A clausal analysis of free choice demo in Japanese

Kimiko Nakanishi

doi:10.3765/plsa.v6i1.5017

Abstract

It is commonly assumed that in Japanese, an indeterminate pronoun followed by demo (indet-demo) corresponds to free choice any in English (FC any). Based on a number of semantic differences between the two, I argue that indet-demo is not a nominal free choice item, but a concealed unconditional adjunct, corroborating the claim made by Nakanishi and Hiraiwa (2019) and Hiraiwa and Nakanishi (2020, to appear). Based on Rawlins’s (2008, 2013) Hamblin analysis of unconditionals in English, I propose a compositional semantics of indet-demo that captures its semantics properties.

Highlights

In Japanese, indeterminates like dare ‘who’ or nani ‘what’ give rise to various interpretations depending on a particle that they appear with, as in (1) (Kuroda 1965)
It is generally assumed that an indeterminate followed by demo in (2a) corresponds to free choice any (FC any) in (2b) (Nishigauchi 1990, among others)
Analysis of unconditionals in English (e.g. Whatever Beth cooks, Al will be pleased), this article provides a compositional semantics of indet-demo where (2a) has the structure in (3) with two pros, one in the subject position in the unconditional clause and the other in the argument position in the main clause where nan-demo appears on the surface

Summary

Introduction

In Japanese, indeterminates like dare ‘who’ or nani ‘what’ give rise to various interpretations depending on a particle that they appear with, as in (1) (Kuroda 1965). Analysis of unconditionals in English (e.g. Whatever Beth cooks, Al will be pleased), this article provides a compositional semantics of indet-demo where (2a) has the structure in (3) with two pros, one in the subject position in the unconditional clause and the other in the argument position in the main clause where nan-demo appears on the surface (see section 3.2 for details).

Results

Conclusion