(No) variation in the grammar of alternatives

Author:

Howell Anna1ORCID,Hohaus Vera2,Berezovskaya Polina1,Sachs Konstantin1,Braun Julia1,Durmaz Şehriban1,Beck Sigrid1

Affiliation:

1. University of Tübingen

2. The University of Manchester

Abstract

Abstract The paper reports the results of an in-depth crosslinguistic study of intervention effects and the grammar of alternatives in a typologically diverse sample of five languages: Palestinian Arabic (Afro-Asiatic, Semitic), Russian (Indo-European, Slavic), Samoan (Austronesian, Oceanic), Turkish (Altaic, Turkic), and Yoruba (Niger-Congo, Defoid). In all of these languages, we find an interesting asymmetry in that focus evaluation interrupts question evaluation and causes an intervention effect, but not vice versa. We take our data to inform the crosslinguistic analysis of two alternative-evaluating operators, the squiggle operator and the question operator. To capture the observed absence of variation, we propose two semantic universals: The squiggle operator unselectively evaluates all alternatives in its scope. The question operator, on the other hand, is selective.

Publisher

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Subject

Food Science

Cited by 1 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

1. Language change and the Degree Semantics Parameter;Natural Language & Linguistic Theory;2024-05-22

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