A Variable-Force Variable-Flavor Attitude Verb in Koryak Maa Mo - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

A Variable-Force Variable-Flavor Attitude Verb in Koryak

Maša Močnik (mocnik@mit.edu) Rafael Abramovitz (rafabr@mit.edu)

22nd Amsterdam Colloquium (18 December 2019)

Roadmap

➢ Introduction ➢ Koryak 'ivək' and Methodology ➢ PART 1: Variable-Force, Doxastic Flavor ➢ PART 2: Assertive Flavor ➢ PART 3: Bouletic Flavor (Embedded Clause) ➢ Contributions

Are there restrictions on force and flavor variability?

(No.)

Modal elements [...] either vary on the [flavor] axis and thus are polyfunctional in the original sense of expressing different types of modality or they vary

• n the [force] axis and can express

possibility and necessity, but they cannot vary on both axes. (Nauze 2008: 222) Bochnak (2015): not for modals us: not for propositional attitude verbs

Koryak

➢ Koryak (Chukotko-Kamchatkan family) ➢ verb "ivək" (infinitival form), "iv-" (root)

• ex. (2)-(3)

￫ assertive ('say') ￫ doxastic ('think', 'allow for the possibility') ￫ bouletic ('wish', 'hope', 'fear') ￫ directive ('tell/order', 'propose/suggest') see App.

Elicitation Methodology

➢ difficulty with contextual felicity judgments

￫ speakers often treat them as (syntactic) well-formedness judgments

➢ solved with matching task ￫

Russian dopuskat' ("to allow for the possibility", cf. Slovenian dopuščati in Močnik 2019)

Variable Force & Doxastic Flavor

➢ preference for a strong interpretation

• ex. (4)-(5)

(also in elicitations) ➢ weak reading available: ✓ IV p ∧ IV¬p

• ex. (6)-(8a)

➢ not with every doxastic verb: ✗ LƏMALAV p ∧ LƏMALAV ¬p

• ex. (8b)

➢ we don't know if there are variable-force versions of the other flavors, e.g. existential 'say'

Part 1

Variable Force & Doxastic Flavor

➢ downward-entailing contexts:

• ex. (9)-(10)

both readings seem available ➢ under negation: ¬IV white ∧ ¬IV black

• ex. (11)

￫ ♢ black ∧ ♢ white [negation+necessity vs possibility+neg-raising] ￫ a speaker suggested that it can also express another thought (white+black), if this is a separate reading, it would be accounted with: ⃞ black ∧ ⃞ white

Part 1

How to derive variable force?

Rullmann et al. (universal quantification + restriction): Our version (following a suggestion by R. Schwarzschild) is essentially the same: Part 1

iv p ∧ iv ¬p

• ex. (8b)

Part 1 belief state

p ¬p

✓ if g(C) is the set

• f all subset

functions on the belief state

¬iv p ∧ ¬iv ¬p

• ex. (11b)

Part 1 belief state

• p
• ¬p

✓ if g(C) is the set

• f identity

functions on the belief state

Assertive Flavor

➢ modal flavor of modals: underspecification (Kratzer 1977, 1981, 1991,...) vs polysemy (Nauze 2008, Viebahn & Vetter 2016,...) ➢ not what Nauze's generalization hinges upon ➢ we'll model it as underspecification

￫ specifiers: 'openly', 'with words', 'secretly', 'to oneself'

Part 2

Assertive Flavor

✗ The teacher iv'ed that his students studied well, ex. (16) but he iv'ed that they studied badly. ✓The teacher iv'ed that his students studied well, but to himself he iv'ed that they studied badly. ✓The teacher iv'ed that his students studied badly, but openly he iv'ed that they studied well.

Part 2

Part 2

Free (modal-base-like) variable at LF

Bouletic Flavor: Embedded Clause

➢ bouletic flavor not found in the nominalization

• ex. (19)

➢ embedded conjunctions test (cf. Bogal-Allbritten 2016): ￫ iv [p,q] : ✓ think p and hope q ex. (20) ✓ hope p but allow q

• ex. (21)

✗ say p and think q

• ex. (22)

￫ iv [p, would q]: think p and wish q

• ex. (23)

Part 3

Bouletic Flavor: Embedded Clause

➢ group attitude holder test (cf. Bogal-Allbritten 2016): ￫ no hope/fear distinction

• ex. (24)

➢ we have not yet found: ￫ a mixed-feelings flavor ￫ a fear-version of wish ('I ivək that I was sad' would presuppose that I am

happy and assert that being sad is dispreferable)

Part 3

Part 3

Bouletic Flavor: Illustration with wish

Example denotation for 'wish' from the literature: the goal is to abstract this out ! belief-state contingent

Part 3

Bouletic Flavor: Illustration with wish

Yalcin (2007): Example: here: Example: agent the world from which the info state is generated the way the info state is generated a restricted state?

ivək feeds this in

Part 3

Bouletic Flavor: Illustration with wish

Example denotation for 'wish' from the literature: the goal is to abstract this out issue: belief-state contingent

Part 3

Bouletic Flavor

➢ wish = ivəkDOX + CF (most likely, it's actually CF+something covert) ➢ hope = fear = ivəkDOX + a covert item downstairs

Contributions

➢ methodological: ￫ solution for doing semantic fieldwork when contextual felicity judgments fail ➢ empirical: ￫ variable-force attitude verb ￫ variable-force-variable-flavor attitude verb (against the universal) ➢ theoretical: ￫ bouletic meaning composed at LF (doxastic quantifier + preference component)