Wh-quantification in Alternative Semantics
Channel: Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine
Date: 2019-08-22

Michael Yoshitaka ERLEWINE (mitcho)

Presented at GLOW in Asia XII, Dongguk University, Seoul, August 2019

Slides and handouts at https://mitcho.com/research/talk-glowinasia2019.html 

Many languages form quantiﬁers by combining a wh-phrase with an additional morpheme, which is often a scalar focus particle or disjunctor (see e.g. Haspelmath 1997: 157). I present a framework for the compositional semantics of alternatives which models various attested forms of wh-quantification, and helps us explain the prevalent use of disjunctors and focus particles in wh-quantification. This work builds on existing descriptions of wh-quantification, but also builds on original data and analyses from Toba Batak (Austronesian), Tibetan, and Burmese.