ON THE INTERPRETATION OF (UN)CERTAIN INDEFINITES IN INUKTITUT AND RELATED LANGUAGES
The ultimate goal of this dissertation is to move closer toward a universal semantic analysis of indefinite descriptions, with the route being taken principally an ex-amination of the scope-interpretational properties of indefinites in the related lan-guages/dialects of Inuktitut and Kalaallisut (Es...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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2003
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.488.2408 http://www.semanticsarchive.net/Archive/jNlZTc2Y/wharram_dissertation.pdf |
| Summary: | The ultimate goal of this dissertation is to move closer toward a universal semantic analysis of indefinite descriptions, with the route being taken principally an ex-amination of the scope-interpretational properties of indefinites in the related lan-guages/dialects of Inuktitut and Kalaallisut (Eskimo-Aleut: Inuit), both of which are languages lacking (overt) indefinite articles. The general idea behind the dissertation is this: I take a highly constrained view of what an indefinite can denote (a property, unambiguously) and as to what quantificational force it has (none, unambiguously), and, with this, I investigate to what extent the semantic properties of indefinites in Inuktitut and Kalaallisut can be explained. I additionally adopt the idea, which has received increasing attention among linguists in recent years, that choice functions play a role in the interpretation of certain indefinites. Explicitly, I assume that indef-inites may be freely combined with an indefinite article denoting a choice function, and that this choice function is left free, its interpretation being contextually de-termined (Kratzer (1998)). Though it is not obvious why choice functions in natural |
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