The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

Sven Lauersven.lauer@stanford.edu

Department of Linguistics, Stanford University

March 6, 2009Workshop on

Expressives and other kinds of non-truth-conditional meaning31st Annual Meeting of the DGfS, Osnabruck

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

Outline

1 Prelude: Two Kinds of Free Choice Items

2 The central question

3 A closer look at the data

4 The analysis

5 Conclusion

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

Prelude: Two Kinds of Free Choice Items

What is a Free Choice ItemTM?

Free Choice Items: Heterogenous group of operators thatseem similar on an intuitive level

What, precisely unifies them remains unclear (‘free choiceflavor’)

Two main English contenders: any and wh-ever

Some authors foreground similarities (Horn (2000),Giannakidou and Cheng (2006))

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

Prelude: Two Kinds of Free Choice Items

The view of Singapoorean soft-drink makers

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

Prelude: Two Kinds of Free Choice Items

Two kinds of Free Choice Items

Carbonated FCIs

English anyScandinavian wh- som helst (Sæbø 2001)Korean amwu-na (Kim and Kaufmann 2006)

Non-carbonated FCIs

English wh-everGerman irgend- indefinites (Kratzer and Shimoyama 2002)Spanish algun (Alonso-Ovalle and Benito forthcoming)? English some (Farkas 2002)? Greek o-diphote (Giannakidou 2001, Vlachou 2007)

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

The central question

The central question

(1) What Arlo is cooking is vegetarian.

(2) Whatever Arlo is cooking is vegetarian.

Asserts: The thing that Arlo is cooking is vegetarian.

Conveys: Speaker is uncertain as to what Arlo is cooking.

But conveys how?

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

The central question

The usual suspectsAssertion, Presupposition, Conventional Implicature

(2) Whatever Arlo is cooking is vegetarian.Conveys: Speaker is uncertain as to what Arlo is cooking.

Some ideas that don’t quite work:

The ignorance-implication is asserted (Dayal 1997), cf. (3)

The ignorance-implication is presupposed (von Fintel 2000),cf. (4)

The ignorance-implication is a Potts-style conventionalimplicature (von Fintel 2005), cf. (7)

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

A closer look at the data

Embedded occurrences: Variation across a modal domain

(8) John thinks that whoever won the race will get laid tonight.Implication: John does not know (yet) who won the race.

(9) Jill wants to marry whoever her parents have selected for her.Implication: Jill’s wish does not depend on the identity ofthe person her parents have selected.

Generalization

If wh-ever occurs in the scope of a modal, it can signal that thereferent of the free relative is not constant wRt to the set of worldsthe modal quantifies over.

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

A closer look at the data

Embedded occurrences: Variation across a modal domain

Generalization

If wh-ever occurs in the scope of a modal, it can signal that thereferent of the free relative is not constant wRt to the set of worldsthe modal quantifies over.

Outscoping modal operator required if the ignorance implication isto apply to a third party!(contra what von Fintel (2000)/Tredinnick (2005) predict):

(10) Raja was digging into my pork stew, oblivious to what it was.I had to tell him that what#ever he was eating was not halal.

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

A closer look at the data

Generalization

If wh-ever occurs in the scope of a modal, it can signal that thereferent of the free relative is not constant wRt to the set of worldsthe modal quantifies over.

Wait a minute: No filtering effects? Really?

(11’) If John did not know that Bill won the race, he would stillthink that whoever won the race will get laid tonight.

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

A closer look at the data

A caveat: Resolvedness 6= rigid reference

Non-constant reference is not quite enough.

What counts as the referent being identified wRt to a set ofworlds depends on context (contra Heller and Wolter (2008))

Contextually specified methods of identification (Aloni 2001,cf. (12,13))

Contextually specified methods of individuation(Condoravdi unpublished, cf. (14))

Both problems are familiar from knowing wh-constructions.

Condoravdi’s solution: Instead of variation, require that a setof more specific, incompatible alternative properties beinstantiated in some world or other.

Subsumes (an adaption of) Aloni’s solution in the presentcontext.

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

A closer look at the data

Same effect under non-episodic aspect, Q-adverbs, inDonkey sentences

(15) In these days, whatever Sven published about eFRs was fullof errors.

(16) Whatever John writes is (always) violent.

(17) If a farmer sees a monkey, he feeds it whatever is in hispocket.

Generalization: If a free relative occurs in the scope of aquantificational operator, -ever signals that the reference of the FRis not resolved wRt the domain of the operator.

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

A closer look at the data

‘Speaker-ignorance’ is not the whole story

Hint-type uses (von Fintel 2000):

(18) Whatever I am cooking contains a lot of garlic.

Acknowledgement of disagreement (Condoravdi unpublished):

(19) A: Susan entered the house last.B: No, JOHN entered the house last.A: Well, whoever entered the house last saw what happened.

Instead of ‘speaker ignorance’-uses/readings, we should talk of‘conversation-directed’ uses/readings.

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

A closer look at the data

-ever, in a descriptive nutshell

If a free relative occurs in the scope of a quanticational operator,

-ever signals that the reference of the FR is not resolved wRtthe domain of the operator.

This signal behaves presupposition-like.

If a free relative occurs outside of any embedding,

it signals uncertainty/indifference/disagreement of theinterlocutors.

This signal does not behave like a presupposition, and ismore context-dependent than the embedded signal.

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

The analysis

-ever : The analsis

-ever is taken to uniformly contribute a presupposition-likenon-resolvedness requirement.

In unembedded contexts, we assume that this isnon-resolvedness is wRt to the conversational commonground.

Specific conversation-oriented effects arise as implicatures.

This explains the non-presuppositional nature ofnon-embedded signals, as well as their context-dependentnature

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

The analysis

Formal implementation

Dynamic update system a la Heim/Veltman/Beaver,possibilities are pairs of worlds and assignments

Modals (and conditionals, and Q-adverbs) create ‘localinformation states’

In embedded uses, these local states satisfy the variationrequirement.

In non-embedded uses, the global information state satisfiesthe variation requirement, this triggers implicatures.

s[wh-everx(φ)(ψ)]s ′ :⇔s[thex(φ)(ψ)]s ′

& ∃i , j ∈ s ′ : i(x) 6= j(x)

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

The analysis

Compare and contrast: -ever and Beaver-presuppositions

s[wh-everx(φ)(ψ)]s ′ :⇔s[thex(φ)(ψ)]s ′

& ∃i , j ∈ s ′ : i(x) 6= j(x)

s[regret(j , φ)]s ′ : ⇐⇒ s[dispreferjφ]s ′

& s |= φ

Like a presupposition, the component contributed by -ever isa definedness/appropriateness condition.

Unlike a garden-variety presupposition, -ever imposes acondition on the output context

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

The analysis

Embedded uses: Projection galore

�wh-everx(φ)(ψ) pragmatically presupposes that the referentof the FR is not resolved in the worlds � quantifies over.

This presupposition can, if compatible with the commonground, be easily accommodated.

This gives the right predictions for universal modals andattitude verbs like must, believe, know, want.

Similarly for Q-adverbs and donkey sentences.

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

The analysis

Implicatures: Why global variation is meaningful

When not embedded, -ever requires that the referent of theeFR is not constant in the global output context.

Thus (1) pragmatically presupposes: It is not resolved whatArlo is cooking and learning that what he is cooking isvegetarian will not change that.

The following three conditions are jointly incompatible withthe definedness condition of wh-ever :

Feasability: The speaker is able to resolve the identity of thefree relative in the common ground.Relevance: The identity of the referent of the free relative isrelevant to the current conversational purposes.Cooperativity: The speaker is willing to commit any relevantinformation to the common ground.

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

The analysis

Why post-supposition?

Triggers stronger implicatures than a presupposition.

Gives the right predictions in antecedents of conditionals:

(21) If what#ever Arlo is cooking is beef, I am going to eatout tonight.

Also takes care of possibility modals:

(22) You may marry whoever you want (to marry).

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

The analysis

Why not just conversational implicatures?

Kratzer and Shimoyama (2002), Aloni & van Rooij (2005) tryto account for the very similar behavior of irgend-indefinitesas conversational implicatures.

Kratzer & Shimoyama’s implicature-computation, however,applies equally well to plain indefinites, Aloni & van Rooij’srelies on the FCI specifying the alternative sets that thequantity-implicature is sensitive to.

One solution: Calculate Q-implicatures in the grammar.(Chierchia 2006)

Another: Assume that non-carbonated FCIs contributepost-suppositions, only global effects are implicatures: Thebest of both worlds.

The -ever in whatever : What, and how?

Conclusion

Take-home messages

The content of the variation signal contribution is muchtighter constrained than previously thought.

Conversation-oriented implications and embedded implicationsdo not behave alike.

A unified analysis is still possible if we assume thatconversation-directed implications are implicatures generatedby a presupposition-like implication.

To have things come out right, we need to model this as apostsupposition.

Postsuppositions are especially suited to trigger implicatures.