The semantics and syntax of modal indefinites in Japanese
| Project/Area Number |
26370450
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Linguistics
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| Research Institution | Okayama University |
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Principal Investigator |
Kaneko Makoto 岡山大学, 社会文化科学研究科, 准教授 (00362947)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
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| Project Status |
Completed (Fiscal Year 2016)
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| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,730,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,100,000、Indirect Cost: ¥630,000)
Fiscal Year 2016: ¥910,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000、Indirect Cost: ¥210,000)
Fiscal Year 2015: ¥910,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000、Indirect Cost: ¥210,000)
Fiscal Year 2014: ¥910,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000、Indirect Cost: ¥210,000)
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| Keywords | modal indefinites / modal variation / appositive / parenthetical question / implicature / positive polarity / contrastive topic / davidsonian ‘utterance’ / epistemic indefinites / Inquisitive Semantics / Ａｎｄｒｅｗｓ Ａｍａｌｇａｍ / appositives / 会話の含意 / 慣習的含意 / implicatures / contrastive topics / rescuing effects / paraphrase of quotes / bare coordination / non-uniform plurality / rescuing effect / domain alternatives / disjunction / coordinated whole |
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
This study advances the following two hypotheses about modal indefinites, like Japanese "WH-ka". 1)Although most of previous analyses have proposed some unifying analysis to them, modal indefinites in various languages should be classified among three types: Type A which requires that the alternative set provided by the NP includes at least two members having different values in different worlds; Type B which boils down to a set of alternative entities, to which the following NP is semantically adjoined; Type C which is a sluiced parenthetical interrogative clause. 2)The positive polarity properties of "WH-ka" stem from factors not necessarily coming from its lexical semantics: morpho-syntactic properties of negative -nai; pragmatically motivated scope-inversing effects of the contrastive topic ("??I didn’t see SOMEON" vs "I didn’t see ALL"; semantic properties of some complements (ex. complements of speech act verbs) which are specified to denote an utterance in davidsonian terms.
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Report
(4 results)
Research Products
(19 results)
