Cross-Linguistic variations in disjunction explained in two-dimensional semantics

Yusuke Yagi (University of Connecticut)

Since Kartunnen’s (1973, 1974) observations, (English) disjunction p or q is assumed to be parsed as p or (not p and q). The posited not p, called the local context of the second disjunct, is supported not only by the classical equivalence but also by various empirical observations — presupposition projection (Kartunnen 1973), the bathroom anaphora, polarity-reversed sluicing (Kroll 2019), and the domain restriction of modal (Rothchild 2013). The disjunction in Japanese, p ka q*, replicates the pattern of presupposition projection, but none of the other aforementioned phenomena. I propose that this discrepancy is explained with the two-dimensional semantics (Kartunnen and Peters 1979): the Japanese disjunction has the local context only in the presuppositional dimension, but not in the assertive dimension.