Conjunction and disjunction in a language without ‘and’  

Oleh:

Bowler, Margit

Jenis: Article from Proceeding
Dalam koleksi: Proceedings of the 24th Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference, held at New York University, May 30th - June 1st, 2014, page 137-155.
Topik: Australian Aboriginal languages; conjunction; disjunction; exhaustification
Fulltext: 9. 2422-2565-1-PB.pdf (165.2KB)

Isi artikel

Warlpiri (Pama-Nyungan, Australia) has a single coordinator, manu. This coordinator occurs in constructions of the form P manu Q. In the following paper, I argue that manu has a non-strengthened disjunctive denotation (_) which can undergo pragmatic strengthening to conjunction (&). I propose that the absence of a conjunctive coordinator in Warlpiri results in the set of scalar alternatives {P, Q, (P _ Q)} for P manu Q. This is identical to the set of scalar alternatives for English P or Q proposed by Singh, Wexler, Astle, Kamawar, & Fox (2013) for English-speaking children. I follow Singh et al. in using a recursive application of Fox’s (2007) exhaustivity operator, Exh, to derive a strengthened conjunctive reading of P manu Q that is categorical in unembedded contexts. I also address strengthening under the scope of negation and in conditionals and Wh-questions, and place some pragmatic constraints on Exh application.

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