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Questions, Quantifiers, and Polarity in Malayalam

K. A. Jayaseelan, CIEFL, Hyderabad

Malayalam has two suffixes -um and -oo, that signify conjunction and disjunction respectively. When these suffixes are added to question words, they yield negative polarity quantifiers and existential quantifiers respectively. The explanation for the wh + `OR' yielding an existential quantifier is as follows: the wh-word is simply a variable. A variable plus disjunction is interpreted as an infinite disjunction of variables, which yields the meaning of an existential quantifier. As for the negative polarity quantifier, it is noted that -um, besides being a conjunction marker, also means `even' and `also'. The author uses Lee & Horn (1994) and Israel (1996)'s analysis to derive the appropriate semantics for wh + -um.



Rajesh Bhatt
Mon Mar 30 11:24:59 EST 1998