Open Collections

Assis Navarro, Michel

University of British Columbia

This thesis investigates the semantics of nominal countability and scope properties of bare nouns (BNs) in Kaingang (Jê, Brazil). The analysis given here ties together these two phenomena by showing that the scope patterns of BNs in Kaingang, and across languages, are contingent on properties underlying countability distinctions. My main claim is that quantization underlies the count interpretation of Kaingang BNs and their variable-scope effects. The thesis also explores the theoretical and typological implications of this analysis. First, I address countability in Kaingang. The main claim is that all Kaingang nouns are count nouns. This hypothesis is supported by several morphosyntactic and semantic properties of nouns in the language. For instance, Kaingang allows numerals and other count quantity expressions to combine directly with individual and substance nouns, and in quantity judgement tasks comparisons with both types of nouns are cardinality-based. I analyze this generalized counting strategy as an effect of the lexical semantics of nouns. Building on Krifka’s approach (1989, 2007), I argue that all Kaingang nouns are lexically quantized, i.e., they are equipped with a context-sensitive counting function that measures quantities in terms of individual- or portion-units. Second, I examine the scope behavior of BNs in Kaingang and its relevance to the study of variation in the scope of BNs across languages. I show that Kaingang BNs exhibit variable scope in relation to other operators. Using a type-shifting framework (Partee 1986; Krifka 2003), I analyse Kaingang indefinite BNs as predicate NPs mapped into arguments via a choice function type-shifter (CF) which gets existentially closed at any level in the clausal spine (Reinhart 1997). I argue that the difference in scope properties between variable-scope BNs and narrowest-scope BNs is linked to the quantized/cumulative opposition of the predicates they express: the former are quantized predicates, while the latter are cumulative ones. I claim that variable-scope BNs and narrowest-scope BNs are created by two distinct type-shifters: the former by a CF operator and the latter by Krifka’s ∃ operator (Krifka 2003). I further propose that both operators are sensitive to the quantized/cumulative opposition and model this sensitivity via presuppositions carried by them.

Text

2024-08-29

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89098

Linguistics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/