Choice & Inference

We will propose a novel solution to the puzzle that the word “or” under permission, for example under “may,” loses standard entailment relations. While a disjunction is generally entailed by its disjuncts, under permission it receives a “free choice” reading where the disjunction entails its disjuncts. Our solution is driven by empirical data from legal discourse and does not suffer from the same problems as implicature-based accounts. We will argue against implicature-based accounts and provide an entailment-based solution. The framework for the proposal is inquisitive semantics, which will be introduced in its radical form. Following Anderson’s violation-based deontic logic, we will demonstrate that a support-based radical inquisitive semantics will correctly model both the free choice effect and the boolean standard entailment relations in downward entailing contexts. An inquisitive semantics is especially suited to model cases where the continuation “but I do not know which” coerces an ignorance reading. It also demonstrates that the counterarguments to deontic reduction failed to take into account the effects of different utterances in conversation, such that a refined definition of radical inquisitive entailment renders such inferences invalid. Furthermore, we will argue that the problem of strengthening the antecedent that is used as a counterargument against entailment-based accounts also fails under a refined notion of entailment.