At least et al: The semantic of scalar modifiers
At least et al: The semantic of scalar modifiers
复制标题
至少等人：标量修饰符的语义
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
2007
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
R. Nouwen
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
B. Geurts;R. Nouwen
在天真的解释中，比如超过和至少这样的标量修饰语，至少有三个女孩打呼噜就是两个以上打呼噜的同义词，这两句话都意味着打呼噜的女孩超过了两个(相同的，句子最多和少于/少于)。我们证明这是错误的，并提出了另一种理论，根据该理论，最高级修饰语(至少/大多数)与比较级修饰语(更多/更少/更少)有很大的不同。天真的理论关于比较修饰语基本上是正确的，但关于最高级修饰语的理论是错误的，我们声称最高级修饰语具有情态意义：至少有三个女孩打呼噜的话传达了两件事：第一，可以肯定有三个打呼噜的女孩，第二，可能有四个以上的女孩打呼噜。我们认为，这一分析解释了对幼稚观点有问题的各种事实，这些事实与特殊性、最高级修饰语和比较修饰语之间的分布差异、由这些表达式许可的不同推理模式以及它们与各种操作符(如情态动词和否定词)的互动方式有关。
On the naive account of scalar modifiers like more than and at least, At least three girls snored is synonymous with More than two girls snored, and both sentences mean that the number of snoring girls exceeded two (the same, mutatis mutandis, for sentences with at most and less/fewer than). We show that this is false and propose an alternative theory, according to which superlative modifiers (at least/most) are quite different from comparative ones (more/less/fewer than). Whereas the naive theory is basically right about comparative modifiers, it is wrong about superlative modifiers, which we claim have a MODAL meaning: an utterance of At least three girls snored conveys two things: first, that it is CERTAIN that there was a group ofthree snoring girls, and second, that more than four girls MAY have snored. We argue that this analysis explains various facts that are problematic for the naive view, which have to do with specificity, distributional differences between superlative and comparative modifiers, differential patterns of inference licensed by these expressions, and the way they interact with various operators, like modals and negation.