Erlewine, Michael Yoshitaka, 2019.
“Wh-quantification in Alternative Semantics.”
Presented at GLOW in Asia XII, Dongguk University, Seoul.
Many languages form quantifiers by combining a wh-phrase with an additional morpheme, which is often a scalar focus particle or disjunctor (see e.g. Haspelmath 1997: 157). I present a framework for the compositional semantics of alternatives which models various attested forms of wh-quantification, and helps us explain the prevalent use of disjunctors and focus particles in wh-quantification. This work builds on existing descriptions of wh-quantification, but also builds on original data and analyses from Toba Batak (Austronesian), Tibetan, and Burmese.