Japanese embedded questions are nominal: Evidence from quantificational variability effect

The exhaustivity of an embedded interrogative sentence can be altered by the presence of an adverb in the matrix clause. This phenomenon, known as Quantificational Variability Effect (QVE), manifests itself in a peculiar way in Japanese. A QVE-inducing adverb can take the form of a numeral classifier that agrees with the embedded Wh-phrase. While a QVE-inducing numeral classifier appears to be associated with an embedded wh-phrase, it is not clear how such an association can be established. I argue that Japanese embedded questions are implicitly nominalized in the fashion similar to the internally-headed relative clause construction, and that the nominalized embedded questions are treated as concealed questions. The proposed analysis gives a very simple account for the puzzling QVE construction, as the floated quantifier structure with a concealed-question-denoting NP is commonplace. The paper examines a variety of phenomena, such as doubly headed relative clause structure and selectional restrictions on QVE, which support the nominal structure of Japanese embedded questions.

Getting quantifying-into questions uniformly: Functionality, domain exhaustivity, and quantificational variability

Questions with a quantifier have readings that seem to involve quantification-into questions (QIQ). This paper provides a uniform compositional analysis of these readings. I propose that QIQ-readings are special functional readings —— the question nucleus involves a functional dependency between the quantifier and wh-trace.I argue that the seeming QIQ-effect is derived by extracting a minimal set that satisfies a quantificational predication condition. The possible values of this minimal set determine whether QIQ-readings are available and whether a question admits a pair-list answer and/or a choice answer. This analysis also explains the contrast between ∀-questions and multi-wh questions with respect to domain exhaustivity, and accounts for the quantificational variability effects in embeddings.

Than clauses as embedded questions

Quantifiers in comparative than clauses often appear to take scope at the matrix level, a phenomenon that has spawned a large recent literature. Here I reopen an old line of investigation that seeks illumination in the strikingly similar behavior of quantifiers in embedded questions. A novel observation in this connection is that English clausal comparatives support quantificational variability effects. I explore the possibility of treating than clauses as embedded questions, sketching two implementations, and weigh this type of analysis against recent approaches that invoke degree pluralities. I also discuss multiple-wh configurations in clausal comparatives.

On the (in)definiteness of impersonal pronouns

This paper addresses the question whether impersonal pronouns should be analyzed as indefinite or definite expressions based on their discourse anaphoric potential. I present new data that support the claim that impersonal pronouns should be analyzed as neither (see Koenig & Mauner 1999). I sketch a formal analysis that captures this behaviour. Furthermore, I show that the availability of quantificational variability effects for impersonal pronouns is not foolproof evidence for their indefiniteness as is usually assumed in the literature (see Malamud 2013).

Children's knowledge of wh-quantification in Mandarin Chinese

ABSTRACTWh-words in Mandarin Chinese exhibit quantificational variability. Aside from a typical interrogative reading, wh-words can also have an existential indefinite reading or a universal reading. Which reading it is depends on the linguistic environments in which they occur. The present study investigates Mandarin-speaking children's sensitivity to the linguistic environments for the noninterrogative use of wh-words: the existential reading and the universal reading. The results show that young children exhibited adultlike sensitivity to the licensing environments for the noninterrogative use of wh-words. Given the difficulty that children may have in using the input data to learn the interpretation of wh-words and the early emergence of this knowledge, we propose that the licensing mechanism for the noninterrogative use of wh-words is innate.