Exclusive Company: Only and the Dynamics of Vertical Inference ...

16 Only and the Dynamics of Vertical Inference
make a tree and the set of tree-makers is non-null, then the truth of the
prejacent follows. No specific rule—entailment, presupposition, implicature—
need be stipulated for deriving (35 b) from (35 a).
(35) a. Only God can make a tree.
b. God can make a tree.
c. No one other can God can make a tree.
d. {x I x can make a tree} / 0
On this view, we correctly predict that when 1 ask who's coming and you
answer 'only John', all I must presuppose—all my model of the context must
accommodate—is that someone is coming, not thatjohn is: (36c) but not (36d) is
jiven'. 22
(36) a. —Who's coming tonight
b. —Only John (is coming).
c. Someone is coming.
d. John is coming.
A neo-Burleyan approach also fares better than its market competitors in
capturing the appropriate intuitions for the following context. In September
1994,1 place a wager with you, staking $100 on the proposition that only Seattle
will win more than 60 games in the upcoming regular season for the National
Basketball Association. Now consider the following four possible scenarios on
how season and bet play our, the last column reflects my sense of the proper
resolution of the wager.
(37) SCENARIOS Theories Theory P Theories Intuition
C/C A
PP/M/G
Seattle wins 62 games;
every other team wins < 60 W W W W
Seattle wins 62 games,
Orlando wins 61 L L L L
No team wins more than
60 games
San Antonio wins 62, every
other team wins < 60
[=ACTUAL RESULTS]
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The first two scenarios are straightforward: when the prejacent holds, all
theories correctly predict that I win the bet if the exclusion holds and lose if it
fails. But only the neo-Burleyan theory allows us to distinguish the existential
failure in the third case, where no accommodation is possible, from the mere
falsity of the prejacent in the fourth, where accommodation of the existential
proceeds unimpeded. 23