Abstract
Japanese focus particle mo expresses scalar implicatures similar to English even. In the literature, these implicatures have been related to ‘likelihood/expectation’ of event occurrence. This paper investigates the ‘numeral-CL-mo’ construction where mo follows a numeral and means either many or few, and clarifies the nature of ‘unlikeliness’ given by mo in terms of the probability (Fernando and Kamp 1996) and the set of alternatives (Rooth 1985) of quantities. It is shown that (i) syntactic categories and the scope of mo determine possible interpretations, and (ii) the conventional implicature of mo, together with the order of probabilities, provides many/few interpretations.
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- 1.
The NP-focus mo such as in (2) is generally known as the focus particle of ‘addition’ similar to also, but it occasionally means even within a certain environment created by a context, lexical item, strong stressed intonation, etc. For the descriptive classification of the meanings/usages of mo, which is beyond the scope of this paper, refer to e.g. Numata (1986), Sadanobu (1995). Numata (1995) gives a summary of the various classifications of mo in the literature.
- 2.
- 3.
The pre-case mo here, which appears always within an NP, is called a ‘fuku joshi’ or ‘juntai joshi’ in Japanese.
- 4.
This post-case mo is regarded as a ‘kakari joshi,’ a kind of genuine focus postposition in Japanese.
- 5.
It is known that the scope of a focus particles is affected by the lexical meanings of words, contexts, phonological intonation, etc. For a description of the various scopes taken by mo in written texts, see Numata and Jo (1995).
- 6.
The same scope assignment as in (12b) applies if mo is followed by the focus particle wa of contrast, as in [Gakusei-wa JUU-NIN- mo-wa atsumara]-nakat-ta. (Ten students did not gather. ten: many).
- 7.
This paper does not deal with the negation of assertion, such as [Gakusei-ga JUU-NIN-mo kita]-n - ja - nai . Juu-nin-shika konakatta-nda. (It is not that as many as ten students came. Only ten came); since regardless of the construction/scope, any element in a sentence can be negated by n-ja-nai (it is not that), including conventional implicatures such as the many mo here.
- 8.
Subordinate clauses other than conditionals do not reverse monotonicity, so that the biggest scope does not affect the interpretation. To take a simple example, in Juu-nin-mo kita koto - wa/node yokatta (It was good that/because as many as ten people came), mo expresses invariably many irrespective of the scope, as opposed to the conditional kure-ba (if come).
- 9.
A function f from Boolean algebra B to B* is said to be additive iff for each two elements X and Y of the algebra B:\(f(X{ \cup }Y) = f(X) \cup f(Y)\). A determiner such as one in ‘One student came,’ which is a function on NPs, is called an additive determiner.
- 10.
A function f from Boolean algebra B to B* is said to be anti-additive iff for each two elements X and Y of the algebra B:\(f(X \cup Y) = f(X) \cap f(Y)\). A determiner such as no in ‘No student came,’ which is a function on NPs, is called an anti-additive determiner.
- 11.
The clarification of the notions of ‘resemble’ and ‘similar world’ is beyond the scope of this study; and it is simply assumed here ‘if Q-mo is made up of a number, \({\mathcal{A}}\) also consists of numbers or proportions whose cardinality is calculable within the same cardinality of \(\varphi\),’ adopting the postulation in Fernando and Kamp (1996) ‘the switch a/e (regarding the alternation \(\chi_{e}^{a}\)) could be viewed intensionally as moving to a most similar world modulo a/e.’
- 12.
For displaying the scope and focus of mo seen in Sect. 2, \(Q{\text{-}}{\sf{\hbox{mo}}}_{x} (\varphi ,\psi )\) in (27) can be replaced by \({\sf{\hbox{mo}}}(Q_{F} x(\varphi ,\psi ))\), where mo’s scope is shown by ( ), the focus by \(F\). Thus, \(Q{\text{-}}{\sf{\hbox{mo}}}_{x} (\varphi ,\psi )\) iff \({\sf{\hbox{mo}}(}Q_{F} x(\varphi ,\psi ))\). But the former concise one is used here for simplicity.
- 13.
As well as (27), \(Q{\text{-}}{\sf{\hbox{mo}}}_{x} (\left( {\varphi ,\psi } \right) \to \omega )\) here means \({\sf{\hbox{mo}}(}Q_{F} x(\varphi ,\psi ) \to \omega )\), where the scope and focus of mo are explicitly shown.
- 14.
It is not claimed here that NP-focus mo’s behavior is explained only by this conventional implicature, since its occurrence with NPs is rather limited, and syntactic/semantic differences between the focus particles of NP-even, i.e., mo, sura, sae, demo, made, etc., require further elucidation.
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Acknowledgments
The author greatly thanks the reviewers and participants of the workshop ‘Contrastiveness in Information Structure and/or Scalar Implicatures’ in CIL 18, for the helpful comments and suggestions.
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Nakamura, C. (2017). Focus Particle Mo and Many/Few Implicatures on Numerals in Japanese. In: Lee, C., Kiefer, F., Krifka, M. (eds) Contrastiveness in Information Structure, Alternatives and Scalar Implicatures. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 91. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10106-4_16
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