Cover not available
Part of
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2012: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' Leuven 2012
Edited by Karen Lahousse and Stefania Marzo
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 6] 2014
► pp. 109–122

A pragmatic analysis of the differences between NPIs and FCIs

The paper presents an analysis for a systematic distinction between NPIs and FCIs cross-linguistically. It first relates to a range of analyses that treat NPIs and FCIs as indefinites (in the sense of Kamp (1981) and Heim (1982)) that obey a particular semantic/pragmatic constraint that distinguishes them from plain indefinites. For example, Jayez and Tovena (2005) analyse this constraint as an "equity" constraint which demands that all the entities in the referential domain of the indefinite are equally likely referents for this indefinite. The new contribution of this paper consists in proposing that NPIs and FCIs differ on the fact that this "equity" constraint has a different informational status whether it enters the semantic composition of NPIs or FCIs. This is supported by evidence based on the study of three ways of coercing the interpretation of this kind of items.
Published online: 18 December 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.6.05col
References (9)
References
Geurts, Bart, and Rob van der Sandt. 2004. “Interpreting focus.” Theoretical Linguistics 30: 1-44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Giannakidou, Anastasia. 2006. “Only, emotive factive verbs, and the dual nature of polarity dependency.” Language 82 (3): 575-603. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grice, Paul. 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Horn, Larry. 2005. “Airport ‘86 revisited: Toward a unified indefinite any.” In The Partee Effect, ed. by G. Carlson, and F.J. Pelletier, 179-205. CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Jayez, Jacques, and Lucia Tovena. 2005. “Free choiceness and non-individuation.” Linguistics and Philosophy 28:1-71. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kratzer, Angelika. 1989. “An investigation of the lumps of thought.” Linguistics and Philosophy 12: 607-653. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Potts, Christopher. 2005. “Conventional implicatures, a distinguished class of meanings”. In The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces, ed. by Gillian Ramchand, and Charles Reiss, Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Simons, Mandy, David Beaver, Craige Roberts and Judith Tonhauser. 2011. “What projects and why.” Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 20: 309-327. Ithaca, NY: CLC Publications. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zeevat, Henk. 2009. “Only as a mirative particle.” In Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on formal and experimental approaches to discourse particles and modal adverbs at ESSLLI 2008, 179-196. Bonn: Institut für Kommunikationsforschung und Phonetik der Universität Bonn.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Nkollo, Mikolaj
2020. Cumbersome paths to indefiniteness. Evidence from an Old Occitan customary. Verba: Anuario Galego de Filoloxía 47 ► pp. 245 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.