for modalized interrogatives. Secondly, it predicts unattested interpretations for interrogatives containing negation. We show that both issues can be solved using exhaustification operators. On the one hand, we obtain the desired presupposition for modalized interrogatives by assuming the lexical trigger for uniqueness to be a presuppositional variant of an exhaustification operator (Bassi, Del Pinal & Sauerland 2019). On the other, we show that unattested readings of negation can be blocked by assuming that questions presuppose that the pointwise exhaustification of their answers partitions the context of evaluation (Fox 2019). We argue that proper empirical coverage for singular wh-interrogatives requires the interaction of both exhaustification operations.

The idea that wh-phrases can quantify over generalized quantifiers emerged following two main observations: (i) disjunctive answers to modalized questions lead to free choice inferences if the wh-phrases’s restrictor is plural and (ii) questions with collective predicates do not lead to uniqueness presuppositions. Such proposals, however, fail to derive the connection between (i-ii) and plurality. We propose a novel analysis in which (i-ii) are derived via the presence of an existential distributivity operator. By tying these phenomena to distributivity, our analysis is able to establish the desired connection to plurality.

Recently, core components of irony processing (e.g., mental-state reasoning, executive control, and metalinguistic awareness) have been tentatively linked to bilingual experience. Thus, we investigated whether bilingual experience modulates irony comprehension during first language (L1) reading and also how bilingual adults comprehend irony in positive versus negative contexts (i.e., ironic compliments vs. criticisms, respectively). We deliver 3 main findings. First, bilinguals are faster at processing ironic criticisms than ironic compliments, and they find ironic criticisms more sensible than ironic compliments in their L1, much like past findings among monolinguals. Second, individual differences in bilingual experience modulate comprehension of ironic statements. Specifically, readers with high global second language (L2) proficiency find ironic statements more sensible than readers with low global L2 proficiency, regardless of the valence of the preceding context. Third, individual differences in global L2 proficiency further predict the speed of L1 irony comprehension: following a positive scenario, greater global L2 proficiency patterns with faster processing of irony compared to literal statements. Together, these data suggest that second language experience may be linked to irony processing in the first language. While the precise mechanism underlying this relationship remains open, potential sources may be rooted in flexible social cognition or executive functions.

Each culture has a distinct set of features that contribute to a unique communication style. For example, bilinguals often balance multiple social contexts and may undergo cognitive changes that consequently support different communication styles. The present work examines how individual differences in bilingual experience affect one form of communication style: sarcastic and indirect language. A diverse sample of largely bilingual adults (first language English) rated their likelihood of using sarcastic and indirect language across different daily settings. They also rated their second language experience. There were two key findings: Bilinguals use sarcasm for similar social functions as do monolinguals (general sarcasm, frustration diffusion, and embarrassment diffusion) and greater global second language proficiency linked to greater usage of general sarcasm in daily life. These results suggest that bilinguals may use sarcasm to achieve various communicative goals and bilingual experience may affect general cognitive capacities that support sarcasm use across real-world contexts.

Schlenker (2012) proposes that when framed within a modern Stalnakerian view of presupposition and common ground (Stalnaker, 1998, 2002), Maximize Presupposition! (Heim, 1991; Sauerland, 2008) can be viewed as a special case of the maxim of Quantity (Grice, 1975). We provide data suggesting that in some cases, Maximize Presupposition! applies even when speakers are not expected to use a presupposition as vectors of new information. We argue that these data support the view that Maximize Presupposition! is an independent pragmatic principle, distinct from Quantity.