This paper is an exploration of root semantics, change-of-state (CS), and state passives in Nsyilxcn (a.k.a. Okanagan, ISO: 639-3 oka), a Southern Interior Salish language spoken in south-central British Columbia, and the northern interior of Washington State. The analysis involves a synthesis of Beavers and Koontz-Garboden’s (2012, 2020) theory of change-of-state, work on state passives (Parsons 1990; Kratzer 2000; Embick 2004) and the syntactic and semantic functions of v (Kratzer 1994; Embick 2004, 2023), expressed within a degree framework (Kennedy 1999; Kennedy and Levin 2008; Nederveen 2023 for Salish). I demonstrate that if roots lack degree standards in Nsyilxcn and scalar target states are inherent arguments of CS roots, systemic predictive generalizations emerge regarding not only the semantics of v structures in Nsyilxcn, but points of variation across Salish can also be meaningfully engaged with. Aside from the primary goal of providing an accurate description and compositional analysis of Nsyilxcn roots as they occur within several key v structures, this paper hopes to contribute an additional cross-linguistic perspective and methodology to the ongoing debate regarding the types of meaning roots encode in natural language (Beavers et al. 2021), and the semantics of v.
This paper analyzes the enclitic =mi in Saraguro Kichwa (a severely endangered language spoken in Saraguro, Ecuador) in matrix declarative clauses in an approach that integrates the broader Quechuan language family. Based on original fieldwork that documents an otherwise undocumented variety of Kichwa, I make three novel empirical observations: (i) I provide evidence suggesting that =mi signals verum, (ii) I show that using =mi is possible to confirm the truth of the scope proposition when following up a sentence with a reportative (but not a direct) evidential, and (iii) I show that =mi surfaces in contrastive (corrective) uses. I make a proposal where =mi is analyzed as a focus marker, which is likened to focus-sensitive items such as only. I further broaden the discussion of =mi to the Quechuan family, showing that integration with prior discourse is the common feature across the family. The discussion bears on general debates of how to best analyze verum and contrast strategies cross-linguistically by introducing a novel strategy instantiated by =mi in that analyzing this element requires the integration of elements of both focus (alternative semantics) and discourse management (sensitivity to the question under discussion).
This paper makes two contributions to the study of the interpretation of nominals across Germanic and Romance languages. First, it shows that plural kind terms, such as English bare plurals (e.g., lions) and Italian definite plurals (e.g., i leoni), have definite, non-generic uses in sentences expressing generalizations that were traditionally thought to uniformly involve generic quantification. These non-generic uses explain why the distribution of kind-denoting plurals in sentences expressing generalizations is wider as compared to singular indefinites, which can only appear in generalizations that have a genuinely generic Logical Form (Sects. 3-5). Second, the paper draws on a contrast between English and Italian (and to a minor extent French) plural forms, both bare and definite (Sect. 5). This yields a new approach to the mapping between the form and the interpretation of nominals that combines elements from Chierchia’s (Natural Language Semantics 6:339–405, 1998) and Longobardi’s (Natural Language Semantics 9:335–369, 2001) frameworks. On the approach I present, English bare plurals can alternatively be mapped to kinds or to properties; Italian definite plurals, when not referential, can only be mapped to kinds; and Italian bare plurals only to properties. This explains the behavior of these expressions in a wide number of contexts, most importantly in episodic sentences, which raise puzzles for extant accounts.
This paper evaluates empirical methods for detecting the focus-sensitivity of clause-embedding predicates, with the objective of making them applicable to predicates within and across languages. Our positive proposal is a test based on a combination of inferential judgments and truth-value judgments. We compare this method with three alternatives: one based on truth-value judgments alone; another based on judgments of coherence or contradiction; and a third one based on inferential judgments alone. We conclude that our combined test is more successful than its alternatives in terms of cross-linguistic uniformity (i.e., it is applicable to different languages with as few language-specific elements involved as possible) and item generalizability (i.e., there is a clear recipe for how to carry out the test for any clause-embedding predicate).
There is debate about whether polar questions (PQs) have bipolar semantics (e.g., denoting a set of propositions p, ¬p), monopolar semantics (a singleton set p), or both. The issue is difficult to settle using English data alone. In this paper I bring new data to bear on the debate from nɬe ʔkepmxcín (Salish). I argue that natural language has both bipolar and monopolar questions, and that nɬe ʔkepmxcín morphosyntactically distinguishes the two. I further argue that bipolar questions come in two types, which are also morphosyntactically distinguished in nɬe ʔkepmxcín: exhaustive (presupposing that p and ¬p are the only two answer options), and non-exhaustive (allowing answers beyond p and ¬p). I thus argue that nɬe ʔkepmxcín’s three-way morphosyntactic contrast in polar question forms reflects a three-way semantic contrast. The nɬe ʔkepmxcín data have implications for the analysis of other languages. I argue against existing analyses of English plain PQs as either uniformly bipolar or monopolar, and in favour of an ambiguity analysis. The nɬe ʔkepmxcín data further support a distinction in at least some languages between so-called inquisitive and assertive declarative questions (DQs), rather than a unified analysis of these. Finally, nɬe ʔkepmxcín provides evidence that declarative-question-like or monopolar questions cross-linguistically need not be non-canonical, and their properties should therefore not be derived via markedness.
