---
title: "Spreading ignorance — paper by Marty et al. (2026)"
description: "They present a new pattern, Ignorance Spreading: when a disjunction has the shape φ ∨ (ψ ∧ χ), the hearer concludes that the… 25 references."
authors: ["Paul Marty", "Marco Degano", "Jacopo Romoli"]
year: 2026
venue: "Semantics and Pragmatics"
source: "https://semprag.org/index.php/sp/article/view/sp.19.10"
doi: "10.3765/sp.19.10"
licence: "CC BY 3.0"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/marty-2026-spreading-ignorance/"
---
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# Spreading ignorance

**Authors:** [Paul Marty](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/paul-marty/), Marco Degano and [Jacopo Romoli](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/jacopo-romoli/) · **Year:** 2026 · **Venue:** [Semantics and Pragmatics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/semantics-and-pragmatics/) ([Semantics and Pragmatics 2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/semantics-and-pragmatics/2026/)) · **Publisher:** [Linguistic Society of America](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/linguistic-society-of-america/) · **Licence:** [CC BY 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.19.10) · [PDF](https://semprag.org/index.php/sp/article/download/sp.19.10/3141) · [DOI 10.3765/sp.19.10](https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.19.10) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W7167617633)

**Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
The squib asks which notion of "alternative" best explains ignorance inferences (IIs), the sense that a speaker uttering a disjunction does not know which part is true. One option is the Gricean/implicature view, where alternatives are competing propositions the speaker could have said instead. The other is inquisitive semantics, where alternatives are the maximal ways of supporting a sentence and are built into its meaning. The authors test both on disjunctions of increasing complexity. They present a new pattern, Ignorance Spreading: when a disjunction has the shape φ ∨ (ψ ∧ χ), the hearer concludes that the speaker is uncertain about each conjunct individually, and not just about the conjunction taken together. The implicature account derives this if Quantity also ranges over logically independent sub-alternatives. The inquisitive account, using Inquisitive Sincerity, treats the conjunction as one block and so predicts too little. A theory of IIs therefore needs access to structurally embedded sub-alternatives. The paper ends by listing open problems for the implicature side.

## Key points
- Diagnostic: a disjunct about the speaker's own personal facts (e.g. how many children "I" have) makes the sentence odd, because the predicted ignorance clashes with self-knowledge. The effect disappears in semi-cooperative, game-like contexts ("guess which!") or with amnesia.
- The implicature derivation uses Quality plus a Quantity maxim adapted from Sauerland (2004) and Fox (2007). This maxim covers logically independent alternatives, and a version limited to stronger alternatives would fail to yield spreading (footnote 11).
- The inquisitive account relies on Inquisitive Sincerity, adapted from Groenendijk & Roelofsen (2009). It yields ignorance only about the two maximal alternatives, φ and ψ ∧ χ.
- Spreading depends on the question under discussion. A counterexample about Ed's weekend work, where Saturday is already known, shows no ignorance about the known conjunct.
- Remaining challenges for the implicature view:
  - Experimental results from Degano et al. 2025: disjunctions are rejected when the speaker thinks the second disjunct impossible, but accepted when she thinks it possible.
  - Marty et al. 2024: negated conjunctions ("Ed and Tom do not both…") give weak or absent IIs, which favours the inquisitive view.

## Interesting ideas
- Alternatives are generated compositionally from every connective in the structure, including sub-parts and their combinations, rather than only from the top-level operator.
- Ignorance is derived step by step from two rules: the speaker believes what she said, and she did not assert a relevant independent alternative. This makes every inference traceable.
- Embedding a first-person fact the speaker must know serves as a test that exposes a predicted inference through a clash.
- Which sub-alternatives count depends on the current question or topic. A conjunction can be relevant as a whole while one of its conjuncts is already known and drops out.
- Context type changes the inferences: in semi-cooperative or game settings, the speaker is not expected to share everything she knows.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (frames): The implicature module in prag can walk the UD tree under a disjunction and list the embedded conjuncts as alternatives, so it can mark the speaker as uncertain about each one.
- **I2** (frames): Each ignorance flag could store its proof chain (which alternative, which rule), which keeps the explainability requirement intact.
- **I3** (learn): A self-test set could include "I have five children or Tom does" style items, where the system must detect a conflict with self-knowledge. A system that ignores IIs would fail these items as negative controls.
- **I4** (world): Before uncertainty spreads to a conjunct, the world model should check whether that fact is already established in the text, and skip the ignorance marking if it is.
- **I5** (answer): Riddle-like tale or quiz texts could switch off ignorance inferences, so readers do not wrongly conclude that a character is uncertain.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

## Institutions

- [University of Amsterdam](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-amsterdam/) — University, Amsterdam, Netherlands · 151 works · 174,506 citations
- [University of Lisbon](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-lisbon/) — University, Lisbon, Portugal · 27 works · 3,708 citations
- [University of Ulster](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-ulster/) — University, Coleraine, United Kingdom · 7 works · 144 citations

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🧭 Topics (1): [😉 Implicature](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/implicature/) · 138 works

## Cite

Cite as: Paul Marty, Marco Degano and Jacopo Romoli. 2026. Spreading ignorance. Semantics and Pragmatics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@article{marty2026spreading,
  title = {{Spreading ignorance}},
  author = {Paul Marty, Marco Degano and Jacopo Romoli},
  journal = {Semantics and Pragmatics},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.3765/sp.19.10},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.19.10}
}
```

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## References

25 references, 3 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. Aloni, Maria. 2022. [Logic and conversation: The case of free choice](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/aloni-2022-logic-conversation-case-free-choice/). Semantics and Pragmatics 15(5). 1–60. https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.15.5. early access Either Ed forgot something in his office, or he is working on (both) Saturday and Sunday this week. early access Alonso-Ovalle, Luis. 2006. Disjunction in alternative semantics: University of Massachusetts Amherst dissertation. [↗](https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.15.5)
2. Buccola, Brian & Andreas Haida. 2019. Obligatory irrelevance and the computation of ignorance inferences. Journal of Semantics 36(4). 583–616. https://doi.org/ 10.1093/jos/ffz013. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffz013)
3. Buccola, Brian, Manuel Križ & Emmanuel Chemla. 2022. Conceptual alternatives: Competition in language and beyond. Linguistics and Philosophy 45(2). 265– 291. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-021-09327-w. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-021-09327-w)
4. Ciardelli, Ivano, Jeroen Groenendijk & Floris Roelofsen. 2018. Inquisitive semantics. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198814788.001.0001. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198814788.001.0001)
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6. Degano, Marco, Paul Marty, Sonia Ramotowska, Maria Aloni, Richard Breheny, Jacopo Romoli & Yasutada Sudo. 2025. The ups and downs of ignorance. Natural Language Semantics 33. 1–41. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-024-09226-3. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-024-09226-3)
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9. Fox, Danny. 2014. [Cancelling the maxim of quantity: Another challenge for a gricean theory of scalar implicatures](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/fox-2014-cancelling-maxim-quantity-another-challenge/). Semantics & Pragmatics 7(5). 1–20. https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.7.5. [↗](https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.7.5)
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12. Groenendijk, Jeroen & Floris Roelofsen. 2009. Inquisitive Semantics and Pragmatics. In J.M. Larrazabal & L. Zubeldia (eds.), Meaning, content and argument, proceedings of the ilcli international workshop on semantics, pragmatics and rhetoric, 41–72. [https://eprints.illc.uva.nl/id/document/848](https://eprints.illc.uva.nl/id/document/848). [↗](https://eprints.illc.uva.nl/id/document/848)
13. Hamblin, C. L. 1973. Questions in Montague English. Foundations of Language 10(1). 41–53. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Hamblin%2C+C%2E+L%2E+1973%2E+Questions+in+Montague+English%2E+Foundations+of+Language+10%281%29%2E+41%E2%80%9353%2E)
14. Hawthorne, John, Daniel Rothschild & Levi Spectre. 2016. Belief is weak. Philosophical Studies 173(5). 1393–1404. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0553-7. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0553-7)
15. Mandelkern, Matthew & Kevin Dorst. 2022. Assertion is weak. Philosophers’ Imprint 22(19). https://doi.org/10.3998/phimp.1076. early access Marty, Paul & Jacopo Romoli. 2022. Presupposed free choice and the theory of scalar implicatures. Linguistics and Philosophy 45(1). 91–152. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s10988-020-09316-5. [↗](https://doi.org/10.3998/phimp.1076)
16. Marty, Paul, Jacopo Romoli, Yasutada Sudo & Richard Breheny. 2022. Implicating in semi-cooperative contexts. [https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/006698/current.pdf?](https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/006698/current.pdf?) _s=vwaiFbBtueqNDE9o. [↗](https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/006698/current.pdf?)
17. Marty, Paul, Jacopo Romoli, Yasutada Sudo & Richard Breheny. 2024. What makes linguistic inferences robust? Journal of Semantics 41(1). 1–52. https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffad010. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffad010)
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19. Ninan, Dilip. 2026. The strength of assertion. Analytic Philosophy 67(2). 182–191. https://doi.org/10.1111/phib.12375. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1111/phib.12375)
20. Roelofsen, Floris. 2019. Two alternatives for disjunction: An inquisitive reconciliation. In Klaus von Heusinger, Malte Zimmermann & Edgar Onea (eds.), Questions in discourse, 251–274. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004378322_009. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004378322_009)
21. Sauerland, Uli. 2004. Scalar implicatures in complex sentences. Linguistics and Philosophy 27(3). 367–391. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:LING.0000023378.71748.db. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1023/b:ling.0000023378.71748.db)
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23. Singh, Raj. 2010. Oddness and ignorance inferences. Handout presented at Modularity Reading Group at MIT. [https://carleton.ca/singhr/wp-content/uploads/singh-oddness-ignorance-handout.pdf](https://carleton.ca/singhr/wp-content/uploads/singh-oddness-ignorance-handout.pdf). [↗](https://carleton.ca/singhr/wp-content/uploads/singh-oddness-ignorance-handout.pdf)
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25. Williamson, Timothy. 2000. Knowledge and its limits. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/019925656X.001.0001. early access Paul Marty Center of Linguistics of the University of Lisbon Universidade de Lisboa Alameda da Universidade 1600-214 Lisboa - Portugal pmarty@edu.ulisboa.pt Marco Degano Institute for Logic, Language and Computation Universiteit van Amsterdam Science Park 107 1090 GE Amsterdam, Netherlands m.degano@uva.nl Jacopo Romoli Institute für Sprache und Information Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf Universitätstr. 1 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany jacopo.romoli@hhu.de [↗](https://doi.org/10.1093/019925656x.001.0001)

*Updated 2 November 2026*