Speaker: Wataru Uegaki
\nTitle: Japanese alternative questions are matrix disjunctions of Q-marked clauses
\nDate\/Time: Thursday April 5, 10 am
\nLocation: 32-D831<\/p>\n
Abstract:<\/p>\n
\nAuthors in the previous literature disagree on whether ellipsis is
\ninvolved in alternative questions and (if it is) how large the elided
\nmaterial is (e.g., Han & Romero 2004, Beck & Kim 2006, Pruitt &
\nRoelofsen 2011). In this talk, I present my ongoing analysis of
\nJapanese alternative questions, and argue that they are best analyzed
\nas disjunctions of Q-marked clauses with ellipsis in the first
\ndisjunct. The argument is based on the restricted syntactic
\ndistribution of alternative questions in Japanese: DP disjunction
\nunder the Q morpheme “ka” does not induce alternative question reading
\n(i.e. yes\/no-question reading is obligatory) while VP disjunction
\nunder “ka” allows (in fact strongly prefers) alternative question
\nreading, as exemplified in (i) below.<\/p>\n(i)<\/p>\n
a. watashi-wa [Mary-ga [John ka Sue]-o yonda-ka] shitteiru
\n 1sg-Top Mary-Nom John Disj Sue-Acc called-Q know
\n *’I know whether it is John or Sue that Mary called.’ (*alt Q)
\n ‘I know whether or not Mary called [John or Sue].’ (Y\/N Q)<\/p>\nb. watashi-wa [Mary-ga [John-o yonda ka Sue-o yonda]-ka] shitteiru
\n 1sg-Top Mary-Nom John-Acc called Disj\/Q Sue-Acc called-Q know
\n ‘I know whether it is John or Sue that Mary called.’ (alt Q)
\n ? ‘I know whether or not Mary called [John or Sue].’ (? Y\/N Q)<\/p>\nI show that this fact straightforwardly falls out as a consequence of
\na restriction on the deletion operation in the first disjunct, given a
\nunified semantic analysis of the disjunction marker “ka” and the
\nQ-particle “ka” as a polyadic operator that creates alternative
\npossibilities (cf., e.g., Zimmermann 2000, Alonso-Ovalle 2006). If
\ntime allows, I would also like to talk about possible sources of
\ncross-linguistic variation in the distribution of alternative
\nquestions.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaker: Wataru Uegaki Title: Japanese alternative questions are matrix disjunctions of Q-marked clauses Date\/Time: Thursday April 5, 10 am Location: 32-D831 Abstract: Authors in the previous literature disagree on whether ellipsis is involved in alternative questions and (if it is) how large the elided material is (e.g., Han & Romero 2004, Beck & Kim 2006, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-talks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3986","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\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3986"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4006,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3986\/revisions\/4006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}