A variably exhaustive and scalar focus particle and pragmatic focus concord in Burmese

Erlewine, Michael Yoshitaka; New, Keely

doi:10.3765/sp.14.7

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Cited by 2 publications

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Mandarin exhaustive focus shì and the syntax of discourse congruence

Erlewine

2022

Studies in Language Companion Series

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This paper describes three constraints that together govern the distribution of the exhaustive focus marker shì in Mandarin Chinese. First, I argue that shì is a sentential focus particle that is subject to a requirement to adjoin as low as possible within its clause or phase. Second, I show that shì requires a congruent Question Under Discussion (QUD). Third and finally, I show that there are certain reduced clauses where shì is completely disallowed, although other focus particles such as ‘only’ may appear. To explain this last restriction, I propose that reference to a QUD is mediated by a functional head in the clause periphery. Shì is thus unavailable in reduced clauses which do not project this high functional layer.

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Mandarin exhaustive focus shì and the syntax of discourse congruence

Erlewine

2022

Studies in Language Companion Series

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Anti-uniqueness without articles

Erlewine

Lim

2021

SALT

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We report on the expression of singular nominals in Burmese, an articleless language, from original elicitation work. Bare nouns are interpreted as singular definites, to which the numeral tiq 'one' is added to form indefinites. We propose that tiq 'one' restricts the domain of the nominal to a singleton, and that its addition is subject to a Non-Vacuity constraint; this is the source of the anti-uniqueness inference of indefinites. We furthermore investigate the availability of tiq 'one' in anaphoric definites. Such behavior forms an argument that the compositional semantics of anaphoric definites does not involve contextual restriction via a situation variable, unlike unique definites.

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A variably exhaustive and scalar focus particle and pragmatic focus concord in Burmese

Abstract: 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).

Cited by 2 publications

References 30 publications

Mandarin exhaustive focus shì and the syntax of discourse congruence

Mandarin exhaustive focus shì and the syntax of discourse congruence

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