Abstract
The paper investigates the information structure that licenses the Japanese floating numeral quantifier (FNQ) in terms of prosody and context from the point of view that the pitch reset on the FNQ affects the information structure and plays a crucial role in determining the interpretation of the FNQ. I will show that FNQ sentences are potentially ambiguous between an event-quantifier reading (i.e., a VP-related FNQ reading), and an object-quantifier reading (i.e., an NP-related FNQ reading) where such a reading is possible. The syntactic and semantic difference yields distinct prosodic phrasings (in accordance with information-structure) which contribute to the disambiguation of the two readings (and hence the grammaticality).
Highlights
Discourse effects supposedly affecting the processing of the floating numeral quantifier construction in Japanese is not yet known1
Through the examination of floating numeral quantifier (FNQ) interpretation, this paper argues that the Japanese FNQ should be defined as an instance of expressing a discourse relation, with an emphasis on the nature of its prosodic realization in a given discourse2
I have emphasized that in light of information structure, focus emerges as part of the interpretation of Japanese FNQs
Summary
Received December 9th, 2012; revised January 2nd, 2013; accepted January 10th, 2013. The paper investigates the information structure that licenses the Japanese floating numeral quantifier (FNQ) in terms of prosody and context from the point of view that the pitch reset on the FNQ affects the information structure and plays a crucial role in determining the interpretation of the FNQ. I will show that FNQ sentences are potentially ambiguous between an event-quantifier reading (i.e., a VP-related FNQ reading), and an object-quantifier reading (i.e., an NP-related FNQ reading) where such a reading is possible. The syntactic and semantic difference yields distinct prosodic phrasings (in accordance with information-structure) which contribute to the disambiguation of the two readings (and the grammaticality)
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