The (non)-projective properties of the Japanese counter-expectational intensifier yoppodo

Abstract

This paper investigates the projective and non-projective properties of the Japanese counter-expectational intensifier yoppodo. Yoppodo has some unique semantic and pragmatic characteristics that ordinary intensifiers do not. In adjectival environments, yoppodo must co-occur with an inferential evidential marker (modal) and infers a high degree via the evidence. It also conventionally implicates that the high degree is above a speaker’s expectation. The interesting feature of yoppodo is that its relationship with an evidential marker is tied up in the issue of projectability. If yoppodo is embedded under an attitude predicate and there is an evidential modal in the embedded clause, then yoppodo’s counter-expectational meaning is subject-oriented. However, if yoppodo is embedded under an attitude predicate and there is an evidential modal in the main clause, then yoppodo’s counter-expectational meaning is speaker-oriented. I argue that the projective property of yoppodo is different from both typical conventional implicatures (e.g., expressives, appositives; see Potts 2005, 2015; Tonhauser et al. 2013) and typical presuppositions, and I claim that it belongs to a new type of projective content, a “dependent projective content.” This paper provides a new perspective for the theories and classification of projective content.