Projects: Focus particle semantics   Non-interrogative uses of wh-words  

The expression yin.na’ang in Tibetan is (a) a discourse particle expressing counterexpection (‘however’), (b) a concessive scalar particle (Lahiri 2010; Crnič 2011a,b) and (c) forms free choice items together with wh-words. Morphologically, yin.na’ang is a transparent combination of a copula, conditional ending, and even. In this talk, I document these uses of yin.na’ang from original fieldwork and propose a compositional semantics which derives this range of uses.

Keywords: Tibetan counterexpectation focus particle concessive scalar particle free choice wh-quantification