Peng Liu (doctoral student, University of Stuttgart) will give a talk titled Minimal sufficiency and scalar particles in German at LingLunch next Tuesday (October 13, 12:30-1:30). This is a collaborative study with Alexander Wimmer and Daniel Hole, to be presented at NELS next week.

The meeting will be held in person, in SHH 338.

Title: Minimal sufficiency and scalar particles in German

Abstract: Exclusive focus particles sometimes receive minimal sufficiency (MS) readings (Grosz 2012, Coppock & Lindahl 2014, Coppock & Beaver 2014, Liu 2016, 2017, Panizza & Sudo 2020). In German, such readings can arise with allein ‘alone’ in combination with schon ‘already’ and selbst ‘even’.

(1) a. QUD: Are antibiotics needed to cure this disease?
b. Selbst allein  schon    Baldrian_F hilft hier.
even    alone  already  valerian helps here
‘Even just valerian alone helps here.’

In (1b), valerian is presented as sufficient without excluding other effective treatments. The central question is how this reading arises despite the presence of an exclusive particle.

This talk explores a compositional account of minimal sufficiency. We distinguish local exclusivity, contributed by allein, from scalar lowness, contributed by schon. The particle selbst ‘even’ adds mirativity. We examine how these three operators combine to present a small resource as sufficient while leaving larger alternatives available.

---