Ever free relatives crosslinguistically
Radek Simik
July 2018 

Based on a sample of seven languages, I show that the so called modal inferences in ever free relatives (ignorance and indifference) are not universally available. The primary reading of eFRs crosslinguistically turns out to be a "non-modal" one, which is available to all languages under investigation. The implication is that if there is a modal inference triggered by the use of the ever-morpheme in FRs, the inference is likely to have a source external to the eFR (Lauer 2009, Condoravdi 2015, Hirsch 2016). In line with this conclusion, I propose to generalize Hirsch's (2016) analysis of ignorance ever free relatives, suggesting that all ever free relatives, no matter what their interpretation ends up being, are instances of (un)conditionals + donkey-anaphoric definite descriptions.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/003919 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 22 (published by ZASPiL)
keywords:	ever free relatives, (un)conditionals, definite descriptions, modal inferences, crosslinguistic semantics, semantics, syntax
previous versions:	v2 [March 2018] v1 [March 2018]
Downloaded:	680 times

 

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