Recent proposals in the semantics literature hold that the negative comparative less and negative adjectives like short in English are morphosyntactically complex, unlike their positive counterparts more and tall. For instance, the negative adjective short might decompose into little tall (Rullmann 1995; Heim 2006; Büring 2007; Heim 2008). Positing a silent little as part of adjectives like short correctly predicts that they are semantically opposite to tall; we seek evidence for this decomposition in language understanding in English and Polish. Our visual verification tasks compare processing of positive and negative comparatives with taller and shorter against that of arguably less symbolically-rich mathematical statements, A > B, B < A. We find that both language and math statements generally lead to monotonic increases in processing load along with the number of negative symbols (as predicted for language by e.g. Clark and Chase 1972). Our study is the first to examine the processing of the gradable predicates tall and short cross-linguistically, as well as in contrast to extensionally-equivalent, and putatively non-linguistic stimuli (cf. Deschamps et al. 2015 with quantificational determiners).

Tucker, D., B. Tomaszewicz and A. Wellwood. (2018). Decomposition and processing of negative adjectival comparatives. In The semantics of gradability, vagueness, and scale structure: Experimental perspectives, Cognition and Mind series.

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The event analysis is only rarely incorporated into degree-theoretic treatments of adjectival comparatives. I propose a neodavidsonian account of predications like Ann was happy that involves quantification over both states and events. This 'double-eventuality' analysis is motivated primarily by how stage-level gradable adjectives interact with temporal for-phrases in two classes of comparatives, which I differentiate as 'low' versus 'high' attachment of the comparative morpheme. Low attachment comparatives express canonical degree readings (more available), while high attachment involve comparing numbers of occasions (available more). I resolve these patterns by positing a stative core for adjectives, and the possibility of mapping properties of states to properties of events. Low attachment interpretations, then, involve comparison of states, and high involve comparison of (pluralities of) events. I show that the analysis extends to other cases where states and events can do work for adjectives outside of comparatives.

Wellwood, A. (2016). States and events for S-level gradable adjectives. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 26.

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How much meaning can a morpheme have? Syntactic and morphological analyses generally underdetermine when distinctions in meaning between two forms are due to (i) the presence of an additional syntactic head or to (ii) different information coded on the same head. Surveying patterns across hundreds of languages, Bobaljik (2012) hypothesizes that superlative forms universally consist of a comparative morpheme plus an additional superlative morpheme, e.g., tallest is underlyingly [ SUP [ CMPR [ TALL ] ] ]. Bobaljik's hypothesis includes, in part, a speculative proposal for a universal limit on the semantic complexity of morphemes. We offer a concrete basis for this proposal, the 'No Containment Condition' (NCC). The NCC is a constraint on grammars such that they cannot contain a certain semantic representation for a unitary head, if that representation can be constructed out of the semantic representations of two heads. Illustrating the proposal, we take Bobaljik's analysis of forms like tallest further, into [ [ [ CMPR SUP ] MUCH ] TALL ]. Based in semantic analysis, our suggestion introduces Bresnan's (1973) classical analysis of comparatives into the decomposition of superlatives.

Dunbar, E. and A. Wellwood. (2016). Addressing the two interface problem: comparatives and superlatives. Glossa.

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Acquiring the correct meanings of words expressing quantities (seven, most) and qualities (red, spotty) present a challenge to learners. Understanding how children succeed at this requires understanding not only what kinds of data are available to them, but also the biases and expectations they bring to the learning task. The results of our word-learning task with 4 year-olds indicates that a "syntactic bootstrapping" hypothesis correctly predicts a bias towards quantity-based interpretations when a novel word appears in the syntactic position of a determiner, but leaves open the explanation of a bias towards quality-based interpretations when the same word is presented in the syntactic position of an adjective. We develop four computational models that differentially encode how lexical, conceptual, and perceptual factors could generate the latter bias. Simulation results suggest it results from a combination of lexical bias and perceptual encoding.

Wellwood, A., A. Gagliardi, and J. Lidz. (2016). Syntactic and lexical inference in the acquisition of novel superlatives. Language Learning and Development.

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In acquiring a semantics, children relate their experience of their world to their experience of speakers. When we study this in the lab, we often presume to understand the first part of this relation: we take for granted how the child will experience the world of our experiment, and test for how she will experience an attendant event of speech. Such presumptions are fair. But they need to be justified, when the experience we impute to the child is much richer than what the world presents objectively. In this paper we discuss one such case, reporting on several experiments targeted at assessing event perception in pre-linguistic infants, following the lead of Gordon (2003). We begin by characterizing what a 'participant role' is, and how certain acquisition heuristics that depend on this notion are meant to facilitate verb learning.

Wellwood, A., A. X. He, J. Lidz, and A. Williams. (2015). Participant structure in event perception: towards the acquisition of implicitly 3-place predicates. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics.

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This paper explores the hypothesis that all comparative sentences—nominal, verbal, and adjectival—contain instances of a single morpheme that compositionally introduces degrees. This morpheme, sometimes pronounced much, semantically contributes a structure-preserving map from entities, events, or states, to their measures along various dimensions. A major goal of the paper is to argue that the differences in dimensionality observed across domains are a consequence of what is measured, as opposed to which expression introduces the measurement. The resulting theory has a number of interesting properties. It characterizes the notion of ‘measurement’ uniformly across comparative constructions, in terms of non-trivial structure preservation. It unifies the distinctions between mass/count nouns and atelic/telic verb phrases with that between gradable and non-gradable adjectives. Finally, it affords a uniform characterization of semantically anomalous comparisons across categories.

Wellwood, A. (2015). On the semantics of comparison across categories. Linguistics & Philosophy, 38(1).

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Determining the semantic content of sentences, and uncovering regularities between linguistic form and meaning, requires attending to both morphological and syntactic properties of a language with an eye to the notional categories that the various pieces of form express. In this dissertation, I investigate the morphosyntactic devices that English speakers (and speakers of other languages) can use to talk about comparisons between things: comparative sentences with, in English,more… than, as… as, too, enough, and others. I argue that a core component of all of these constructions is a unitary element expressing the concept of measurement.

The theory that I develop departs from the standard degree-theoretic analysis of the semantics of comparatives in three crucial respects: First, gradable adjectives do not (partially or wholly) denote measure functions; second, degrees are introduced compositionally; and three, the introduction of degrees arises uniformly from the semantics of the expression much. These ideas mark a return to the classic morphosyntactic analysis of comparatives found in Bresnan (1973), while incorporating and extending semantic insights of Schwarzschild (2002, 2006). Of major interest is how the dimensions for comparison observed across the panoply of comparative constructions vary, and these are analyzed as a consequence of what is measured (individuals, events, states, etc.), rather than which expressions invoke the measurement.

This shift in perspective leads to the observation of a number of regularities in the mapping between form and meaning that could not otherwise have been seen. First, the notion of measurement expressed across comparative constructions is familiar from some explications of that concept in measurement theory (e.g. Berka 1983). Second, the distinction between gradable and non-gradable adjectives is formally on a par with that between mass and count nouns, and between atelic and telic verb phrases. Third, comparatives are perceived to be acceptable if the domain for measurement is structured, and to be anamolous otherwise. Finally, elaborations of grammatical form reflexively affect which dimensions for comparison are available to interpretation.

Wellwood, A. (2014). Measuring Predicates. University of Maryland linguistics dissertation.

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Questions about the nature of the relationship between language and extralinguistic cognition are old, but only recently has a new view emerged that allows for the systematic investigation of claims about linguistic structure, based on how it is understood or utilized outside of the language system. Our paper represents a case study for this interaction in the domain of event semantics. We adopt a transparency thesis about the relationship between linguistic structure and extralinguistic cognition, investigating whether different lexico-syntactic structures can differentially recruit the visual causal percept. A prominent analysis of causative verbs like move suggests reference to two distinct events and a causal relationship between them, whereas non-causative verbs like push do not so refer. In our study, we present English speakers with simple scenes that either do or do not support the perception of a causal link, and manipulate (between subjects) a one-sentence instruction for the evaluation of the scene. Preliminary results suggest that competent speakers of English are more likely to judge causative constructions than non-causative constructions as true of a scene where causal features are present in the scene. Implications for a new approach to the investigation of linguistic meanings and future directions are discussed.

Vogel, C., A. Wellwood, R. Dudley, and J. B. Ritchie. (2013). Talking about causing events.The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication: Vol. 9.

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Bresnan (1973) posited that more is uniformly analyzed as much-er, whether it appears with adjectives (more intelligent, redder) or nouns (more soup). On the earliest degree-semantic analysis of such constructions, much appears but is semantically inert: it serves to morphologically mark the presence of the degree argument which is introduced by adjectives and nouns (Cresswell 1976). I present an alternative analysis, one suggested by Cresswell himself: on this account, the degree argument is introduced by much. I first show how the interpretation of this morpheme as a structure-preserving mapping to the domain of degrees is motivated by data from nominal and verbal comparatives, and then how it extends to adjectival comparatives. To accomplish this, I argue that adjectives express predicates of states, and interact with degrees only in composition with much. The upshot is a theory in which much universally provides the mapping to degrees for comparison by more, regardless of the syntactic category it combines with.

Wellwood, A. (2012). Back to basics: more is always much-er. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 17.

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Acquiring the correct meanings of number words (e.g., seven, forty-two) is challenging, as such words fail to describe salient properties of individuals or objects in their environment, referring rather to properties of sets of such objects or individuals. Previous research has revealed a critical role for language itself in how children acquire number word meanings, however attempts to pinpoint precisely the strong linguistic cues has proved challenging. We propose a novel "syntactic bootstrapping" hypothesis in which categorizing a novel word as a determiner leads to quantity-based interpretations. The results of a word learning task with 4 year olds indicates that this hypothesis is on the right track.

Wellwood, A., D. Odic, J. Halberda, and J. Lidz. (2012). Choosing quantity over quality: syntax guides interpretive preferences for novel superlatives. Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society annual meeting.

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No language has a determiner meaning something like 'less than half' (e.g., a fost to complement determiner most), nor does any language have a determiner meaning something like what most means, but which is non-conservative (e.g., a grfost). Like the hypothetical fost, but unlike the hypothetical grfost, every natural language determiner is "conservative"—i.e., it lives on the set denoted by its complement NP. Are these two typological gaps equally principled? We look at this question from the perspective of language acquisition, asking whether the two meanings (non-conservative or conservative 'less than half') are equally acquirable. Our experiments suggest that children are able to access the non-existent, yet conservative determiner meaning fost, but not a non-conservative counterpart like grfost.

Hunter, T., J. Lidz, A. Wellwood, and A. Conroy. (2012). Restrictions on the meanings of determiners: typological generalisations and learnability. Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 19.

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The question of whether epistemic modals contribute to the truth conditions of the sentences they appear in is a matter of active debate in the literature. Fueling this debate is the lack of consensus about the extent to which epistemics can appear in the scope of other operators. This corpus study investigates the distribution of epistemics in naturalistic data. Our results indicate that they do embed, supporting the view that they contribute semantic content. However, their distribution is limited, compared to that of other modals. This limited distribution seems to call for a nuanced account: while epistemics are semantically contentful, they may require special licensing conditions.

Additional material: Expanded Karttunen classification of question-embedding attitudes

V. Hacquard and A. Wellwood. (2012). Embedding epistemic modals in English: a corpus-based study. Semantics and Pragmatics, 5(4).

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This squib investigates parallels between nominal and verbal comparatives. Building on key insights of Hackl (2000) and Bale & Barner (2009), we show that more behaves uniformly when it combines with nominal and verbal predicates: (i) it cannot combine with singular count NPs or perfective telic VPs; (ii) grammatical properties of the predicates determine the scale of comparison—plural marked NPs and habitual VPs are compared on a scale of cardinality, whereas mass NPs and perfective (atelic) VPs are (often) compared along non-cardinal, though monotonic, scales. Taken together, our findings confirm and strengthen parallels that have independently been drawn between the nominal and verbal domains. In addition, our discussion and data, drawn from English, Spanish, and Bulgarian, suggest that the semantic contribution of more can be given a uniform analysis.

Wellwood, A., V. Hacquard, and R. Pancheva. (2012). Measuring and comparing individuals and events. Journal of Semantics, 29(2).

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Von Fintel and Iatridou (2003) observed a striking pattern of scopal noninteraction between phrases headed by strong quantifiers like every and epistemically interpreted modal auxiliaries. Tancredi (2007) and Huitink (2008) observed that von Fintel and Iatridou's proposed constraint, the Epistemic Containment Principle (ECP), does not apply uniformly: it does not apply to strong quantifiers headed by each. We consider the ECP effect in light of the differential behavior of each and every in the environment of wh-, negative, and generic operators as described by Beghelli and Stowell (1997). Assuming that epistemic and root modals merge at two different syntactic heights (e.g. Cinque 1999) and that modals may act as unselective binders (Heim 1982), we extend Beghelli and Stowell's topological approach to quantifier scope interactions in order to formulate a novel syntactic account of the ECP.

Gagnon, M. and A. Wellwood. (2011). Distributivity and modality: where each may go, every can't follow. Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 21.

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Gagnon, M. and A. Wellwood. (2010). The typology of distributivity and epistemic containment phenomena. Proceedings of the Canadian Linguistics Association annual meeting.

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Marshallese, an Oceanic language spoken on the atolls of the Marshall Islands, has a question particle, ke, which may appear in one of a number of positions in yes/no interrogatives. Interestingly, the availability of certain positions depends upon whether the sentential context is affirmative or negative. We evaluate Willson (2005)’s remnant movement analysis of the distribution of ke, and formulate a novel approach to the problem whereyes/no interrogatives in Marshallese are built on a core cleft construction, and ke is generated in the middlefield of the matrix clause.

Gagnon, M. and A. Wellwood (2008). Interrogative structures in Marshallese. Proceedings of the Canadian Linguistics Association annual meeting.

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