Quexistentials and Focus
<jats:p>Many languages have words that can be interpreted either as question words or as existentials. We call such words quexistentials. It has been claimed in the literature (e.g., Haida 2007) that, across languages, quexistentials are (a) always focused on their interrogative interpretation...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MIT Press - Journals
2022
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144288 |
| _version_ | 1811084948549926912 |
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| author | Hengeveld, Kees Iatridou, Sabine Roelofsen, Floris |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Hengeveld, Kees Iatridou, Sabine Roelofsen, Floris |
| author_sort | Hengeveld, Kees |
| collection | MIT |
| description | <jats:p>Many languages have words that can be interpreted either as question words or as existentials. We call such words quexistentials. It has been claimed in the literature (e.g., Haida 2007) that, across languages, quexistentials are (a) always focused on their interrogative interpretation and (b) never focused on their existential interpretation. We refer to this as the quexistential-focus biconditional. The article makes two contributions. The first is that we offer a possible explanation for one direction of the biconditional: the fact that quexistentials are generally contrastively focused on their interrogative use. We argue that this should be seen as a particular instance of an even more general fact—namely, that interrogative words (quexistential or not) are always contrastively focused—and propose an account for this fact. The second contribution of the article concerns the other direction of the biconditional. We present evidence that, at least at face value, suggests that focus on a quexistential does not necessarily preclude an existential interpretation. Specifically, we show that it is possible for Dutch wat to be interpreted existentially even when it is focused. We attempt to explain this phenomenon.</jats:p> |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:00:35Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/144288 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:00:35Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | MIT Press - Journals |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1442882023-12-06T21:57:17Z Quexistentials and Focus Hengeveld, Kees Iatridou, Sabine Roelofsen, Floris Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy <jats:p>Many languages have words that can be interpreted either as question words or as existentials. We call such words quexistentials. It has been claimed in the literature (e.g., Haida 2007) that, across languages, quexistentials are (a) always focused on their interrogative interpretation and (b) never focused on their existential interpretation. We refer to this as the quexistential-focus biconditional. The article makes two contributions. The first is that we offer a possible explanation for one direction of the biconditional: the fact that quexistentials are generally contrastively focused on their interrogative use. We argue that this should be seen as a particular instance of an even more general fact—namely, that interrogative words (quexistential or not) are always contrastively focused—and propose an account for this fact. The second contribution of the article concerns the other direction of the biconditional. We present evidence that, at least at face value, suggests that focus on a quexistential does not necessarily preclude an existential interpretation. Specifically, we show that it is possible for Dutch wat to be interpreted existentially even when it is focused. We attempt to explain this phenomenon.</jats:p> 2022-08-09T17:27:48Z 2022-08-09T17:27:48Z 2021 2022-08-09T17:13:12Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144288 Hengeveld, Kees, Iatridou, Sabine and Roelofsen, Floris. 2021. "Quexistentials and Focus." Linguistic Inquiry. en 10.1162/LING_A_00441 Linguistic Inquiry Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf MIT Press - Journals MIT Press |
| spellingShingle | Hengeveld, Kees Iatridou, Sabine Roelofsen, Floris Quexistentials and Focus |
| title | Quexistentials and Focus |
| title_full | Quexistentials and Focus |
| title_fullStr | Quexistentials and Focus |
| title_full_unstemmed | Quexistentials and Focus |
| title_short | Quexistentials and Focus |
| title_sort | quexistentials and focus |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144288 |
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