Topics in Semantics and Pragmatics

Even yet until: polarity sensitive scalar particles. This graduate seminar in Semantics will examine the semantics of the scalar particles even, yet, and until, and their counterparts across various languages, which are often also the counterparts of words like again, also, more, except, and others .All three of these particles have both a positive and a negative polarity use. What these particles mean, whether and how their positive and negative uses are (not) related to each other, and how they get expressed in different languages, will not have even been agreed on in the literature yet until this class is over. Confounding issues implicated in their analysis include: how do we decide between presupposition, truth conditional content, and  implicature? What is additivity? How do negation and aspectual properties interact with scalar reasoning? How do we decide between lexical ambiguity and scope taking? Even other questions will probably yet arise, though not until the class starts.