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This paper proposes a pragmatic account of modal utterances triggering sporadic interpretations, such as Lions can be dangerous, which quantify over individuals (some lions are dangerous) or over times (lions are sometimes dangerous). English and French are compared in this respect. We suggest that sporadic interpretations stem from a pragmatic scheme of enrichment based on search for informativeness and relevance, starting from the under-informative nature of utterances expressing trivial properties or potentialities of the considered individual or class of objects and ending with a number of specific inferences, notably dealing with actual probability.
This paper proposes a pragmatic account of modal utterances triggering sporadic interpretations, such as Lions can be dangerous, which quantify over individuals (some lions are dangerous) or over times (lions are sometimes dangerous). English and French are compared in this respect. We suggest that sporadic interpretations stem from a pragmatic scheme of enrichment based on search for informativeness and relevance, starting from the under-informative nature of utterances expressing trivial properties or potentialities of the considered individual or class of objects and ending with a number of specific inferences, notably dealing with actual probability.