{"id":17895,"date":"2026-04-06T06:05:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T10:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=17895"},"modified":"2026-04-04T20:34:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T00:34:24","slug":"colloquium-veneeta-dayal-yale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2026\/04\/06\/colloquium-veneeta-dayal-yale\/","title":{"rendered":"Colloquium - Veneeta Dayal (Yale University)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><b data-olk-copy-source=\"MailCompose\">Speaker<\/b>: Veneeta Dayal (Yale University)<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><b>Title<\/b>: A Sortability-based Account of Anti-singularity in Questions<\/div>\n<div><b>When<\/b>: Friday, April 10th, 3:30-5pm\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><b>Where<\/b>: 32-141\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><b>Abstract:\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\n<p>This talk addresses three cases of anti-singularity in questions, illustrated in (1a)-(1c). They all convey that the speaker expects that the answer will name more than one individual:<\/p>\n<p>(1)\u00a0 \u00a0a. Which books did you buy?\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <em>English<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 b. Was\u00a0 \u00a0 hast du\u00a0 \u00a0alles gekauft?\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <em>German<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0What have you all\u00a0 \u00a0 bought<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u0093What all have you bought?\u0094<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 c. Qui\u00e9nes\u00a0 \u00a0se\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0fueron pronto?\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <em>Spanish<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Who-PL REFL left\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0early<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u0093Who left early?\u0094<\/p>\n<p>The anti-singularity of (1a) has been explained as arising from competition with its singular version: <em>which book did you buy?<\/em>, which has a uniqueness presupposition \u0096 only one book can be named. This explanation does not extend to the other two cases. There is no uniqueness presupposition in the version of (1b) without alles or in the version of (1c) that has a singular wh <em>qui\u00e9n.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The proper analysis of the anti-singularity observed in (1b)-(1c), I argue, requires us to pivot from consideration of number proper. Drawing inspiration from work on so-called optional plural markers, specifically the Cuzco Quechua morpheme <em>kuna<\/em>, I show how anti-singularity can be a bi-product of a presupposition of <em>sortability<\/em> \u0096 it should be possible to partition the set denoted by the noun complement along some dimension, such as type, size, color etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker: Veneeta Dayal (Yale University) Title: A Sortability-based Account of Anti-singularity in Questions When: Friday, April 10th, 3:30-5pm\u00a0 Where: 32-141\u00a0 \u00a0 Abstract:\u00a0 This talk addresses three cases of anti-singularity in questions, illustrated in (1a)-(1c). They all convey that the speaker expects that the answer will name more than one individual: (1)\u00a0 \u00a0a. Which books did [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17895"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17903,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17895\/revisions\/17903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}