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In:Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Vietnamese Linguistics
Edited by Nigel Duffield, Trang Phan and Tue Trinh
[Studies in Language Companion Series 211] 2019
► pp. 181–212

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Chapter 9
Scalar implicatures and the semantics of wh-indefinites in Vietnamese

 | City University of Hong Kong
 | Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz | Germany & Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam
Published online: 9 October 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.211.09tsa
Abstract
In this chapter we attempt to account for the meaning of wh-indefinites in Vietnamese through a formal system of scalar implicatures and exhaustification (Chierchia, Fox & Spector 2012; Chierchia 2013). While Vietnamese wh-indefinites occur in a variety of licensing contexts, we conclude that the crucial condition is speaker ignorance, which can be derived compositionally from the interaction between a wh-indefinite, an exhaustification operator, and a speaker-oriented epistemic modal. We further discuss the interpretations of morphologically complex wh-indefinites and bare wh-indefinites in negative sentences and non-epistemic modal environments, and demonstrate how to derive their semantics uniformly. Our proposal presents an alternative to the syntactic analysis by Tran & Bruening (2013), which is critically reviewed.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Wh-indefinites in Vietnamese
    • 1.1Traditional NPI-licensing contexts
    • 1.2Epistemic modal contexts
    • 1.3Complement clauses of nonfactive predicates
    • 1.4In the scope of imperatives, certain non-epistemic modals and “non-realised” contexts
    • 1.5Complex/non-bare morphological forms
  • 2.Tran & Bruening (2013)
    • 2.1The proposal
    • 2.2Objections to T&B’s approach
  • 3.An implicature-based alternative account
    • 3.1Outlining the framework
    • 3.2A note on the null assertoric operator
  • 4.Types of modality and the role of classifiers
  • 5.Further issues: Complex wh-indefinites and the (wide) scope of wh-indefinites
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (29)
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