July 13, 2012: Junko Shimoyama

Time:: 4:40pm, July 13, 2012
Place:: Kwansei Gakuin University, Nishinomiya-Uegahara Campus,
Graduate Students Services Building 1, 2nd floor, Room 208.
Speaker:: Junko Shimoyama (McGill University)
Title:: Modal indefinites beyond Indo-European: Japanese wh-ka
Abstract:: In this work in progress with Luis Alonso-Ovalle, we explore the epistemic component of wh-ka indeterminates such as nani-ka 'something' and dare-ka 'someone', building on observations in recent work by Sudo (2010, handout for the workshop on epistemic indefinites) and Kaneko (2011, EISS 8). As we can see in examples such as: Mako-wa nani-ka Miyazaki-no eega-o mita 'Mako watched some or other Miyazaki film', wh-ka indeterminates can signal that the speaker does not know which is the individual that satisfies the existential claim. Our hope is that this ongoing project will contribute to the development of a semantic typology of epistemic indefinites (see, e.g., Aloni & Port 2010, Alonso-Ovalle & Menéndez-Benito 2010, and Kratzer & Shimoyama 2002).

Semantics Research Group Meeting, July 13, 2012