Universal quantifiers, focus, and grammatical relations in Besemah

Bibliographic Data

ID20511518
AuthorsBridget Mcdonnell (0000-0001-6422-2022, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume47
Issue2
Pages422-462
Publication date2022-09-13
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueStudies in Language (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0378-4177 • E-ISSN: 1569-9978
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/sl.20060.mcd
OpenAlexW4295339316
LanguageEN
References cited24

This article describes adverbial universal quantification in Besemah, a little-described Malayic language of southwest Sumatra, and how the syntactic position of the quantifier relates to grammatical relations and information structure. Given previous descriptions of the relationship between quantifiers and grammatical relations, especially in western Austronesian languages (e.g., Kroeger 1993 ; Musgrave 2001 ), Besemah presents a unique system of universal quantification wherein adverbial universal quantifiers place severe restrictions on which arguments can be quantified. I argue that these restrictions are fundamentally different than those described as ‘quantifier float’ in other languages, but they are not incidental. Instead, these restrictions can be explained by the fact that the adverbial universal quantifier also marks focus in Besemah

Adverbial · Linguistics · Computer Science · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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