A distributed analysis of only

Abstract The positive, non-exclusive inference of only has been famously elusive with respect to its projective status and its content: in some cases the positive inference behaves like a presupposition, while in others it does not; in some cases the inference is non-modal, corresponding to the prejacent of only or an existential counterpart of it, while in others it is modalized. This behavior, we argue, surfaces the exceptive nature of only (cf. von Fintel and Iatridou in Linguist Inq 38(3):445–483, 2007). More specifically, if the import of only is distributed between a minimality and a subtraction component, as has been argued for exceptives (esp. Gajewski in Nat Lang Semant 16(1):69–110, 2008), the apparently irreconcilable properties of only can be captured.