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Published on: October 13, 2018
St'át'imcets frustratives as not-at-issue modals.
Henry Davis1, Lisa Matthewson1
1Department of Linguistics, University of British Columbia, Totem Field Studios, 2613 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T1Z4, Canada.
This study analyzes the St'át'imcets frustrative marker séna7, revealing it signals unexpected or suboptimal outcomes based on speaker expectations. It clarifies distinctions between entailments and implicatures, and future vs. prospective aspects in linguistics.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Semantics
- Pragmatics
Background:
- The 'frustrative' aspect marks events with unexpected or suboptimal outcomes.
- Cross-linguistic analysis of such markers is crucial for understanding semantic and pragmatic phenomena.
- St'át'imcets (Lillooet Salish) possesses a frustrative marker, séna7, requiring detailed investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze the 'frustrative' marker séna7 in St'át'imcets.
- To compare séna7 with similar markers in other languages (Tohono O'odham, Kimaragang, Tagalog).
- To propose a unified analysis for frustrative markers, considering tense/aspect systems.
Main Methods:
- Linguistic analysis of discourse contexts where séna7 appears.
- Formal semantic and pragmatic argumentation regarding the conditions for séna7's use.
- Cross-linguistic comparison with data from Tohono O'odham, Kimaragang, and Tagalog.
Main Results:
- Séna7 applies when a speaker expects a proposition *p* and a salient true proposition *q* not to co-occur.
- Séna7 encodes epistemic modality, pertaining solely to the speaker's beliefs and not affecting truth conditions.
- Séna7 serves as a diagnostic for distinguishing entailments from implicatures and future from prospective aspects.
Conclusions:
- The analysis of séna7 provides insights into epistemic modality and speaker-based meaning.
- Frustrative markers like séna7 and the Kimaragang frustrative can be unified under a single analysis.
- Frustratives should be distinguished from non-culminating accomplishments and do not require causal explanations.
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