Whamit!

Abstract: I present part of my ongoing work on Hurford disjunctions and the role of parthood in meaning. In the first part of the talk, I introduce novel data showing that predicates vary systematically in how they interact with the Hurford Constraint. In particular, I show that while all predicates give rise to infelicity in Hurford-like sentences, many can be rescued by inserting just or only in one of the disjuncts. This pattern resembles traditional scalar cases, but crucially arises even in the absence of an overt all in the other disjunct. I propose a typology that predicts when such rescue is possible: namely, in sentences containing predicates that universally quantify over parts of entities. More generally, I argue that all Hurford sentences can be rescued when universal quantification is introduced by some means, for instance via distribution over conjunction or through definite plurals.