Cross-linguistics difference in disjunction in two-dimensional semantics

Abstract

Disjunction, expressed by or in English, is a primary connective available in natural language. It was traditionally analyzed as the counterparts of the Boolean connectives ∨ (e.g., Montague 1973), but subsequent studies revealed a number of inadequacies in this approach, which led to the ‘dynamic turn’ in natural language semantics (Karttunen 1974; Heim 1982; et seq). However, the empirical base of the literature almost exclusively comprises examples of English. The cross-linguistic (in)adequacy of the theory has yet to be investigated. This paper addresses this research gap by inspecting disjunction in Japanese. More specifically, this paper examines the (non-)replicability of the observations that support the dynamic analysis for English ‘φ or ψ’ that hardwires the local context ¬φ. I argue that Japanese disjunction exhibits some kinds of evidence for the local context, but not others.