Conjoined Predication and Scalar Implicature
This addresses a theoretical problem in linguistics for researchers studying quantification and implicature, but it is incremental as it builds on existing frameworks.
The paper tackles the unresolved first puzzle from Magri (2016) regarding the infelicity of conjoined sentences like '(Only) Some Italians come from a warm country and are blond', arguing that it arises from a collective or concurrent reading causing an indirect contextual contradiction.
Magri (2016) investigates two puzzles arising from conjunction. Although Magri has proposed a solution to the second puzzle, the first remains unresolved. This first puzzle reveals a hidden interaction among quantification, collective/concurrent interpretation, and contextual updating dimensions that have yet to be explored. In essence, the problem is that certain forms of sentences like "Some Italians come from a warm country," when conjoined as in "(Only) Some Italians come from a warm country and are blond," sound infelicitous, even though no obvious alternative triggers a conflicting scalar implicature. In this paper, we offer a conceptual analysis of Magri's first puzzle by situating it within its original theoretical framework. We argue that the oddness arises from the collective or concurrent reading of the conjunctive predicate: in examples such as "(Only) Some Italians come from a warm country and are blond," this interpretation generates an indirect contextual contradiction. Moreover, we suggest that the pragmatic mechanisms governing scalar implicature generation extend beyond what is captured by exhaustification-based grammatical licensing accounts.