| Abstrakt: |
This article develops a comparative semantic analysis of representative focus-alternative quantifiers in English and Japanese: (i) only in English, (ii) dake, dake-wa, and shika in Japanese, and (iii) the cleft construction(s in the two languages). A sentence with only typically, and one with shika invariably, conveys the "negative contribution (NC)" (exclusivity implication) as an at-issue content and the "positive contribution (PC)" (prejacent-proposition) as a (non-presuppositional) not-at-issue content. A sentence with dake typically conveys both PC and NC as at-issue contents, while a sentence with dake-wa, as well as the cleft construction, conveys the PC as an at-issue content and the NC as a not-at-issue content. Dake-wa and the cleft semantically contrast in two respects: (i) with the former, the NC is presuppositional, while with the latter it is non-presuppositional, and (ii) only the latter conveys, as a presupposition, that at least one of the relevant alternative propositions holds true. With appropriate contextual cues, only may receive the dake-like, symmetrical interpretation. Dake may receive, in limited configurations, the dake-wa-like interpretation where only the PC is at-issue. These findings contribute to the general-linguistic taxonomy of focus-alternative quantifiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
Full text from SpringerLink