Principles of interdimensional meaning interaction

Abstract

Expressions that contribute side issues, including at least expressives, supplements, and epithets, take scope only at the level of a complete utterance. Kubota and Uegaki 2009 give a compositional semantics for side-issues, but do not explain why at-issue content never interacts with side issues. We draw an analogy with indexicals, which also depend on context but typically do not interact with surrounding semantic material. As with indexicals, side-issue content motivates staged interpretation: an at-issue stage, and a context update stage. We show how the undelimited continuations provided by Bernardi and Moortgat's 2010 Lambek Grishin calculus can provide a principled way to regulate interdimensional interaction.