Scalarity and alternatives of Japanese mora (letter)-based minimizers

Osamu Sawada

doi:10.3765/plsa.v4i1.4525

Abstract

This paper investigates interpretations of the Japanese mora- (letter-) based minimizer “X.Y.Z”-no “X”-no ji-mo ‘even the letter “X” of “X.Y.Z”.’ I argue that this mora/letter-based minimizer has two types, a literal type and a non-literal type, and each type has different semantic characteristics regarding scale structure and computation of alternatives. In the literal type, X corresponds to the first mora of a target “X.Y.Z” and is construed as a minimum on the number scale of moras (among higher scalar alternatives). On the other hand, in the non-literal type it refers to the degree of a main predicate about the target “X.Y.Z” where X is construed as a minimum on the scale of the main predicate. That is, in the non-literal type, scale does not have to do with the number of moras, but with the degree of a predicate. I propose on the basis of the findings that in addition to a local minimizer whose alternatives are lexically activated (Chierchia 2013), there is a global minimizer in natural language, whose alternatives are activated by information contained in the main predicate.

Highlights

This paper investigates interpretations of the Japanese mora- based minimizer “X.Y.Z”-no “X”-no ji-mo ‘even the letter “X” of “X.Y.Z”.’ I argue that this mora/letter-based minimizer has two types, a literal type and a non-literal type, and each type has different semantic characteristics regarding scale structure and computation of alternatives
This paper investigated the meanings of literal and non-literal types of morabased minimizer and showed that each has a different semantic mechanism for computing a scale and alternatives
The phenomenon of the non-literal use of a mora-based minimizer is theoretically important because unlike regular minimizers and literal mora-based minimizers, the minimum degree in a non-literal mora-based minimizer and its alternatives are not lexically determined

Summary

DIAGNOSTIC 2

REPLACEABILITY BY A CHINESE CHARACTER REPRESENTING MULTI-PLE MORAS. The second diagnostic is concerned with the possibility of the use of a Chinese character with multiple moras. Let us analyze the meaning of the non-literal type of mora-based minimizer. (25) The verbs that co-occur with a non-literal mora-based minimizer (from BCCWJ-NT corpus): shira-nai ‘not know’, kuchini si-nai ‘don’t talk about’, iwa-nai ‘don’t say’, kokoroenai ‘don’t understand’, nai ‘there is no (not enough)’, wakara-nai ‘don’t know’, ukagawasenai ‘don’t let us think’, agara-nai ‘don’t go up’. I propose that a non-literal mora-based minimizer has the following at-issue meaning and alternatives, as in (29):. I assume that noun hansei denotes an event of type v: This leads us to posit a slightly different lexical item for a non-literal mora-based minimizer, as in (38), and to posit a structure like (39):. He-TOP “I am sorry”-GEN GO-GEN letter-even say-NEG-PAST ‘He didn’t apologize at all.’ This suggests that the denotation of the non-literal mora-based minimizers is quite flexible

THE ODD EXAMPLES

Theoretical implications

Conclusions