potts-etal-comment

Harvard–MIT–UConn Indexicality Workshop, Nov. 20, 2004Puzzle But we can use vocatives in sentences that have exactly the claimed vocative content:(3) Mary, I request your attention. (4) Maria, I request that you activate yourmental representation of her.Comments on Paul Portner’s a. I request Mary’s attentiona. I request that you activate yourb. I request Mary’s attention‘Instructions for Interpretation as Separatemental representation of MariaPerformatives’ b. I request that you activate yourmental representation of MariaChristopher Potts, Florian Schwarz, and Shigeto Kawahara In other areas where we can more easily grasp the content of all dimensions of meaning, redun-dancy does arise:UMass Amherst#(5) Mary, who is tall, is tall.November 20, 2004a. Regular meaning: Mary is tallb. Conventional implicature: Mary is tall1 OverviewA processing perspective Using a DP seems to entail that your mental representation of theWe are getting good at managing expressive content, but we are still fumbling after a characteriza- referent of that DP is activated. In general, can we gain from adding content that is entailed in thetion of expressive content itself. utterance situation?Portner’s insight about content management Sentences containing vocatives and dislocated Mixed evidence On Portner’s analysis, one expects redundancy if the speaker already has thetopics are semantically multidimensional. addressee’s attention (in the vocative case) or already has ...