Modal determiners and alternatives: Quantity and ignorance effects  

Oleh:

Alonso-Ovalle, Luis ; Menendez-Benito, Paula

Jenis: Article from Proceeding
Dalam koleksi: Proceedings of the 23rd Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference, held at the University of California, Santa Cruz, May 3 - 5, 2013, page 570–586.
Topik: Modal determiners; alternatives; implicatures.
Fulltext: 3679-7465-1-PB.pdf (174.65KB)

Isi artikel

The literature on epistemic inde?nites has explored the possibility that different pragmatic competitors give rise to different epistemic effects (Alonso Ovalle & Menendez-Benito 2010; Falaus 2009). Like epistemic inde?nites, “class B modi?ed numerals” (Nouwen 2010), such as English at least n, signal speaker ignorance. This paper examines the modal component of the Spanish complex determiner algún que otro, which, like at least n, conveys that the speaker does not know how many individuals satisfy the existential claim. We show that the modal components of at least n and algún que otro differ. Unlike at least n, algún que otro does not determine the minimum number of individuals that, according to the speaker, might satisfy the existential claim. We argue that the epistemic component of algún que otro is an implicature, and, building on the discussion in Nouwen (forthcoming). we contend that the contrast between at least n and algún que otro can also be traced back to the different pragmatic competitors that these items invoke.

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