The Burmese particle hma expresses exhaustivity in some contexts but a scalar, even-like meaning in other contexts. We detail the distribution of hma and its meaning and develop a unified semantics. Hma is a not-at-issue scalar exhaustive, similar to the semantics proposed for English it-clefts in Velleman, Beaver, Destruel, Bumford, Onea & Coppock 2012. When hma takes wide scope, it leads to an exhaustive, cleft interpretation which is not scale-sensitive. When hma takes scope under negation, the resulting meaning will have a scale-sensitive felicity condition. We also discuss the semantics of the sentence-final mood marker dar, which we propose is a marker of propositional clefts (Sheil 2016), and its apparent role in the determination of the scope of hma.

This is an early access version of Erlewine, Michael Yoshitaka & Keely New. 2021. A variably exhaustive and scalar focus particle and pragmatic focus concord in Burmese. Semantics and Pragmatics 14(7).

I investigate the interpretation of the associative plural tó/dó in Colloquial Burmese based on original fieldwork. I report that in a conjunction of associative plurals, there is an available reading where the named individuals in the conjunction internally satisfy the plural requirement. I call this the internal plural reading, a reading which has not been previously observed in the literature. I propose that the named individuals in a conjunction of associative plurals can satisfy each other's plural requirement if the Burmese associative plural has a meaning that ixs post-suppositional. The proposal is inspired by Brasoveanu & Szabolcsi 2013's treatment of conjunctions of additive phrases in some languages, but our proposals crucially differ in that associative plurals contribute assertive meaning rather than not-at-issue meaning.