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Epistemic indefinites in Cantonese

A case study of m-zi ‘not-know’

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Abstract
A recent line of research concerns how an existential claim is bundled with a modal component — in particular, one relating to speakers’ ignorance — in the nominal domain. The primary focus of this paper is to discuss a case of epistemic indefinites in Cantonese which takes the form of m-zi-WH ‘not-know-WH’. I argue for two claims in this paper. First, I propose that mzi is an (overt) choice function operator that binds wh-expressions and disjunctive expressions. Second, I suggest that the ignorance component associated with mzi is a conventional implicature, representing a new type of the ignorance component for epistemic indefinites. I also discuss a potential grammaticalization path of m-zi, connecting its syntactic distribution to its semantic properties. The findings in this paper uncover a new breed of epistemic indefinites and contributes to our understanding of both the interpretation of wh-expressions in Cantonese and the study of how natural languages encode an ignorance component in nominal expressions.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A choice functional analysis of mzi
    • 2.1The non-verbal use of mzi
      • 2.1.1Differentiating the verbal m-zi from the non-verbal mzi
      • 2.1.2Not syntactic amalgams
    • 2.2Arguments for a choice-functional analysis of mzi
      • 2.2.1Mzi and expressions invoking sets of alternatives for evaluation
      • 2.2.2Competitions with other wh-binders
      • 2.2.3Indefiniteness and scope behaviors of the mzi+wh string
  • 3.The ignorance component as a conventional implicature
    • 3.1The ignorance component
    • 3.2Escaping intensional scope
    • 3.3Not a conversational implicature
    • 3.4Conventional implicature
  • 4.A compositional analysis
    • 4.1Assumptions
    • 4.2Proposal and implementation
      • 4.2.1Mzi as a choice function variable and a CI trigger
      • 4.2.2The apparent narrow scope and parameterized choice functions
    • 4.3Distributed ignorance
      • 4.3.1A complication
      • 4.3.2Towards a solution
  • 5.Notes on the grammaticalization of mzi
    • 5.1Different usages of the string m-zi
    • 5.2Morphological fusion of verbs and wh-expressions
    • 5.3On the source of the ignorance component
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • List of abbreviations
  • References
References (80)
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