An Overt Even Operator over Covert-Based Focus Alternatives: The Case of Hebrew BIXLAL

The particle even in English has received much attention in the semantic-pragmatic literature on scalarity and polarity. Following works like Horn 1969, Kartunnen & Peters 1979, Rooth 1985, 1992, Guerzoni 2003, 2004, 2007, Chierchia 2013, Crnič 2011, 2014 we take the core lexical entry of even in English to be along the lines of (1), where even (CF) (p) (w) presupposes that p, the prejacent of even, is stronger on a scale >c than all its distinct alternatives q in the set CF (where CF is the contextually relevant subset of||p||F, i.e. of the set of focus alternatives to p)2. If defined, even (CF) (p) (w) asserts that p is true w:

(1) ||even||g,c = λCF.λp.λw:∀q∈ CF q ≠ p → p > c...