Situation partition and shifted evaluation of distributivity

Authors

  • Takanobu Nakamura

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18148/sub/2021.v25i0.961

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss what I call group distributive readings. Japanese has a distributor “zutsu,” which can occur at the prenominal position or at the floating position. When it occurs at the prenominal position, distributivity is evaluated in a situation other than the situation in which the rest of the clause is evaluated. To account for this shifted evaluation ofdistributivity, I propose that “zutsu” partitions a situation and the shifted evaluation of distributivity comes from the presence of a situation pronoun. The syntactic distribution of group distributive readings follows from an independently motivated generalisation on situation pronoun binding. In addition, this situation-based account makes better predictions for the semantics of canonical distributive readings than previous analyses do.

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Published

2021-09-17

How to Cite

Nakamura, T. (2021). Situation partition and shifted evaluation of distributivity. Proceedings of Sinn Und Bedeutung, 25, 684–701. https://doi.org/10.18148/sub/2021.v25i0.961