en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicature
1 correction found
Here, the use of some semantically entails that more than one cookie was eaten.
This overstates the literal meaning of "some." In standard treatments of scalar implicature, "some" is compatible with one item and even with all items; the "not all" reading is an implicature, not part of the literal semantics.
Full reasoning
The sentence is describing the semantic content of some, but standard references treat some as an existential quantifier whose basic/logical reading is compatible with at least one and even possibly all, not specifically "more than one."
A peer-reviewed review article on scalar implicatures states that some "defines a lower boundary to express any quantity greater than none, including the maximum (i.e., some and possibly all)." It immediately uses the same example, "John ate some of the cookies," to explain that the strengthened reading "some but not all" is an implicature. That directly contradicts the claim that the semantics of some itself entail that more than one cookie was eaten.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy likewise explains that "Some athletes smoke" can be followed without contradiction by "indeed, all do," because "not all" is merely an implicature and not part of the sentence's semantic content. So the article is wrong to present some as semantically entailing a quantity greater than one here.
2 sources
- When some is not every: Dissociating scalar implicature generation and mismatch - PMC
some has a single lexical meaning that defines a lower boundary to express any quantity greater than none, including the maximum (i.e., some and possibly all)... Consider the sentence John ate some of the cookies. A listener is likely to infer that John ate some but not all of the cookies.
- Implicature (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Spring 2019 Edition)
For "Not all athletes smoke" is not part of the meaning of "Some athletes smoke." Hence there is no contradiction in saying "Some athletes smoke; indeed, all do."