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Filtering free choice

Paper · 2019 · Jacopo Romoli and Paolo Santorio

Summary

This note examines how free choice inferences interact with presupposition filtering. A free choice inference is the suggestion that each option in a disjunction under a possibility modal ("can A or B") is possible. The authors build test sentences that combine a modal disjunction with a presupposition trigger. The trigger, such as being "the first in our family" to be able to do something, sits in a conditional consequent, a second disjunct, or the scope of unless.

Speakers judge the presupposition to be filtered. That requires the free choice reading to be active when presuppositions are computed. In the disjunction and unless cases, though, the same clause is negated in its asserted role, where free choice should not arise. Standard scalar, exh-based accounts cannot produce this split behaviour.

The method is introspective judgments plus formal derivation, with no corpus or experiment. The authors reject computing implicatures on presuppositions alone. They then explore two repairs:

  • an implicature account combined with Rothschild's (2017) free insertion of redundant material at LF;
  • Goldstein's (2019) semantic, homogeneity-based account.

Both handle the core data, but each carries costs. The upshot is that projection facts become a new test for choosing between theories of free choice.

Key points

  • Three constructions are tested: conditionals, disjunctions and unless sentences. Scalar accounts cover the conditional case but fail on the other two.
  • The central example has two disjuncts. The first denies that Maria can study in Tokyo or Boston. The second calls her the first in the family able to study in Japan. Filtering needs the negated first disjunct to yield "she can do each", while its asserted meaning must stay plain.
  • Local accommodation is ruled out with a control sentence about Maria's brother. Local accommodation would treat both sentences alike, yet they differ in how strongly they suggest Maria can study in Japan.
  • The analysis uses a placeholder operator, exh*, so the problem is independent of how free choice is derived. Possible derivations include recursive exhaustification (Fox 2007) and the operator of Bar-Lev & Fox 2017.
  • Goldstein's account cannot cover free choice with negated conjunctions under "required", or the matching filtering case, because conjunctions introduce no alternatives there. The redundancy-insertion (ARC) account can, by copying the exhaustified negated first disjunct.
  • Both solutions predict that the main sentence fails to be true in a scenario where Tokyo is Maria's only option. The ARC account counts it false; the homogeneity account counts it undefined. The authors doubt this prediction and flag it for further study.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. Pairing each test sentence with a near-identical control that shares the same escape route (local accommodation) cleanly isolates the effect being studied. This is a cheap way to rule out a rival explanation.
  • I2. Stating the problem over an abstract operator (exh*) rather than one specific derivation keeps the argument valid whatever implementation wins. This lets the theory compare mechanisms without being rewritten.
  • I3. A presupposition is filtered when the local context entails it. That local context is the antecedent, the negated first disjunct, or the negated unless restrictor, rather than the global context.
  • I4. Copying the negated first disjunct into the second disjunct as redundant LF material makes the filtering context a visible part of the structure. Nothing hidden needs to be computed elsewhere.
  • I5. Judging truth after learning extra facts may give more tolerant verdicts than judging at the time of utterance. This is a methodological caveat for collecting truth-value judgments.

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

  • I1 (learn): Build evaluation sets as minimal pairs where a rival mechanism would predict no difference, so negative controls show which component actually drives an inference.
  • I2 (frames): Define the implicature step in crate prag as one interface with swappable strategies, so tests on filtering cases stay valid when the derivation behind it changes.
  • I3 (world): Before adding a presupposed fact to the world of the text, check whether the clause's local context already entails it, and record that check as an explicit reason.
  • I4 (frames): Represent local contexts as explicit copied nodes in the frame graph, so each filtered presupposition has an inspectable source that can be explained.
  • I5 (answer): When testing whether a reader accepts or rejects a statement, fix the information state the judgment is made against, so later facts do not loosen the verdict.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🎓University of California San DiegoSan Diego · United States73 works · 51,948 citations🎓University of UlsterColeraine · United Kingdom7 works · 144 citations

 Fields, topics and concepts

📚 Shelves 5The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Computer Science · 16,667 worksArtificial Intelligence · 16,194 worksArts and Humanities · 16,039 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 15,891 worksPhilosophy · 284 works

🧭 Topics 1Research subjects and languages the work is about.Implicature · 138 works

Cite

Cite as Jacopo Romoli and Paolo Santorio. 2019. Filtering free choice. Semantics and Pragmatics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.3765/sp.12.12

@article{romoli2019filtering,
  title = {{Filtering free choice}},
  author = {Jacopo Romoli and Paolo Santorio},
  journal = {Semantics and Pragmatics},
  year = {2019},
  doi = {10.3765/sp.12.12},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.12.12}
}

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