Interpreting 都 to 1 TO in earlier Southern Min texts

Chinfa Lien

doi:10.1186/s40655-015-0009-1

Abstract

The paper explores the polyfunctional word 都 to 1 TO in early Southern Min texts dating back to the sixteenth century or even earlier. Unlike 都 dou 1 in Mandarin, which mainly functions as a maximality operator, 都 to 1 in Southern Min is chiefly used as a modal particle expressing a concessive meaning or meaning of unexpectedness as a type of conventional implicature rather than pragmatic inference. However, it can be identified as expressing maximality and exhaustivity in construction with wh-words and negation. In a nutshell, the concessive sense is taken as the default sense unless it is overridden by the interpretation of 都 to 1 as a maximality operator. I will examine the syntactic and semantic properties of 都 to 1 based on these texts. Its interpretation hinges on the structural position it occupies and the collocates it interacts with.

Highlights

As attested in early Southern Min texts,a 都 to1 TO is mainly subject to two interpretations: (1) a concessive interpretation and (2) an interpretation of maximality and exhaustivity
The concessive meaning is obtained by the conflict between the at-issue meaning of the sentence marked by 都 to1 and the presupposition or inferred meaning driven by the linguistic context.b The universal and distributive meaning induced by 都 to1 is only compatible with the plural meaning carried by noun phrases
4 Conclusions In this paper, I propose that 都 to1 as attested in earlier Southern Min texts features two basic functions, either as a maximality operator or a modal particle carrying concessive meaning or both

Summary

Introduction

As attested in early Southern Min texts,a 都 to1 TO is mainly subject to two interpretations: (1) a concessive interpretation and (2) an interpretation of maximality and exhaustivity. If there is a contradiction or incompatibility between the at-issue expression and a certain assumption or the presupposition inferable from a preceding proposition over and above the sense of exhaustivity and maximality, 都 to1 will be construed as a modal particle featuring the concessive meaning.

Results

Conclusion