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This paper explores the idea that scalar implicatures are computed with respect to discourse referents. Given the general consensus that a proper account of pronominal anaphora in natural language requires discourse referents separately from the truth-conditional meaning, it is naturally expected that the anaphoric information that discourse referents carry play a role in the computation of scalar implicatures, but the literature has so far mostly exclusively focused on the truth-conditional dimension of meaning. This paper offers a formal theory of scalar implicatures with discourse referents couched in dynamic semantics, and demonstrates its usefulness through a case study on the plurality inferences of plural nouns in English.

The contribution of anaphoric encapsulators to the information structure of the utterance has often been restricted to observations regarding their position as sentence topics (theme) or as part of the comment (rheme). However, they may appear in other positions that can be better delimited with the help of a model of discourse segmentation such as the Basel Model. I explore the different discourse functions of anaphoric encapsulators in the three main units delineated in this model: the Nucleus or propositional core of the utterance, the Frame or the information chunk preceding the Nucleus, and the Appendix or slot for background information. Besides, I claim that the possibility for an anaphoric encapsulator to express the discourse topic of (part of) a text is intimately related to its position in the Utterance and propose a tentative scale of access to discourse topicality for this type of anaphors. Keywords: anaphora, encapsulation, information structure, discourse topic, Basel Model.

Pictorial free perception reports are sequences in comics or film of one unit that depicts an agent who is looking, and a following unit that depicts what they see. This paper proposes an analysis in possible worlds semantics and event semantics of such sequences. Free perception sequences are implicitly anaphoric, since the interpretation of the second unit refers to the agent depicted in the first. They are argued to be possibly non-extensional, because they can depict hallucination or mis-perception. The semantics proposed here employs an account of anaphora using discourse referents, a formalized possible worlds semantics for pictorial narratives, and, to model the epistemic consequences of perceptual events, the event alternative construction from dynamic epistemic logic. In intensional examples, the second unit depicting what is seen is analyzed as embedded. It is argued that a semantics for embedding where the attitudinal state of the depicted agent is required to entail the semantic content of the picture attributes too much information to the agent. This is addressed with a model of normal looking, and a semantics for the embedding construction that uses existential quantification over alternatives, rather than universal quantification.

The paper investigates the discourse effects of bare nominal pseudo-incorporated objects in Persian. Contrary to claims that such nominals cannot be antecedents to anaphora, experimental results show that that their anaphoric potential is only somewhat reduced, compared to indefinites. This is consonant with Krifka & Modarresi (2016), according to which they are interpreted like functional definites that are dependent on the event denoted by the verb that undergo existential closure.

The paper investigates conditions for the bare occurrence of noun phrases in the topic position of specificational copula clauses in German. It is shown that this is a predicate position for non-referential NPs. Specificational clauses in German are special because of the unusual alignment of the predicative position with the topic position. I show that the condition for the bare occurrence of NPs in this position is that the head noun denotes a functional concept. According to the theory of concept types by Löbner (2011), nouns denoting functional concepts are relational and unique. I argue that relationality ensures the anchoring of bare NPs in the discourse via an anaphoric link to a bridging antecedent in the previous discourse and qualifies them to be a topic in the sense of discourse-familiarity. The uniqueness of such NPs is the key to understanding why they can occur bare without a definite article: they belong to the type of definite descriptions in which definiteness is based on uniqueness. The article in uniqueness-based DPs encodes uniqueness and indicates morphological case. Since NPs denoting functional concepts are already unique, and as complements of the copula are not assigned case, the article need not be realized.

This paper argues that correlative constructions in Hittite are paratactically structured. The relative clause is essentially a clausal hanging topic, sitting at the left edge of the main clause in linear juxtaposition without actually being an integrated part of it, syntactically speaking. I defend this claim in two stages. First, I argue that correlatives in Hittite are base-generated in their left-edge position rather than derived through movement (as advocated for Hindi by, e.g., Bhatt 2003). I adduce as evidence the fact that the main clause correlate appears to be simply a discourse anaphor and need not even be present in the construction; these observations are incompatible with a movement-based derivation that generates the relative clause as a modifier of the correlate. There is also evidence for a lack of locality effects. The second part of my claim, that Hittite correlatives are not syntactically integrated, differs from most base-generation accounts of correlatives, which take correlatives to be clausal adjuncts. I support my position with parallels to hanging topics and peripheral adverbials (Haegeman 2012) and with examples of intervening non-subordinate clauses, and I offer some comments on why syntactic adjunction is less well suited to the Hittite situation. I also show that Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (Asher & Lascarides 2003) accommodates these structures, including some notably non- canonical ones, in a simple and principled way.

This experimental study tests the Interface Hypothesis by looking into processes at the syntaxdiscourse interface, teasing apart acquisition of syntactic, semantic and discourse knowledge. Adopting Lopez's (2009) pragmatic features [± a(naphor)] and [±c(ontrast)], which in combination account for the constructions of dislocation and fronting, we tested clitic left dislocation and fronted focus in the comprehension of English native speakers learning Spanish. Furthermore, we tested knowledge of an additional semantic property: the relationship between the discourse anaphor and the antecedent in clitic left dislocation (CLLD). This relationship is free: it can be subset, superset, part/whole. Syntactic knowledge of clitics was a condition for inclusion in the main test. Our findings indicate that all learners are sensitive to the semantic constraints.While the near-native speakers display native-like discourse knowledge, the advanced speakers demonstrated some discourse knowledge, and intermediate learners did not display any discourse knowledge. The findings support as well as challenge the Interface Hypothesis.

Genre effects on the construction of discourse coherence are investigated through a case study in Yaqui (Uto-Aztecan, northwestern Mexico and in Arizona). Five different discourse factors (referential continuity, finiteness vs. nonfiniteness, information structure, pausing and intonation contours, and discourse markers) are selected in order to compare how they function together to create discourse coherence in two different texts representative of two main discourse genres: monologues (narrative) and dialogues (conversation). Differences between the texts are identified not only for each feature separately but also in terms of correlations between these features.

The aim of this paper is to describe the available strategies for coding purpose relations in Mbya, focusing on their semantico-pragmatic distribution. According to Dooley, Mbya Guarani presents two main different strategies involved in the coding of purpose relations: aguã nominalizations and vy-dependent clauses, and among the latter a motion-cum-purpose (MCP) construction subtype is included. These strategies differ in regard to the semantic class of the main verb, referential continuity between the dependent and the main unit, and the fact that the dependent form can be negated independently from the main clause—thus, establishing different degrees of integration within the main unit in each case—, but overlap in same-subject contexts that involve a directed motion verb. However, according to our data, speakers do not use these constructions interchangeably, whereas aguã nominalizations portray an intended hypothetical outcome of the event or state-of-affair (hereafter SoA) expressed in the matrix clause; vy-dependent clauses and motion-cum-purpose constructions consistently trigger a result interpretation, entailing that the intended SoA was successfully accomplished.

Previous research on VP-ellipsis has revealed the existence of a Mismatch Asymmetry, whereby cases with passive voice ellipsis clauses and active antecedent clauses are less acceptable than cases with active ellipsis clauses and passive antecedents. According to the memory-based explanation offered by the Recycling Hypothesis (RH; Arregui et al. 2006), this effect arises because passive clauses are more prone to be misremembered as active than the other way around, and hence passive-active mismatches are more likely to create an “illusion of grammaticality”. This paper describes three experiments that explore the source of the asymmetry, with particular attention to the predictions of the RH account on previously unexamined cases. The findings are inconsistent with the predictions of memory-based explanations such as the RH, and instead point to the existence of a penalty against passive ellipsis clauses in subject focus environments, one that applies to both matched and mismatched cases of VP-ellipsis and in both anaphoric and cataphoric discourse configurations. A possible explanation for the penalty is offered as a subject for future work.