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Share Paper 3804

Towards a Propositional Concord Approach for Exclusives in Kasem
Daniel Aremu
36-45 (complete paper or proceedings contents)

Abstract

This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion on the best approach for analysing the syntax-semantic property of the exclusive focus sensitive particle only. There are two approaches which have been discussed in the literature as a result of only's syntactic and semantic properties. The first approach is the Quantifier Approach. It involves only composing with its focus associate in order to form a single quantifier which can quantifier-raise together. The second approach is the Proposition Approach, and it involves a high exclusive (covert) operator which Agrees with adfocal-only, and licenses exclusive interpretation (following Bassi et al. 2002). Based on data from an under-researched Mabia (Gur) language, Kasem, and using semantic, syntactic and morphological tests, I argue for a Proposition Approach for Kasem's adfocal-only cases. I assume that this can equally account for the adverbial-only cases. Overall, the study offers a cross-linguistic support for the Proposition Approach to adfocal-only (cf. Lee 2005, Quek & Hirsch 2017, Bayer 2018 2020, Hirsch & Wagner 2019, Sun 2021, Bassi et al. 2022, Branan & Erlewine 2023, a.o.).

Published in

Proceedings of the 42nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics
edited by Shweta Akolkar, Amber Galvano, Akil Ismael, Kang Franco Liu, and Line Mikkelsen
Table of contents
Printed edition: $475.00