Downloadable Writings

Forthcoming
Kinds, Properties and Atelicity
Chierchia. Kinds, Properties and Atelicity, in SALT 33. Yale University: LSA ; Forthcoming.Abstract

Since at least Vendler (1967), one of the most widely discussed data points, often viewed as the ultimate test for (a)telicity, is the behavior of durative modifiers with respect to different VP types as in John killed mosquitos/* a mosquito for an hour.  In the present paper, I explore a new blend of the two most widespread approaches to this issue, namely (i) the view of durative modifiers as universal quantifiers (e.g., Dowty 1979, a.o.) and (ii) their view as aspect sensitive measure adverbials (e.g. Krifka 1998, a.o.).  The blend explored here is based on an economy constraint specific to the scope of adverbial quantification (‘do not weaken’ cf. Bassa Vanrell 2017) combined with the identification of the special role that kinds and properties may play as direct bearers of thematic relations in an event-based semantics.

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2022
“Identifying (in)definiteness in Vietnamese”
Phan, Chierchia. “Identifying (in)definiteness in Vietnamese”. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. 2022;15 (2) :27-49. Publisher's VersionAbstract
This paper aims to settle the issue of whether những, các, một are articles in Vietnamese as argued by Nguyen T. C. (1975), Nguyen H. T. (2004), a.o. First, we adopt Dayal (in prep.)’s cross-linguistic questionnaire of (in)definiteness since this questionnaire offers us a set of useful tests to diagnose definiteness and indefiniteness from a crosslinguistic perspective. Second, we broaden up the empirical landscape by contrasting the interpretation of nominal constructions which have the so-called overt (in)definite markers (các-CLF-N, những-CLF-N, and một CLF N) with that of nominal constructions without them (including bare N and CLF-N, numeral(>1)-CLF-N), in order to see if the (in)definiteness effect truly comes from the presence or absence of these three markers, or from something else. We then conclude that (i) những and các are plural markers, (ii) only một seems to be a likely candidate for an indefinite article, and (iii) bare nouns and numerals are not genuine indefinites: the former denotes kinds, while the latter can be interpreted as definite, which sets Vietnamese apart cross-linguistically.
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"People are fed up; don't mess with them." Non quantificational arguments and polarity reversals
Chierchia. "People are fed up; don't mess with them." Non quantificational arguments and polarity reversals. Journal of Semantics. 2022;39 (3) :475-521. Publisher's VersionAbstract

The first sentence in the title means roughly: All the people around are tired. The second means: Do not mess with any of them. Even though the second sentence looks just like a negative counterpart of the first, it doesn’t have the expected compositional meaning: it doesn’t mean “do not mess with all the people”. This phenomenon is extremely general. It takes place with Bare Plurals, as in the title. It figures prominently in the behavior of Plural Definites (I spoke to the students in trouble / I didn’t speak to the students in trouble  ¬∃). It also takes place with to Donkey pronouns (Every farmer who had a donkey sold it  / No man who had a donkey sold it ¬∃). These switches of quantificational force under polarity reversals calls to mind Free Choice phenomena. In particular, a determiner like any is interpreted as a narrow scope existential in a sentence like I didn’t talk to any student in trouble ¬∃; however, in positive environments, the existential meaning of any emerges as strengthened to universal I spoke to any student in trouble . It is tempting to conjecture that the source of this uniform behavior is a uniform mechanism. While these constructions (Free Choice any, Bare Plurals, Plural Definites, and Donkey pronouns) have been studied extensively, and insightful approaches to Plural Definites in terms of Free Choice mechanisms have also been proposed (Bar Lev 2018, 2021), a unitary analysis has not been attempted to the best of my knowledge. In spite of the many challenges that a unified analysis faces, it is worth a try, for, if successful, it would considerably push forward our understanding of a wide range of very diverse constructions.

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2021
Mass vs. Count: Where do we stand? Outline of a theory of semantic variation
Chierchia. Mass vs. Count: Where do we stand? Outline of a theory of semantic variation. In: Things and Stuff: The Semantics of the Count-Mass Distinction. Edited by Kiss, Pelletier, and Husić. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press ; 2021. pp. 21-54. Publisher's VersionAbstract

DP structure, number marking, and the morphosyntax of the mass/count distinction appears to be subject to a great deal of variation. Language systems with clear evidence of two classes of nouns, those that allow direct combination with numerals and those that don’t, are by now fairly well combed through. As are languages that disallow direct combinations of numerals with any noun, namely generalized classifier languages (Mandarin, Japanese, etc.). Finally, there are languages that do allow free combination of numerals with any N, whether conceptually mass or count, like Nez Perce, Yudja, Indonesian,…, which have also been well documented at this point. This variation has given rise to theories of the mass/count contrast where the link between the pre-linguistic/cognitive basis of the distinction and its grammatical manifestation is weakened to the point of disappearance: basically any ‘concept’ can have a mass or a count grammatical representation (cf. e.g. Chierchia 1998a, Borer 2005, Rothstein 2010, Landman 2011,  De Vries et al. 2018, a.o.). I am going to argue that this position is not supported by the available evidence: All of the languages mentioned above retain essentially the same notion of countability. I will, accordingly, propose an approach consistent with the thesis that the mass/count contrast rests on an underlyingly universal structure. To use one of Chomsky’s favorite metaphors, if Martians were to be exposed to Italian, Mandarin and Yudja, they would think that they count things the same way, modulo minor phonological differences.

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On being trivial: grammar vs. logic
Chierchia. On being trivial: grammar vs. logic. In: The Semantic Conception of Logic: Essays on Consequence, Invariance, and Meaning. Edited by Sagi and Woods. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press ; 2021. pp. 227-248. Publisher's VersionAbstract

There is increasing consensus on the idea that certain sentences perceived as “ungrammatical” owe their status not to being syntactically ill-formed, but to their being L(ogically)-determinate and hence informationally trivial. Clearly, however, not every L-determinate sentence is perceived as ungrammatical, which raises the question of whether there is a principled way of sifting among the L-determinate sentences those that give rise to ungrammaticality from those that do not. Several interesting attempts have been made in this connection (Gajewski, Del Pinal), which, however, we argue fall short of the task. We propose a modification and generalization of such proposals based on the notion of ‘modulation’ of what are termed ‘the referential points’ of sentences (i.e. their non logical vocabulary and their variables). This approach has far reaching consequences for our understanding of the divide between logical and non logical vocabulary and for the very notion of semantic competence.

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2020
Origins of Weak Crossover: when Dynamic Semantics meets Event Semantics
Chierchia. Origins of Weak Crossover: when Dynamic Semantics meets Event Semantics. Natural Language Semantics. 2020;28 :23–76. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Approaches to anaphora generally seek to explain the potential for a DP to covary with a pronoun in terms of a combination of factors, such as (i) the inherent semantics of the antecedent DP (i.e., whether it is indefinite, quantificational, referential), (ii) its scope properties, and (iii) its structural position. A case in point is Reinhart’s classic condition on bound anaphora, paraphrasable as A DP can antecede a pronoun pro only if the DP C-commands pro at S-structure, supplemented with some extra machinery to allow indefinites to covary with pronouns beyond their C-command domains. In the present paper, I explore a different take. I propose that anaphora is governed not by DPs and their properties; it is governed by predicates (i.e., in the unary case, objects of type <e, t>) and their properties. To use a metaphor from dynamic semantics: discourse referents can only be ‘activated’ by predicates, never by DPs (Dynamic Predication Principle). This conceptually simple assumption is shown to have far-reaching consequences. For one, it yields a new take on weak crossover, arguably worthy of consideration. Moreover, it leads to a further general “restatement of the anaphora question” in Reinhart’s words (Linguist Philos 6: 47–88, 1983).
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Contemporary issues in natural language semantics: An interview with Gennaro Chierchia
Pires-de-Oliveira, Chierchia. Contemporary issues in natural language semantics: An interview with Gennaro Chierchia. Delta. 2020;36 (1) :1-25. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Chierchia discusses his views on the frontiers of contemporary semantics: multidimensionality of meaning, alternative semantics, ‘mid level’ generalizations, the natural logicality of natural languages, the role of reference, and the place of new methodologies, i.e. lab-experiments.
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2019
Factivity meets polarity: On two differences between Italian vs. English factives
Chierchia. Factivity meets polarity: On two differences between Italian vs. English factives. In: The Semantics of Focus, Degrees and Times. Essays in honor of Roger Schwarzschild. Edited by Altshuler and Rett. New York: Springer ; 2019. pp. 111-134. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Italian and English factives differ from each other in interesting and puzzling ways.  English emotive factives (regret, sorry) license Negative Polarity Items (NPIs), while their Italian counterparts don’t. Moreover, when factives of all kinds (emotive or cognitive) occur in the scope of negation in Italian an intervention effect emerges that interferes with NPI licensing way more robustly than in English. In this paper, I explore the idea that this contrast between Italian and English may be due to a difference in the Complementizer (C) -system of the two languages that parallels a difference that has been noted in the literature between the singular and the plural definite determiner the with respect to NPI licensing. Understanding how factives differ across language with respect to polarity phenomena is not only interesting in its own right, but also because it sheds further light on how logical contradictions may affect grammaticality judgments.
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2017
Clouds and blood. More on the mass/count distinction.
Chierchia. Clouds and blood. More on the mass/count distinction. Synthese. 2017;197 (7) :2523-2538. Publisher's VersionAbstract
A vagueness-based approach to the mass/count distinction was developed in Chierchia (Synthese 174:99–149, 2010). Liebesman (Synthese 193: 185-203) argues against Chierchia’s proposal developing four arguments aimed at undermining it. He furthermore tries to make a case that regardless of the details of C’s proposal no vagueness-based account of the distinction is viable. In this paper I show that Liebesman’s arguments against C don’t go through and that a line of investigation on the mass count contrast in terms of vagueness is not only viable but also perhaps a source of insight on the nature of this much debated distinction and on the relations between grammar and metaphysics in general. The outcome of the present discussion is of interest beyond the question of who is right in this debate, as it puts into sharper focus several issues pertaining to mass vs. count, plural vs. singular, and the role of vagueness in natural language semantics
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Scalar implicatures and their interface with grammar
Chierchia. Scalar implicatures and their interface with grammar. Annual Review of Linguistics. 2017;3 :245-264. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Scalar implicatures (SIs) and, more generally, quantity-based implicatures (QBIs) have been intensely investigated since Grice's seminal work. Recently, SIs and QBIs have been at the center of an intense debate. Some researchers, following Grice's original insight, argue that they should be captured solely in terms of principles of rational action (the pragmatic approach). Others argue that they cannot be analyzed in purely pragmatic terms but can only be properly understood in terms of a compositional semantic device, namely exhaustification (the grammatical approach). In this article, I review the key arguments in this debate, which is of interest not only to determine who is right but also because of the range of new phenomena that have come to light thanks to such a debate. My conclusion is that both conceptual and empirical reasons favor the grammatical approach.
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Logic and the language faculty
Chierchia. Logic and the language faculty. Inference. 2017;3 (2). Publisher's VersionAbstract

In this note I address one of the issues raised in Chomsky’s “The Galilean Challenge,” namely how the basic mechanisms of Universal Grammar (“merge”) can produce a natural logic, i.e. a system for drawing sound inferences, in interaction with possibly language independent ‘proto-logical’ operations. I also give some examples of how a ‘natural logic’ is indeed intertwined with grammar and constitutes the main source of our capacity for ‘creating meaning’.

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Why does A-movement bleed Weak Crossover?
Chierchia. Why does A-movement bleed Weak Crossover?. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa/Research in Generative Grammar. 2017;39 :53-77. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Weak Crossover (WCO) has many puzzling properties, including that of being obviated by A-movement. We argue that the key to understanding WCO lies in the fact that traces and pronouns have a different semantics. Simply put, traces are interpreted as variables in classical logic; pronouns are interpreted as discourse markers in dynamic logic. The heart of this paper is devoted to exploring the syntactic consequences of this view, that are argued to be far reaching. Not only the basics of WCO follow without construction specific constraints, but one gains new interesting insight of the difference between A- vs. A’-chain, the EPP, and the nature of expletives.
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2015
Where do Chinese wh-items fit?
Chierchia, Liao. Where do Chinese wh-items fit?. In: Epistemic Indefinites: Exploring modalities beyond the verbal domain. Edited by Alonso-Ovalle and Menendes-Benito. Oxford, U.K. Oxford Universit Press ; 2015. pp. 31-59. Publisher's VersionAbstract
This chapter investigates wh-items in Mandarin from a cross-linguistic perspective, seeking to unify their various uses. It stems from: (i) previous approaches to indefinites in Chinese (Cheng 1991; Lin 1998); (ii) Kartunnen’s semantics for questions; (iii) recent work on epistemic indefinites (EIs); and (iv) recent approaches to polarity (e.g. Chierchia 2013). The chapter claims that indefinites in all languages denote existential terms and activate a grammatically determined set of alternatives, factored into meaning through a process of ‘exhaustification’, responsible for the scalar and ‘free choice’ readings of ordinary indefinites (OIs). EIs are viewed in the same way, the only difference from OIs being that EIs’ alternatives cannot be ‘pruned’ (i.e. ‘ignored’) depending on the context. Therefore, with EIs, epistemic effects come about obligatorily. The differences within types of EIs (including Chinese wh’s) are part of (a small set of) parametric differences on how alternatives can be factored in.
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How universal is the mass/count distinction? Three grammars of counting
Chierchia. How universal is the mass/count distinction? Three grammars of counting. In: Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective. Edited by Li, Simpson, and Tsai. Oxford University Press ; 2015. pp. 147-178. Publisher's Version Download PDF
2014
When some is not every: Dissociating scalar implicature generation and mismatch
Shetreet, Chierchia, Gaab. When some is not every: Dissociating scalar implicature generation and mismatch. Human Brain Mapping. 2014;35 :1503-1514. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Making inferences beyond the literal meaning of sentences occurs with certain scalar expressions via scalar implicatures. For example, adults usually interpret some as some but not all. On the basis of behavioral research, it has been suggested that processing implicatures is cognitively costly. However, many studies have used cases where sentences with some did not match the context in which they were presented. Our study aimed to examine whether the processing cost is linked to implicature generation, to the mismatch between the implicature and the context, or to both processes. To do so, we explored the neural patterns of implicature generation and implicature mismatch using fMRI. Thirteen participants performed a sentence‐picture matching task (where pictures determined the context) with mismatched implicatures, successful implicatures or no implicature conditions. Several brain regions were identified when comparing cases of implicature mismatch and cases without implicatures. One of these regions, left‐IFG, was jointly activated for mismatched and successful implicatures, as observed in a conjunction analysis. By contrast, left‐MFG and medial‐frontal‐gyrus, were identified when comparing cases of implicature mismatch with cases of successful implicatures. Thus, the left IFG can be interpreted as being linked to implicature generation, whereas the other two areas seem to participate in the processing of the mismatch between the implicature and its context. Our results indicate that scalar implicatures induce processing cost in different ways. This should be considered in future research.
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2013
Questions on questions and free relatives
Chierchia, Caponigro. Questions on questions and free relatives. Handout. Sinn und Bedeutung, Vitoria, Basque Country, September 12. 2013. Download PDF
2012
Scalar implicatures in child language: Give children a chance
Foppolo, Guasti, Chierchia. Scalar implicatures in child language: Give children a chance. Language Learning and Development. 2012;8 :365-394. Download PDF
Scalar implicature as a grammatical phenomenon
Chierchia, Fox, Spector. Scalar implicature as a grammatical phenomenon. In: Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning. Vol. 3. Edited by Maienborn, von Heusinger & Portner. Mouton de Gruyter ; 2012. pp. 2297-2331. Download PDF
2010
Mass nouns, vagueness, and semantic variation
Chierchia. Mass nouns, vagueness, and semantic variation. Synthese. 2010;174 :99-149. Download PDF
2009
Relevance of polarity for the online interpretation of scalar terms
Panizza, Huang, Chierchia, Snedecker. Relevance of polarity for the online interpretation of scalar terms. Proceedings of SALT 19. 2009 :342-359. Download PDF

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