snippets
Issue 26

December 2012

Contents
1. Luka Crnic. Projection of supplements in alternatives.
2. Michael Erlewine. Structurally distant haplology.
3. Natalia Fitzgibbons. Pied-pipe your preposition and strand it too.
4. Michael Frazier and Masaya Yoshida. Remarks on gapping in ASL.
5. Sumiyo Nishiguchi. Shifty operators in Dhaasanac.
6. Jacopo Romoli. Strong NPIs and Neg-raising desire predicates.
7. Philippe Schlenker. Informativity-based maximality conditions.

5.
Sumiyo Nishiguchi – Tokyo University of Science
Shifty operators in Dhaasanac
doi: 10.7358/snip-2012-026-nishnishiguchi@rs.tus.ac.jp

There has been much debate on whether or not contexts are shiftable. Kaplan 1977
claimed that they are not, but Schlenker 2003 and Anand and Nevins 2004, among
others, have argued that context shifters (referred to as monsters) exist in languages
such as Amharic and Zazaki. Without context shift, an indexical I only refers to thespeaker or the writer as in the English (1a). The result of context shift is that indexicals
such as I, you, here, now, and yesterday can potentially change their reference –similarly to what happens in direct quotation as in (1b).
(1) a. Baali said that I am an idiot.
b. Baali said “I am an idiot.”
In this snippet I present data from Dhaasanac that contradict Kaplan’s claim andthat echo Anand and Nevins’ Zazaki data. Dhaasanac is a Cushitic language spoken byapproximately 48,000 people in Ethiopia and Kenya (Lewis 2009, Tosco 2001). The
data used in this study are based on fieldwork I conducted in 2011.
In (2), the subject of the embedded clause refers either to the matrix subject Baali
or the speaker of the sentence. Here, in contrast to the English (1a), the reference of I
appears to be shifted by a monstrous attitude predicate say.
(2) Baalii
kieyeyaa/yu{ i/speaker}
Baali
say.3SG.PAST
I.SUB/I.ABS`Baali said {I/he} was an idiot.'

deech.
idiot

Note that (2) does not seem to be a direct quotation. Direct discourse is known to be
opaque to A' extraction (Partee 1973, Recanati 1999, Schlenker 1999). However, theobject extraction in (4) and (5) does not affect the reference of I in the relative clauses.
kieye“yaa/yu{ i/speaker} deech”.
(3) Baalii
Baali
say.3SG.PAST
I.SUB/I.ABSidiot`Baali said “{I/he} was an idiot”.'(4) Ini giri Hassani kieye
yu{i/speaker} af gaa duŋgekahemiðab.
girl that Hassan say.3SG.PAST I.ABS
mouth on kiss.1SG.PAST be beautiful`The girl that Hasan said {Hasan/I} kissed is pretty.'(5) Maaya Baalii kieye
NY hayu{i/speaker}
whoBaali say.3SG.PASTNY PREVERBAL I.ABS`In NY, who did Baali say {Baali/I} would meet?'gaa aargira?
in see.FUTUREMoreover, the indexical yesterday, which on a Kaplanian view should never shift
temporal reference from one day before the utterance, seems indeed to shift reference

Snippets - Issue 26 – December 2012
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in Dhasaanac embedded clauses. From (6), it is interpreted that Loya met Baali one day
before the reference time of the matrix, that is, eight days ago.
(6) Ram tiiya
beeyetia
Baalii ye
geey
kieye
days seven ago
Baali to me tell.3SG.PAST say.3SG.PASTLoya geferemu{√i/*speaker} holarge.
Loya yesterdayhim
REFLEXIVE meet.3SG.PAST`A week ago, Baali told me that Loya met him the day before.'(√Loya met Baali eight days ago./*Loya met Baali yesterday.)
References
Anand, P. and A. Nevins. (2004) “Shifty operators in changing contexts,” in Proceedings ofSALT 14, ed. K. Watanabe and R. B. Young. Ithaca, NY: CLC Publications, 20-37.
Kaplan, D. (1989) “Demonstratives,” in Themes from Kaplan, ed. J. Almog, J. Perry and H. K.
Wettstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 481–564.
Lewis, M. P. (2009) Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth Edition. Dallas, TX: SILInternational.
Partee, B. (1973) “The syntax and semantics of quotation,” in A Festschrift for Morris Halle, ed.
S. R. Anderson and P. Kiparsky. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 410-418.
Recanati, F. (1999) Oratio Obliqua,Ooratio Recta. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Schlenker, P. (1999) Semantic uniformity: a cross-categorial approach. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.
Schlenker, P. (2003) “A plea for monsters.” Linguistics and Philosophy 26:29–120.
Tosco, M. (2001) The Dhaasanac Language. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

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