Number Neutrality and Anaphoric Update of Pseudo-Incorporated Nominals in Persian (and Weak Definites in English)

Abstract

Persian shows differential object marking. We argue that objects without the object marker rā are pseudo-incorporated in the verbal predicate; specifically, existential closure over the vP binds the event variable, and nominals in the vP are interpreted as dependent definites with respect to the event. This results in an apparent number neutrality and a maximality interpretation of pronouns typical of the E-type strategy. The semantic contribution of nominals is modeled in DRT. We also argue that weak definites in English are interpreted similar to pseudo-incorporated nominals in Persian, and offer an explanation why they are restricted to readings referring to institutionalized activities.

Pseudo-Incorporated Antecedents and Anaphora in Persian: The Influence of Stereotypical Knowledge

“…We report on experiments in which the stereotypical enrichment of the number-neutral interpretation was systematically varied with two types of biases -towards a singular or a plural interpretation -and in the neutral case, when such a bias is lacking. The results of the experiments are compatible with Krifka & Modarresi (2016), which considers PIN objects as dependent singular definites (similar to weak definites) within existential closure over an event variable.…”

“…The experiments provided evidence that can be cautiously interpreted as disfavouring theories that assume that PIN objects are semantically specified as number-neutral such as Modarresi (2014Modarresi ( , 2015, as then we would have found a greater preference for number-neutral null pronouns for PIN objects. Rather, the experiments favour the proposal by Krifka & Modarresi (2016), which considers PIN objects as dependent singular definites within existential closure over an event variable. The DR of PINs is not directly available but can be accessed via a process of abstraction and summation, a phenomenon that is well-known in other cases, as in so-called donkey sentences.…”

“…In this section we will present three experiments that provide evidence for the hypotheses presented in the previous sections. In order to facilitate the discussion, we list here five hypotheses, where A and A* are related to Modarresi (2014Modarresi ( , 2015 according to which PINs are discourse transparent, and B and B* are related to Krifka & Modarresi (2016) according to which PINs are discourse translucent. 0 is the hypothesis that PINs do not introduce DRs, hence that they are discourse opaque.…”

“…The second theory we consider is Krifka & Modarresi (2016). According to it, the event DR is bound by a narrow-scope existential quantifier, the existential closure introduced by Diesing (1992), which scopes over the syntactic domain of the vP.…”

Nominals and number neutrality in languages

“…They can also be modified by certain elements such as adjectives. Pseudo incorporation is observed in a number of typologically different languages such as Spanish and Catalan (Espinal & McNally, ); Persian (Krifka & Modarresi, ); Hindi (Dayal, and 2004); and Norwegian (Borthen, ). Below are some examples from various languages.…”