Maik Thalmann

RTG PhD student, member since 2021

Project "Scrambling and scalar implicatures"

The use of weak scalar terms in upward-monotonic contexts optionally leads to a scalar implicature, which lacks an overt trigger and thus constitutes a 0:1 form-meaning mismatch.

John ate some of the Sauerkraut.

John did not eat all of the Sauerkraut.

Scalar implicatures are influenced by a wide range of factors, chiefly among them matters of information structure like focus and discourse-structuring questions. The exact role that they play, however, remains a controversial issue (Zondervan 2010). Breheny et al. (2006) suggest that word order, through an interaction with information structure, affects scalar implicature rates in Greek.

Are scalar implicatures primarily determined by prosody and information structure or is there a previously undiscovered influence of syntactic positions and word order? If syntax does determine, or at least influence, the likelihood of deriving an enrichment, are the reasons to be found in the structural algorithm assumed for alternative generation, operator placement (cf. Chierchia et al. 2012), or other areas?