Speaker: Verena Hehl (MIT) Time: Wednesday, November 30th, 1-2pm Place: 32-D831 Title: Discussion of: “On the meaning of some focus-sensitive particles” (Ippolito 2007).
In the paper Ippolito argues that the aspectual, marginality, and concessive uses of ‘still’ and ‘already’ in (1), (2) and (3) can be reduced to the following three classes of focus-sensitive particles: additive particles like ‘too’, scalar particles like ‘even’, exclusive particles like ‘only’.
(1) John is still/ already cooking. (2) (a) Compact cars are still safe; subcompacts start to get dangerous. (b) (Compact cars are still safe.) Subcompacts are already dangerous. (3) (Even) if the doctor tells him not to, Harry will still run the marathon.
The paper then features a (non-uniform) compositional analysis of the presuppositions triggered by ‘still/ already’ that sheds (new?) lights on the focus-sensitive particle ‘again’.