Exceptions from rules and noteworthy exceptions: the balance scale for making exceptions

Andy Lücking, Jonathan Ginzburg

Abstract: Exception phrases have recently gained renewed attention in semantics. Our contribution is two-fold. (1) We provide a range of empirical data that show a much broader use of exceptives than acknowledged in previous accounts. (2) Based on advances in linguistics and philosophy—namely type-theoretical semantics and a two-dimensional denotational underpinning of plural NPs—we propose a new analysis of exception phrases. We develop a balance scale model of exceptions in terms of reference and complement sets, a model that captures previous analyses as well as the new data. The theoretical generalization to be drawn is that exceptions are linguistic manifestations of reference repair strategies, strategies that are linguistically constrained by the quantificational properties of the NP constituent from which exceptions are to be drawn. Restrictions of different types of exception phrases are formulated as restrictions on an NP’s balance scale within a compositional grammar fragment.

External IDs:doi:10.1007/s10988-024-09429-1