Similative Plurals in Persian: Alternatives, Homogeneity, or Strongest Meanings?
Manfred Krifka, Fereshteh Modarresi
January 2024 

Persian, like several other languages, allows for similative plurals like "ketab metab", 'books and such things’. While in upward-entailing contexts this refers to at least one book and at least one book-like object, in downward-entailing contexts this has rather a disjunctive reading, to at least a book or at least a magazine. The article discusses various ways of modeling this behavior of similative plurals, and proposes an account in terms of the strongest meaning hypothesis, which predicts that in downward-entailing contexts the disjunctive interpretation is selected.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/007994 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Proceedings of WCCFL 42
keywords:	reduplication, conjunction, disjunction, ad-hoc kinds, downward-entailing contexts, semantics
Downloaded:	499 times

 

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