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Two Views on Epistemic Indefinites
Author(s) -
AlonsoOvalle Luis,
MenéndezBenito Paula
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
language and linguistics compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.619
H-Index - 44
ISSN - 1749-818X
DOI - 10.1111/lnc3.12009
Subject(s) - ignorance , pragmatics , implicature , linguistics , context (archaeology) , existentialism , epistemology , semantics (computer science) , philosophy , psychology , computer science , history , archaeology , programming language
Epistemic indefinites are existential determiners that convey ignorance on the part of the speaker. This paper reviews two types of accounts of the semantics and pragmatics of these items. The first one derives the ignorance component as a quantity implicature that arises via competition with alternative domains of quantification (Alonso‐Ovalle and Menéndez‐Benito 2003, 2008, 2010, 2011; Chierchia 2006; Fălăuş 2009, 2011a,b, 2012; Kratzer and Shimoyama, 2002). The second one claims that the ignorance effect comes about because epistemic indefinites impose a shift on the method of identification required by the context (Aloni 2012; Aloni and Port forthcoming). Although both approaches have improved our understanding of epistemic indefinites, we conclude that neither of them predicts the whole range of variation attested to date.