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7 - Indexical Inference: Counting and Measuring in Context
- By Alice G. B. ter Meulen
Edited by Hana Filip, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
Book:

Countability in Natural Language

Published online:

11 June 2021

Print publication:

01 July 2021, pp 199-216
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Summary

This chapter analyses how we give linguistic expression to counting as a cognitive process of interpretation in context with a focus on the interaction between aspectual adverbs and phrases with numerical DPs. For example, the use of already or no longer in there are already/no longer three students here conveys the speaker’s knowledge of the recent past of the described situation and gives rise to indexical inferences, for example, that three students were here. In order to capture these indexical inferences, ter Meulen proposes a DRT analysis that models both the information that utterances presuppose in the common ground and the inference triggered by the aspectual adverb in the context. Ter Meulen then considers how this approach could be extended to polar question uses of aspectual adverbs (Still?/Already?), and discusses the interesting and intricate differences between uses of aspectual adverbs and numerical DPs cross-linguistically.