papers

2026

1. Alternatives and Local Contexts in Disjunctions

   Yunhui Bai, and Jonathan Caleb Kendrick

   2026

   manuscript

   abstract PDF

   Standard dynamic theories of disjunctions have it that the local context of a right disjunct always entails the negation of the left disjunct. This is mistaken. We argue that an alternative-based QUD-sensitive account of local contexts in disjunctions is needed, and give such an account.

2. The weakness of ‘will’

   Yunhui Bai

   2026

   manuscript

   abstract PDF

   There are two readings of ‘will’—one that entails its prejacent and one that merely implies it. I argue that an existential semantics for ‘will’ together with the assumption that the domain is homogeneous best captures the readings.

3. Pre-DP ‘only’ lacks sufficiency readings

   Yunhui Bai, and Jingyi Chen

   snippets, 2026

   forthcoming

   abstract PDF

   While sentences with pre-DP ‘only’ like ‘John has to read only Macbeth’ has a reading paraphrasable as ‘John only has to read Macbeth‘, the reading doesn’t give rise to the so-called Minimal Sufficiency Reading, where ‘To get good cheese, you only have to go to the North End’ doesn’t imply that to get good cheese you have to go to the North End.

2025

1. Localizing to-do lists

   Yunhui Bai, and Jonathan Caleb Kendrick

   In NELS 55: Proceedings of the Fifty-fifth Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, 2025

   abstract PDF

   According to certain pragmatics model, assertions update the context set and imperatives update the to-do lists of the global context. While there has been a long tradition to posit a localized context set (“the local context”), no attempt has been made to localize the to-do list. We suggest that there is a need to localize local to-do lists, making the local context a pair of local context set and local to-do lists, to explain declaratives-and-imperative conjunctions and disjunctions (e.g, ‘Don’t plagiarize or you’d be caught’).

2. Restriction in doubly-modal disjunctions

   Yunhui Bai, and Jonathan Caleb Kendrick

   In Proceedings of SALT 35, 2025

   abstract HTML PDF Poster

   According to a prominent theory of disjunction, the modal in ‘John is away, or he must be in his office’ has its domain restricted by the negation of the left disjunct ‘John is away’. However, in ‘John has to write a paper, or he will get a C’, the right modal is not restricted by the negation of the entirety of the left disjunct but instead by the negation of the prejacent of the left disjunct. We dig into the empirical pattern of this flexibility of restriction and propose a new theory of disjunction.